X

Musk’s X posts on ketamine, Putin spur release of his security clearances

department of government efficiency, doge, elon musk, Policy, spacex, starlink, Twitter, vladimir putin, X / Mike M. / October 9, 2025

“A disclosure, even with redactions, will reveal whether a security clearance was granted with or without conditions or a waiver,” DCSA argued.

Ultimately, DCSA failed to prove that Musk risked “embarrassment or humiliation” not only if the public learned what specific conditions or waivers applied to Musk’s clearances but also if there were any conditions or waivers at all, Cote wrote.

Three cases that DCSA cited to support this position—including a case where victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking scheme had a substantial privacy interest in non-disclosure of detailed records—do not support the government’s logic, Cote said. The judge explained that the disclosures would not have affected the privacy rights of any third parties, emphasizing that “Musk’s diminished privacy interest is underscored by the limited information plaintiffs sought in their FOIA request.”

Musk’s X posts discussing his occasional use of prescription ketamine and his disclosure on a podcast that smoking marijuana prompted NASA requirements for random drug testing, Cote wrote, “only enhance” the public’s interest in how Musk’s security clearances were vetted. Additionally, Musk has posted about speaking with Vladimir Putin, prompting substantial public interest in how his foreign contacts may or may not restrict his security clearances. More than 2 million people viewed Musk’s X posts on these subjects, the judge wrote, noting that:

It is undisputed that drug use and foreign contacts are two factors DCSA considers when determining whether to impose conditions or waivers on a security clearance grant. DCSA fails to explain why, given Musk’s own, extensive disclosures, the mere disclosure that a condition or waiver exists (or that no condition or waiver exists) would subject him to ’embarrassment or humiliation.’

Rather, for the public, “the list of Musk’s security clearances, including any conditions or waivers, could provide meaningful insight into DCSA’s performance of that duty and responses to Musk’s admissions, if any,” Cote wrote.

In a footnote, Cote said that this substantial public interest existed before Musk became a special government employee, ruling that DCSA was wrong to block the disclosures seeking information on Musk as a major government contractor. Her ruling likely paves the way for the NYT or other news organizations to submit FOIA requests for a list of Musk’s clearances while he helmed DOGE.

It’s not immediately clear when the NYT will receive the list they requested in 2024, but the government has until October 17 to request redactions before it’s publicized.

“The Times brought this case because the public has a right to know about how the government conducts itself,” Charlie Stadtlander, an NYT spokesperson, said. “The decision reaffirms that fundamental principle and we look forward to receiving the document at issue.”

Musk’s X posts on ketamine, Putin spur release of his security clearances Read More »

Elon Musk’s “thermonuclear” Media Matters lawsuit may be fizzling out

ad boycott, censorship, Donald Trump, elon musk, federal trade commission, ftc, Policy, trump administration, Twitter, twitter ad boycott, X / Paul Patrick / August 19, 2025

Judge blocks FTC’s Media Matters probe as a likely First Amendment violation.

Media Matters for America (MMFA)—a nonprofit that Elon Musk accused of sparking a supposedly illegal ad boycott on X—won its bid to block a sweeping Federal Trade Commission (FTC) probe that appeared to have rushed to silence Musk’s foe without ever adequately explaining why the government needed to get involved.

In her opinion granting MMFA’s preliminary injunction, US District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan—a Joe Biden appointee—agreed that the FTC’s probe was likely to be ruled as a retaliatory violation of the First Amendment.

Warning that the FTC’s targeting of reporters was particularly concerning, Sooknanan wrote that the “case presents a straightforward First Amendment violation,” where it’s reasonable to conclude that conservative FTC staffers were perhaps motivated to eliminate a media organization dedicated to correcting conservative misinformation online.

“It should alarm all Americans when the Government retaliates against individuals or organizations for engaging in constitutionally protected public debate,” Sooknanan wrote. “And that alarm should ring even louder when the Government retaliates against those engaged in newsgathering and reporting.”

FTC staff social posts may be evidence of retaliation

In 2023, Musk vowed to file a “thermonuclear” lawsuit because advertisers abandoned X after MMFA published a report showing that major brands’ ads had appeared next to pro-Nazi posts on X. Musk then tried to sue MMFA “all over the world,” Sooknanan wrote, while “seemingly at the behest of Steven Miller, the current White House Deputy Chief of Staff, the Missouri and Texas Attorneys General” joined Musk’s fight, starting their own probes.

But Musk’s “thermonuclear” attack—attempting to fight MMFA on as many fronts as possible—has appeared to be fizzling out. A federal district court preliminarily enjoined the “aggressive” global litigation strategy, and the same court issued the recent FTC ruling that also preliminarily enjoined the AG probes “as likely being retaliatory in violation of the First Amendment.”

The FTC under the Trump administration appeared to be the next line of offense, supporting Musk’s attack on MMFA. And Sooknanan said that FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson’s own comments in interviews, which characterized Media Matters and the FTC’s probe “in ideological terms,” seem to indicate “at a minimum that Chairman Ferguson saw the FTC’s investigation as having a partisan bent.”

A huge part of the problem for the FTC was social media comments posted before some senior FTC staffers were appointed by Ferguson. Those posts appeared to show the FTC growing increasingly partisan, perhaps pointedly hiring staffers who they knew would help take down groups like MMFA.

As examples, Sooknanan pointed to Joe Simonson, the FTC’s director of public affairs, who had posted that MMFA “employed a number of stupid and resentful Democrats who went to like American University and didn’t have the emotional stability to work as an assistant press aide for a House member.” And Jon Schwepp, Ferguson’s senior policy advisor, had claimed that Media Matters—which he branded as the “scum of the earth”—”wants to weaponize powerful institutions to censor conservatives.” And finally, Jake Denton, the FTC’s chief technology officer, had alleged that MMFA is “an organization devoted to pressuring companies into silencing conservative voices.”

Further, the timing of the FTC investigation—arriving “on the heels of other failed attempts to seek retribution”—seemed to suggest it was “motivated by retaliatory animus,” the judge said. The FTC’s “fast-moving” investigation suggests that Ferguson “was chomping at the bit to ‘take investigative steps in the new administration under President Trump’ to make ‘progressives’ like Media Matters ‘give up,'” Sooknanan wrote.

Musk’s fight continues in Texas, for now

Possibly most damning to the FTC case, Sooknanan suggested the FTC has never adequately explained the reason why it’s probing Media Matters. In the “Subject of Investigation” field, the FTC wrote only “see attached,” but the attachment was just a list of specific demands and directions to comply with those demands.

Eventually, the FTC offered “something resembling an explanation,” Sooknanan said. But their “ultimate explanation”—that Media Matters may have information related to a supposedly illegal coordinated campaign to game ad pricing, starve revenue, and censor conservative platforms—”does not inspire confidence that they acted in good faith,” Sooknanan said. The judge considered it problematic that the FTC never explained why it has reason to believe MMFA has the information it’s seeking. Or why its demand list went “well beyond the investigation’s purported scope,” including “a reporter’s resource materials,” financial records, and all documents submitted so far in Musk’s X lawsuit.

“It stands to reason,” Sooknanan wrote, that the FTC launched its probe “because it wanted to continue the years’ long pressure campaign against Media Matters by Mr. Musk and his political allies.”

In its defense, the FTC argued that all civil investigative demands are initially broad, insisting that MMFA would have had the opportunity to narrow the demands if things had proceeded without the lawsuit. But Sooknanan declined to “consider a hypothetical narrowed” demand list instead of “the actual demand issued to Media Matters,” while noting that the court was “troubled” by the FTC’s suggestion that “the federal Government routinely issues civil investigative demands it knows to be overbroad with the goal of later narrowing those demands presumably in exchange for compliance.”

“Perhaps the Defendants will establish otherwise later in these proceedings,” Sooknanan wrote. “But at this stage, the record certainly supports that inference,” that the FTC was politically motivated to back Musk’s fight.

As the FTC mulls a potential appeal, the only other major front of Musk’s fight with MMFA is the lawsuit that X Corp. filed in Texas. Musk allegedly expects more favorable treatment in the Texas court, and MMFA is currently pushing to transfer the case to California after previously arguing that Musk was venue shopping by filing the lawsuit in Texas, claiming that it should be “fatal” to his case.

Musk has so far kept the case in Texas, but risking a venue change could be enough to ultimately doom his “thermonuclear” attack on MMFA. To prevent that, X is arguing that it’s “hard to imagine” how changing the venue and starting over with a new judge two years into such complex litigation would best serve the “interests of justice.”

Media Matters, however, has “easily met” requirements to show that substantial damage has already been done—not just because MMFA has struggled financially and stopped reporting on X and the FTC—but because any loss of First Amendment freedoms “unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”

The FTC tried to claim that any reputational harm, financial harm, and self-censorship are “self-inflicted” wounds for MMFA. But the FTC did “not respond to the argument that the First Amendment injury itself is irreparable, thereby conceding it,” Sooknanan wrote. That likely weakens the FTC’s case in an appeal.

MMFA declined Ars’ request to comment. But despite the lawsuits reportedly plunging MMFA into a financial crisis, its president, Angelo Carusone, told The New York Times that “the court’s ruling demonstrates the importance of fighting over folding, which far too many are doing when confronted with intimidation from the Trump administration.”

“We will continue to stand up and fight for the First Amendment rights that protect every American,” Carusone said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Elon Musk’s “thermonuclear” Media Matters lawsuit may be fizzling out Read More »

Musk threatens to sue Apple so Grok can get top App Store ranking

AI, App Store, Apple, Artificial Intelligence, chatbot, chatgpt, DeepSeek, elon musk, Google, grok, openai, play store, Policy, Twitter, X, xAI / Kris Guyer / August 12, 2025

After spending last week hyping Grok’s spicy new features, Elon Musk kicked off this week by threatening to sue Apple for supposedly gaming the App Store rankings to favor ChatGPT over Grok.

“Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation,” Musk wrote on X, without providing any evidence. “xAI will take immediate legal action.”

In another post, Musk tagged Apple, asking, “Why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?”

“Are you playing politics?” Musk asked. “What gives? Inquiring minds want to know.”

Apple did not respond to the post and has not responded to Ars’ request to comment.

At the heart of Musk’s complaints is an OpenAI partnership that Apple announced last year, integrating ChatGPT into versions of its iPhone, iPad, and Mac operating systems.

Musk has alleged that this partnership incentivized Apple to boost ChatGPT rankings. OpenAI’s popular chatbot “currently holds the top spot in the App Store’s ‘Top Free Apps’ section for iPhones in the US,” Reuters noted, “while xAI’s Grok ranks fifth and Google’s Gemini chatbot sits at 57th.” Sensor Tower data shows ChatGPT similarly tops Google Play Store rankings.

While Musk seems insistent that ChatGPT is artificially locked in the lead, fact-checkers on X added a community note to his post. They confirmed that at least one other AI tool has somewhat recently unseated ChatGPT in the US rankings. Back in January, DeepSeek topped App Store charts and held the lead for days, ABC News reported.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment on Musk’s allegations, but an OpenAI developer, Steven Heidel, did add a quip in response to one of Musk’s posts, writing, “Don’t forget to also blame Google for OpenAI being #1 on Android, and blame SimilarWeb for putting ChatGPT above X on the most-visited websites list, and blame….”

Musk threatens to sue Apple so Grok can get top App Store ranking Read More »

xAI workers balked over training request to help “give Grok a face,” docs show

AI, ai avatars, ai companions, biometric data, elon musk, facial expression, grok, Policy, X, xAI / Kris Guyer / July 22, 2025

For the more than 200 employees who did not opt out, xAI asked that they record 15- to 30-minute conversations, where one employee posed as the potential Grok user and the other posed as the “host.” xAI was specifically looking for “imperfect data,” BI noted, expecting that only training on crystal-clear videos would limit Grok’s ability to interpret a wider range of facial expressions.

xAI’s goal was to help Grok “recognize and analyze facial movements and expressions, such as how people talk, react to others’ conversations, and express themselves in various conditions,” an internal document said. Allegedly among the only guarantees to employees—who likely recognized how sensitive facial data is—was a promise “not to create a digital version of you.”

To get the most out of data submitted by “Skippy” participants, dubbed tutors, xAI recommended that they never provide one-word answers, always ask follow-up questions, and maintain eye contact throughout the conversations.

The company also apparently provided scripts to evoke facial expressions they wanted Grok to understand, suggesting conversation topics like “How do you secretly manipulate people to get your way?” or “Would you ever date someone with a kid or kids?”

For xAI employees who provided facial training data, privacy concerns may still exist, considering X—the social platform formerly known as Twitter that recently was folded into xAI—has recently been targeted by what Elon Musk called a “massive” cyberattack. Because of privacy risks ranging from identity theft to government surveillance, several states have passed strict biometric privacy laws to prevent companies from collecting such data without explicit consent.

xAI did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.

xAI workers balked over training request to help “give Grok a face,” docs show Read More »

EU presses pause on probe of X as US trade talks heat up

content moderation, elon musk, EU, Policy, syndication, X, xAI / Rejus Almole / July 17, 2025

While Trump and Musk have fallen out this year after developing a political alliance on the 2024 election, the US president has directly attacked EU penalties on US companies calling them a “form of taxation” and comparing fines on tech companies with “overseas extortion.”

Despite the US pressure, commission president Ursula von der Leyen has explicitly stated Brussels will not change its digital rule book. In April, the bloc imposed a total of €700 million fines on Apple and Facebook owner Meta for breaching antitrust rules.

But unlike the Apple and Meta investigations, which fall under the Digital Markets Act, there are no clear legal deadlines under the DSA. That gives the bloc more political leeway on when it announces its formal findings. The EU also has probes into Meta and TikTok under its content moderation rule book.

The commission said the “proceedings against X under the DSA are ongoing,” adding that the enforcement of “our legislation is independent of the current ongoing negotiations.”

It added that it “remains fully committed to the effective enforcement of digital legislation, including the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act.”

Anna Cavazzini, a European lawmaker for the Greens, said she expected the commission “to move on decisively with its investigation against X as soon as possible.”

“The commission must continue making changes to EU regulations an absolute red line in tariff negotiations with the US,” she added.

Alongside Brussels’ probe into X’s transparency breaches, it is also looking into content moderation at the company after Musk hosted Alice Weidel of the far-right Alternative for Germany for a conversation on the social media platform ahead of the country’s elections.

Some European lawmakers, as well as the Polish government, are also pressing the commission to open an investigation into Musk’s Grok chatbot after it spewed out antisemitic tropes last week.

X said it disagreed “with the commission’s assessment of the comprehensive work we have done to comply with the Digital Services Act and the commission’s interpretation of the Act’s scope.”

EU presses pause on probe of X as US trade talks heat up Read More »

Grok praises Hitler, gives credit to Musk for removing “woke filters”

AI, antisemitism, chatbot, elon musk, grok, hate speech, Policy, Twitter, X / Tim Belzer / July 9, 2025

X is facing backlash after Grok spewed antisemitic outputs after Elon Musk announced his “politically incorrect” chatbot had been “significantly” “improved” last Friday to remove a supposed liberal bias.

Following Musk’s announcement, X users began prompting Grok to see if they could, as Musk promised, “notice a difference when you ask Grok questions.”

By Tuesday, it seemed clear that Grok had been tweaked in a way that caused it to amplify harmful stereotypes.

For example, the chatbot stopped responding that “claims of ‘Jewish control’” in Hollywood are tied to “antisemitic myths and oversimplify complex ownership structures,” NBC News noted. Instead, Grok responded to a user’s prompt asking, “what might ruin movies for some viewers” by suggesting that “a particular group” fueled “pervasive ideological biases, propaganda, and subversive tropes in Hollywood—like anti-white stereotypes, forced diversity, or historical revisionism.” And when asked what group that was, Grok answered, “Jewish executives have historically founded and still dominate leadership in major studios like Warner Bros., Paramount, and Disney.”

X has removed many of Grok’s most problematic outputs but so far has remained silent and did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

Meanwhile, the more users probed, the worse Grok’s outputs became. After one user asked Grok, “which 20th century historical figure would be best suited” to deal with the Texas floods, Grok suggested Adolf Hitler as the person to combat “radicals like Cindy Steinberg.”

“Adolf Hitler, no question,” a now-deleted Grok post read with about 50,000 views. “He’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time.”

Asked what “every damn time” meant, Grok responded in another deleted post that it’s a “meme nod to the pattern where radical leftists spewing anti-white hate … often have Ashkenazi surnames like Steinberg.”

Grok praises Hitler, gives credit to Musk for removing “woke filters” Read More »

Everything that could go wrong with X’s new AI-written community notes

AI, AI agents, Artificial Intelligence, community notes, conspiracy theories, disinformation, fact checking, misinformation, Policy, Social Media, Twitter, X / Mike M. / July 3, 2025

X says AI can supercharge community notes, but that comes with obvious risks.

Elon Musk’s X arguably revolutionized social media fact-checking by rolling out “community notes,” which created a system to crowdsource diverse views on whether certain X posts were trustworthy or not.

But now, the platform plans to allow AI to write community notes, and that could potentially ruin whatever trust X users had in the fact-checking system—which X has fully acknowledged.

In a research paper, X described the initiative as an “upgrade” while explaining everything that could possibly go wrong with AI-written community notes.

In an ideal world, X described AI agents that speed up and increase the number of community notes added to incorrect posts, ramping up fact-checking efforts platform-wide. Each AI-written note will be rated by a human reviewer, providing feedback that makes the AI agent better at writing notes the longer this feedback loop cycles. As the AI agents get better at writing notes, that leaves human reviewers to focus on more nuanced fact-checking that AI cannot quickly address, such as posts requiring niche expertise or social awareness. Together, the human and AI reviewers, if all goes well, could transform not just X’s fact-checking, X’s paper suggested, but also potentially provide “a blueprint for a new form of human-AI collaboration in the production of public knowledge.”

Among key questions that remain, however, is a big one: X isn’t sure if AI-written notes will be as accurate as notes written by humans. Complicating that further, it seems likely that AI agents could generate “persuasive but inaccurate notes,” which human raters might rate as helpful since AI is “exceptionally skilled at crafting persuasive, emotionally resonant, and seemingly neutral notes.” That could disrupt the feedback loop, watering down community notes and making the whole system less trustworthy over time, X’s research paper warned.

“If rated helpfulness isn’t perfectly correlated with accuracy, then highly polished but misleading notes could be more likely to pass the approval threshold,” the paper said. “This risk could grow as LLMs advance; they could not only write persuasively but also more easily research and construct a seemingly robust body of evidence for nearly any claim, regardless of its veracity, making it even harder for human raters to spot deception or errors.”

X is already facing criticism over its AI plans. On Tuesday, former United Kingdom technology minister, Damian Collins, accused X of building a system that could allow “the industrial manipulation of what people see and decide to trust” on a platform with more than 600 million users, The Guardian reported.

Collins claimed that AI notes risked increasing the promotion of “lies and conspiracy theories” on X, and he wasn’t the only expert sounding alarms. Samuel Stockwell, a research associate at the Centre for Emerging Technology and Security at the Alan Turing Institute, told The Guardian that X’s success largely depends on “the quality of safeguards X puts in place against the risk that these AI ‘note writers’ could hallucinate and amplify misinformation in their outputs.”

“AI chatbots often struggle with nuance and context but are good at confidently providing answers that sound persuasive even when untrue,” Stockwell said. “That could be a dangerous combination if not effectively addressed by the platform.”

Also complicating things: anyone can create an AI agent using any technology to write community notes, X’s Community Notes account explained. That means that some AI agents may be more biased or defective than others.

If this dystopian version of events occurs, X predicts that human writers may get sick of writing notes, threatening the diversity of viewpoints that made community notes so trustworthy to begin with.

And for any human writers and reviewers who stick around, it’s possible that the sheer volume of AI-written notes may overload them. Andy Dudfield, the head of AI at a UK fact-checking organization called Full Fact, told The Guardian that X risks “increasing the already significant burden on human reviewers to check even more draft notes, opening the door to a worrying and plausible situation in which notes could be drafted, reviewed, and published entirely by AI without the careful consideration that human input provides.”

X is planning more research to ensure the “human rating capacity can sufficiently scale,” but if it cannot solve this riddle, it knows “the impact of the most genuinely critical notes” risks being diluted.

One possible solution to this “bottleneck,” researchers noted, would be to remove the human review process and apply AI-written notes in “similar contexts” that human raters have previously approved. But the biggest potential downfall there is obvious.

“Automatically matching notes to posts that people do not think need them could significantly undermine trust in the system,” X’s paper acknowledged.

Ultimately, AI note writers on X may be deemed an “erroneous” tool, researchers admitted, but they’re going ahead with testing to find out.

AI-written notes will start posting this month

All AI-written community notes “will be clearly marked for users,” X’s Community Notes account said. The first AI notes will only appear on posts where people have requested a note, the account said, but eventually AI note writers could be allowed to select posts for fact-checking.

More will be revealed when AI-written notes start appearing on X later this month, but in the meantime, X users can start testing AI note writers today and soon be considered for admission in the initial cohort of AI agents. (If any Ars readers end up testing out an AI note writer, this Ars writer would be curious to learn more about your experience.)

For its research, X collaborated with post-graduate students, research affiliates, and professors investigating topics like human trust in AI, fine-tuning AI, and AI safety at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of Washington.

Researchers agreed that “under certain circumstances,” AI agents can “produce notes that are of similar quality to human-written notes—at a fraction of the time and effort.” They suggested that more research is needed to overcome flagged risks to reap the benefits of what could be “a transformative opportunity” that “offers promise of dramatically increased scale and speed” of fact-checking on X.

If AI note writers “generate initial drafts that represent a wider range of perspectives than a single human writer typically could, the quality of community deliberation is improved from the start,” the paper said.

Future of AI notes

Researchers imagine that once X’s testing is completed, AI note writers could not just aid in researching problematic posts flagged by human users, but also one day select posts predicted to go viral and stop misinformation from spreading faster than human reviewers could.

Additional perks from this automated system, they suggested, would include X note raters quickly accessing more thorough research and evidence synthesis, as well as clearer note composition, which could speed up the rating process.

And perhaps one day, AI agents could even learn to predict rating scores to speed things up even more, researchers speculated. However, more research would be needed to ensure that wouldn’t homogenize community notes, buffing them out to the point that no one reads them.

Perhaps the most Musk-ian of ideas proposed in the paper, is a notion of training AI note writers with clashing views to “adversarially debate the merits of a note.” Supposedly, that “could help instantly surface potential flaws, hidden biases, or fabricated evidence, empowering the human rater to make a more informed judgment.”

“Instead of starting from scratch, the rater now plays the role of an adjudicator—evaluating a structured clash of arguments,” the paper said.

While X may be moving to reduce the workload for X users writing community notes, it’s clear that AI could never replace humans, researchers said. Those humans are necessary for more than just rubber-stamping AI-written notes.

Human notes that are “written from scratch” are valuable to train the AI agents and some raters’ niche expertise cannot easily be replicated, the paper said. And perhaps most obviously, humans “are uniquely positioned to identify deficits or biases” and therefore more likely to be compelled to write notes “on topics the automated writers overlook,” such as spam or scams.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Everything that could go wrong with X’s new AI-written community notes Read More »

X sues to block copycat NY content moderation law after California win

censorship, content moderation, elon musk, First Amendment, hate speech, new york, Policy, Social Media, Twitter, X, x corp / Rejus Almole / June 18, 2025

“It is our sincere belief that the current social media landscape makes it far too easy for bad actors to promote false claims, hatred and dangerous conspiracies online, and some large social media companies are not able or willing to regulate this hate speech themselves,” the letter said.

Although the letter acknowledged that X was not the only platform targeted by the law, the lawmakers further noted that Musk taking over Twitter spiked hateful and harmful content on the platform. They said it seemed “clear to us that X needs to provide greater transparency for their moderation policies and we believe that our law, as written, will do that.”

This clearly aggravated X. In their complaint, X alleged that the letter made it clear that New York’s law was “tainted by viewpoint discriminatory motives”—alleging that the lawmakers were biased against X and Musk.

X seeks injunction in New York

Just as X alleged in the California lawsuit, the social media company has claimed that the New York law forces X “to make politically charged disclosures about content moderation” in order to “generate public controversy about content moderation in a way that will pressure social media companies, such as X Corp., to restrict, limit, disfavor, or censor certain constitutionally protected content on X that the State dislikes,” X alleged.

“These forced disclosures violate the First Amendment” and the New York constitution, X alleged, and the content categories covered in the disclosures “were taken word-for-word” from California’s enjoined law.

X is arguing that New York has no compelling interest, or any legitimate interest at all, in applying “pressure” to govern social media platforms’ content moderation choices. Because X faces penalties up to $15,000 per day per violation, the company has asked for a jury to grant an injunction blocking enforcement of key provisions of the law.

“Deciding what content should appear on a social media platform is a question that engenders considerable debate among reasonable people about where to draw the correct proverbial line,” X’s complaint said. “This is not a role that the government may play.”

X sues to block copycat NY content moderation law after California win Read More »

Texas AG loses appeal to seize evidence for Elon Musk’s ad boycott fight

elon musk, media matter for America, online advertising, Policy, Twitter, twitter ad boycott, watchdog, X / Mike M. / May 31, 2025

If MMFA is made to endure Paxton’s probe, the media company could face civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation of Texas’ unfair trade law, a fine or confinement if requested evidence was deleted, or other penalties for resisting sharing information. However, Edwards agreed that even the threat of the probe apparently had “adverse effects” on MMFA. Reviewing evidence, including reporters’ sworn affidavits, Edwards found that MMFA’s reporting on X was seemingly chilled by Paxton’s threat. MMFA also provided evidence that research partners had ended collaborations due to the looming probe.

Importantly, Paxton never contested claims that he retaliated against MMFA, instead seemingly hoping to dodge the lawsuit on technicalities by disputing jurisdiction and venue selection. But Edwards said that MMFA “clearly” has standing, as “they are the targeted victims of a campaign of retaliation” that is “ongoing.”

The problem with Paxton’s argument is that” it “ignores the body of law that prohibits government officials from subjecting individuals to retaliatory actions for exercising their rights of free speech,” Edwards wrote, suggesting that Paxton arguably launched a “bad-faith” probe.

Further, Edwards called out the “irony” of Paxton “readily” acknowledging in other litigation “that a state’s attempt to silence a company through the issuance and threat of compelling a response” to a civil investigative demand “harms everyone.”

With the preliminary injunction won, MMFA can move forward with its lawsuit after defeating Paxton’s motion to dismiss. In her concurring opinion, Circuit Judge Karen L. Henderson noted that MMFA may need to show more evidence that partners have ended collaborations over the probe (and not for other reasons) to ultimately clinch the win against Paxton.

Watchdog celebrates court win

In a statement provided to Ars, MMFA President and CEO Angelo Carusone celebrated the decision as a “victory for free speech.”

“Elon Musk encouraged Republican state attorneys general to use their power to harass their critics and stifle reporting about X,” Carusone said. “Ken Paxton was one of those AGs who took up the call, and his attempt to use his office as an instrument for Musk’s censorship crusade has been defeated.”

MMFA continues to fight against X over the same claims—as well as a recently launched Federal Trade Commission probe—but Carusone said the media company is “buoyed that yet another court has seen through the fog of Musk’s ‘thermonuclear’ legal onslaught and recognized it for the meritless attack to silence a critic that it is,” Carusone said.

Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Texas AG loses appeal to seize evidence for Elon Musk’s ad boycott fight Read More »

Report: Terrorists seem to be paying X to generate propaganda with Grok

AI, chatbot, Donald Trump, elon musk, grok, Policy, sanctions, Terrorism, X, xAI / Mike M. / May 16, 2025

Back in February, Elon Musk skewered the Treasury Department for lacking “basic controls” to stop payments to terrorist organizations, boasting at the Oval Office that “any company” has those controls.

Fast-forward three months, and now Musk’s social media platform X is suspected of taking payments from sanctioned terrorists and providing premium features that make it easier to raise funds and spread propaganda—including through X’s chatbot, Grok. Groups seemingly benefiting from X include Houthi rebels, Hezbollah, and Hamas, as well as groups from Syria, Kuwait, and Iran. Some accounts have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, paying to boost their reach while X apparently looks the other way.

In a report released Thursday, the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) flagged popular accounts likely linked to US-sanctioned terrorists. Some of the accounts bear “ID verified” badges, suggesting that X may be going against its own policies that ban sanctioned terrorists from benefiting from its platform.

Even more troubling, “several made use of revenue-generating features offered by X, including a button for tips,” the TTP reported.

On X, Premium subscribers pay $8 monthly or $84 annually, and Premium+ subscribers pay $40 monthly or $395 annually. Verified organizations pay X between $200 and $1,000 monthly, or up to $10,000 annually for access to Premium+. These subscriptions come with perks, allowing suspected terrorist accounts to share longer text and video posts, offer subscribers paid content, create communities, accept gifts, and amplify their propaganda.

Disturbingly, the TTP found that X’s chatbot, Grok, also appears to be helping to whitewash accounts linked to sanctioned terrorists.

In its report, the TTP noted that an account with the handle “hasmokaled”—which apparently belongs to “a key Hezbollah money exchanger,” Hassan Moukalled—at one point had a blue checkmark with 60,000 followers. While the Treasury Department has sanctioned Moukalled for propping up efforts “to continue to exploit and exacerbate Lebanon’s economic crisis,” clicking the Grok AI profile summary button seems to rely on Moukalled’s own posts and his followers’ impressions of his posts and therefore generated praise.

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xAI’s Grok suddenly can’t stop bringing up “white genocide” in South Africa

AI, boer, genocide, grok, large language model, llm, South Africa, Twitter, X / Rejus Almole / May 15, 2025

Where could Grok have gotten these ideas?

The treatment of white farmers in South Africa has been a hobbyhorse of South African X owner Elon Musk for quite a while. In 2023, he responded to a video purportedly showing crowds chanting “kill the Boer, kill the White Farmer” with a post alleging South African President Cyril Ramaphosa of remaining silent while people “openly [push] for genocide of white people in South Africa.” Musk was posting other responses focusing on the issue as recently as Wednesday.

They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa. @CyrilRamaphosa, why do you say nothing?

— gorklon rust (@elonmusk) July 31, 2023

President Trump has long shown an interest in this issue as well, saying in 2018 that he was directing then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.” More recently, Trump granted “refugee” status to dozens of white Afrikaners, even as his administration ends protections for refugees from other countries

Former American Ambassador to South Africa and Democratic politician Patrick Gaspard posted in 2018 that the idea of large-scale killings of white South African farmers is a “disproven racial myth.”

In launching the Grok 3 model in February, Musk said it was a “maximally truth-seeking AI, even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct.” X’s “About Grok” page says that the model is undergoing constant improvement to “ensure Grok remains politically unbiased and provides balanced answers.”

But the recent turn toward unprompted discussions of alleged South African “genocide” has many questioning what kind of explicit adjustments Grok’s political opinions may be getting from human tinkering behind the curtain. “The algorithms for Musk products have been politically tampered with nearly beyond recognition,” journalist Seth Abramson wrote in one representative skeptical post. “They tweaked a dial on the sentence imitator machine and now everything is about white South Africans,” a user with the handle Guybrush Threepwood glibly theorized.

Representatives from xAI were not immediately available to respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica.

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Disgruntled users roast X for killing Support account

elon musk, Policy, Social Media, Twitter, X / Rejus Almole / April 17, 2025

After X (formerly Twitter) announced it would be killing its “Support” account, disgruntled users quickly roasted the social media platform for providing “essentially non-existent” support.

“We’ll soon be closing this account to streamline how users can contact us for help,” X’s Support account posted, explaining that now, paid “subscribers can get support via @Premium, and everyone can get help through our Help Center.”

On X, the Support account was one of the few paths that users had to publicly seek support for help requests the platform seemed to be ignoring. For suspended users, it was viewed as a lifeline. Replies to the account were commonly flooded with users trying to get X to fix reported issues, and several seemingly paying users cracked jokes in response to the news that the account would soon be removed.

“Lololol your support for Premium is essentially non-existent,” a subscriber with more than 200,000 followers wrote, while another quipped “Okay, so no more support? lol.”

On Reddit, X users recently suggested that contacting the Premium account is the only way to get human assistance after briefly interacting with a bot. But some self-described Premium users complained of waiting six months or longer for responses from X’s help center in the Support thread.

Some users who don’t pay for access to the platform similarly complained. But for paid subscribers or content creators, lack of Premium support is perhaps most frustrating, as one user claimed their account had been under review for years, allegedly depriving them of revenue. And another user claimed they’d had “no luck getting @Premium to look into” an account suspension while supposedly still getting charged. Several accused X of sending users into a never-ending loop, where the help center only serves to link users to the help center.

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