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Comment by ssklash | Hacker News Reader

Seems the free market is doing it's job, but I assume Musk will of course see it differently and start suing right, left, and center.

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Has he ever actually sued any of the people he's threatened? This is not the first time he's thrown around a lot of bluster with nothing to show for it

Yes: he's filed suit against the "Center for Countering Digital Hate", also for publicly criticizing the way he runs Twitter.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/01/free-speech-absolutist-e...

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.41... (plaintiff's complaint)

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.41... (defendant's anti-SLAPP motion)

He's an absolutist in his belief that he should be free to sue anyone whose speech about him he does not like.

It would be nice if others start counter-suing him personally and not his companies. Don’t make the employees suffer for his tactics.

Did he also ever take legal action after the supposed stalker incident which was claimed to be a result of the jet tracker?

In this specific round of bluster, he has filed suit against Media Matters.

Nature abhors a vacuum. If the ad displays are worthwhile then advertisers will be drawn to use X regardless of the audience or what their ads are displayed next to. There is a porn shop in my city with a Coca-Cola billboard above it because it's on the most major thoroughfare.

Probably true in direct response marketing, possibly unknowable in brand marketing.

That’s not a valid analogy: everyone knows that the billboard is separate from the shop renting the space below and Coca Cola doesn’t pay the porn shop to drive traffic to their ad. Twitter has revenue sharing and also uses that revenue to provide free services so there’s no way for an advertiser to avoid their money benefitting the extremist groups who use the service. Coca Cola paying for the billboard on the roof doesn’t mean the porn shop isn’t paying rent.

The porn shop is also unlikely to have anything on the front of their shops which is even remotely comparable to the tweets causing advertisers to leave. For all that religious nuts go on about it, porn is mainstream even in conservative areas and the ads will talk about pleasing your wife, not harming anyone. If they put up ads talking about how mixed-race sex should be punished or saying that women should be assaulted, the comparison would hold up more - and so would the reaction as they lost their business permits and lease.

What even is the legal case that he could be making?

I mean, there's his Media Matters lawsuit for one: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/18/elon-musk...

It's not a lawsuit until he files it.

It's just random words from the Twitter king for now. I think that it will be a difficult case and that the Lawyers will shy away from trying to go through with that insanity.

Legal threats from a non-lawyer have very, very low risk. People only pay attention when an actual lawyer is involved.

Here's the now filed lawsuit:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24172809-x-v-media-m...

And he has a very strong case it seems.

On what grounds?

What lawsuit? All I see is a scared CEO flapping his lips about using the legal system to chill the free speech of a group he does not like for calling out his Naziesque rhetoric. It is now well past "The split second court opens on Monday," and yet, no lawsuit. It's almost like he doesn't actually have a case.

Here's the lawsuit:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24172809-x-v-media-m...

Ah yes, hours after the comment and much later than the moment the courts open.

This reads like a petulant press release and nor an actual legal document. It feels like they even stipulate that Media Matters was right and they did display ads next to Nazi propaganda, but Musk is getting huffy about the technique MM used to expose this flaw in their system.

Side note: how long did it take you to replay to just about every thread in this article with a link to Musk's temper tantrum?

When you can provide a court and a docket number for that lawsuit, we can treat it a real thing that exists rather than empty threat that doesn't because it would have no merit and probably also subject Musk to penalties under the applicable anti-SLAPP laws.

He filed it in Texas, possibly to avoid anti-SLAPP laws.

It doesn't look like The "thermonuclear lawsuit" he was going to launch the "split second court opens", has happened.

/S/

I am shocked, shocked I say. Musk usually seems so cool headed and not prone to constantly spewing hyperbole and bullshit.

Lawsuit here https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24172809-x-v-media-m...

Well shut my mouth, I thought it was a bluff.

Thanks for the link.

ps. this isn't sarcasm.

There isn't one. Truth is a defense to defamation in the USA. Media Matters can call Musk an anti-Semite and say Twitter pays Nazis to write propaganda and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them, because both of those things are true.

That is true, however Musk's suit is likely even more difficult to prove than that. It's not good enough that it be provably false (and the law puts a heavy emphasis on the word provably there).

For a public figure suing anyone over claims like this, he would need to prove "actual malice" which typically means that not only was it provably false, but that the entity making the claim KNEW it was false, and decided to say it anyway.

So Musk will likely have to prove that Media Matters article was a matter of fact (and not an opinion), prove that the fact they claimed was false, and prove that they knew it was false before publishing it.

That's a VERY high bar.

sounds more like a cartel than a "free market"

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