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[-] frazw@lemmy.world 142 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Why is it OK for an American company to headquarter in one state then cherry pick another in which to file a lawsuit? Surely a company should be governed by the laws of the state in which they are based. It seems weird to choose the set of laws you want to be judged by when the defendant cannot do the same.

[-] Diplomjodler@feddit.de 89 points 1 year ago

Because the system is set up so that the powerful can fuck over the powerless in any way they want.

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[-] flumph@programming.dev 46 points 1 year ago

It shouldn't be OK and Media Matters will surely file for a change of venue. They're located in DC and Twitter in California. Heck, Twitters own TOS says that your use of the service is governed by California law, so any claim that they fraudulently used the service should be handled in California.

But activist judges are also known to deny motions for made up reasons, so Twitter starts in Texas in hopes an activist judge keeps the case there to "stick it to the liberals."

[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago

Texas is famous for judges that keep the venue there, with laws that are friendly to corporations. It's why it's the most popular state for these shitbird corporate lawyers to file suits.

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[-] ZickZack@fedia.io 27 points 1 year ago

Surely a company should be governed by the laws of the state in which they are based

This is not true and wouldn't make why sense: let's say you are a delivery company and one of your drivers runs over a dog in Texas. The lawsuit can be filed in Texas, regardless of whether your company is in Texas, California, or even outside the united states. The place you are incorporated in doesn't change the damages or laws you violated when running over the dog. Of course you can also move the venue to the state the company is based in.

You cannot (generally) move it to another state, since that state doesn't even have jurisdiction over any part of the incident.

The internet is just special in the sense that really something that happened on the internet happened everywhere on earth at the same time, meaning any venue is a place where potential damages were accrued.

[-] frazw@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

Agree that if an incident happens in a particular jurisdiction, the local court should handle it. That makes sense, no argument here. But here they get to choose the set of laws because there was no physical location? That just feels wrong somehow. Anyway there is a physical location and if anything, the incident was 'perpetrated' by a person who was physically located somewhere at the time. It should be handled by the court local to them at the time. In the case of organisations, I guess this would mean where the defendant company operates from. Or if we accept it is virtual and everywhere then, it should be governed by federal laws not state laws.

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[-] DacoTaco@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Makes sense, but how can things like the slapp suit from bob murray have been in a state (west virginia) neither hbo ( who called bob a lot of shit and is located in new york ) , bob murray ( utah) or his company were in?
Edit: excuse me, i meant bob murray, not bill murrey

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[-] scarabic@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I think your example covers the case where a company has a lawsuit filed against it. And the object of the lawsuit is an event that occurred in a particular state. But why should a company be able to originate a lawsuit in the state of their choosing? Shouldn’t it either be their home state or the home state of whom ever they’re suing? Or wherever the events in question took place?

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[-] charonn0@startrek.website 9 points 1 year ago

It was filed in federal court. Why they filed in a federal court in Texas is not yet clear.

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[-] drdabbles@lemmy.world 121 points 1 year ago

The instant they enter discovery, he's going to have to drop the suit like usual or hand over an awful lot of evidence of interacting with some extremely shitty racist ass hats. I'm excited for either outcome.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago

Oh... I want discovery to go deep. Like all the way to the market manipulation that caused him to buy Twitter in the first place... didn't he avoid the lawsuit and buy Twitter just to avoid discovery? Let's discover all!

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[-] Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works 94 points 1 year ago

Please consider setting up an account on Mastodon and slowly move over as it takes time to build your network just like it did when you first joined Twitter. Get off Twitter.

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[-] JeffKerman1999@sopuli.xyz 85 points 1 year ago

Mister "fined by sec for stock manipulation" screams about fraud? Also that situation with the ads should have never been possible in the first place.

[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago
[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

Why do they keep proving this "every accusation is a confession" meme?

[-] MonsiuerPatEBrown@reddthat.com 69 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That is the white supremacist attitude:

Just because Mr. White can do something doesn't mean anyone else can do it.

As a corollary to that: if anyone else can do something then surely Mr. White can do it, too. Mr. White demands it.

Here alleged white supremacist Elon Musk supports Mr. White's right to say anything and everything while anyone not Mr. White must seek permission.

As someone who struggles internally with my racism I can't tell you how much I hate seeing the richest man in the world reinforce these white supremacist values while I try to strangle them out of my interior life. It is like Jefferson Davis is become 21st century businessman.

[-] triclops6@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 year ago

As someone on the receiving end of it, thank you for your struggle

[-] masquenox@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Here alleged white supremacist Elon Musk

What do you mean, "alleged white supremacist"?

The guy is an overt white supremacist - end of story.

I can’t tell you how much I hate seeing the richest man in the world reinforce these white supremacist

I guess this is the first time you've been made aware that white supremacism and capitalism have always gone together like a house on fire?

[-] capital@lemmy.world 67 points 1 year ago

Mr. free speech absolutist.

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[-] foggy@lemmy.world 50 points 1 year ago

Respond to their legal service with 💩

Call them a pedo. Instant win.

[-] DeathWearsANecktie@lemm.ee 44 points 1 year ago

""""free speech""""

[-] AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca 40 points 1 year ago

The alleged manipulation involved creating an account that exclusively followed a combination of major brands and extremist content, then “endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed” until it saw a confluence of the two.

[-] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 53 points 1 year ago

Bold move to admit that what was reported was both true and an intended way for ads to be served on Xitter.

[-] elbarto777@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

I know, right?! "The user has to follow our brands and our extremist content!!!!"

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[-] roofuskit@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago

Your speech is free, as long as you can afford it.

[-] athos77@kbin.social 23 points 1 year ago

Time to go look up Texas' anti-SLAPP laws ...

[-] Maestro@kbin.social 41 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

According to the article there aren't any. That's why he filed in Texas. I do wonder how he can file in Texas if neither X nor Media Matters is located there. Doesn't that make it simple to file a motion to move the case to California and then use their anti-SLAPP laws?

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 18 points 1 year ago

That's probably what will happen.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

In a sensible world. In the real world there is a decent chance some activist judge will deny the motion. Corps love suing in Texas.

[-] Deceptichum@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

How can't he slapp?

[-] jballs@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 year ago
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[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

How performative vs serious are these Musksuits?

[-] Salamendacious@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

I doubt he'll win but media matters will have attorney fees and those can be financially devastating sometimes.

[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

How are Tesla shaehrolders not like suing for something to deal with Musk doing stupid shit like this? How far are they gonna let him go?

[-] Salamendacious@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Who knows. Maybe they realize the stock is already overpriced and they don't want to jinx it. I'm still in awe of the fall musk made in the public consciousness. He went from the guy who wanted to change the world and help end fossil fuel consumption to someone who paid 40+ billion to make a safe space for Internet trolls... Crazy.

[-] Alto@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago

I think anyone who has even the slightest idea of how the market works knows Tesla is grossly overvalued. Obviously it's nowhere near the whole story, but when their market cap is nearly 20× that of Ford's with ½ the revenue, something is fucky

[-] Salamendacious@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Irrational exuberance at its finest

[-] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 year ago

I'm still more in awe how he could keep up that futurist facade for so long.

Elmo literally sued the real founders of Tesla in order to be able to call himself a founder.

It goes back as far as his school career, where he was too dumb to get his degree in physics, but because of a generous donation was able to get it 2 years after he left.

That guy was like this from the start.

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[-] ours@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Don't forget how one of his companies was pushing the envelope in reusable rockets.

And now burning the aura he carefully built for... Twitter and "alt-right" bullshit.

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[-] Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

Well atleast they're admiting the screenshots are legit. Knowing how much people hate this guy, I wouldn't be too surprised if the algorithm manipulation claim was actually true. However you'd think that by this point they would already have optimized their advertising system to prevent this exact thing from happening.

[-] romkube@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They probably had a solution for it, but mr. “I know better then everyone else” probably took the solution offline while he was dismantling twitter earlier this year

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[-] autotldr 11 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Nearly simultaneously, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened an investigation into Media Matters for “potential fraudulent activity.” Musk posted the news on his X account, stating that “fraud has both civil and criminal penalties.” Musk had previously responded to a tweet by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller that suggested conservative attorneys general (like Paxton) look into fraud charges.

“Media Matters has 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, leaving the false impression that these pairings are anything but what they actually are: manufactured, inorganic, and extraordinarily rare.” The alleged manipulation involved creating an account that exclusively followed a combination of major brands and extremist content, then “endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed” until it saw a confluence of the two.

(Musk famously beat a libel suit after falsely dubbing one of his critics a “pedo guy.”) “We are going to continue our work undeterred.

If he sues us, we will win,” the organization’s president Angelo Carusone told The Verge in a previous statement, saying that “Elon Musk has spent the last few days making meritless legal threats, elevating bizarre conspiracy theories, and lobbing vicious personal attacks against his ‘enemies’ online.” Carusone reiterated the sentiment after the suit was filed.

Moving the lawsuit also puts it under the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has proven highly sympathetic to conservative figures who claim they’ve been censored — something Musk has made a centerpiece of his publicity strategy around X.

But she suggested employees “be as fiscally responsible as possible” to offset potential losses from advertisers and exhorted them to “by all means, put your heads together to bring new revenue into the company.”


The original article contains 647 words, the summary contains 293 words. Saved 55%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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