On Monday, X filed a lawsuit against Media Matters for America (MMFA), a nonprofit, alleging that a recent report showing big name advertisers appearing next to antisemitic content on X was an attempt to “destroy” the company by encouraging advertisers to pull their money.
Shortly after, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office announced that it would be investigating MMFA for “potential fraudulent activity.”
Neither X nor the Attorney General’s office responded to questions about whether these moves were coordinated.
“This is a frivolous lawsuit meant to bully X’s critics into silence,” says MMFA president Angelo Carusone. “Media Matters stands behind its reporting and looks forward to winning in court.”
But it is likely not just this report from MMFA that has stopped advertisers from spending on X. Last week, Musk appeared to endorse the antisemitic “great replacement” theory in a post, leading many advertisers, including IBM and Disney, to pause or pull ads from the platform entirely. It was the latest blow to X’s shrinking ad revenues.
Early Saturday, Musk posted on X that he would file a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters, along with a screenshot of a document in which X alleges that MMFA “misrepresented the real user experience” on the platform.
“These lawsuits quite clearly are triggered not by an offense, but by Musk losing advertisers. And it’s quite clear they’re leaving because of what he said,” claims Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit watchdog group that is also being sued by X for their research. In the suit, filed in August, X alleges that CCDH had cost the company “at least tens of millions” of dollars in advertising revenue and other costs. CCDH’s reports showed how disinformation and hateful content was allegedly able to remain and circulate on X. The suit alleges that CCDH accessed the data to show this by using another nonprofit’s Brandwatch account.
“To be a victim in that lawsuit is incredibly expensive. It’s incredibly time-consuming,” says Ahmed, who estimates that CCDH has had to spend more than $250 million in legal fees to defend itself. Ahmed worries that these types of lawsuits could have a “chilling effect” on other organizations monitoring X.
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