Elon Musk's erratic posting on X, formerly Twitter, is back to haunt him once again as a 22-year-old Jew pursues a defamation case over tweets in which the tech mogul unfoundedly suggested the recent graduate was an undercover federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi during a street race between far-right groups. Musk's harrowing March 27 deposition on the matter, which a judge ordered public over the objections of the CEO's lawyer, reveals the extent to which he is constantly sabotaging both himself and the social media platform he owns.
X is “the most accurate, current and true place on the Internet,” Musk said when asked about a false statement he made on the site that has been seen by more than a million users and has yet to be retracted or deleted in nearly a year . later.
The lawsuit, filed in October by Ben Brody of California, is one of several false conspiracy theories that Musk has fallen for and has been boosting since buying Twitter. Last June, as members of the fascist Proud Boys gang clashed with the Rose City Nationalists, a Pacific Northwest neo-Nazi organization, at an LGBTQ pride event that both tried to disrupt, several RCN participants came out. Internet wizards got to work matching names to their faces, but far-right accounts hoping to frame the violence as a “false flag” event mistakenly identified Brody as a participant, circulating a photo of him from Alpha Epsilon Pi's Instagram account. Jewish fraternity he belonged to as a student at the University of California Riverside. In fact, Brody was in California at the time, and this misinformation was based on nothing more than the slightest resemblance between Brody and the person at the event.
The Instagram post described Brody as a political science major who wanted to work in government after graduation, details that extremists used to implicate him in an alleged conspiracy by federal agencies to stage a violent conflict between hard-right groups. Twice, Musk reinforced these misleading claims, in one instance responding “Always take their masks off” to a crypto influencer who accused the feds of “planting fake Nazis at rallies.” Finally, Musk responded to an anonymous blogger who posted about a “white defender exposed as a suspected feeder.” Writing“It looks like one is a college student (looking to join the government) and another is maybe a member of Antifa, but still a potential false flag situation.”
Brody's attorney, Mark Bankston, who previously won Sandy Hook parents $45 million in damages from Alex Jones in a lawsuit over the conspiracy kingpin's false claims that the fatal school shooting never happened, has argued that Musk vilified Brody in this latest post, with the college. Grant and his family were wronged and harassed to the point where they had to leave their home.
In grilling Musk about his social media habits last month, Bankston engaged in testy exchanges with both the billionaire's lawyer, Alex Spiro, and Musk himself, who complained that Bankston had “no sense ». (Spiro successfully defended Musk in a previous defamation case over a tweet in which he insulted a British cave diver by calling him a “kid kid” during efforts to rescue a Thai youth soccer team trapped in a flooded cave system.) Despite the defenses of it, Musk was backed into several embarrassing statements and commented early on that he had a “limited understanding” of “what the lawsuit is about.”
Musk was reluctant to even acknowledge that Brody had filed the lawsuit—commenting several times that Bankston was the real plaintiff and was interested in “getting a lot of money.” Bankston, however, moved on to the subject of the lawsuit itself, getting Musk to confirm that he had done nothing to independently verify the identity of the RCN member mistakenly identified as Brody prior to his allegedly defamatory tweet. Asked if he had secured “other information about this unmasked brawler” than what he had seen from the few extremist accounts promoting the false conspiracy theory, Musk replied: “I don't recall securing any other information.” He also agreed that everything he supposedly knew about the brawler came from those tweets.
Bankston pushed Musk further on his dubious sources, asking if he clicks on profiles and feeds to scan for “red flags” when it comes to credibility. “I wasn't trying to assess their credibility,” Musk said of an account he was working with, which Bankston pointed out had posted anti-Semitic content the same day he shared the Brody conspiracy theory. Musk argued that even if he knew such a disturbing agenda from the user he relied on for information, he couldn't automatically dismiss their views. “You know, every once in a while, a conspiracy theorist is going to be right,” he told Bankston.
Elsewhere in the deposition, Musk criticized the mainstream media and “so-called disinformation experts” and insisted that X has better ways to ensure accuracy. In particular, he praised the platform's Community Notes feature as “the best system on the web” when it comes to fact-checking. However, Musk has it at times topic received with Community Notes on his own tweets, and although he pointed out Community Notes in his post supporting the false “false flag” claims about the melee in Oregon, the post never received a correction. Musk admitted that there is always “some risk that what I say is wrong,” but said that must be balanced against “a chilling effect on free speech in general, which would undermine the entire foundation of our democracy.”
At times, Musk has had to wrestle with his own reckless actions as X's owner and chief influencer. “I may have done more to financially hurt the company than help it,” he told Bankston in one exchange, adding: “ I don't guide my posts based on what's financially beneficial, but what I think is interesting or important or fun for the audience.”
Musk also confirmed that an exhibit filed in court records showed another account that was running for “test” purposes. The profile, @Ermnmusk, came to light a year ago as Musk's possible secret account because he tweeted an image showing himself logged into it and Motherboard he then reported on a number of indications that it was probably his. Some since-deleted tweets by @Ermnmusk appear to show Musk posting in character as X Æ A-12, his young son with singer Grimes, announcing his fourth birthday or saying: “I wish I was old enough to go in nightclubs. They sound like so much fun.” Other tweets were more risque, including one that asked: “Do you like Japanese girls?” Musk revived the account on the day of the filing, writing:I'm back,” and proceeded to post several memes and jokes over the next few days.
Musk also declined to name a second burner account, though it may have been incorrectly listed in the filing transcript, which has it as “baby smoke 9,000.” There is no active X profile with this handle, although a verified account called @babysmurf9000 interacts with many of the same accounts Musk follows and interacts with, retweeting official company X accounts and posting in an emoji-filled style similar to his Musk. He can also be found disparaging billionaire Mark Cuban, whom Musk owns regularly criticized latterly, as “stupid.” This post came as Musk argued with the Cuban through his main account in PPC programs in early January.
Other strange revelations in the interview included Musk's claims that he was unaware that Brody was seeking a recall of the false flag posts to clear his name (at the time, the college graduate had made a viral Instagram video debunking the conspiracy theory and people calling to leave his family alone), that what he tweets to his millions of followers isn't always seen by that many people, and that he doesn't think Brody is “materially harmed by it” because it's “rare.” in order for media attacks to have a “significant negative impact” on their targets.
Those comments prompted sometimes incredulous responses from Bankston, who said “Wow” when Musk said Brody wasn't hurt by his fake tweets about him. After Bankston made some inquiries about whether Musk felt he was being reckless or failing to take responsibility for his actions, Bankston and Spiro further supported the scope of the questioning before wrapping up proceedings with a discussion of whether the transcript would be made confidential by protective order. Bankston told the story that in his opinion, Spiro had behaved inappropriately and “completely glossed over many parts of the deposition.”
As for the protective order sealing the transcript, Bankston said he would wait to hear from the court, but that “we don't recognize that request as something valid.” Clearly, neither does the court.
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-defamation-lawsuit-fact-check-twitter-burner-accounts-1235000968/
