Musk Files Lawsuit Against Media Matters Over Its Report About Anti-Semitic Content On X

X owner Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against media watchdog Media Matters for America over its report, which accused X of allowing antisemitic posts to appear next to ads.

The lawsuit filed by Musk on Monday claims that Media Matters "manipulated" data to destroy the platform, adding that it was done to drive advertisers away from X.

"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," read an excerpt of the complaint filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Brands like Apple, IBM, Disney, and Comcast paused their ads on X after the report came to light.

Meanwhile, Media Matters has called the lawsuit a bullying tactic. "Media Matters stands behind its reporting and looks forward to winning in court," Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said in a statement on Monday night.

Carusone called Musk a bully, stating that he is not the free speech advocate he claims to be. In addition to the statement by Carusone, Media Matters accused Musk of threatening meritless lawsuits to stop reporting what he confirmed is accurate.

Following the lawsuit's filing, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into Media Matters' claims.

What did the Media Matters report say?

The report claimed that the ads on X were shown next to pro-Nazi posts. The report cited several examples to back their analysis.

In one example, an ad for Apple's Mac computers was shown alongside a post that claimed Hitler and the Nazis represented a "spiritual awakening".

This is not the first time that Musk has been involved in a legal battle over an alleged increase in hate speech on X since he bought the platform last year. Earlier in August, the tech billionaire filed a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate after its report claimed that X has indeed seen a rise in hate speech.

These lawsuits come in the backdrop of Musk and X facing scrutiny over allegations that they promoted antisemitic content on the platform.

What do others claim?

Earlier this year, an analysis conducted by tech firm CASM Technology and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue revealed that antisemitic tweets have more than doubled since Elon Musk took over Twitter last year.

The researchers analysed over a million tweets with the help of various tech tools for "plausibly antisemitic" tweets between June 2022 and February 2023. The findings, which have not been peer-reviewed, revealed that there was a 105 per cent increase in the number of such tweets from October 27 to February 9, 2023.

"In all, a total of 325,739 tweets from 146,516 accounts were labelled as 'plausibly antisemitic' over the course of our study, stretching from June 1, 2022, to Feb. 9, 2023," per the report.

Just last week, Musk was being slammed for backing an anti-Semitic tweet on the X platform. This came after an X user posted a video wherein a father could be seen lashing out at his son for putting out posts against Jewish communities.

The caption with the video reads: "To the cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and posting 'Hitler was right', You got something you want to say? Why don't you say it to our faces..."

Another user responded to the post by accusing Jews of harbouring "hatred against whites".

The user @breakingbaht wrote: "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them."

"You want truth said to your face, there it is," the user added. Musk was quick to support @breakingbaht's argument.

In a reply to his tweet, Musk wrote: "You have said the actual truth." Musk's support of the tweet did not go down well with X users, who came down heavily on him for supporting it.