The Yaccarino Campaign: Defending Free Speech in the Age of Adversarial Machines and in the X-ray Room

Across every corner of this company, we’re working to create a platform for everyone. And there is no other platform that’s working as hard to protect free speech like X. Our work is critical, but it’s not always easy. What we’re doing matters, which means it naturally invites criticism from those who do not share our beliefs.

As pressure mounts for the company to distance itself from supporting antisemitism, Forbes reported that advertisers are urging Yaccarino to resign as well. A former chair of NBCUniversal, Yaccarino was brought into Musk’s company to restore relationships with the companies that make up most of X’s revenue. Advertisers were already concerned their paid content would show up next to antisemitic or otherwise bigoted posts, but they’re especially worried now, when the platform’s owner seems to be actively stoking conspiracies about the Jewish community.

Let’s keep putting our values to work and lean on one another. I am extremely proud to be on the front line with you all — and I’ll see you all at the office tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, Semafor reports that Yaccarino has enlisted her son Matt Madrazo to reboot X’s political advertising business, in hopes to make up for the revenue lost by the “temporarily paused investments” of what previously were some of the company’s biggest clients.

The lawsuit accuses Media Matters of interference with contract, business disparagement, and interference with prospective economic advantage — claims that could be difficult to prove given the First Amendment’s high bar for legally prosecuting speech. Musk was sued for libel after he called one of his critics a pedo guy. “We are going to continue our work undeterred. The president of the organization has said that if Musk were to file a lawsuit, they would win. Carusone reiterated the sentiment after the suit was filed. “This is a frivolous lawsuit meant to bully X’s critics into silence,” he said. Media Matters looks forward to winning in court.

Yaccarino has insisted that advertisers are not pulling back their X presence permanently. “Some advertisers may have temporarily paused but I do want to go on record, I had several really good conversations today,” she told employees at an all-hands after the lawsuit, according to Fortune. She urged employees to put their heads together and bring in new revenue, as they were being fiscally responsible to offset potential losses from advertisers.

Neither Paxton nor X argues that Media Matters was falsely claiming to see ads on pro-Nazi content. The suit confirms that the photos posted on the website are real. It believes that the service was manipulated to serve the offending ads. The false impression is that these pairings are anything but what they actually are because the Algorithms are manipulated to ignore safeguards and create images of large advertisers next to racist, inflammatory content. A combination of major brands and extremist content was followed by the account until it saw a confluence of the two.

Ken Paxton opened an investigation into Media Matters for potential fraudulent activity. On his account Musk stated that fraud can have both civil and criminal penalties. Stephen Miller, who was a former advisor to Trump, had previously responded to Musk that he suggested the attorneys general look into fraud charges.

Advertisers have been fleeing the site formerly known as Twitter over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content — and hate speech on the site in general — while billionaire owner Musk has inflamed tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.