A left-leaning pressure group said that Elon Musk’s social media site X allowed racist posts next to ads, so the site sued the group.
In X’s lawsuit, it is said that Media Matters for America “manipulated” data to try to “destroy” the site that used to be called Twitter.
Since the watchdog posted its report, companies like Apple, Disney, IBM, and Comcast have stopped putting ads on X.
Media Matters called Mr. Musk a bully after he said he would sue.
Last week, the activist group said that ads had shown up on X next to Nazi-supporting posts like Hitler quotes and denials of the Holocaust.
Another thing is that Mr. Musk was accused of spreading an anti-Semitic stereotype on the app last week.
Media Matters knowingly and maliciously made images showing advertisers’ posts on X Corp’s social media platform next to Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content, and then they showed these fake images as if they were what normal X users experience on the platform,” the lawsuit filed in Texas on Monday says.
“Media Matters designed both these images and its resulting media strategy to drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.”
In this case, X said that ads for Comcast, Oracle, and IBM had only shown up next to hateful content for Media Matters viewers and not for anyone else.
The CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, wrote on Monday, “Here’s the truth. There were no real users on X who saw the IBM, Comcast, or Oracle advertisements next to the information in the Media Matters article.
Because of the claims made by Media Matters, the European Commission, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and Lionsgate have also stopped advertising on X.
On Saturday, Mr. Musk said he would sue Media Matters and anyone else “who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company” with a “thermonuclear” lawsuit.
In reaction, Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, said that they would win any court case.
“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,” Mr. Carusone stated in a statement.
Media Matters has been around since 2004 and is known for criticising conservative media and commenters.
It defines itself as a non-profit “progressive research and information centre dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analysing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the US media” .
Last Wednesday, Mr. Musk got in trouble when he answered a post that shared a conspiracy theory that Jewish groups are spreading hate against white people by calling it “actual truth.”
Later, the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX denied being antisemitic, saying that his words were not about all Jews but about groups like the Anti-Defamation League, which is Jewish and fights hate.
On the other hand, on Monday, Texas’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton said that he was looking into Media Matters “for possible fraudulent activity” because of the claims it made about X.
The leftist group was called a “radical anti-free speech organisation” by his office in a statement.
Mr. Paxton also vowed to make sure “the public has not been deceived by the schemes of radical left-wing organisations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square” .
Also on Monday, the White House announced that Vice President Joe Biden would be joining Threads, a Meta-owned business that competes with X.
There are also Threads accounts for the president, the first lady, the vice president, and the second gentleman.
