How is it defamatory if it’s true?
You don’t get to ask questions like that to a free speech absolutist.
This is the default law action from Musk these days. Also, a nonsensical law suite is enough to shut a big newspaper sometimes. The governing Liberal Democratic Party in Japan successfully silenced a news organization by starting a 1 billion yen (or some amount) nonsense law suit. Hell, they control the supreme court judges also.
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Unless I’m missing it, nowhere in the article or elsewhere did they say that ads only appeared one time.
They said that ads were served for one particular account 50 times (and presumably have data to back that up but I’m not inclined to give them benefit of the doubt). And that media matters had scrolled/refreshed a bunch of times to see whose ads would be displayed. Which seems reasonable to me.
Then TwitX made some claim about “50 out of 50 billion ads served” or something, which is a disingenuous comparison. This was one example of a problem. No one claimed it was the only example, so why would anyone compare against all ads served anywhere?
I agree with your point in general, but I have a hard time applying it here. Unless the lawsuit alleges that MM hacked into Twitter or doctored the screenshots, then the core claim of the MM report “Twitter served ad Y next to post Z” is not under dispute. If the claim is that refreshing a page is malicious, then I don’t think we need to wait to call the lawsuit malicious.
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I mean, it’s splitting hairs. While the proximity probably didn’t help, I doubt the companies deciding to pull ads weren’t like “sure, we don’t mind hanging out in a nazi bar, just make sure not to seat us next to any nazis.” I mean, some probably were, but there has been increasingly large amounts of pressure on these people and within like 24 hours of each other Elon endorses replacement theory and the MM story drops that Elon is running ads for nazis. There are only so many times you can make a dumb excuse. For lots of us, that was a long time ago. Even the capitalists are realizing now at least that he’s bad for business.
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Okay, that’s a fair point. They left too many blanks for the reader to fill in, and some will assume the problem is more widespread than it is.
When I put my Social Scientist hat on, I don’t think the methodology was totally unreasonable or obviously malicious, so X would have to strengthen their claims to convince me to wait for court. But you’re right, MM should have done better.
He’s gonna bail out before this goes into discovery. This is a SLAPP suit if I ever saw one.
X claimed Media Matters “manipulated” the social media platform by using accounts that exclusively followed accounts for major brands or users known to produce fringe content and “resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing” the feed until it found ads next to extremist posts.
Media Matters’ report misrepresented the typical experience on X “with the intention of harming X and its business”, the company said in the lawsuit.
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Kill the messenger!
Remember when Musk sued Top Gear for ‘manipulation’ and lost?
The purpose of this lawsuit is so musk can claim it’s bs.
If he loses, right wingers will only remember the lawsuit, not the loss (they’ll just blame the judge)
“If we lose the judge will have been very biased!”
Didn’t he already write a public letter explaining how what they did does reveal ads, but that it was unfair because they went ad hunting and searched for ads on a page?
Boohoo, just because they over-searched to see it happen, means that it can and does happen.
This is a failure on your part, not theirs. This is how scientific research is conducted.
Not that you understand science or handling failure, Elon.
I, for one, will turn to Scalzi on this one:
This is the “So few people find a festering rat’s anus in their can of SpaghettiOs that finding one shouldn’t be considered an actual problem” argument, eliding the fact that the number of rat anuses in ANY SpaghettiOs can should be “zero”
Like, really looking forward to court case when Elon or Yacco have to explain “yes your honor, the thing they said is true, but to get it to happen they had to use our platform!!!” If I had to guess, Elon has to know he’s going to lose, but the point isn’t necessarily a win, it’s to tie up Media Matters in a legal battle that Elon can keep going effectively forever. This is one of his favorite tactics – doing whatever the fuck he wants because he knows the only thing you can do is sue, and he can pay lawyers forever so you’re going to have to blink first.
point isn’t necessarily a win, it’s to tie up Media Matters in a legal battle that Elon can keep going effectively forever
And to intimidate other people into not reporting about him.
It’s absolutely free to just not be a huge racist
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X, formerly Twitter, has faced growing outrage since Media Matters published the report on Thursday, which led IBM, Comcast and several other advertisers to pull ads from the platform in response.
In the lawsuit filed in a US district court in Texas, X claimed Media Matters “manipulated” the social media platform by using accounts that exclusively followed accounts for major brands or users known to produce fringe content and “resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing” the feed until it found ads next to extremist posts.
In an interview with Reuters earlier on Monday, Angelo Carusone, the Media Matters president, said the non-profit’s findings flew in the face of X’s statements that it had introduced safety protections to prevent ads from appearing next to harmful content.
X said in the lawsuit that ads for IBM, Comcast and Oracle only appeared alongside hateful content for one viewer, which the company said was Media Matters.
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said on Monday his office was opening an investigation into Media Matters and that he was “extremely troubled” by allegations that the group manipulated data on X.
Yaccarino told employees in a note on Sunday that while some advertisers had paused their investments following the report’s publication, the company had been clear about its efforts to fight antisemitism and discrimination.
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is he that sadface over his rocket blowing up again?
