Elon Musk vowed to hit Media Matters for America, a nonprofit media watchdog group, with a “thermonuclear lawsuit” after the organization published a story showcasing major companies’ advertisements on X, the company formerly known as Twitter, appearing next to bigoted and white nationalist posts.
The Media Matters story found a dozen instances of advertisements run by companies including Amazon, NBCUniversal Catalyst and NBA Mexico next to posts featuring “White Lives Matter” and “white pride world wide” hashtags. See the article
Musk conceded the instances were real, but characterized each as a “rare instance” and alleged that Media Matters manufactured a scenario to make such cases appear more often than they ordinarily would for the average user. “Our logs indicate that they forced a scenario resulting in 13 times the number of ads served compared to the median ads served to an X user,” Musk wrote in a lengthy statement to X.
IBM pulled their ads Thursday. Lionsgate, Disney, Paramount, Comcast and Apple followed suit. Musk wrote of them, “Many of the largest advertisers are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech.”
“The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company”
Media Matters president Angelo Carusone released the following statement in response to Elon Musk’s legal threat:
