Musk’s X Lawsuit Against Media Matters Can Proceed To Trial: Judge

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk’s X against Media Matters can proceed to trial, after dismissing a request by the Democrat-run enterprise.

“Because the Court has personal jurisdiction over Defendants, venue is proper, and Plaintiff has properly pled its claims, Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss is denied,” wrote Judge Judge Reed O’Connor in his ruling.

X, formerly known as Twitter, filed the suit in November after Musk threatened to bring a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against the left-leaning nonprofit and “all those who colluded” for “completely misrepresenting” the real user experience on X.”

According to the lawsuit, Media Matters – founded by Democratic operative David Brock, who left the organization in 2022, used manipulative and deceptive tactics to convince advertisers like Apple, IBM and Disney that ‘hateful’ content was being displayed next to their brands – leading them to pause their X advertising campaigns.

X claims Media Matters fabricated the results. From the original complaint:

Media Matters has opted for new tactics in its campaign to drive advertisers from X. Media Matters has manipulated the algorithms governing the user experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content, leaving the false impression that these pairings are anything but what they actually are: manufactured, inorganic, and extraordinarily rare.

Media Matters executed this plot in multiple steps, as X’s internal investigations have revealed.

First, Media Matters  accessed accounts that had been active for at least 30 days, bypassing X’s ad filter for new users. Media Matters then exclusively followed a small subset of users consisting entirely of accounts in one of two categories: those known to produce extreme, fringe content, and accounts owned by X’s big-name advertisers. The end result was a feed precision-designed by Media Matters for a single purpose: to produce side-by-side ad/content placements that it could screenshot in an effort to alienate advertisers.

But this activity still was not enough to create the pairings of advertisements and content that Media Matters aimed to produce.

Media Matters therefore resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed, generating between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than viewed by the average X user repeating this inauthentic activity until it finally received pages containing the result it wanted: controversial content next to X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino defended the company in November:

If you know me, you know I’m committed to truth and fairness. Here’s the truth. Not a single authentic user on X saw IBM’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to the content in Media Matters’ article. Only 2 users saw Apple’s ad next to the content, at least one of which was Media…

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) November 20, 2023

If you want to go deep into the accusations, click into Michael Shellenberger’s tweet below, or visit his blog.

The media say X is placing Apple, IBM, and other ads near pro-Nazi content, but it’s not. We tried various ways to replicate Media Matters’ research and couldn’t. The real goal of Media Matters isn’t to fight antisemitism. It’s to destroy X as a free speech platform. pic.twitter.com/rpxANwkMDx

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) November 20, 2023

Andrew Carusone, president of Media Matters and one of the defendants, said that it was a “frivolous lawsuit” that was “meant to bully X’s critics into silence.”

Judge O’Connor didn’t buy it, and denied the nonprofit’s effort to have the case dismissed, ruling that X “had properly pled its claims.”

In August, O’Connor dismissed a request by Media Matters to force Musk to list Tesla

as an interested party in X’s lawsuit against the nonprofit. O’Connor said at the time in a legal filing that “there is no evidence that shows Tesla has a direct financial interest in the outcome of this case.”

O’Connor was also overseeing a recently filed antitrust lawsuit by X against a global advertising association and its member companies like Unilever, Mars and CVS Health. O’Connor then recused himself from the lawsuit. Although he didn’t provide a reason for the recusal, a recent financial disclosure showed that the judge invests in Unilever. –CNBC

 Let’s get ready to rumble!!!