Elon Musk’s X Corp has filed a lawsuit against American nonprofit Media Matters for driving advertisers away from the platform formerly known as Twitter by portraying it as rife with anti-Semitic content.
The case comes in the wake of the advertising exodus of Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal, and IBM, who were among high-profile brands that paused advertising on X last week after Media Matters reported finding ads displayed with pro-Nazi content.
X accuses the organisation of “tricking the algorithm into thinking Media Matters wanted to view both hateful content and content from large advertisers.” “This is a frivolous lawsuit meant to bully X’s critics into silence,” Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said in response to an AFP inquiry. “Media Matters stands behind its reporting and looks forward to winning in court.”
What the lawsuit says
“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,” the lawsuit contended. X accused Media Matters of duping its algorithm by following only accounts known for extreme, fringe content along with big-name brands.
The result was a feed “precision-designed” to produce the kind of side-by-side ad and content pairings that alienated X advertisers, the suit maintained. X asked the court to order Media Matters to pay unspecified cash damages and to take down the report.
(With agency inputs)
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