X Corp. Elon Musk has sued media watchdog group Media Matters for poaching advertisers from the social network formerly known as Twitter, calling it full of anti-Semitic content.
In a complaint filed in Texas federal court, X accuses the NGO of “misleading the algorithm into believing that Media Matters wanted to see both hateful content and content from major advertisers.”
Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal and IBM are among the major brands that stopped advertising last week
“This is a futile process designed to silence critics of X,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, in response to a request for comment from AFP.
“Media Matters stands by its information and hopes to win its case in court,” he added.
The White House also accused Elon Musk on Friday of making a “pathetic promotion of anti-Semitic and racist hatred” in one of his publications on X.
The billionaire on Wednesday responded to the owner of an account who wrote that Jewish people were promoting “hatred against white people” with the message: “You told the exact truth.”
For Washington, the message merely reiterates a conspiracy theory popular among white nationalists that Jews have a secret plan to encourage illegal immigration to Western countries to harm the white majority.
The complaint filed Monday does not mention Elon Musk’s support of this conspiracy theory, but rather blames Media Matters for the recent advertising losses.
“Media Matters knowingly and maliciously produced images containing promotional messages on X Corp’s social network. alongside neo-Nazi and white nationalist content and then presented these fabricated images as if they were the typical X user experience,” the complaint states.
X asked the court to sanction Media Matters by ordering it to pay unspecified damages and to remove its information.
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter a year ago, he has reduced content moderation, reinstated previously banned extremist accounts and allowed users to pay for account verification, helping them exploit viral but often inaccurate posts.