Musk threatens ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’ against media watchdog, calls advertisers ‘oppressors’

Elon Musk lashed out at large advertisers and Media Matters, a media watchdog group, on Friday after several major brands decided to pause spending on X, the social media platform he owns and runs as CTO.

Musk wrote late Friday night, “The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.” He added, “Their board, their donors, their network of dark money, all of them…” and “the discovery and depositions will be glorious to behold,” in subsequent tweets.

Media Matters for America (MMFA) published a report last week showing ads for mainstream brands on X, formerly Twitter, were running alongside user posts espousing pro-Nazi views. The report came after Musk personally posted a spate of tweets that the White House called an “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.”

In response, advertisers including Apple, Comcast/NBC Universal (parent of CNBC.com), Disney, IBM, Lions Gate, Paramount Global, and Warner Bros. Discovery, then decided to halt their ad spending, at least temporarily, on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Musk hawked a paid, ad-free subscription version of X in a tweet after news of suspended campaigns surfaced. He wrote, “Premium+ also has no ads in your timeline. Many of the largest advertisers are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech.” He did not specify which large advertisers he believes are “oppressors.”

A spokesperson for X, Joe Benarroch, emailed a company blog post to CNBC that alleges Media Matters has “completely misrepresented the real user experience” of the social network.

He also said in the email: “Media Matters created an alternate X account and deliberately followed sensitive accounts to curate posts and get advertising to appear on the account’s timeline to then misinform advertisers about the placement of their posts. These contrived experiences could be created on any…