Elon Musk’s (formerly Twitter) X files lawsuit against watchdog Media Matters, accusing it of “cooking” evidence to display advertiser posts on the platform next to neo-Nazi and nationalist content.

Major US companies including Disney, Warner Bros and Sky News parent Comcast pulled their ads from the X platform because they didn’t want their content appearing next to racist and nationalist posts.

In fact, Musk himself has created tensions with his own posts that support anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

In a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Texas, X said Media Matters “knowingly and maliciously” displayed ads next to hateful material “as if it were what typical X users experience on the platform.”

It claims the watchdog group was “teasing” algorithms on the platform to create paid advertising images next to racist and Nazi content. Musk’s company says the evidence was “fabricated, non-organic and extremely rare.”

He also said that Media Matters used accounts that followed users who were known for their “extreme fringe content” and accounts belonging to major X influencers, which he says led to a stream aimed at creating false comparisons and impressions to drive advertisers away.

Media Matters said it stood by its evidence, with its president Angelo Carusone saying: “This is a frivolous lawsuit designed to intimidate X’s critics.”

Musk had sparked backlash when he agreed with a post that said Jews promote hatred against whites, commenting that the user who referenced the conspiracy theory was telling “the exact truth.”

His comments were also criticized by the White House, which accused him of “heinous promotion of anti-Semitic and racist hatred”.

Advertisers have been leaving the X platform since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022 due to his controversial posts and employee layoffs.

The platform’s US ad revenue has fallen by at least 57% each month compared to the same month last year since Musk’s buyout, according to Reuters.