Elon Musk is big mad at Media Matters For America after the media watchdog released a report on Thursday that accused X of placing ads for brands next to pro-Hitler and white nationalist accounts. Musk announced he will file a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters the “split second court opens on Monday.”
According to the report, some brands — including The Athletic, Major League Baseball, Sports Illustrated and Amazon — had advertisements placed within the feed of a pro-Hitler account. Others, such as The Wall Street Journal and Nokia, had ads placed on accounts run by Holocaust deniers.
Media Matters also reported that X’s algorithms placed ads for Apple, Bravo and Xfinity next to content that praises Hitler and the Nazis.
Musk disputes the methods deployed by Media Matters. In the filing, he insisted that the organization set out to “manipulate the public and advertisers” by creating a fake account to curate a timeline that would “misinform advertisers about the placement of their posts.”
On top of that, he continued, “These contrived experiences could be applied to any platform.”
On Saturday, Media Matters President Angelo Carusone responded to the lawsuit. “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,” Carusone said. “Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win.”
Musk’s legal plans come after quite a few advertisers dropped or paused advertising campaigns on Twitter… due to Musk’s own antisemitic actions on the platform.
In an attempt to move on from the potential lawsuit, Musk followed up that announcement by sharing he would be “Getting back to productive matters, Starship flight 2 launches in ~6 hours!!”
The second Starship flight was touted as a success, despite the fact that the rocket’s trip was cut short due to technical issues. SpaceX goals include using Starship to deliver a team to the moon by the end of the decade.
NASA’s Bill Nelson tweeted out his congratulations to the SpaceX team. The former U.S. senator wrote, “Congrats to the teams who made progress on today’s flight test. Spaceflight is a bold adventure demanding a can-do spirit and daring innovation. Today’s test is an opportunity to learn — then fly again. Together @NASA and @SpaceX will return humanity to the Moon, Mars & beyond.”