Leftist media watchdog group Media Matters is suing Elon Musk’s X social media platform amid an ongoing legal battle between the two entities.
The lawsuit, filed on Monday, alleges that X is violating its contract because it has filed numerous lawsuits against Media Matters in Texas, Ireland, and Singapore. The social media company’s terms of service (TOS) requires all legal actions to be litigated in San Francisco County, California.
The plaintiffs allege that X’s lawsuits in locations other than San Francisco County constitute a breach of contract and an attempt to use lawfare to silence the media watchdog.
“X’s Terms of Service governing the conduct at issue in X’s lawsuits contain a mandatory forum selection clause requiring that ‘All disputes related to these Terms or the Services will be brought solely in the federal or state courts located in San Francisco County, California, United States,’” the lawsuit reads.
The plaintiffs further point out that “None of the lawsuits X filed were filed in this county. Rather, X initiated a vendetta-driven campaign of libel tourism, spanning three jurisdictions in three countries, all arising from the same conduct: Media Matters’ use of X’s platform in accordance with X’s Terms of Service and its truthful reporting on the results.”
Media Matters accused Musk of trying to retaliate against it after it published reports detailing how advertiser’s ads were appearing alongside alleged white supremacist content on X. It cites Musk’s threat of filing a “thermonuclear” lawsuit against the outlet.
Musk in 2023, wrote a post on X saying “X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.”
The plaintiffs argue that Musk’s “proliferation of claims over a single course of conduct, in multiple jurisdictions, is abusive.”
Musk has publicly criticized Media Matters on several occasions, calling it “evil incarnate” and accusing it of “doing everything it can to undermine the First Amendment.”
The lawsuit claims X Corp’s lawsuits have caused severe financial, operational, and expressive harm to Media Matters as it has to defend itself against legal actions in multiple jurisdictions.
X’s litigation campaign against Plaintiffs has also significantly chilled Media Matters’ and its employees’ reporting. For instance, in the ten months preceding the lawsuit, Hananoki authored at least 16 articles critiquing Musk and/or X’s approach to moderating hateful content on the platform. Since X’s first lawsuit was filed, however, Hananoki has not authored any articles critiquing Musk and/or X’s approach to moderating hate speech or extremist content on the X platform.
The nonprofit claims it “faces imminent, ongoing harm as a consequence of being forced to defend itself on multiple fronts.”
There are several flaws with Media Matters’ allegations. As Musk has pointed out repeatedly, the organization created a misleading narrative about ads appearing alongside white supremacist content. They made it appear as if these occurrences were commonplace when they are clearly not an accurate representation of an average user’s experience using the platform.
Indeed, Media Matters followed many fringe extremist accounts and repeatedly refreshed their feeds to create the ad pairings. If you refresh enough times, you are eventually going to get the same result. However the average user typically does not spend time constantly refreshing their feeds in this manner. Moreover, most people don’t actively follow white supremacist accounts.
The fact of the matter is that Musk has a valid case against Media Matters. This lawsuit appears to be a desperate move to stop him from seeking relief. I’m not sure whether the terms of service issue will matter – but the notion that Media Matters, which has a reputation for falsely linking folks on the right to white supremacy, should not be held accountable is absurd.
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