> Bailey's lawsuit claims that "Media Matters has used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to trick advertisers into removing their advertisements from X, formerly Twitter, one of the last platforms dedicated to free speech in America."
The last sentence really says it all. They don't even try to hide their agenda.
> They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. — JCAS
Luckily the US legal system —at least as I remember it— prefers sound argument to being misused by bad-faith actors.
Republicans have started using "committed to free speech" as a euphemism for "doesn't censor hate speech or misinformation". The problem with that isn't that it's impossible to make an argument that "protecting free speech" should cover that, the problem is that they are hiding that controversial argument behind the less controversial argument to protect free speech.
Is this really unique to Republicans though? This seems like the kind of sleight of hand that is just the current norm in American public discourse. The equivalent from the Democrats would be basically any article about politicians legislating against something like "healthcare for trans teens" when what they really mean is "puberty blockers for teenagers" or "sex change operations for teenagers". Hiding the controversy to pretend at normalcy is just the present state of dialogue in America.
> Musk previously sued Media Matters over the article, claiming the group "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."
So Is this saying X has "racist, incendiary content"? I never knew.
I can see both sides here but I think media matters is mostly in the wrong. All platforms can be smeared like this if you set up perfect conditions. How many times has this happened with Facebook?
In my reading, the poster you responded to claimed that MM cherry picked their data. This is consistent with my understanding of the kerfuffle. MM deliberately sought to create situations where advertisements appeared next to objectionable content. In other words, cherry picking, which is at the heart of this dispute.
From my perspective it was a bit ironic.
> I can see both sides here but I think media matters is mostly in the wrong. All platforms can be smeared like this if you set up perfect conditions. How many times has this happened with Facebook?
The last sentence really says it all. They don't even try to hide their agenda.