Elon Musk’s social media platform X has filed a lawsuit against Media Matters on Monday, alleging that the liberal media-pressure group deliberately created posts to make it appear as though major companies’ ads were displayed next to Nazi content in an attempt to drive away business.
X stated that Media Matters has been targeting the platform for some time, with 20 different stories in November alone criticizing the platform. However, things escalated when Media Matters published an article claiming to have discovered ads from Apple, IBM, and Xfinity placed “next to pro-Nazi content” on X.
The company alleges that Media Matters manipulated its account to achieve this result by restricting the accounts it followed to 30, which included major national brands and extremist content. This, in turn, “tricked” X’s algorithm into displaying the advertisers’ content alongside hateful materials.
According to X, Media Matters knowingly and maliciously created images depicting advertisers’ posts alongside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and used them as part of a media strategy to drive advertisers away from the platform.
As a result of Media Matters’ efforts, X claimed that companies such as Comcast, NBCUniversal, Apple, and IBM pulled their ads from the platform. Other major brands, including Sony and Paramount, also withdrew their ads, despite not being mentioned in Media Matters’ report.
X has emphasized that while it supports free speech across the ideological spectrum, it has measures in place to prevent major advertisers’ material from being displayed alongside hateful content. The company used its internal data to determine that Media Matters deliberately bypassed these safeguards, creating a situation that was only possible in less than one-millionth of 1% of cases and which was not seen by authentic users of the platform.
The lawsuit was filed in a federal district court in Fort Worth, Texas, and coincided with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s announcement of an investigation into Media Matters for potential fraud under a state deceptive practices law.
Media Matters, formed in 2004 as a liberal watchdog on news outlets, has focused its attention on X due to Musk’s ownership of the platform.
Unique Perspective: It appears that in today’s digital age, even social media platforms face challenges from watchdog groups. The dispute between X and Media Matters sheds light on the power struggle between media platforms and organizations aiming to hold them accountable. Balancing free speech with responsible content moderation continues to be a complex issue in the online sphere.
