Tesla Takes Legal Action Against Media Matters for Accusations of Ads Supporting Hate Groups

On Monday, X, the social media company owned by Elon Musk, took legal action against Media Matters for America, a liberal advocacy group. X accused the group of fabricating a report that intentionally displayed advertisers’ posts alongside content from neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups. The lawsuit claims that this was done with the intention of causing advertisers to abandon the platform and ultimately harm X Corp.

Media Matters, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit, called the lawsuit “frivolous.”

Advertisers have fled the site formerly known as Twitter over concerns about their ads appearing next to pro-Nazi content – and hate speech on the site in general – while billionaire owner Musk has stoked tensions with his own posts supporting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

IBM, NBCUniversal and its parent Comcast announced last week that they had stopped advertising on X after a Media Matters report said their ads appeared alongside Nazi-glorifying material. It was another setback as the platform tries to win back big brands and their ad dollars, which are X’s main source of revenue.

The Media Matters report cited Apple and Oracle ads that were also placed next to X’s anti-Semitic material. On Friday, it said it also found ads from Amazon, NBA Mexico, NBCUniversal and others next to white nationalist hashtags.

But San Francisco-based X says in a complaint filed in federal court in Fort Worth, Texas, that Media Matters “knowingly and maliciously” depicted ads next to hateful material “as if they were typical experiences of X users on the platform.”

X’s complaint alleges that Media Matters manipulated algorithms on the platform to create images of advertisers’ paid posts next to racist, inflammatory content. The confrontations, according to the complaint, were “fabricated, inorganic and exceptionally rare.”

According to it, Media Matters did this by using X accounts that followed exactly X users, known to generate “extreme page content”, and accounts owned by X’s top advertisers. According to the complaint, this resulted in a feed designed to produce adjacent placements that Media Matters could then screenshot in an attempt to wean off X’s advertisers.

Media Matters said Monday that it stands by its reports and expects to prevail in court.

“This is a frivolous lawsuit designed to silence X’s critics,” Angelo Carusone, the nonprofit’s president, said in a prepared statement.

Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that his office is launching a Media Matters investigation into possible fraudulent activity related to the group’s report.

Advertisers have been worried about X since Musk took over more than a year ago.

Musk has also caused an uproar this month with his own posts, responding to a user who accused Jews of hating white people and ignoring anti-Semitism. “You have spoken the real truth,” Musk tweeted in response last Wednesday.

Musk has been accused of tolerating anti-Semitic messages on the platform since his purchase last year, and X’s content has gained increased attention since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said the company’s “view has always been very clear that discrimination from everyone should STOP across the board.”

“I think we can and should all agree on that,” he wrote on the platform last week.