X, FORMERLY TWITTER, has taken legal action in the Irish courts against a US media monitoring site.
Court papers filed this week show that Twitter International Limited Company, the name of its Ireland-based entity for operations, has taken legal action against Media Matters for America.
It’s the latest legal action taken by Elon Musk’s company against Media Matters.
In the US last month, X sued the site after it published allegations that antisemitic content was posted alongside ads on the social media platform.
Among the claims by Media Matters was that ads for major brands had appeared next to posts promoting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.
Media Matters has recently run coverage of US figures weighing in on the Dublin riots, some of which appeared on a show which streamed on X, hosted by broadcaster Tucker Carlson.
Both parties to the dispute have been contacted for comment by The Journal and did not reply at the time of publication. Dublin-based law firm McCann Fitzgerald, who are listed as representatives for Twitter in the action, did not respond when contacted.
Risk to advertisers
In an interview in August, X chief executive Linda Yaccarino sought to assuage advertisers, claiming that companies’ brands are now “protected from the risk of being next to” potentially inflammatory content.
After Media Matters published an article detailing allegations of antisemitism on the platform, X launched its legal action in the US, claiming the monitor website was driving advertisers away from the platform by portraying it as rife with antisemitic content.
In the lawsuit filed last month, X accused the organisation of “tricking the algorithm” by following only accounts known for extreme, fringe content along with big-name brands.
Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal and IBM were among high-profile brands that paused advertising on X last week after Media Matters reported finding ads displayed with pro-Nazi content.
Posts by Musk, the world’s richest person, on the site have also drew condemnation from the White House for allegedly endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
The White House condemned Musk last month for what it called “abhorrent promotion” of antisemitism.
The White House was reacting to a post by Musk in which the controversial Tesla and SpaceX tycoon replied to an antisemitic post on X with the words: “You have said the actual truth.”
The original post was widely seen as a reference to a false conspiracy theory among White supremacists that Jewish people have a secret plan to bring illegal immigrants into the United States to move US demographics away from a white majority.
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