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Elon Musk’s X sues media watchdog Media Matters over report on pro-Nazi content on the social media site

After a devastating advertiser exodus last week involving some of the world’s largest media companies, X owner Elon Musk is suing the progressive watchdog group Media Matters over its analysis highlighting antisemitic and pro-Nazi content on X — a report that appeared to play a significant role in the massive and highly damaging brand revolt.

The lawsuit filed Monday accuses Media Matters of distorting how likely it is for ads to appear beside extremist content on X, alleging that the group’s testing methodology was not representative of how real users experience the site.

“Media Matters knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and then portrayed these manufactured images as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform,” the complaint filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas said. “Media Matters designed both these images and its resulting media strategy to drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.”

Treczoks ,

alleging that the group’s testing methodology was not representative of how real users experience the site.

Now all he has to proof is that somehow Media Matters has a vastly different view of X than anyone else. Good luck with that, Elon. ,-)

Twentytwodividedby7 ,

X has gotten so bad…any comments section it seems is full of troll farm accounts for Republican fascist ideology. Lately there have been a bunch of memes about how J6 was just a left wing hoax to make Republicans look bad. It’s insane, I watched J6 unfold in disbelief on like 3 live news channels- the fact that they are claiming this is just demonstrably false. Free speech is not protected if it is hate speech, or if it is libelous, and most pertinent - if it is posted on a private company’s forum, so misinformation should be labeled as such or removed. Trump has proven a lack of critical thinking skills is another pandemic in this country and they cannot be allowed to return to power.

thisbenzingring ,

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

In real time… fucking a! George Orwell was something else.

Twentytwodividedby7 ,

I was just thinking about that line but couldn’t remember it. Thanks for posting. It’s insane

DieguiTux8623 ,

Where I live, in my language/dialect we have a saying that goes like “the fifth article I call: who has got money always wins it all”. As opposed to “the third article you have crossed: who hasn’t got money has always lost”.

DieguiTux8623 ,

The numbering “fifth” and “third” is required by the rhymes in the original proverb.

Tears_of_a_Saint ,

Whats the original language and sayings?

DieguiTux8623 ,

Venetian dialect.

Articoło quinto: chi che g’à schei g’à senpre vinto. Articoło terso: chi che no g’à schei g’à senpre perso.

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

In before Elongate Muskrat calls Media Matters a pedophile.

atzanteol ,

“free-speech absolutist”

Vant ,

Absolutely free speech for literal neo-nazi’s, but for everyone else, not so much.

athos77 ,

Ah yes, the ever-popular argument that "the problem isn't that we're a Nazi platform, the problem is that people are pointing out that we're a Nazi platform".

Pratai ,

What a sad little coward.

Illuminostro ,

“Wait a minute… are you seriously going to fuck with The Mouse?”

“Well… yes.”

“You are a fucking idiot.”

OldWoodFrame ,

Remember when Musk seemed like a quirky but well meaning dude who thought the car company he bought was going to save the world?

aseriesoftubes ,

action.mediamatters.org/secure/donate

Varyk ,

“Compare me to fascist bigots, will they!?

I’ll attack the reporting as slander, in a similar way the fascist bigots I’m being compared to do!”

tsonfeir ,
@tsonfeir@lemm.ee avatar

Elon the crybaby Nazi.

jay9 ,

Media Matters should just fold and phoenix into a new company. LOL

mosiacmango ,

Why would they fold? Once discovery starts, they will have Twitter and Musk by the balls. They will entitled to thousands of internal emails/txt/chats that all talk about how Twitter treats Nazis on it platform. You can sure as shit there will be some damning statements made by some employee at some point. Hell, they were most likely made by Musk himself.

Dude is scared shitless of discovery. He sued to not buy Twitter and folded the day before discovery started. Guys got some damning media floating around somewhere hes really afraid of turning over to a court.

SatanicNotMessianic ,

Truth is an absolute defense in cases like these. They admitted to the facts of the case. The testing methodology is absolutely standard. There is no way Musk can prevail.

I just wonder if this will also fall under anti-SLAPP laws, since Musk is clearly doing it to shut down public disclosure and discussion.

NotMyOldRedditName ,

I’d never heard of anti slapp laws before. That’s cool. We have them where I’m at too!

AmbroisindeMontaigu ,

It would, so they chose a jurisdiction that's unrelated to any involved party but doesn't have those laws.

protist ,

Texas does have anti-SLAPP laws:

The Texas Citizens Participation Act protects your rights by giving you:

Anti-SLAPP Motion to Dismiss: This motion asks the court to promptly end lawsuits that violate the Texas Citizens Participation Act.

Help paying for a lawyer: If you win your Anti-SLAPP Motion to Dismiss, the other side may have to pay your attorney’s fees.

Protection: The court may impose sanctions on the other party to discourage them from filing a SLAPP lawsuit against others in the future.

Whether a judge in the northern district of Texas agrees to implement these remedies is less clear

Evilcoleslaw ,

Texas state law has it but this was filed in Federal court. There’s no Federal anti-SLAPP.

protist ,

Ok got it, and since this was always going to be filed in Federal Court, the jurisdiction didn’t particularly matter as far as anti-SLAPP laws are concerned

IHeartBadCode ,
@IHeartBadCode@kbin.social avatar

as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform

The thing is that it looks like Musk is going to mount a technical defense. There's likely to be an admission that there's all kinds of Nazi crap on Twitter and that they allow it to roam free, within it's own little echo chamber. The whole "it's not what the average user experiences" tells me is that what they're going to do is cover the keywords that unlock the Nazi echo chamber and how that sequence of required words aren't in some top 5,000 search terms on the site.

I'm pretty sure the entire point will be to sow some distrust on Media Matter's manner by which they got those screenshots. Basically an argument of "Well, yeah, if you search Nazi 100,000 times and then Apple 100,000 times, we're going to absolutely show you Nazi + Apple stuff. But the number of users who have that as their search history, we here at Twitter, can count on one hand."

The idea is to not deny that it is possible to get Nazi + Apple, but to indicate that the chances of getting it are so rare that Media Matters had to know that their research was contrived. I don't think they're going to deny one ounce of what Media Matters presents to the court, I think what they're going to try and do is shift what the underlying question is on the matter. Basically, shifting it to "this happens to rarely that you just have to go out of your way to get it to happen."

Media Matters will need to keep focus on their broader topic. "X admits that such a combination can happen, they indicate that it is super rare, but there is no way that X could have calculated every permutation. Because of that, the arguments of Media Matter stand firm in that such CAN absolutely happen and X has no idea the frequency of it."

And the fact that X has filed in a very friendly to them courtroom, it's likely that the court is going to entertain the more technical merits of the case rather than the broad questions. It'll absolutely put Media Matters in a very hard position.

There is no way Musk can prevail.

First rule of any kind of litigation. Don't ever say never. Law is black and white but the people who enforce it and judge it are still fleshy emotion pods.

Musk is clearly doing it to shut down public disclosure and discussion

Oh yeah, he's absolutely doing that.

SatanicNotMessianic ,

Yeah, they signaled that’s what they’re going to argue but I don’t think it matters. That’s the standard way of doing that kind of research.

Lining up with any given ad is going to be a function of the number of buys for that ad and the number of locations on a page it could be shown on. That, times the number of users will give you the ability to estimate how many times that happens.

Not having the source code or the business rules for ad picking, the only way to simulate the experiences of millions of daily users is to load the pages over and over again and see what it produces.

IBM and Apple know pretty well how Internet advertising works. They were concerned enough to pull their spends because they were guaranteed this wouldn’t happen, and then it did. It’s really as easy as putting a flag like racist=true on the ad, then having the advertisers contract allow them to opt out of racist ads.

In fact, it’s so simple and such a solved problem that the only reason it wouldn’t be working is if Elon fired the staff that oversees trust and safety and signals that it’s not a concern of twitter’s.

Which he did.

Even if he managed to hand pick his judge, he will lose on appeal. This is a SLAPP with a chilling effect, and I’ve done research on network effects using internet searches as part of the data set, and I can tell you that they followed accepted academic practice.

Musk’s sole argument will be that they didn’t say how often it happened out of how many attempts, but the breadth and variety of the documented instances shows it’s not uncommon when you’re talking about millions of daily users.

Either he knows he’s going to lose and is just doing this to get his narrative into headlines, or he’s got full blown narcissistic rage.

IHeartBadCode ,
@IHeartBadCode@kbin.social avatar

This is a SLAPP with chilling effect.

And I don't disagree with you one bit there. But Texas' anti-SLAPP law is the Texas Citizens Participation Act and it used to be one of the strongest in the country. In 2019, it was modified by the Texas Assembly to introduce a lot of gray area and weaken it considerably.

So I don't disagree with the assertion that this is absolutely frivolous. But Texas' current laws on the book are likely to give Musk enough room to avoid challenges on that aspect.

and I can tell you that they followed accepted academic practice

Oh no doubt, that's the point. To sow doubt on that whole process.

IBM and Apple know pretty well how Internet advertising works

Oh yeah, the notion that they're indicating that Apple pulled their revenue because of "THIS REPORT" is just them grasping. But Musk is absolutely banking that IBM and Apple won't file brief with the Judge to provide more motivation to stick to the broad questions put forward by Media Matters. Business wise, this case isn't bringing dollars back to the platform, it is just being vindictive. Musk had his feels hurt and now he wants to hurt something else.

he’s got full blown narcissistic rage

I'm going to guess that one. Just the way Musk's been talking about this case, it feels like this one got deep under his skin.

machinin ,

or he’s got full blown narcissistic rage.

You’re talking about a guy who swatted the family of a Tesla whistleblower. Elon Musk is vile

SeedyOne ,

Exactly. This case likely will never make it past discovery given how much there is to lose.

mosiacmango ,

Yeah, he filed this to say he filed this, to cause a chilling effect on other orgs who report on the nazis he supports on his platform.

He will fold the very instant before discovery starts, because once email/texts/chats hit the lawyers, Twitter will be burning to the ground.

scottmeme ,

How many times can they cram media into one title? Lmao

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