Elon Musk threatened to sue Media Matters yesterday over its article about brand advertising running against Nazi material on the site. In his threat, Musk admitted exactly what the site had been accused of, a fact Media Matters wasted no time pointing out in its response.
Musk wrote late Friday night, "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." He added, "Their board, their donors, their network of dark money, all of them…" and "the discovery and depositions will be glorious to behold," in subsequent tweets.
Media Matters' Angelo Carusone:
Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate. Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win.
Advertisers are fleeing Twitter this weekend, but only partly due to Media Matters' exposé: the departure lounge filled after Musk himself endorsed the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews are hostile to white people and trying to replace them with immigrants.
IBM, then Apple, were first to at least temporarily halt their advertising on the site. Disney, NBC Universal, Lions Gate, Paramount Global, Sony, Comcast, and Warner Bros. Discovery, have all since followed suit. It's not clear which major advertisers haven't—as Musk haplessly pointed out, you have to do a lot of reloading to get the ads you might be looking for—though they reportedly include Amazon.
UPDATE: Popehat returned to Twitter [nitter.com] just to kick this lawsuit threat, and the man who issued it, in the nuts:
There are about fifty reasons your petulant flounce is nonsense, you emotionally-spavined freak, but let's start with the first clause of the first sentence: it's 2023 and you e-file complaints now. You don't have to wait for the courthouse to be open. You utter twat.
Note the Britishality; it may be that someone other than Ken White is at the controls.
