Elon Musk ‘s X, formerly Twitter , has aggressively gone after watchdogs reporting on the hate speech that came to saturate the platform after he bought it in 2022. The company argues that such research is to blame for major advertisers — the ones Musk famously told to “ go fuck yourself ” — abandoning ship. So far, legal attacks on organizations pointing out X’s abundance of extremist content have been rebuffed: a judge tossed X’s suit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate in March on First Amendment grounds, ruling that Musk’s lawyers were trying to muzzle free speech with intimidation tactics.
Currently, Media Matters for America, an anti-misinformation nonprofit, faces a similar suit — considered “ bogus ” by legal experts — over an article detailing how the site served pro-Nazi posts next to ads while Musk himself endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories . But the venue for this fight may be more favorable for X. That’s because X v.
Media Matters for America is playing out in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where District Judge Reed O’Connor is assigned to the case.
(Judge Mark Pittman recused himself from the case in November without citing his reasons.) O’Connor is the notoriously partisan George W. Bush appointee who in 2018 declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional in an attempt to repeal it entirely (the Supreme Court struck down that widely mocked decision), and has a long record of other ru.