Elon Musk is going “thermonuclear.”
No, this has nothing to do with SpaceX or any of his other wild technology projects – but it’s how Musk described the lawsuit he was filing against Media Matters for America this week. The lawsuit is in response to a Media Matters report last week that X, the Musk-owned social media platform formerly known as Twitter, was placing ads for major brands such as Apple and IBM next to “pro-Nazi content.” After some prodding from Media Matters, within a day of their report, a slew of major corporations, such as IBM, Disney, Comcast, Sony, NBC, and Warner Brothers, announced they were pulling ads from X.
As part of his announcement, Musk posted a statement making specific allegations that Media Matters technologically manipulated the service to produce the desired juxtapositions of ads and extremist content – and that these contrived ads were seen by virtually no one.
“For one brand showcased in the article, one of its ads ran adjacent to a post 2 times and that ad was seen in that setting by only two users, one of which was the author of the Media Matters article,” reads the statement. If Musk’s claim is accurate, it means that the organized boycott of X was prompted by less of a display of Nazism than one would see at the average pro-Palestinian demonstration.
