Elon Musk vowed to hit Media Matters for America, a nonprofit media watchdog group, with a “thermonuclear lawsuit” after the organization published a story showcasing major companies’ advertisements on X, the company formerly known as Twitter, appearing next to bigoted and white nationalist posts.
The Media Matters story found a dozen instances of advertisements run by companies including Amazon, NBCUniversal Catalyst and NBA Mexico next to posts featuring “White Lives Matter” and “white pride world wide” hashtags.
Musk conceded the instances were real, but characterized each as a “rare instance” and alleged that Media Matters manufactured a scenario to make such cases appear more often than they ordinarily would for the average user.
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“Our logs indicate that they forced a scenario resulting in 13 times the number of ads served compared to the median ads served to an X user,” Musk wrote in a lengthy statement to X.
Media Matters President Angelo Carusone responded in a scorching statement that decried Musk’s threat of litigation as an attempt to silence accurate journalism.
“Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate,” Carusone said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win.”
IBM on Thursday pulled its advertisements from the platform after they appeared next to pro-Nazi tweets. The day prior, Musk drew widespread condemnation for his endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
What followed was a major exodus of advertisers from the platform as, Lionsgate, Disney, Paramount and Apple joined with IBM in suspending advertisements on the platform. Musk appeared happy to see them go.
X’s Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino was even reportedly unable to keep NBCUniversal on as an advertiser, despite having served as chairman of global advertising and partnerships at the company for years.
“Many of the largest advertisers are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech,” Musk wrote Friday in a post advertising a paid, ad-free version of X.
Musk said Saturday that X Corp will file the lawsuit “The split second court opens on Monday,” seeking to target both Media Matters and “Their board, their donors, their network of dark money, all of them.”
“The discovery and depositions will be glorious to behold,” Musk wrote.
