This week, the nonprofit organization Media Matters for America filed a lawsuit against X, accusing Elon Musk‘s social network of “harassment” and Musk of a “global legal campaign against Media Matters.”
After Media Matters reported in 2023 that X had placed ads next to pro-Nazi content, X filed three lawsuits against the nonprofit organization, accusing it of jeopardizing the company’s relationships with advertisers. Media Matters now claims that X violated its own Terms of Service by filing these lawsuits in Texas, Ireland, and Singapore – arguing that any complaints should have been filed in San Francisco, where X was headquartered at the time.
The media watchdog group says it has spent millions of dollars defending itself in court and is seeking damages. It is also seeking a court order that would prohibit X from initiating litigation in countries outside the United States or from pursuing the pending cases in Ireland and Singapore.
In its complaint, Media Matter refers to X’s own policy, which states that “all disputes related to these Terms or the Services will be resolved exclusively in the federal or state courts located in San Francisco County, California, USA.”
However, last year, X changed its terms of service to refer disputes to the federal court of the Northern District of Texas, Reuters reports. Musk moved the company’s offices from California to Texas last year after taking control of Twitter and rebranding it as X. A federal judge in Texas, who owned Tesla shares, last year rejected a motion to dismiss X’s lawsuit against Media Matters, saying that X “properly filed its claims” in the right place.
Meanwhile, San Francisco has been a more favorable arena for watchdog groups suing X. There, a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit by X against the Center for Counting Digital Hate (CCDH). In that lawsuit, X accused CCDH of launching a “smear campaign” that allegedly cost it “tens of millions of dollars” in lost advertising revenue. “This case is about punishing the defendants [CCDH] for their statements,” the judge wrote in his ruling.
X did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment. The lawsuit, filed against Media Matters in Texas, claims that the nonprofit organization “manipulated the algorithms that govern users on X to bypass safeguards and create images of paid posts from X’s largest advertisers next to racist, inflammatory content.”
Media Matters stands by its analysis. “X has filed these lawsuits in retaliation for Media Matters’ truthful reporting that ads appeared next to white supremacist content on X’s platform,” the complaint, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, said.
