by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:
This is an interesting complaint.
Assuming the pattern of activity X alleges is true, which X (Twitter) can in fact prove if they have the logs to document it (and, from the specificity in the complaint, they are by implication alleging they do) this is a prima-facie malicious set of actions by Media Matters.
The sheer audacity of such a course of action in the world of computers and near-free cost of storage, meaning that the logs necessary to substantiate exactly what someone has done are trivially inexpensive to keep around for exactly such a defensive and documentary purpose is stunning. I can only assume that Media Matters believed they’d get away with it, again assuming that X has not manufactured these claims and can prove them.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
If he in fact has the logs he can prove them, particularly the most-damning claim which is that no actual authentic user ever saw the claimed “brand unsafe” advertising placements.
In short what X/Twitter alleges is precisely the same sort of malicious activity that would be at-issue if someone grafted my head on a porn star and then claimed I was screwing around on my wife, presenting the video as “evidence.” The claimed act never actually happened but for the manufactured video, which did not represent the willful conduct of anyone except the party committing the slur.
I would expect that such an event would be literal entity-ending and personally subject to punitive damages for everyone involved in it since the fact pattern, again assuming it is as presented, demonstrates on an irrefutable basis that actual malice was the gist of the action.
In the digital era “he said / she said”, which many people think they can still rely on, is trivially pierced. Attacking someone who has the logs, when you are the one who did the things that led to the issue is utterly idiotic; you have to either have an IQ smaller than your shoe or believe the other party is entirely incompetent and thus cannot piece together said logs to undertake such an act.
Of course a complaint is that just — a complaint. There is a long distance between complaint and judgment, and of course both sides are now entitled to discovery. But were I Media Matters and my people did in fact do what is alleged in terms of how they “manufactured” the “outrageous” content displays paraded around in the media over the last couple of weeks I’d consider my time as a viable organization to have effectively expired.
