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by xepriot 948 days ago
Not in the article that article (written by the defendants) - the lawsuit, following the example of others, explains how they poked and prodded in very unnatural ways, trying to contrive a circumstance in which ads would be shown next to certain posts - and they did find such! X contends no actual users were or ever would be in this same circumstance, so no brand damage was actually done.

It may hinge on exactly how strong the 'protection' is that Yaccarino alluded to is inferred to be - whether it's reasonable to infer she meant that content moderation under Musk was now perfected and 100% hateproof, at least with respect to ads.
1 comments
aw1621107 948 days ago
Sure, but the issue is that defamation requires a false statement of fact. Elon may not be happy that the article is missing context, but that's not the same thing as claiming something false.

> X contends no actual users were or ever would be in this same circumstance, so no brand damage was actually done.

If that's what they want to contend then this lawsuit is probably not the right vehicle. They'd probably be better off making that argument to their advertisers.

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xepriot 948 days ago
The contention is close, but not exactly that - it would be that when MM said 'Yaccarino was wrong, here's proof', this was defamatory because 'protected' was never meant to imply 100% perfect protection, and therefore claims that her statement was disproven - with their contrived method - are false and malicious.

It may well be a weak case. MM are certainly slimy political operators, but they seem to have mostly avoided any direct statements which are easily, unambiguously provably false.

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aw1621107 948 days ago
> it would be that when MM said 'Yaccarino was wrong, here's proof', this was defamatory because 'protected' was never meant to imply 100% perfect protection, and therefore claims that her statement was disproven - with their contrived method - are false and malicious.

I'm honestly not sure how that would be legally analyzed. It doesn't really feel like a very convincing argument, but I don't think I can articulate exactly why.

In any case, it doesn't seem that particular line of argument is present in the complaint, so it's pretty much just a curiosity.

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