Elon Musk’s X has announced plans to sue leftist nonprofit Media Matters, and has blasted major corporations as “oppressors of your right to free speech” as his social media company battles a new wave of advertiser boycotts.
“This week Media Matters for America posted a story that completely misrepresented the real user experience on X, in another attempt to undermine freedom of speech and mislead advertisers,” said X/Twitter in a statement refuting Media Matters’ research.
In a tweet in the early hours of Saturday morning, Musk said, “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.”
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 pic.twitter.com/55vl7PspaQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2023
The company accuses Media Matters of manipulating the public and advertisers by curating its timeline to “misinform advertisers about the placement of their posts.”
X alleges that of the 5.5 billion ad impressions served on the platform on the day Media Matters released its report accusing the platform of displaying ads next to “pro-Nazi” content, just 50 total ad impressions were displayed next to the content cherrypicked by the nonprofit.
A number of corporations have joined the latest boycott against X, including Apple, Disney, Sony Pictures, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Paramount, Warner Bros, and Lionsgate.
Musk took the boycott as an opportunity to promote X’s new premium $16 subscription service. The $16 tier includes a blue checkmark, ad revenue sharing, access to the Grok AI chatbot, and an ads-free experience.
Premium+ also has no ads in your timeline.
Many of the largest advertisers are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech. https://t.co/dVkTMaGV2b
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2023
“Premium+ also has no ads in your timeline,” said Musk. “Many of the largest advertisers are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech.”
The Media Matters report capitalized on a firestorm of outrage sparked by Musk agreeing with a user’s post that Jewish organizations had supported a “dialectical hatred against whites” that is now being turned on them in the context of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Musk later clarified that the target of his criticism was liberal organizations claiming to represent all Jews, in particular the Anti-Defamation League.
That post Musk concurred with had been made in a response to an ad against antisemitism that featured a white working class father lecturing his son about antisemitic posts online. Many X users took issue with the ad, given that surveys consistently show that minorities are more likely to hold anti-Semitic viewpoints than white people.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.