Elon Musk's X sues advocacy group Media Matters for report on ads next to hate groups' posts
Elon Musk's social media company X filed a lawsuit against liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America on Monday, saying it 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, a Washington, DC-based non-profit, called the lawsuit «frivolous.»
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIndian School of BusinessISB Professional Certificate in Product ManagementVisitIIM KozhikodeIIMK Advanced Data Science For ManagersVisitNorthwestern UniversityKellogg Post Graduate Certificate in Product ManagementVisit Advertisers have been fleeing the site formerly known as Twitter over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content — and hate speech on the site in general — while billionaire owner Musk has inflamed tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
IBM, NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast said last week that they stopped advertising on X after the Media Matters report said their ads were appearing alongside material praising Nazis. It was a fresh setback as the platform tries to win back big brands and their ad dollars, X's main source of revenue.
The Media Matters report pointed to ads from Apple and Oracle that also were placed next to antisemitic material on X. On Friday, it said it also found ads from Amazon, NBA Mexico, NBCUniversal and others next to white nationalist hashtags.
But San Francisco-based X says in its complaint filed in federal court in Fort Worth, Texas, that Media Matters «knowingly and maliciously» portrayed ads next to hateful material «as if they were what typical X users
