Musk's X sues liberal advocacy group Media Matters over its report on ads next to hate groups' posts

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Elon Musk’s social media company formerly known as Twitter filed a lawsuit against liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America on Monday, saying it manufactured a report to show advertisers’ posts alongside neo-Nazi and white nationalist posts in order to “drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.” Advertisers have been fleeing X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content — and hate speech on the site in general — while billionaire owner Musk has inflamed tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory. IBM, NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast said last week that they stopped advertising on X after the Media Matters report said their ads were appearing alongside material praising Nazis. But San Francisco-based X says in its complaint filed in federal court in Fort Worth, Texas, that Media Matters “knowingly and maliciously” portrayed ads next to hateful material “as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform.” The nonprofit, X's complaint claims, “has manipulated 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." In an earlier statement, its president, Angelo Carusone, said “Musk has spent the last few days making meritless legal threats, elevating bizarre conspiracy theories, and lobbing vicious personal attacks against his ‘enemies’ online.” Carusone added that Media Matters will continue its work.