X's High-Profile Media Matters Case Alleges Trickery to Pair Ads With Racist Content
Claims of manipulation, misrepresentation and intentional deception permeated X Corp.’s well-publicized Nov. 20 complaint (docket 4:23-cv-01175) against media watchdog Media Matters in U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in Fort Worth. Media Matters’ “blatant smear campaign” is part of a plan to “drive advertisers from X,” said the former Twitter's complaint against the watchdog group and its senior investigative reporter Eric Hananoki.
A Nov. 16 Media Matters report displayed instances the watchdog group found on X of advertisers’ paid posts next to neo-Nazi and white nationalist content, but it didn’t provide any context regarding the “forced, inauthentic nature and extraordinary rarity of these pairings,” said the complaint. The report said X was placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle and Xfinity “next to pro-Nazi content,” claiming that X “was responsible for anti-Semitic content being paired with X’s advertisers’ paid posts,” said the complaint. The statement “was not true, and Media Matters knew it,” it said.
Advertisers including Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal and IBM pulled all their advertising from X in response to “this intentionally deceptive report,” with IBM calling the pairings an “entirely unacceptable situation,” the complaint said. Oracle did not withdraw its ads, X said, but Media Matters’ “manipulation was so severe that companies not even featured in the article also pulled ads from X,” including Lionsgate, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and Sony, it said.
X asserted that IBM’s, Comcast’s and Oracle’s paid posts appeared alongside fringe content cited by Media Matters for only “one viewer (out of more than 500 million) on all of X: Media Matters,” the complaint said. No “authentic user” of the X platform saw those advertisers’ ads next to fringe content, which Media Matters “achieved only through its manipulation of X’s algorithms,” it said.
Media Matters falsely claims it “recently found ads for Apple, Bravo, Oracle, Xfinity, and IBM next to posts that tout Hitler and his Nazi Party on X,” said the complaint. “Media Matters did not find pairings that X passively allowed on the platform,” it said, saying the group “created these pairings in secrecy, to manufacture the harmful perception that X is at best an incompetent content moderator,” or “even worse that X was somehow indifferent or even encouraging to Nazi and racist ideology,” it said.
X’s internal user data showed that Media Matters manufactured an “inorganic user experience strictly aimed at creating an interaction between controversial content and big-name advertisers that was seen only by the Media Matters account and then published broadly,” alleged the complaint. It attempted to “evade X’s content filters for new users” by using an account that had existed for over 30 days, it said. The watchdog group set its account to follow only 30 users, “severely limiting the amount and type of content featured on its feed,” it said.
All the accounts Media Matters followed “were either fringe accounts or were accounts for national large brands” in an attempt to trick the algorithm into thinking Media Matters “wanted to view both hateful content and content from large advertisers,” the complaint alleged. An internal review showed that Media Matters’ account “started to alter its scrolling and refreshing activities in an attempt to manipulate inorganic combinations of advertisements and content,” it said. Its “excessive scrolling and refreshing generated between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than would be seen by a typical user, essentially seeking to force a situation in which a brand ad post appeared adjacent to fringe content,” it said.
X applies default protections to all posts to prevent ads from being placed next to content that violates community guidelines, said the complaint. “When users operate within X’s community guidelines, these default mechanisms are effective and have a long history of successfully protecting X’s advertisers from undesirable interactions with fringe content,” it said. The platform offers advertisers the option to address further concerns they may have about ads being seen next to specific content, said the complaint. Advertisers can specify which key words and user handles they don’t want to appear near their posts, it said.
Causes of action are interference with contract, business disparagement and interference with prospective economic advantage, said the complaint. X seeks actual and consequential damages caused by Media Matters’ alleged misconduct and a preliminary and permanent injunction ordering the organization to delete or take down the article “As Musk Endorses Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory, X Has Been Placing Ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity Next to Pro-Nazi Content From Its Web.” It also seeks legal costs and attorneys’ fees. Media Matters didn't comment Wednesday.