Twitch is now on the docket for X’s lawsuit against companies that stopped advertising on the social media site. X amended its lawsuit on Monday to include Twitch as a defendant in its lawsuit in a federal court in Wichita Falls, Texas, according to Reuters.
The new complaint claims that the gaming stream site owned by Amazon stopped purchasing ads on X at the end of 2022. X alleges that Twitch and other companies conspired with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) network’s Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative to withhold “billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from Elon Musk’s social media company.
The plaintiff alleges the boycott violated federal antitrust laws and is demanding a jury trial to settle the matter. GARM also announced its discontinuation two days after X filed its lawsuit.
X Corp.’s joint lawsuit first filed in August also includes the WFA, the global food manufacturer Mars Incorporated, the drugstore chain CVS and the Danish energy company Ørsted A/S over the advertising boycott. X also has a lawsuit against the media watchdog group Media Matters for publishing a report showing X displayed ads next to antisemitic content on the platform.
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI accusing the company of abandoning its non-profit mission was withdrawn in July, only to be revived in August. Now, in an amended complaint, the suit names new defendants including Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton.
The amended filing also adds new plaintiffs: Neuralink exec and ex-OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis and Musk’s AI company, xAI.
Musk was one of the original founders of OpenAI, which was meant to research and develop AI for the benefit of humanity, and was established as a non-profit originally. He left the company in 2018 after disagreements about its direction.
In the complaint, lawyers for Musk argue that OpenAI is now “actively trying to eliminate competitors” such as xAI by “extracting promises from investors not to fund them.” It’s also allegedly unfairly benefitting from Microsoft’s infrastructure and expertise in what Musk’s counsel describes in the filing as a “de facto merger.”
“xAI has been harmed by, without limitation … an inability to obtain compute from Microsoft on terms anywhere near as favorable as OpenAI receives … and the exclusive exchange between OpenAI and Microsoft of competitively sensitive information,” reads the complaint, filed late Thursday in federal court in Oakland, California.
Hoffman’s position on the boards of both Microsoft and OpenAI while also a partner at Greylock, the investment firm, gave Hoffman a privileged — and illicit — view into the companies’ dealings, the complaint alleges. (Hoffman stepped down from OpenAI’s board in 2023.) Greylock invested in Inflection, Musk’s counsel notes, the AI startup that Microsoft acqui-hired earlier this year — and which could reasonably be considered an OpenAI competitor, according to the complaint.
As for Templeton, whom Microsoft briefly appointed as a non-voting board observer at OpenAI, the amended filing alleges that she was in a position to facilitate agreements between Microsoft and OpenAI that would violate antitrust rules.
“The purpose of the prohibition on interlocking directorates is to prevent sharing of competitively sensitive information in violation of antitrust laws and/or providing a forum for the coordination of other anticompetitive activity,” the complaint reads. “Allowing Templeton and Hoffman to serve as members of OpenAI’s …. board undermined this purpose. “
Alongside Microsoft, Hoffman, and Templeton, California attorney general Rob Bonta is named as a defendant in Musk’s complaint. Bloomberg reported this month that OpenAI is in talks with Bonta’s office over the process to change its corporate structure.
Per the amended complaint, Zilis, who stepped down from OpenAI’s board in 2023 after serving as a member for roughly four years, has standing as an “injured employee” under California Corporations Code. Zilis repeatedly raised concerns over OpenAI’s dealmaking internally that fell on deaf ears — concerns substantially similar to Musk’s, according to the complaint.
Zilis has close ties to Musk, having worked as a project director at Tesla from 2017 to 2019 in addition to directing Neuralink research. (Neuralink is Musk’s brain-computer interface venture.) She’s also the mother of three of Musk’s children, Techno Mechanicus and twins Strider and Azure.
The 107-page amended complaint includes the unusual detail that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proposed that OpenAI sell its own cryptocurrency in January 2018, before it ultimately decided to transition to a capped-profit structure.
“Heads up, spoke to some of the safety team and there were a lot of concerns about the ICO and possible unintended effects in the future,” Altman wrote in an email to Musk dated January 21, 2018, an exhibit filed with the amended complaint shows. An ICO, or initial coin offering, is an unregulated means by which funds are raised for cryptocurrency businesses. “Going to emphasize the need to keep this confidential, but I think it’s really important we get buy-in and give people the chance to weigh in early.”
Image Credits:Toberoff & Associates
Musk supposedly shot down the crypto sale idea. “I have considered the ICO approach and will not support it,” he wrote in an email reply to Altman and OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman (now OpenAI’s president) and Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI’s ex-chief scientist), shows an exhibit. “In my opinion, that would simply result in a massive loss of credibility for OpenAI and everyone associated with the ICO.”
The thrust of the lawsuit remains the same on the plaintiffs’ side: that OpenAI profited from Musk’s early involvement in the company yet reneged on its nonprofit pledge to make the fruits of its AI research available to all. “No amount of clever drafting nor surfeit of creative dealmaking can obscure what is happening here,” reads the complaint. “OpenAI, Inc., co-founded by Musk as an independent charity committed to safety and transparency … [is] fast becoming a full for-profit subsidiary of Microsoft.”
OpenAI has sought to dismiss Musk’s lawsuit, calling it “blusterous” and baseless.
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI accusing the company of abandoning its nonprofit mission was withdrawn in July, only to be revived in August. Now, in an amended complaint, the suit names new defendants including Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton.
The amended filing also adds new plaintiffs: Neuralink exec and ex-OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis and Musk’s AI company, xAI.
Musk was one of the original founders of OpenAI, which was meant to research and develop AI for the benefit of humanity, and was established as a non-profit originally. He left the company in 2018 after disagreements about its direction.
In the complaint, lawyers for Musk argue that OpenAI is now “actively trying to eliminate competitors” such as xAI by “extracting promises from investors not to fund them.” It’s also allegedly unfairly benefitting from Microsoft’s infrastructure and expertise in what Musk’s counsel describes in the filing as a “de facto” merger.
“xAI has been harmed by, without limitation … an inability to license OpenAI technology given Microsoft’s exclusive license … an inability to obtain compute from Microsoft on terms anywhere near as favorable as OpenAI receives … and the exclusive exchange between OpenAI and Microsoft of competitively sensitive information.”
Hoffman’s position on the boards of both Microsoft and OpenAI while also a partner at Greylock, the investment firm, gave Hoffman a privileged — and illicit — view into the companies’ dealings, the complaint alleges. (Hoffman stepped down from OpenAI’s board in 2023.) Greylock invested in Inflection, Musk’s counsel notes, the AI startup that Microsoft acqui-hired earlier this year — and which could reasonably be considered an OpenAI competitor, according to the complaint.
As for Templeton, whom Microsoft briefly appointed as a non-voting board observer at OpenAI, the amended filing alleges that she was in a position to facilitate agreements between Microsoft and OpenAI that would violate antitrust rules.
“The purpose of the prohibition on interlocking directorates is to prevent sharing of competitively sensitive information in violation of antitrust laws and/or providing a forum for the coordination of other anticompetitive activity,” the complaint reads. “Allowing Templeton and Hoffman to serve as members of OpenAI’s …. board undermined this purpose. “
Per the amended complaint, Zilis, who stepped down from OpenAI’s board in 2023 after serving as a member for roughly four years, has standing as an “injured employee” under California Corporations Code. Zilis repeatedly raised concerns over OpenAI’s dealmaking internally that fell on deaf ears — concerns substantially similar to Musk’s, according to the complaint.
Zilis has close ties to Musk, having worked as a project director at Tesla from 2017 to 2019 in addition to directing Neuralink research. (Neuralink is Musk’s brain-computer interface venture.) She’s also the mother of three of Musk’s children, Techno Mechanicus and twins Strider and Azure.
The 107-page amended complaint includes the unusual detail that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proposed that OpenAI sell its own cryptocurrency in September 2017, before it ultimately decided to transition to a capped-profit structure. Musk supposedly shot down the crypto sale idea.
The thrust of the lawsuit remains the same on the plaintiffs’ side: that OpenAI profited from Musk’s early involvement in the company yet reneged on its nonprofit pledge to make the fruits of its AI research available to all. “No amount of clever drafting nor surfeit of creative dealmaking can obscure what is happening here,” reads the complaint. “OpenAI, Inc., co-founded by Musk as an independent charity committed to safety and transparency … [is] fast becoming a full for-profit subsidiary of Microsoft.”
A Texas judge denied Media Matters for America’s request for a dismissal on Thursday allowing X’s lawsuit over alleged anti-semitic and racist content. The Verge reported that Northern District of Texas Judge Reed O’Connor dismissed the request for a dismissal paving the way for X’s lawsuit against Media Matters to continue.
Media Matters submitted its dismissal request in early March on the grounds that X’s case lacked “personal jurisdiction,” an “improper venue” and the “failure to state a claim.” O’Connor dismissed all of those claims, according to court records.
The lawsuit filed last year in federal court seeks damages from the media watchdog group over “maliciously manufactured” images reporting that X’s platform placed Neo-Nazi and white-nationlist content next to advertisers’ images causing advertisers to flee the site. The images Media Matters used weren’t manufactured but X’s claim is that its dogged pursuit of ads’ placement with racist content by using certain accounts to bypass ad filters caused irreparable harm to the social media giant.
X owner Elon Musk’s other companies are located in Texas but aren’t directly connected to the Media Matters lawsuit. X closed its San Francisco offices earlier this month and owner Elon Musk announced in July that X’s headquarters will move to Austin. Tesla moved its headquarters from California to the Lone Star State in 2021 and SpaceX from Delaware earlier this year when a judge threw out a $56 billion pay package from the state.
However, in dismissing the personal jurisdiction argument, O’Connor noted that two of X’s “blue-chip” advertisers like AT&T and Oracle included in Media Matters’ coverage are based in Texas. He cited the landmark 2002 Internet defamation case Revell v. Lidov quoting the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ assertion that “if you are going to pick a fight in Texas, it is reasonable to expect that it be settled there.”
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has ordered the nation’s internet service providers to block the social media platform X. The New York Times reports that the order stems from owner Elon Musk’s refusal to appoint a legal representative for his case and comply with Moraes’ order to shut down X accounts he deemed as harmful to the democratic process. The order has been published online by Brazilian news site Poder 360.
The justice issued a deadline to telecom companies and tech giants to remove the X from its app stores and platforms. Apple and Google have five days to take down the social media app from its app stores. Brazil’s telecommunication’s agency Anatel has confirmed it has received the order, and ISPs in the country have just 24 hours to comply with the order.
Justice Moraes’ order doesn’t just block the country’s access to X. It also makes it a crime to use the app through a virtual private network (VPN). Anyone caught accessing X with a VPN could face a daily fine of 50,000 Brazilian Real (around $8,900).
Justice Moraes also froze the Brazillian bank accounts of SpaceX’s Starlink internet service provider on Thursday to further pressure Musk to comply with the court’s order. SpaceX, like X, is a private company majority owned by Musk, and X has $3 million in unpaid fines related to its case in the country. The day before, Justice Moraes issued a threat to ban the X platform entirely across Brazil if the social media company did not appoint a legal representative in the country. The deadline passed without any change to the court’s docket so the judge followed through on his promise.
Starlink expressed its disapproval with the order, vowing to fight the ruling. It even threatened to make its services free to customers to subvert the justice’s order.
The legal fight between Justice Moraes and Musk has been fuming for months. The Supreme Court Judge is also Brazil’s electoral authority and has been monitoring and issuing orders to candidates to steer clear of spreading false information through internet and social media channels.
Brazil’s 2022 presidential election between infamous incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and challenger and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reportedly filled with attempts to present voters with false information. Justice Moraes was, until recently, president of the nation’s Superior Electoral Court, which gave him the power to order takedowns of content that violated previous court orders. The judge issued a similar block of the messaging app Telegram for failing to freeze offending accounts, which was lifted after compliance.
Musk characterized Moraes’ directives to take down or freeze similar misinformation accounts from X as “censorship orders.” Earlier this month, Musk expressed his continued refusal to comply with the court by closing X’s Brazilian office in order “to protect the safety of our staff.” X’s Global Governments Affairs team also promised to publish all of “Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings.”
