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X sues watchdog group Media Matters after report on ads next to Nazi posts
(www.theguardian.com)
How is it defamatory if it’s true?
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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You don't get to ask questions like that to a free speech absolutist.
This is the default law action from Musk these days. Also, a nonsensical law suite is enough to shut a big newspaper sometimes. The governing Liberal Democratic Party in Japan successfully silenced a news organization by starting a 1 billion yen (or some amount) nonsense law suit. Hell, they control the supreme court judges also.
Did you read the article? X is alleging that media matters had to manipulate their platform in order for it to generate these ads next to the hateful accounts. According to their records, those ads only appeared one time, for the user account associated with Media Matters. This supports their theory that manipulation was required.
I guess we'll have to wait for the court case to find out who's right. But immediately assuming the X lawsuit has no merits just because you don't like Elon Musk is a bit disingenuous.
Unless I'm missing it, nowhere in the article or elsewhere did they say that ads only appeared one time.
They said that ads were served for one particular account 50 times (and presumably have data to back that up but I'm not inclined to give them benefit of the doubt). And that media matters had scrolled/refreshed a bunch of times to see whose ads would be displayed. Which seems reasonable to me.
Then TwitX made some claim about "50 out of 50 billion ads served" or something, which is a disingenuous comparison. This was one example of a problem. No one claimed it was the only example, so why would anyone compare against all ads served anywhere?
I agree with your point in general, but I have a hard time applying it here. Unless the lawsuit alleges that MM hacked into Twitter or doctored the screenshots, then the core claim of the MM report "Twitter served ad Y next to post Z" is not under dispute. If the claim is that refreshing a page is malicious, then I don't think we need to wait to call the lawsuit malicious.
I agree that the core claim of the MM report is not under dispute. But take a look at their article now that you know the context around how those ads were generated.
I don't know if it's defamatory, but you have to agree that it comes off as a bit disingenuous based on the new info from X. Of course that info from X could be BS, which is why I said we'll have to wait for the court case to know for sure.
I mean, it's splitting hairs. While the proximity probably didn't help, I doubt the companies deciding to pull ads weren't like "sure, we don't mind hanging out in a nazi bar, just make sure not to seat us next to any nazis." I mean, some probably were, but there has been increasingly large amounts of pressure on these people and within like 24 hours of each other Elon endorses replacement theory and the MM story drops that Elon is running ads for nazis. There are only so many times you can make a dumb excuse. For lots of us, that was a long time ago. Even the capitalists are realizing now at least that he's bad for business.
No doubt - the advertisers are 100% right to pull out. I was only answering the original commenter that asked how the MM report could be considered defamatory. I definitely didn't intend to come across as a Musk apologist.
Okay, that's a fair point. They left too many blanks for the reader to fill in, and some will assume the problem is more widespread than it is.
When I put my Social Scientist hat on, I don't think the methodology was totally unreasonable or obviously malicious, so X would have to strengthen their claims to convince me to wait for court. But you're right, MM should have done better.
Basically, Musk is alleging is that they claimed this was a common practice when it was, in fact, extremely rare.
In his tweet about this he said that out of 5.5 **billion ** ad impressions that day, less than 50 were objectionable according to Media Matter's criteria. In other words, there was a 1 in 100 million chance that a normal user would randomly see something like this.
For comparison, the following things have about a 1 in a million chance of happening (i.e. are 100 times more likely):
- flipping a coin 20 times, getting tails every single time
- winning the PowerBall lottery if you buy six tickets a week for a year
- a devastating earthquake occurring in Seattle within the next 5 hours
I just read the MM piece and it doesn't appear to make any specific claims about how frequently this might have happened, it merely says "We recently found ads for Apple, Bravo, Oracle, Xfinity, and IBM next to posts that tout Hitler and his Nazi Party on X." and that "X has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content." which does indeed appear to be factual since it makes no claims about frequency, so I guess we'll see if the court is convinced that it was defamatory. It certainly seems to be the truth, but not the whole truth.
If it turns out they really DID have to create 100 million page views in order to find a single questionable ad placement, and they failed to mention that, you could make the case that they were intentionally trying to hurt his business.
He's gonna bail out before this goes into discovery. This is a SLAPP suit if I ever saw one.
X claimed Media Matters “manipulated” the social media platform by using accounts that exclusively followed accounts for major brands or users known to produce fringe content and “resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing” the feed until it found ads next to extremist posts.
Media Matters’ report misrepresented the typical experience on X “with the intention of harming X and its business”, the company said in the lawsuit.
Purged by creator
Yes exactly. They proved that advertisements can and will be shown alongside objectionable content, and that there are no protections against that. Them conducting a test is not "manufacturing images". X arguing the vast majority of users won't experience that is merely because the majority of users won't browse that content - but those who do will see any adverts alongside it.
This is a frivolous lawsuit from a company that will probably be gone before the suit is even heard. Twitter is worth barely more than its debt at this point - and that's ignoring things like not paying rent for their offices.
Kill the messenger!
Remember when Musk sued Top Gear for 'manipulation' and lost?
The purpose of this lawsuit is so musk can claim it's bs.
If he loses, right wingers will only remember the lawsuit, not the loss (they'll just blame the judge)
"If we lose the judge will have been very biased!"
Didn't he already write a public letter explaining how what they did does reveal ads, but that it was unfair because they went ad hunting and searched for ads on a page?
Boohoo, just because they over-searched to see it happen, means that it can and does happen.
This is a failure on your part, not theirs. This is how scientific research is conducted.
Not that you understand science or handling failure, Elon.
I, for one, will turn to Scalzi on this one:
This is the "So few people find a festering rat's anus in their can of SpaghettiOs that finding one shouldn't be considered an actual problem" argument, eliding the fact that the number of rat anuses in ANY SpaghettiOs can should be "zero"
Like, really looking forward to court case when Elon or Yacco have to explain "yes your honor, the thing they said is true, but to get it to happen they had to use our platform!!!" If I had to guess, Elon has to know he's going to lose, but the point isn't necessarily a win, it's to tie up Media Matters in a legal battle that Elon can keep going effectively forever. This is one of his favorite tactics – doing whatever the fuck he wants because he knows the only thing you can do is sue, and he can pay lawyers forever so you're going to have to blink first.
point isn't necessarily a win, it's to tie up Media Matters in a legal battle that Elon can keep going effectively forever
And to intimidate other people into not reporting about him.
Yes, I believe that's the allegation made in the lawsuit, that they intentionally manipulated the algorithm in order to engineer this ad placement.
It's absolutely free to just not be a huge racist
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Click here to see the summary
X, formerly Twitter, has faced growing outrage since Media Matters published the report on Thursday, which led IBM, Comcast and several other advertisers to pull ads from the platform in response.
In the lawsuit filed in a US district court in Texas, X claimed Media Matters “manipulated” the social media platform by using accounts that exclusively followed accounts for major brands or users known to produce fringe content and “resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing” the feed until it found ads next to extremist posts.
In an interview with Reuters earlier on Monday, Angelo Carusone, the Media Matters president, said the non-profit’s findings flew in the face of X’s statements that it had introduced safety protections to prevent ads from appearing next to harmful content.
X said in the lawsuit that ads for IBM, Comcast and Oracle only appeared alongside hateful content for one viewer, which the company said was Media Matters.
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said on Monday his office was opening an investigation into Media Matters and that he was “extremely troubled” by allegations that the group manipulated data on X.
Yaccarino told employees in a note on Sunday that while some advertisers had paused their investments following the report’s publication, the company had been clear about its efforts to fight antisemitism and discrimination.
Saved 44% of original text.
is he that sadface over his rocket blowing up again?