London, Aug 2 (IANS): Elon Musk-run X Corp has sued anti-hate organisation the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) over "unlawful acts" to "improperly gain access" to its data.

X accused the UK-based nonprofit of accessing data from Twitter to “falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content”.

In a statement, CCDH accused X owner Musk of trying to silence anyone who criticised him, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

"Musk's latest legal threat is straight out of the authoritarian playbook -- he is now showing he will stop at nothing to silence anyone who criticises him,” CCDH chief executive Imran Ahmed said in a statement.

He accused the X Corp boss of attempting to "shoot the messenger".

The case has been filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. It seeks damages (amount is unspecified) against the non-profit. CCDH has produced a number of reports critical of Twitter.

The lawsuit alleges that an unnamed third party improperly shared its Brandwatch login details with the CCDH allowing them to gain unauthorised access to data.

The lawsuit follows a July 20 letter sent from X to the CCDH alleging the organisation made “inflammatory, outrageous, and false or misleading assertions about Twitter” and suggested it conspired “to drive advertisers off Twitter by smearing the company and its owner”,reports CNBC.

Twitter has also filed a data-scraping lawsuit in the US, seeking more than $1 million in damages over “unlawfully scraping data associated with Texas residents”.