THAT ELON MUSK thinks poorly of the media is no surprise; for months after his 2022 takeover of the social media platform X, then known as Twitter, the company’s auto-reply to inquiries from reporters was the poop emoji.
On Monday, Media Matters for America, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that styles itself as a “media watchdog,” brought suit against Musk’s company, X Corp, in federal court in San Francisco, alleging that X had launched a “thermonuclear” retribution campaign against it for truthful reporting about white supremacist content on the X platform.
The retribution — colorfully described by Media Matters’ lawyers as a “vendetta-driven campaign of libel tourism” — came in the form of lawsuits filed against Media Matters and its reporter and editor in Texas, Ireland and Singapore.
Media Matters alleges that the litigation campaign is abusive and violates X’s own “terms of service” — the contract between X and users of its platform — that requires all suits to be brought in San Francisco.
Media Matters seeks $10 million in damages on account of the cost of defending itself in the cases. It also asks the San Francisco court to bar X “from further prosecuting their pending actions against Media Matters in Ireland and Singapore jurisdictions” or from suing it again in other foreign jurisdictions based on the same facts.
A dramatically different Twitter
The fight has its roots in Musk’s October 2022 acquisition of the social media platform. As widely reported, the takeover involved massive layoffs of employees and dramatic changes to content moderation practices that Musk believed amounted to censorship.
According to Media Matters, the changes resulted in the rise of hate speech on the platform and a loss of advertising revenue. It says ad revenue dropped 53% in the year after the takeover and monthly users fell by 15%.
As a reporter at Media Matters for 17 years, Eric Hananoki had previously covered Twitter/X and since 2020 had an account on the platform. His coverage of the company allegedly increased in 2023 allegedly due to a “marked increase in extremist rhetoric on the platform after Musk took ownership,” the lawsuit alleges.
On Nov. 16, 2023, Hananoki wrote, and Media Matters published, an article that asserted that X was telling advertisers that it had instituted protections to prevent customers’ advertisements from being served next to hate speech. However, the article claimed that it found that such juxtapositions were still occurring. As examples, the article included screengrabs that allegedly showed ads for Apple, Bravo, Oracle, Xfinity and IBM next to posts on X that glorified the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler.
Media Matters claims changes to the former Twitter platform after Musk’s purchase resulted in the rise of hate speech, a decline in monthly users, and a 53% loss of advertising revenue.
The story’s headline said that these ad placements were occurring at the same time that “Musk endorses antisemitic conspiracy theory,” a reference to Musk’s alleged endorsement of “the pernicious antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are supporting ‘hordes of minorities’ who are ‘flooding’ into the country to replace white people,” the story says.
The complaint says that Musk was furious at the ad and threatened a “thermonuclear” litigation response.
The complaint quotes a report that Musk allegedly said, “Media Matters is an evil propaganda machine … We are suing them in every country that they operate. And we will pursue not just the organization, but anyone funding that organization. I want to be clear about that. Anyone funding that organization, we will pursue them.”
X and its affiliates then instituted lawsuits that challenged the article. The first, on Nov. 20, 2023, was filed in federal court in Houston, Texas, and claimed Media Matters was wrongfully interfering with X’s contracts with its advertisers. The second suit — this one for defamation — was filed on Dec. 7, 2023, in Dublin, Ireland. The last one, also for defamation, was filed on July 23, 2024, in Singapore.
The suits in Ireland and Singapore were brought by subsidiaries of X.
According to the suit, Media Matters has nothing to do with Ireland or Singapore and it has contested the court’s jurisdiction in those locations.
The chilling effect
Media Matters alleges that the suits were retaliatory and breached the contractual provisions in the platform’s terms of service (drafted unilaterally by Twitter/X) that required all suits about the platform’s services to be brought in state court or federal court in the county of San Francisco.
Media Matters says it has been forced to spend millions to defend itself, and the suits have had a “chilling” effect on its work. It alleges that since the first lawsuit, Hananoki has not written any articles critiquing Musk or X’s content moderation policies.
Media Matters says, “Hananoki has largely stopped working as a Senior Investigative Reporter and his work is now primarily dedicated to defending … (himself) in the multiple lawsuits X has launched around the world.”
X has not responded to the complaint at this time but its filings in the other courts give a preview of what it may argue.
In the Texas suit, X has characterized Media Matters as engaging “in an all-out campaign of ‘guerilla warfare and sabotage’ on conservative news sources.”
It claims X is a target because it has opened its platform “to conservative and liberal speech alike” and therefore “weakened Media Matters’ ability to censor its ideological enemies.”
X contends that Media Matters has conducted a “smear campaign” against X “to destroy the relationships that X Corp. has built with its advertisers.”
As to the merits of the article, X claims that Hananoki created an “alternate account” and used it to curate the feed he would receive from the platform to maximize the chance that he would receive legitimate ads placed next to hate speech. While not denying that the placements occurred, X alleges that the number was minuscule compared to the platform’s usage (50 ad impressions vs. 5.5 billion platform-wide in a single day.) With respect to one of the brands, X alleges that Hananoki was the only person in the world that saw the challenged placement.
A request for comment on the new case by X Corp’s lawyers in the Texas case were not immediately answered. An invitation to comment on the suit directed to the lawyers for the plaintiffs was not immediately accepted.
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