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X Corp. vs. Media Matters for America et al.
- icy_deadposts 3y agoDemand $100000 Why sue for billions when you could sue for dr evil pinkie to mouth hundreds of thousands? LMAO: Media Matters therefore resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand selected feed, generating between 13 and 15 more times advertisements per hour than viewed by the average X user repeating this inauthentic activity until it finally received pages containing the result it wanted: controversial content next to X's largest advertiser's paid posts
- addicted 3y agoI don’t understand. So they did get “controversial content”. What’s the argument then? Further, how is this not free speech anyways.
- vaidhy 3y agoEven one instance is sufficient, right? So, is it ok if one in 15 users see this kind of ad? If I were to do a performance test, I do not run one request through and claim it is representational. I do a large test and test at 99th percentile. No one claims that since I ran many requests, my tests are invalid. You are reaching out to find a bright spot.
- Tadpole9181 3y agoAKA: caught X violating their explicit contract to never serve their ads next to that content? "Your honor, the prosecution had to dig through thousands of transactions to find the one where I embezzled money!"
- two_handfuls 3y agoRight, this sounds like perfectly normal behavior when you want to check whether any ad appears next to any controversial content. of course they would refresh and scroll a lot.
- defrost 3y agoSo ... less than the amount of adverts served to 20 average users then? On a platform supposed serving "millions" .. That's, uhhh, at least 50,000 instances of IBM adverts next to Nazi hatespeech per million users per hour? That's probably waaay to much for the company founded by Herman Hollerith and his whacky punch cards so loved by the Reich.
- fuzzylightbulb 3y agoIANAL, but it seems pretty cut and dry to me: either Twitter served up an ad next to the objectional content or it didn't. A number of the named advertisers claim to have zero tolerance policies when it comes to their brand being placed adjacent to antisemitic content, and so even one misplaced ad should and would be enough to cause an exodus under that policy. At the end of the day twitter and its algorithms control what ads get served regardless of how abnormal the user behavior was that triggered the algorithm to do what it did. Ultimately it's an engineering failure on twitter's part.
- andsoitis 3y agoWhat I have failed to find is a screenshot of said ads placed against objectionable content. All the articles I have found just talk about it but don't show it. Linda Yaccarino writes: https://twitter.com/lindayaX/status/1726747531843915965 https://twitter.com/lindayaX/status/1726747531843915965 Show, don't tell.
- aw1621107 3y agoThe original article has screenshots: https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/musk-endorses-antisemitic-conspiracy-theory-x-has-been-placing-ads-apple-bravo-ibm-oracle https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/musk-endorses-antisemit...
- andsoitis 3y agoThank you. Several of those seem less like ads placed against any specific post, but instead alongside in a stream of posts.
- gingerrr 3y agoThat's a meaningless distinction to advertisers and in the context of this lawsuit. Were brand ads placed colocated with hateful content in a user feed? That's the only question that matters to advertisers at least. Attribution doesn't change the damage to their brand. And even this lawsuit doesn't challenge that fact that the answer is "yes", ads did get placed next to hateful content - the lawsuit just claims results were skewed by gaming ad targeting and so aren't representative.
- chrisbolt 3y agoOther discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357176
- JohnTHaller 3y agoScroll down for screenshots of the ads for the mentioned major brands alongside nazi content: https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/musk-endorses-antisemitic-conspiracy-theory-x-has-been-placing-ads-apple-bravo-ibm-oracle https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/musk-endorses-antisemit...
- sgnelson 3y agoAt this point, I would think an ad from IBM/Apple/etc. showing up next to a post of Elon's would be enough to prove advertisements have been placed next to a known anti-Semite. But that's just me.
- vnchr 3y agoWould you be willing to share some specific reference or example where Elon Musk is anti-Semitic? I invite others to comment. I have heard that claim made baselessly by some, though perhaps others can provide a firm basis.
- rexpop 3y ago> Agreeing with an antisemitic post on his social media platform X, Elon Musk endorsed the claim that Jewish communities push “hatred against Whites.” > An X post Wednesday afternoon said: “Jewish communties (sic) have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The post also referenced “hordes of minorities” flooding Western countries, a popular antisemitic conspiracy theory. > In response, Musk said: “You have said the actual truth.” https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/15/media/elon-musk-antisemitism-white-people/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/15/media/elon-musk-antisemitism-...
- vnchr 3y agoThank you for the reference, that’s very helpful.
- jshaqaw 3y agoWonderful world when the worlds richest man starts using the legal system to spend his “enemies” into oblivion.
- oceanplexian 3y ago[flagged]
- fuzzylightbulb 3y agoI agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment, but it is nothing new. Peter Theil did the same to Gawker via Hulk Hogan a few years back.
- jshaqaw 3y agoYes I agree the precedent was set there. I didn't like that either but this feels like a different scale of things at a more fraught time.
- retrocryptid 3y agoWell... that's the American Way. Rich people can do what they want. Poor people are screwed. People in the middle have various privileges.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoCourtesy of the "free speech absolutist".
- fomine3 3y agoI'm not a fan of X/Elon/hate, but ads shown at search page with hate word shouldn't be a big problem. If it should be considered to a serious problem, every service operator with search feature (even without UGC) need to check very precisely whether the user input is hate or not.
- zagrebian 3y agoWhat would you recommend in this case? MacBook Pro. Most of the time, it’s plugged in because I use it at my desk, so why would I use the battery unnecessarily when the power outlet is right there, and the laptop is stationary. But that means that the battery is “fully charged” most of the time. Is that bad? Would it be better if it didn’t go above 80% most of the time?
- vaxman 3y agoThis means that they'll have to settle, or both parties will need to reveal their relevant algorithms (for ad placement and detection), something they're likely to want to avoid.