Elon Musk's X sues media watchdog over report on ads next to posts from hate groups
Elon Musk's social media company X has filed a lawsuit against media watchdog group Media Matters for America.
X - formerly known as Twitter - says that Media Matters, a Washington DC-based non-profit media watchdog, manufactured a report to show advertisers’ posts alongside neo-Nazi and white nationalist posts in order to “drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.”
Media Matters' president Angelo Carusone posted on X saying the lawsuit was "frivolous" adding it was "meant to bully X’s critics into silence".
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He added: "Media Matters stands behind its reporting and look forward to winning in court."
Some advertisers have left X following concerns over their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech.
Late last week IBM stopped advertising on X, after the report alleged its ads were appearing alongside posts praising Adolf Hitler and Nazis.
IBM said in a statement that it has "zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.”
NBCUniversal and their parent company Comcast also last week stopped advertising on X.
Other findings in the report suggested ads from Apple and Oracle had been placed next to antisemitic material on the social media platform, and ads from Amazon, NBA Mexico, NBCUniversal and others were found next to white nationalist hashtags.
X has filed the complaint in federal court in Fort Worth, Texas, saying Media Matters “knowingly and maliciously” portrayed ads next to hateful material “as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform”.
It also claims Media Matters manipulated algorithms on the platform to create images of advertisers’ paid posts next to racist, incendiary content.
The complaint said the contrasting posts were “manufactured, inorganic and extraordinarily rare”, and that Media Matters did this by using X accounts that just followed users known to produce “extreme fringe content” and accounts owned by X’s major advertisers.
This, the complaint says, led to a feed aimed at producing side-by-side placements that Media Matters could then screen shot in an effort to alienate X’s advertisers.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a post on the social media platform last week: "X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board – I think that’s something we can and should all agree on."
She added: "When it comes to this platform – X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world – it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop."