If you’ve spent any time on X (formerly Twitter) recently, you’ll have noticed that the adverts have been getting very weird: you’ll find provincial real estate companies; people paying to promote themselves by tweeting their own name, and bizarre, Homer Simpson-esque inventions (a contraption you put on your glasses so they don’t touch your nose, anyone? How about a dummy for adults or a collapsible baton of questionable legality?) The platform’s new reliance on eccentric small businesses is in large part because it has become a sewer of extremist content, causing high-profile companies to flee in droves. 

In the latest chapter of X’s humiliating decline, Elon Musk is suing Media Matters, a left-leaning nonprofit and media watchdog, after it accused the company of placing neo-Nazi content next to adverts. This analysis led to a number of high-profile companies – including Apple, Warner Bros, Paramount and Disney – pausing advertising on the platform, which had already been experiencing a cataclysmic drop in advertising revenue.

Media Matter’s report contained screenshots which showed adverts from major brands next to content praising the Nazis, approvingly quoting Hitler and denying the Holocaust. Subsequently, X users posted screenshots of adverts alongside the hashtag ‘#HeilHitler’, along with phrases like ‘1488’ (a Neo-Nazi symbol which represents the phrase “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”) and ‘final solution’ (a term for the Holocaust). When this started going viral on the platform, X allegedly responded by getting rid of all the adverts which came up when people searched for those terms. 

According to Musk’s lawsuit, Media Matters “knowingly and maliciously” manipulated the data to make it seem as though neo-Nazi and white supremacist content is more prevalent on the platform than it actually is. It suggests that this was done in an attempt to drive advertisers away and “destroy” the company. Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, has claimed that “not a single authentic user” saw adverts from IBM, Comcast and Oracel displayed next to hateful content.

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Responding to the lawsuit, Media Matters president Angelo Carusone accused Musk of being a “bully”, far from the free speech advocate that he claims to be, and expressed confidence that the organisation will win the case. People on X are already pushing back on X’s defence. Journalist Matt Binder said that Linda Yaccorino’s statement, rather than exonerating the company, effectively admitted that it was serving adverts alongside Nazi content, regardless of how many users saw them.

It seems that Musk’s lawsuit is already backfiring, and having the effect of alerting even more people to the presence of extremist content on the site. The specifics of what adverts were placed next to which content is almost beside the point: no one wants to be associated with neo-Nazis. Having lost over half of its advertising revenue since Elon Musk took over in October 2022, the company cannot afford to alienate any more companies. Musk’s own behaviour is not helping to improve X’s reputation: last Wednesday, he provoked a furious backlash (and condemnation from the White House) after he replied to a post sharing a racist conspiracy theory which used Jewish communities of deliberately inciting hatred against white people with “actual truth”.

While Musk is keen to position all of this as a nefarious conspiracy, it’s really just simple business: companies generally don’t like advertising next to controversial content, and they definitely don’t like being associated with the Nazis. That’s the exact reason why Twitter introduced stronger content moderation policies in the first place; it was never out of a sincere commitment to “wokeness”, but because they wanted to make more money. Instead of trying to intimidate a progressive nonprofit, Musk should be filing a lawsuit against plain old capitalism itself.

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