X's legal eagles swoop on Media Matters over antisemitic content row
- Reference: 1700593389
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/11/21/x_sues_media_matters/
- Source link:
According to X's lawyers, Media Matters manufactured the ad placements it [1]reported last week that caused IBM and [2]other high-profile advertisers to suspend ad spending on Musk's social media platform.
"Media Matters knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers' posts on X Corp.'s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and then portrayed these manufactured images as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform," X argued in its [3]complaint [PDF].
[4]
Per the suit, and expanding on what The Register was previously told by X, Media Matters allegedly created an account that exclusively followed "fringe accounts" and those associated with large brands advertising on X.
[5]
[6]
"Through intentionally evading X's multiple safeguards by curating the content on its feed and then repeatedly attempting to create pairings of advertisements for major brands with controversial content, Media Matters finally achieved its goal," X claimed in its filing. That goal, the company claims, was to get ads from IBM, Apple, Bravo, Xfinity, and Oracle "to appear adjacent to inflammatory, fringe content."
X claimed those posts were "not only inorganic, but exceedingly (and demonstrably) rare," yet the lawsuit is still an admission that the ads were served. The suit also reveals that, of all the companies mentioned in the Media Matters lawsuit (IBM, Comcast, NBCUniversal, Apple, and Oracle), only Oracle hasn't withdrawn advertising. X also stated that Lionsgate, Warner Brothers Discovery, Paramount, and Sony had all withdrawn ads alongside those listed in Media Matters report.
Musk chases away POTUS
Meanwhile, the White House and President Biden have criticized Musk for [7]calling an anti-Jewish conspiracy theory on Twitter "the actual truth" – the SpaceX supremo denies being antisemitic – leading to the administration setting up accounts on Meta's Threads app, where Biden [8]reportedly racked up a few million followers within hours of launching the account.
"You're hearing from me today from a new platform, but my message to you hasn't changed," Biden said in his first post to Threads, adding the US was at an inflection point between a "dark, dismal divided future" and an America "about to take off."
"I'll continue doing everything in my power to meet this moment – and keep you posted along the way," the President [9]noted from his new soapbox. Posts from the President continue, and have been more numerous, on X since the Threads launch.
X is accusing Media Matters of interfering with advertiser contracts, business disparagement, and interference with prospective economic advantage. X seeks unspecified damages and to force Media Matters to remove its article alleging the posting of ads adjacent to antisemitic content.
"This is a frivolous lawsuit meant to bully X's critics into silence. Media Matters stands behind its reporting and looks forward to winning in court," Media Matters president Angelo Carusone [10]said of the filing.
[11]
X and its lawyers didn't respond to questions for this story.
Anti-SLAPP rules
Though they vary from state to state, the US has laws designed to protect publishers from printing negative publicity about individuals and companies, which are generally referred to as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP suits.
"People bring SLAPP suits because they can either temporarily prevent their critics from making public statements against them or more commonly to make critics spend all of their time and resources defending the SLAPP suits," Cornell University's Legal Information Institute [12]says . "By definition, SLAPP suits do not have any true legal claims against the critics."
Whether that's true of the case in X's case against Media Matters will be up to the courts to decide, but by choosing to file its lawsuit in Texas's 5th District court, as opposed to the 9th District where X is headquartered, Musk's lawyers are suing Media Matters where there are rules against anti-SLAPP lawsuits.
[13]X says it's only worth $19B after year of Muskmanagement
[14]X marks the spot where free speech clashes with Californian transparency
[15]X fails to remove hate speech over Israel-Gaza conflict
[16]Musk tells Twitter advertisers: You're welcome back, but don't make demands
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals [17]ruled in 2019 that Texas's anti-SLAPP rules don't apply to federal cases, meaning Media Matters won't be able to move to dismiss the case on the basis that it's a SLAPP suit, which is exactly what the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) moved to do in the suit [18]X filed against it in August .
In a [19]filing [PDF] last week, the CCDH alleged that X's case hinged on the fact that it was publicly criticized, not that the CCDH violated any of its rules. Federal courts in California, where the CCDH case was filed, accept anti-SLAPP charges unlike Texas's 5th District. The judge in the CCDH suit has yet to decide on the dismissal.
"The 5th Circuit is one of the most conservative courts in the country and likely to be more receptive to First Amendment arguments that take a broad approach to its applicability," Colin Levy, a lawyer specializing in the intersection of law and technology, told The Register . "As to whether the suit has merit, that depends on what precise data X can show in court."
[20]
Musk has also [21]threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League as a source of X's sinking advertising revenue, though that lawsuit doesn't appear to have materialized.
In an all-hands meeting at X yesterday, CEO Linda Yaccarino [22]reportedly told employees to "put your heads together to bring new revenue into the company," while also urging staff to "be as fiscally responsible as possible" as X's revenue slips further and further from the [23]break-even point Musk claimed the company was approaching. ®
This lawsuit is X Corp v. Media Matters for America , case number 4:23-cv-1175 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
Get our [24]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/17/ibm_pauses_advertising_on_x/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/20/ibmled_advertising_xodus_gains_steam/
[3] https://regmedia.co.uk/2023/11/21/x-v-media-matters-lawsuit.pdf
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZV02kklRoh8OdTAFZLt3hQAAANA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZV02kklRoh8OdTAFZLt3hQAAANA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZV02kklRoh8OdTAFZLt3hQAAANA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1724908287471272299
[8] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/20/biden-joins-metas-threads-after-white-house-rebukes-elon-musk.html
[9] https://www.threads.net/@potus
[10] https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1726800683263771051
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZV02kklRoh8OdTAFZLt3hQAAANA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/slapp_suit#:~:text=Primary%20tabs,continuing%20to%20produce%20negative%20publicity.
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/31/x_worth_19b/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/11/x_california_moderation_law/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/14/x_israel_gaza_moderation/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/19/musk_says_twitter_advertisers_can/
[17] https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/fifth-circuit-rules-texas-anti-slapp-27561/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/01/x_corp_lawsuit_ccdh/
[19] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.416212/gov.uscourts.cand.416212.47.0_1.pdf
[20] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZV02kklRoh8OdTAFZLt3hQAAANA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/05/twitter_adl_lawsuit/
[22] https://fortune.com/2023/11/20/inside-twitter-x-all-hands-after-media-matters-lawsuit-elon-musk-antisemitism-yaccarino/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/26/musks_x_tries_again_to/
[24] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I assume that the eagles have been paid up front
You'd be surprised. I used to work for a well respected commercial law firm, currently one of the top five in the world. The firm whom I'll call CLF did a lot of work for a particular sector known for throwing money around, and especially for a globally recognised player in that sector who I'll refer to as GRP (well, we worked for more than a few in the same sector, but this tale concerns one). GRP would never pay on time. They'd ignore the demands of the law firm's accounts payable team, and let the bills rack up, whilst continuing to demand both preferential treatment, and assign more work. Then, towards the end of the year, GRP would take out the partner leading that relationship, give him a slap up meal, and when he tentatively raised the matter of several millions of pounds of unpaid bills, GRP's man would explain that notwithstanding that GRP already had very heavily discounted terms agreed with CLF, it all added up to a lot, and so they would not be paying for THIS, or THIS or THAT (invariably on spurious grounds), and for a whole load of other stuff, and the amount for Matter Z and Matter K was just wildly too much, you do know that? Add in that it would be a shame if CLF were to lose all this valuable, experience and reputation building work for GRP, and the partner concerned would cave in, and write off about a million pounds of already completed and billed revenue. And this happened year after year.
So assuming that all top lawyers have commercial nous is perhaps unwise.
Re: I assume that the eagles have been paid up front
These aren't top lawyers. Musk has retained biglaw for the suits he's defending, but this one is too dumb for them to risk their reputation on even if they were to be paid in advance.
This suit was filed by some political hacks whose sole qualification is having worked for the Texas AG/SG offices and not yet having been disbarred.
Re: I assume that the eagles have been paid up front
My company did some work in the middle east and we never got our final payment. It was a significant chunk of the contract but the cusomer just stonewalled. We took legal advice in country and they said that we should have inflated our price, weighted payments towards the front end and planned not to get the final payment. The lawyer said that the customer would have expected it and wouldn't be losing any sleep over the "face saving game" he assumed we were playing. He told us to hold a final reconciliatory meeting with gifts to save face all round and smooth things over for the next contract. We followed his advice and succeeding contracts with the same customer went like a dream.
Maybe your lawyers front loaded things in a similar way?
Translated for martinusher, Jellied Eel, Disgusted, justthefacts etc.:
https://nitter.net/KathrynTewson/status/1727002256149770483
Bullshaite
""Through intentionally evading X's multiple safeguards by curating the content on its feed and then repeatedly attempting to create pairings of advertisements for major brands "
What is so questionable about that?? YouTube does it all the time - you bother to stop on, or watch, ONE feed and it then automatically assumes you want a continuous feed of this garbage.
There is nothing about your "safeguards". "Curating contact to create pairings" is what your algorithms do , naturally, every time we look at that screen. There's nothing 'unnatural' about it. Somehow, YT believes I now want to watch anime because I stopped on a feed about Marvel. You do the same thing...but now want to claim that you don't , because it suits your purposes.
You're full of it.
Venue Change
Media Matters should request a change of venue to the San Francisco County federal court since that is where Twitter's operations are based from and the "harm" would have taken place. I suppose they could also claim that it should be filed in a DC court as well, since that's where Media Matters is based out of, but the idea that it belongs in a Texas court is absolutely laughable. It's Texas, so who knows what'll happen, but if the judge whose docket this lands on isn't a Clarence Thomas type, it should be pretty hard to deny the venue change request.
Someone want to help me out. Is this filed in the same district that patent trolls love to use?
Re: Venue Change
Is this filed in the same district that patent trolls love to use?
I'm not (and would not want to be) an expert on legal matters. But i believe the Troolheim is(was?) the Federal District Court in East Texas. This sounds like a suit filed in a Texas state court.
Re: Venue Change
Either way, it still doesn't make sense to me.
"file its lawsuit in Texas's 5th District court, as opposed to the 9th District where X is headquartered,"
Shirley they should be filing this where either they or Media Matters are headquartered, not "shopping around" for the most sympathetic jurisdiction.
Break even point
Didn't he and his investors pay $40B for Twitter and it was only worth around $8B at the time they bought it? If that's the case, then he and Linda need to start selling the sh*t out of that Blue Checkmark service.
Interesting wording
Calling them "manufactured" which implies that they are fake, when they are not. In fact Musk already admitted they are real in a post so his lawyers would have a really hard time arguing otherwise.
Whether they are "rare" or not is irrelevant. These companies won't advertise with Twitter if their ads EVER appear alongside such content, which Twitter cannot guarantee so long as Musk maintains it as a safe haven for Nazis and other terrible people. Previously when Twitter had a policy against that then it 1) didn't attract them to nearly the degree they are now, because they knew their accounts would be canceled as soon as they were found and 2) such posts wouldn't be removed so there is no incentive for anyone to flag such posts to Twitter.
So basically unless a watchdog like Media Matters checks up on them, Twitter will knowingly be running ads for these companies on Nazi accounts, but excusing it as "rare" as if that assuages the concerns of advertisers. There's no way to prevent your company's ads running alongside Nazi accounts eventually, because Twitter's owner welcomes Nazis and Nazi posts under his "maximal free speech" banner. But his love of free speech ends when it is someone else exercising THEIR right of free speech, such as Media Matters posting what they found when they looked to see what sort of ads would be run alongside a few Nazi accounts, or IBM/Apple/Disney/etc. exercising their right to insure their ads are not run alongside Nazi content.
Reputation management via lawsuit
So Elon is going to win the following prizes :
1) A set of damaging worldwide headlines about how he's filed a lawsuit against people who pointed out that ads were appearing next to Nazi shit on his website.
2) Another set of damaging worldwide headlines about how he's lost a lawsuit against people who pointed out that ads were appearing next to Nazi shit on his website.
The idea that not having the Nazi shit on his website might have prevented the damage in the first place doesn't seem to have occurred to him.
Re: Reputation management via lawsuit
Maybe Musk is really leaning into the principle that there's no such thing as bad publicity. He knows that the press will report on his antics, which keeps Xitter in the news, which attracts at least some people to the platform, so perhaps in his view it's worth it to get bad publicity.
Re: Reputation management via lawsuit
It's not like things seem to be going all that well in the Grand Duchy of Twit. Maybe this is just a "What the hell, how can things possibly get worse?" action.
Re: Reputation management via lawsuit
If Twitler's ego weren't so massive that it didn't allow for the idea that he could possibly fail at anything, he should either just IPO Twitter or shut the whole thing down. At this point, it's almost cruel to let it continue on this death march to total destruction.
It's a trap
I can't help but think this is all a trap and the man known for his impulsive emotional responses has walked straight into it.
Media Matters now has all the attention it wanted to a) the awful content that make Xitter's bread and butter, b) that Xitter is paying many of these lowlifes to produce their hateful material, and c) the risk that any advertisers run of seeing their ad next to people who fantasize of genocide. It also has a splendid opportunity to add reams and reams of screenshots of truly awful posts (that even the average Texan might think go a bit far) to the supporting documents in their defence.
And that all drawn out over a multi-day circus of a lawsuit against the right to say what you want with dozens of reporters lapping it all up, receiving copies of the supporting documents, canned statements from Media Matters spokespeople and lawyers about how Musk it trying to attack their speech, against a backdrop of Xitter's ever declining revenue figures and relevance.
I assume that the eagles have been paid up front
That is unless the legal eagles have not been reading the news for the last year - this is the only sane way to do business with twatter.