UK campaigner targeted by Trump accuses tech giants of ‘sociopathic greed’

A British anti-disinformation campaigner told by the Trump administration that he faces possible removal from the US has said he is being targeted by arrogant and “sociopathic” tech companies for trying to hold them to account.

Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), is among five European nationals barred from the US by the state department after being accused of seeking to push tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.

Ahmed lives lawfully in Washington DC with his American wife and daughter, meaning he is at risk of deportation. Late on Thursday a court granted him a temporary restraining order to block any attempt to remove him from the US or detain him.

Ahmed told the Guardian he believed he had been singled out for his work seeking greater accountability and transparency for social media and AI firms, which has led to Elon Musk’s X unsuccessfully suing CCDH.

Ahmed, who is a friend of Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, said it was another attempt to deflect accountability and transparency.

“This has never been about politics,” he said, adding that his organisation had worked successfully with the first Trump administration and would do so again if asked.

“What it has been about is companies that simply do not want to be held accountable and, because of the influence of big money in Washington, are corrupting the system and trying to bend it to their will, and their will is to be unable to be held accountable,” he said.

“There is no other industry, that acts with such arrogance, indifference and a lack of humility and sociopathic greed at the expense of people.”

As well as Ahmed, the state department has barred the former EU commissioner Thierry Breton. It accused the five people of leading “organised efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetise and suppress American viewpoints they oppose”.

Sarah Rogers, an official at the state department, posted on X: “Our message is clear: if you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you’re unwelcome on American soil.”

The sanctions are being seen as the latest attack on European regulations that target hate speech and misinformation. Campaigners in the UK have said the British government could be targeted further if the Trump administration steps up its attacks on tech regulation.

Ahmed, who began his career working with Labour politicians in Westminster, said he had not yet formally received any notification from the US government, and that he believed its case against him was unfounded. “I’m very confident that our first amendment rights will be upheld by the court,” he said.

The next court hearing, due on Monday, is expected to confirm the protective order that prevents the US government from detaining him, said Ahmed, who spent Christmas away from his wife and infant daughter amid the legal battle.

He said this was “a rational thing for us to do, given that in every other case to date where someone has had a green card withdrawn in the last few months, they have been arrested and detained and often spirited hundreds or thousands of miles away from their friends, family and support networks.”

The CCDH has previously angered Musk over reports chronicling the rise of racist, antisemitic and extremist content on X since he took it over. Musk tried unsuccessfully to sue the CCDH last year before calling it a “criminal organisation”.

More recently, the CCDH released a report warning about harmful answers produced by the latest version of ChatGPT when asked about suicide, self-harm and eating disorders.

“We’ve seen that social media and AI companies are increasingly under pressure as a result of organisations like mine,” Ahmed said. “No one likes being exposed as mendacious or hypocritical, but they call their friends in government or they call their pitbull litigation lawyers and start suing.”

Ahmed said it was particularly jarring to be targeted given that hate speech and misinformation was increasingly a bipartisan issue, raised as a concern by some Republican politicians as well as Democrats.

He said he was nonetheless ready to respond with a swift legal response when he heard the news. “When you take on the world’s biggest corporations and when you’ve had the experiences we’ve had, being sued by the world’s richest man, you dissociate and compartmentalise immediately.”

There had been a cost already, he said. “Nothing I’m going through compares to any of the parents I sit with who’ve lost their children,” Ahmed said. “I chose to take on the biggest companies in the world, to hold them accountable, to speak truth to power. There is a cost attached to that. My family understands that.

“The only time I felt any sadness at all is last night when my wife told me that our child said her sixth word, and then I cried a bit.”