this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
507 points (93.5% liked)
Technology
59582 readers
2645 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nearly simultaneously, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened an investigation into Media Matters for “potential fraudulent activity.” Musk posted the news on his X account, stating that “fraud has both civil and criminal penalties.” Musk had previously responded to a tweet by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller that suggested conservative attorneys general (like Paxton) look into fraud charges.
“Media Matters has manipulated the algorithms governing the user experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content, leaving the false impression that these pairings are anything but what they actually are: manufactured, inorganic, and extraordinarily rare.” The alleged manipulation involved creating an account that exclusively followed a combination of major brands and extremist content, then “endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed” until it saw a confluence of the two.
(Musk famously beat a libel suit after falsely dubbing one of his critics a “pedo guy.”) “We are going to continue our work undeterred.
If he sues us, we will win,” the organization’s president Angelo Carusone told The Verge in a previous statement, saying that “Elon Musk has spent the last few days making meritless legal threats, elevating bizarre conspiracy theories, and lobbing vicious personal attacks against his ‘enemies’ online.” Carusone reiterated the sentiment after the suit was filed.
Moving the lawsuit also puts it under the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has proven highly sympathetic to conservative figures who claim they’ve been censored — something Musk has made a centerpiece of his publicity strategy around X.
But she suggested employees “be as fiscally responsible as possible” to offset potential losses from advertisers and exhorted them to “by all means, put your heads together to bring new revenue into the company.”
The original article contains 647 words, the summary contains 293 words. Saved 55%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!