X is fighting for its users’ right to anonymity against the far-right influencers and accused human traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are seeking to unmask their online critics.
The Tate brothers filed suit against the owners of more than a dozen social media accounts — several of them run pseudonymously — last year, claiming the accounts engaged in a “Conspiratorial Plot” to defame them. After a Florida court said the claims couldn’t be brought against unidentified defendants, they filed an amended complaint against the users they could identify, and a complaint against X demanding it disclose the anonymous account holders in order to go after them, too. Last month, an attorney for the so-called Doe defendants filed a motion for a protective order seeking to block their personal information from being disclosed. Now, in a May 11th response, X has objected as well — saying that among several other legal deficiencies, the request puts First Amendment rights seriously in jeopardy.
“The United States Supreme Court has long recognized that the right to speak anonymously on the internet, including via social media platforms, is protected,” the complaint says. While these protections aren’t absolute, it says, the suit hasn’t satisfied the First Amendment safeguards that are required to prevent chilling effects — and “deter participation in the marketplace of ideas out of fear they could be unmasked for expressing potentially unpopular opinions.”
The accounts in question tracked legal actions against Andrew Tate, a self-professed misogynist accused of rape and human trafficking in the UK and Romania, and his brother, who is also accused of some of the same crimes. The pair deny the accusations. In their original complaint, the Tates say some of the allegedly defamatory statements the accounts posted included calling Andrew Tate “a compulsive liar” and a “groomer.” X and a lawyer for the Tate brothers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The legal battle pits various MAGA-aligned factions against one another
The legal battle pits various MAGA-aligned factions against one another. The Tate brothers were brought back to the US in 2025 reportedly with help from the Trump administration. X owner Elon Musk — himself at times a close ally of Trump — has helped boost their online presence in the past, reinstating Tate’s Twitter account in 2022 after taking over the platform. But Musk has also positioned himself (highly debatably) as a “free speech absolutist” while also taking a particularly harsh stance on anything he deems “doxing” on X. Tate’s demands — to reveal information about users with the intent of stopping them from speaking — might look like abandoning both these principles at once.
Nathan Pope, a creator who goes by Gadget on social media, was originally only named by his online pseudonym in the brothers’ initial complaint against him and other defendants. In a later amended complaint, Pope (who does not conceal his identity online) was named directly. In an email to The Verge, Pope says he was “particularly concerned by the recent efforts to unmask anonymous defendants, especially given the Tates’ own public comments about using the courts against critics and sharing people’s identities online. That raises broader concerns about harassment and the chilling effect this kind of litigation can have on online speech.”
“The right to speak anonymously is part of the First Amendment, and the First Amendment applies to the Internet. And lots of courts have put these two ideas together to protect anonymous online speakers from being unmasked, because that’s what the Constitution requires,” Cathy Gellis, an attorney who writes about internet law, told The Verge in an email. Practically, though it can depend on a variety of factors because “it can be hard for anonymous speakers to get the counsel they need to fight these attempts to unmask them as quickly and affordably as they may need. Sometimes the platforms themselves can and do try to quash the discovery instruments themselves in order to protect their user communities, but it is not always feasible for them to do it every time it comes up.”
Pope said that defending against the Tates’ claims has “come at a significant financial cost,” with defendants crowdfunding their legal support. “I’m pleased that X has chosen to challenge these efforts and defend the principle that people should be able to express opinions and discuss public figures without fear of intimidation through the legal system.”
