Janice R. Andrews
A Texas judge turned down Media Matters for America’s request to throw out a libel case brought by X, which used to be known as Twitter. According to the claim, Media Matters did a lot of damage to the social media site by linking it to racist and anti-Semitic material. Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas made the ruling that the case can go forward in federal court.
Media Matters asked for X’s case to be thrown out in March, saying that it didn’t have “personal jurisdiction,” was brought in the wrong place, and didn’t make a valid claim. All of these claims, though, were turned down by Judge O’Connor, which meant that X’s case could go on.
Media Matters reported that Neo-Nazi and white nationalist material was showing up on X’s website along with ads, which led to the lawsuit. Media Matters said that the pictures it used in its stories were real, but X says that the watchdog group changed its ad filters on purpose to make photos that were not accurate. Because of these stories, a lot of big advertisers stopped working with the site, which cost X a lot of money.
The company X, which is owned by Elon Musk, has been suing hard to protect its business and image. Musk’s other businesses, like Tesla and SpaceX, are based in Texas, but they are not directly involved in this case. X just shut down its offices in San Francisco, and Musk has said that the company will move its base to Austin, Texas.
When Judge O’Connor threw out the personal jurisdiction case, she pointed out that AT&T and Oracle, two of X’s main advertisers that were named in Media Matters’ reports, are based in Texas. He brought up the Internet slander case Revell v. Lidov from 2002 to stress that if someone starts a fight in Texas, it makes sense for the fight to be settled there.
This decision means that X’s case against Media Matters will go on. It could set a big legal standard for slander online and holding platforms accountable.
