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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.”
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Ooooh. Discovery is gonna be goooooooood.
starts popping popcorn
The threat of discovery was what forced him to have to buy twitter in the first place.
Fool me once…
Discovery giveth
Discovery taketh away
I got mine 🍿
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.
It would, so they chose a jurisdiction that’s unrelated to any involved party but doesn’t have those laws.
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
Texas state law has it but this was filed in Federal court. There’s no Federal anti-SLAPP.
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
Exactly. This case likely will never make it past discovery given how much there is to lose.
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.
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.
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=trueon 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.
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
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.
I’d never heard of anti slapp laws before. That’s cool. We have them where I’m at too!
So looks like they did some judge shopping first. They’re suing a company located in DC in a Texas court with a Trump-appointed judge: https://x.com/esqueer_/status/1726762933969895771?s=46&t=EUtgwMByNj4sQbVP9INV-Q
When your “thermonuclear lawsuit” is so flimsy that you have to find a bully-friendly court first…
The whole point of conservatives stacking the courts for decades has been to reach a point when they could win with the most flimsy, immoral, and unethical of reasoning (e.g. conservative logic).
East TX courts are the go to for Republicans and companies. They are notorious for handing favorable verdicts to them. Especially on things like this.
Ugh. That’s bullshit. I still hope Elon / Twitter lose. Fuck that guy.
“free-speech absolutist”
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You think Apple & Disney didn’t verify this for themselves before ditching Twitter?
This dumb-ass is going to be proven to be a bigot in a US court of law, isn’t he?
“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.”
The counter-suit for this claim is going to be 🧑🍳💋
Damn if only there was a way for bud to prevent ads from appearing next to Nazis on his platform 😆
You think Apple & Disney didn’t verify this for themselves before ditching Twitter?
They might have. It would be great if they file a brief with the court to support the argument. I’m pretty sure that Musk is absolutely going to tear through Media Matter’s search history and say some bullshit like “Yeah, if you search for Nazi 10,000 times and Apple 10,000 times, we’re absolutely going to do the thing you asked. But the number of people who actually do that is few and Media Matters made it sound like it was everyone.”
Media Matter’s is going to absolutely need others joining in to provide other sources of information independent of them. That’ll make the almost inevitable argument from Musk that “Nazi + Apple is a rare thing” incredibly weak.
Apple and Disney won’t be filing a brief with the court. Apple and Disney are going to get a subpoena.
Because Musk is arguing that Media Matters was the only user that saw those ads next to racist content. So naturally Apple and Disney will need to be asked, “If only a single user saw your ads next to racist content, would you continue running ads on that platform?”
That’s not a question they want to answer in public. So they are going to be pressuring Musk to drop the lawsuit.
Yeah, if you search for Nazi 10,000 times and Apple 10,000 times, we’re absolutely going to do the thing you asked. But the number of people who actually do that is few and Media Matters made it sound like it was everyone.
Don’t believe your lying eyes said the Malignant Narcissist.
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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”.
“Free Speech absolutist”
Translation: Everyone absolutely must listen to what I have to say and I absolutely have the right to make others shut up the fuck up so they can listen to what I have to say. It is what I call freedom!!!
“Yes, I do absolutely love freeze peach” - Elon, probably
Shouldn’t he be alarmed and thankful? Not suing? Hmm
The call is coming from inside the empty Twitter offices.
In before Elongate Muskrat calls Media Matters a pedophile.
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.
“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.
I was just thinking about that line but couldn’t remember it. Thanks for posting. It’s insane
Can Xitter prove they didn’t serve those ads next to that content? If not I don’t see how they can win this.
Actually he released this statement admitting that it did happen, but wants us to think he’s been wronged because someone curated a feed then hit refresh a bunch of times, and only a couple of people saw it, so it doesn’t count.
And by this CNN report it sounds like he’s now misrepresenting their own findings.
Exactly. He’s not saying it didn’t happen but rather it’s not typical.
He’s apparently saying they “manufactured images” in the lawsuit which is a weird way of describing “refreshed until our system natively generated this.”
Could be a messy enough distinction to confuse a judge or jury into thinking they were manufacturing it
Possibly. Hopefully not.
That’s how Tesla won their most recent case with an autopilot failure. They acknowledge that the car did indeed drive itself into a tree. But that the company did not knowingly sell a defective product as they routinely update the vehicle.
That wasn’t the argument that won the day for them, but it was the argument that allowed them to start on a way more technical footing that would allow them to misdirect the court to focus more on any driver impairments.
Musk’s lawyers are insanely good at misdirection, they are some of the best at this one particular thing. Additionally, the case was file in an incredibly friendly court to Musk, so it’s likely the Judge will be willing to go down the rabbit hole of insanely technical arguments while losing sight of the more broad questions.
There is a lot stacked up against Media Matters here.
All good points, except then they were on defense. Now they’re on offense trying to accuse someone else of malicious harm, when all MM did was create a new profile, then follow accounts and refresh. Sure, it was an abnormal amount of times unless you’re a caffeinated doomscroller, but otherwise they didn’t fake or insert anything. So it would seem like MM is on at least as good of defense footing here. Maybe.
Even that is wrong though. Every few posts, Nazi or not, is going to have an ad next to it. The numbers they are talking about are mostly irrelevant.
The statement from exTwitter is not showing total numbers. It’s only referencing against what Media Matters showcased.
Yeah. That statement isn’t doing him any good.
If 50 out of 5.5 billion were odds to win the mega jackpot lottery, sure. The chances seem insignificant and super low.
The problem is, 5.5 billion numbers are being rolled every day and 50 people out of a much smaller selection pool are going to win. So, if X has a total of 2000 advertisers that give a shit about ad placement, someone has a high chance of winning. Multiple times.
The actual odds are based off of the total number of advertisers and are only loosely based on total ad impressions. Here is what I mean: Every tweet, antisemitic or not, will be close to an ad and not all advertisers care where their ads land. If you find a Nazi, you will find an ad.
You can start doing the math about the actual distance a tweet is from an ad and stuff. Whatever.
This is the important bit: 50 out of 5.5 billion was just what Media Matters showcased and absolutely does not show the entire problem. It’s much worse.
I hope MM has a statistics expert to point this out in court.
It’s less about statistics and more about deception in my opinion. Numbers are almost always meaningless in papers that excessively use bold type and underlined words.
The function of the paper wasn’t to prove anything. It was to get idiots focused on its false concept of freedom of speech. Even if my math assumptions are wrong, it doesn’t matter and was never the point of the paper.
Hmmm, understood. Well hopefully they’ll get whatever expert they need to explain that.
“We think free speech is important unless that speech is being mean to us” is the biggest crybaby bullshit in the world.
That’s been his playbook since before buying Twitter.
Ok, but like, X corp? For real? Musk really leaning into the comic book villain shit he’s got going on lately.
Discount Lex Luthor.
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. ,-)
Elon the crybaby Nazi.
