CENTER FOR COUNTERING DIGITAL HATE

Institutional Archetype

THE NAMED LIST — CCDH’s characteristic product is a short list of named accounts, paired with a demand that platforms and advertisers act on it. The organization does not run a model, host a network, or hold a moderation console. Its lever is upstream of all three: publish a ranked count of who is said to cause the most harm, attach the metric to a call for deplatforming or demonetization, and let the platforms and the ad buyers supply the enforcement. The archetype is the list itself — the artifact that converts an advocacy group’s research into pressure on private infrastructure. This profile scores that mechanism, not the private motives of anyone who operates it; the lawsuit allegations below are X’s, and the ruling that dismissed them is the court’s.

Mandate & Origin

CCDH is a nonprofit incorporated in the United Kingdom with an affiliated U.S. 501(c)(3), led since founding by CEO Imran Ahmed. Its self-stated mission is to disrupt “the architecture of online hate and misinformation,” pursued primarily through published research reports that name specific actors and press platforms and advertisers to act against them.

Its most consequential artifact is the “Disinformation Dozen” report, published 24 March 2021 under the title “The Disinformation Dozen: Why platforms must act on twelve leading online anti-vaxxers.” CCDH named twelve individuals and asserted they were responsible for up to 65% of anti-vaccine content shared across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, calling on the platforms to remove them.

Funding & Backers

CCDH reported raising roughly $1.47 million in 2021, of which about $1.1 million came from the Schwab Charitable Fund, a donor-advised-fund sponsor through which the ultimate donors are not disclosed.

The funding shape is ordinary for an advocacy nonprofit and is noted here only because the org’s leverage runs through third parties: the money buys research that names actors, and the naming is then actioned by platforms and advertisers the org does not control.

The filings, current. ProPublica’s index of CCDH’s U.S. returns gives total revenue of $1,471,247 for 2021, the figure behind the ~$1.47 million above (ProPublica, CCDH). The return for calendar 2025, submitted 14 August 2026, reports total revenue of $3,526,306, all but $32,244 of it contributions and grants ($3,494,062), no program-service revenue, expenses of $3,432,825, net assets of $1,866,587 and nine employees, against revenue of $4,248,552 in 2024. The government-grants line is blank. Expenses include $1,620,670 of salaries and benefits, $183,897 of legal fees and $977,333 of other fees for services, which Schedule O breaks into $967,333 of consulting and $10,000 of contracted labor. The return’s own mission line reads “THE CENTER FOR COUNTERING DIGITAL HATE’S (CCDH) MISSION IS TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES ONLINE THROUGH INNOVATIVE RESEARCH, PUBLIC CAMPAIGNS, AND POLICY ADVOCACY” (ProPublica, Form 990, calendar 2025). Schedule R lists one related organization, a British non-profit, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate at 82 St John Street, London (Schedule R). Total lobbying expenditures for 2025 under the section 501(h) election were $2,068, $2,019 of it direct and $49 grassroots, against a nontaxable amount of $321,641 (Schedule C).

The federal ledger, from the government’s side. USAspending, queried for recipients named “Countering Digital Hate” across all federal award types on 23 October 2026, returns no contract, grant or loan. The one lobbying registrant that has worked for CCDH is below.

Institutional Voice & Intent

The register is investigative and campaigning: a research house that writes for the front page and says so. Its own site describes the method as “We build public campaigns that turn evidence into pressure, from front-page news to movements demanding action” (CCDH, About), and the homepage line is “We expose digital harm to hold tech companies accountable” (CCDH). Ahmed gave the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee the platform theory on 9 December 2021: “The platforms have managed to successfully stop any credible action by deploying a well-worn playbook,” summarized as “Deny, deflect, delay,” and the legislative conclusion: “social media companies cannot self-regulate, and that we need new legislation” (House hearing record, 9 Dec 2021). After the Southern District of New York dismissed his suit on 8 September 2026, the organization’s statement carried his words: “We will not be intimidated or silenced” (CCDH, 10 Sep 2026).

The voice changed in 2026. On 15 October CCDH announced a new name: “The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) today announced a new name, the Center for Countering Digital Harm, reflecting the organization’s growing mission to protect people from the harms caused by social media, artificial intelligence, and other digital technologies.” Ahmed: “The Era of Unaccountability is ending.” The release adds a Canadian office, a rapid-response research team and, as Chief Strategy Officer, Jason Sattizahn, “a former Meta researcher and whistleblower who testified before Congress about the company’s handling of child-safety research” (CCDH press release, 15 Oct 2026). The About page now says “In 2026, we changed our name from the Center for Countering Digital Hate to the Center for Countering Digital Harm to reflect the broader scope of our work.”

Stated alignment: “Protect human rights and civil liberties online” (Form 990), and make “digital safety” the heart of “some of the biggest issues shaping our lives today” (CCDH site). Observed alignment: A campaigning nonprofit whose product is a named target (an account list in 2021, a platform, a model or an executive since) paired with a demand that someone else enforce. Gap assessment: The target set has widened from accounts to products and companies, and the record shows the same mechanism running at each scale. The 2026 filings move it from hate speech toward child safety and AI.

Stated intent: Expose “how powerful people and companies enable digital harm through social media and AI,” then “build campaigns and change policy to hold them accountable” (CCDH, About).

Observed intent: Convert research into pressure on platforms, advertisers, legislators and, now, courts and AI developers. Interest, as documented: CCDH told Congress that platforms “cannot self-regulate” and that “we need new legislation,” and in 2021 and 2022 it paid an outside firm, Lot Sixteen LLC, to lobby on “Section 230 reform” (LDA filings, below). The pairing is the documented fact: its product is measurement of platform conduct, and the rule it asks for would put duties on that conduct. Its own best case is the one Ahmed gave the committee: platforms “discovered prioritizing hate, misinformation, conflict, and anger is highly profitable,” and voluntary action had failed. Other factions gain from the same rule: ADL asked the same subcommittee on the same day to change Section 230, and NewsGuard has had a lobbying registration naming Section 230 reform since 2021. The convergence is the finding, and no coordination is asserted.

Gap: The organization’s defense is its record and its court wins: X’s suit was dismissed as punishment for speech, and the Southern District of New York dismissed its CEO’s suit on jurisdiction while saying he “very well may have valid causes of action.” The record cannot settle whether the metrics behind each campaign hold, which Meta disputed for the Disinformation Dozen, and it cannot settle what any government’s visa action intended. For the lever, it never needs to.

• Social accounts and feeds. Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads and YouTube, all linked from counterhate.com; no X account is linked from the site, and no RSS or Atom feed was found at the usual paths (they return 404). The renamed organization also runs counterharm.com.

Position in the Apparatus

CCDH sits as the list-maker upstream of enforcement, and as a witness, a registered-lobbyist client, a defendant and now a litigation party.

• The named list. The Disinformation Dozen of March 2021 is the archetype above. In the platform era CCDH’s list-making now covers products: the organization’s statement of 10 September 2026 says “our research found that Grok generated three million sexualized images in just 11 days, including 23,000 depicting children” (CCDH, 10 Sep 2026), the target being xAI’s Grok on X. The AI safety desk is now a standing issue page on the site (CCDH, AI Safety).
• The witness. Ahmed testified at the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing “Holding Big Tech Accountable” on 9 December 2021, on a panel with ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt (hearing record, above).
• The lobbying client. Lot Sixteen LLC registered for CCDH in the third quarter of 2021 and terminated in the first quarter of 2022 (below), and the organization’s own return reports $2,068 of direct and grassroots lobbying in 2025.
• The litigant. CCDH is the appellee in X Corp. v. CCDH in the Ninth Circuit, argued on 30 September 2026 with Roberta Kaplan as counsel of record, and an amicus in the New York Court of Appeals, where on 15 September 2026 it announced a brief “over whether the algorithm can be put on trial,” in the Buffalo shooting case (CourtListener, 9th Cir. No. 24-2643; CCDH, 15 Sep 2026).

Actions & Leadership Choices

The register is “countering digital hate.” The record is a sequence of named-list campaigns whose enforcement is carried out by others — and two adversaries who tested the mechanism in court and in sanctions.

The Disinformation Dozen was actioned despite a disputed metric. After publication, the Biden administration cited the report in July 2021 while pressing platforms on vaccine misinformation. Meta publicly disputed CCDH’s 65% figure, countering that the twelve named profiles accounted for only about 0.05% of vaccine-related content views on Facebook — yet Meta also confirmed it had removed or penalized content tied to each of the twelve accounts. The mechanism worked whether or not the headline number held: the list produced enforcement. The Virality Project’s “General Anti-Vaccine” pod covered “Anti-vaccine activists and influencers, including those discussed in the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Report,” and surfaced “the greatest amount of content compared with the other five pods” (Virality Project final report, Table 1.1).

X sued, and lost. In 2023 X Corp. sued CCDH, alleging its scraping breached the platform’s terms of service (with claims under the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and for intentional interference), and alleging that CCDH’s reports drove advertisers away. On 25 March 2024, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer (N.D. Cal.) dismissed the suit, writing that “this case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech” and that X had brought it to punish CCDH for publications that criticized the company.

A government named the mechanism a coercion campaign. In December 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed visa sanctions on Ahmed, with the State Department’s stated rationale citing “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints.” This is the government’s stated reason for the sanction, not an editorial finding about CCDH; European officials publicly pushed back on the sanctions as an overreach against protected activity.

The court case. Ahmed, a US green-card holder, sued; Judge Vernon S. Broderick (S.D.N.Y.) barred his arrest or detention on December 25, 2025 (JURIST). On September 8, 2026 Judge Loretta Preska dismissed the suit, writing that while Ahmed “very well may have valid causes of action,” an appellate ruling left her without jurisdiction over his free-speech and due-process claims; she kept the restraining order in place for five business days so he could appeal (Reuters via Internazionale).

The rename, the appeal and the brief, current. X appealed the dismissal to the Ninth Circuit (No. 24-2643, docket opened 25 April 2024); the docket lists Roberta Kaplan’s notice of appearance for the appellees, CCDH Inc. and CCDH Ltd., on 27 August 2024, and records the argument on 30 September 2026 with the last filing, a supplemental-authority letter from the appellees, on 25 September 2026 (CourtListener docket). Kaplan is also listed as a board member on CCDH’s 2025 return. On 10 September 2026 CCDH published its CEO’s response to the Preska ruling and quoted the judge’s line that Ahmed “very well may have valid causes of action.” On 15 September it announced an amicus brief in New York’s highest court; on 15 October it announced the new name, the Canadian office and Sattizahn’s appointment (voice section above). Leadership, per the 2025 return: Imran Ahmed, CEO, $270,418 of reportable compensation and $42,363 of other compensation; board chair Simon Clark; directors Anne Marie Albano, Roberta Kaplan and Coby Schoffman (Form 990, Part VII).

CONDUCT verdict: PRESSURE-CAMPAIGN — NAMED-LIST PLATFORM-AND-ADVERTISER LEVER. CCDH’s structural position is the same one occupied by the ratings-and-lists layer of the moderation apparatus — the seam where an advocacy group’s count becomes a platform’s or an advertiser’s action (compare NewsGuard rating publishers and Graphika mapping networks). The org names, and others enforce; the mechanism functioned against the Disinformation Dozen even as the metric was contested, survived X’s suit as protected speech, and drew a government sanction that called it coercion. The hazard is the lever, not the ledger of anyone’s intent.

Alliance Map

These run at the same time. One organization is a U.S. 501(c)(3) with a British affiliate, was a named defendant in a platform’s suit that ended in dismissal and is now on appeal, was a House witness and a lobbying client, has its CEO under a federal visa sanction, with his suit against it dismissed, and has just renamed itself and moved from “hate” to “harm” with a former Meta researcher in its leadership. A single lawyer is both its counsel of record on appeal and a director on its return. CCDH files each of these itself, in its returns, its dockets and its releases. The overlap is the finding.

Reach Assessment

Institutional: High. The mechanism worked on Facebook in 2021 with the metric disputed, per Meta’s own rebuttal, and it has since been aimed at X and at Grok. The organization’s reach is modest in budget, $3.5 million in 2025 against ADL’s $135 million, and large in effect per dollar. The state’s response is itself a reach measure: a visa sanction on its CEO and a dismissed suit over it.

Memetic: High. “Deny, deflect, delay” and the 65 percent figure both entered congressional testimony and press coverage, and the Grok image count is now in its CEO’s public statements.

Civilizational: Moderate. CCDH does not build or deploy a model and writes no refusal policy. It publishes claims about what models produce, and with the 2026 rename it has said that AI is now part of its remit. The hazard is the position, not the people: a small organization whose published count can become a platform’s or an advertiser’s action. The score holds at 72 (8/6/6) against Global Disinformation Index (8/6/6, 77), which has the same component values and a direct revenue chokepoint, and NewsGuard (8/6/7, 76), whose score is licensed into products. CCDH’s list has no such contract behind it and its revenue is unitemized gifts, which is why it sits lower.

Sources: The Disinformation Dozen — Center for Countering Digital Hate (live; bot-403, verified via Wayback); About — Center for Countering Digital Hate (live; bot-403, verified via Wayback); Eric Goldman, “Court Says Twitter Misused Litigation to Punish Defendants for Their Speech–X v. CCDH”; Deadline: X/Musk lawsuit against CCDH dismissed (March 2024); InfluenceWatch: Center for Countering Digital Hate; NBC News: Europeans push back on Trump administration sanctions over anti-disinformation work (26 Dec 2025); PBS NewsHour: Imran Ahmed on the threat to deport him.

Further sources: Center for Countering Digital Hate Inc, Form 990 for calendar 2025 with Schedules C, O and R — ProPublica; Center for Countering Digital Hate — ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer; About — CCDH; CCDH Ushers in New Era of Tech Accountability, 15 October 2026; “We will not be silenced”, 10 September 2026; CCDH Files Amicus Brief, 15 September 2026; CCDH — AI Safety; House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing, 9 December 2021 — congress.gov; Lobbying Disclosure Act filings for Center for Countering Digital Hate — lda.gov; X Corp. v. Center for Countering Digital Hate, No. 24-2643 — CourtListener; FARA registrants — efile.fara.gov.