How Twitter?

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Random old article on the topic:

Elon Musk's submarine 'not practical' for Thai cave mission, rescue head says - CNET

I recalled the sub as actually existing just interfering with the plan already in place.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

Elon Musk to file ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’ as advertisers desert X | X | The Guardian

It led to a number of big names in technology and media announcing they would be withdrawing their advertising. It also included Warner Brothers, Paramount and Disney.

I'm reading that as: "It did NOT lead to Warner Brothers, Paramount, or Disney withdrawing their advertising."

[fragment]

Originally Posted by -FX-

I saw that on X

Mastodon for me. Haven't been bothered to recover my Xitter password since my laptop broke months ago.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

Random old article on the topic:

Elon Musk's submarine 'not practical' for Thai cave mission, rescue head says - CNET

I recalled the sub as actually existing just interfering with the plan already in place.

He made a thing, but it was never remotely capable of actually doing the mission. He did not in fact produce a completed, working, thing, that could have done the task.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Popehat the 1A guy stuff: My Free Speech Means You Have To Shut Up

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

lol

[seebs]

The media matters lawsuit is truly spectacular. Like, he said it was going to be thermonuclear, and it sort of is.

It's filed in a cherry-picked jurisdiction where they're hoping to get a notoriously awful judge, but Twitter's ToS have a binding agreement saying lawsuits involving them are supposed to be resolved in CA in general, and the neat thing about those is usually you can choose to enforce that on them, too. CA has a nice clear anti-SLAPP law; so does Texas, but it's state-only and doesn't cover federal courts in TX sometimes.

On the other hand, they completely forgot to actually plead anything at all against one of the defendants, and their basic argument about the rest of it is "yes, all of that happened, but they saw those ads because they experimented with following the neo-nazi content and discovered ads next to it", which is... actually just completely conceding the truth of the claims made.

This is a spectacularly dumb lawsuit, and that's coming from someone who reads dumb lawsuits for fun.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by seebs

Twitter's ToS have a binding agreement saying lawsuits involving them are supposed to be resolved in CA in general, and the neat thing about those is usually you can choose to enforce that on them, too.

I would be absolutely shocked if that forum selection clause binds anyone other than X users suing X.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

I would be absolutely shocked if that forum selection clause binds anyone other than X users suing X.

The wording is pretty clear!

The laws of the State of California, excluding its choice of law provisions, will govern these Terms and any dispute that arises between you and us. All disputes related to these Terms or the Services will be brought solely in the federal or state courts located in San Francisco County, California, United States, and you consent to personal jurisdiction and waive any objection as to inconvenient forum. To the extent permitted by law, you also waive the right to participate as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class action, collective action or representative action proceeding.

They don't say "any lawsuits you bring", they say "any dispute that arises between you and us". Courts like nice simple language like that!



So far, among the Actual Lawyer Types I've seen comment, consensus has been strongly that it would be very unusual for a judge to disregard this. It'd be one thing if they'd picked a jurisdiction that made sense for some overwhelmingly strong reason, like "suing someone where they live", maybe, where both parties might stipulate to it. But they picked a jurisdiction where neither party has any reason to be suing there. So even without this clause it'd probably be very easy for the defendants to request a venue transfer somewhere else. With it, it should be a slam dunk.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Originally Posted by seebs

Actual Lawyer Types

As an aside, as far as I'm aware, Maturin, ChuckF, and Sock Puppet are actual lawyer types of varying disciplines. (I think there's one more regular as well but it's eluding me and I don't know if any of the disciplines are LOLSUITE LOLYER.)

[Sock Puppet]

I'm a lawyer-type, but not an actual lolyer (although Mrs. Puppet is a real one). I'm someone with special skills, skills that make me a nightmare for ...

Basically, a contracts expert and veteran of the Corporate Compliance Wars. I report to the General Counsel of my company, along with the actual lolyers.

vremya is a real Esquire as well, as is occasional visitor rigorist.

[ShottleBop]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

I'm a lawyer-type, but not an actual lolyer (although Mrs. Puppet is a real one). I'm someone with special skills, skills that make me a nightmare for ...

Basically, a contracts expert and veteran of the Corporate Compliance Wars. I report to the General Counsel of my company, along with the actual lolyers.

vremya is a real Esquire as well, as is occasional visitor rigorist.

I am also an individual of the lolyer persuasion. I am a transactional attorney, however, and do not litigate--but that doesn't stop me from expressing an opinion. My own take on the venue issue is that X's terms state that "[a]ll disputes related to these Terms or the Services" will be brought in one of the specified courts, but it's not clear that this defamation case is such a dispute. X's causes are all based on Media Matters' alleged bad-faith reportage--while X uses examples of Media Matters' alleged manipulation of X's algorithms and processes to produce the juxtaposition of antisemitic content and advertisers who don't want to be associated with that content, X does not seek a remedy for alleged misuse of the Services.

[Sock Puppet]

Forgot 'Bop. Sorry.

[seebs]

Huh, interesting. I guess Actual Lawyer Types can in fact disagree on how enforceable or non-enforceable a clause is.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by ShottleBop

I am also an individual of the lolyer persuasion. I am a transactional attorney, however, and do not litigate--but that doesn't stop me from expressing an opinion. My own take on the venue issue is that X's terms state that "[a]ll disputes related to these Terms or the Services" will be brought in one of the specified courts, but it's not clear that this defamation case is such a dispute. X's causes are all based on Media Matters' alleged bad-faith reportage--while X uses examples of Media Matters' alleged manipulation of X's algorithms and processes to produce the juxtaposition of antisemitic content and advertisers who don't want to be associated with that content, X does not seek a remedy for alleged misuse of the Services.

Ooh, good point. I think I would consider "you used the Service wrong" to be at least tangentially related to the services, in that if Media Matters had not used the service, the dispute couldn't exist? But that may be more logicallly-plausible than legally-plausible.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by seebs

Huh, interesting. I guess Actual Lawyer Types can in fact disagree on how enforceable or non-enforceable a clause is.

That is basically my job.

There is no such thing as an ironclad forum selection provision - even less so in something like a terms of service that is drafted exclusively by one party - because if that clause is in dispute, it has to be construed by a judge or arbitrator. The extent to which they are enforceable or applicable to a particular dispute is often subject to facts and circumstances. But they are often convenient ways for judges to get things off their dockets and on to someone else's.

In this case, Elon went forum shopping for a reason.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by seebs

The wording is pretty clear!

Well, I'll be dipped in shit! That same lingo appeared in the old Twitter TOS, and remains unchanged in X's TOS. One would think a "genius" might spot an issue here and massage the early part of that second sentence to make the issue go away.

It looks to me like the forum selection clause is fully enforceable. Just for lulz I did some checking and found multiple court orders holding that the language is mandatory in nature and enforceable. However, all those orders came in cases where Twitter was the defendant, including the federal court lawsuit PAB filed after Twitter kicked his fat ass off the platform.

The passive-voiced "All disputes related to these Terms or the Services will be brought solely in the federal or state courts located in San Francisco County, California, United States" does indeed appear to apply even when X is the plaintiff. I'm trying to figure how their lolyers plan to get around that. Maybe they'll contend that their dispute with Media Matters is insufficiently "related to these Terms or the Services" to trigger the forum selection clause in the first place. Maybe they'll rely on the rule that requires contract lingo to be interpreted and applied as an integrated whole, such that the waivers relating to personal jurisdiction, venue, forum non conveniens, and class actions - all of which apply to the user ("you") only - establish that the forum selection clause applies to users only. That idea finds some support in the first sentence of the following paragraph, "If you are a federal, state, or local government entity in the United States using the Services in your official capacity and legally unable to accept the controlling law, jurisdiction or venue clauses above, then those clauses do not apply to you." X's lolyers, assuming they aren't Rudy 9iu11iani-level booze addled morons, have surely considered this shit. It'll be interesting to see how they respond to Media Matter's motion to transfer.

The first sentence is a choice-of-law clause. Ups to the lolyer who put in "excluding its choice of law provisions." If you really and for true want a particular state's substantive law to control, that lingo is a must. If all you say is "California law governs," then some smartass will try to renvoi your ass by saying "California law" refers to the whole law of that state, including its choice-of-law rules. If Cali COL rules provide that issues of contract performance are governed by the law of the place where performance is to occur, and performance in this case is to occur in, say, New Mexico, some lolyer will come along and argue that the COL clause requires application of NM law. That's doesn't happen with the anti-renvoi language used in the quote.


Assuming Klaxon Co. v. Stenor Elec. is still the law, the federal court in Texas where X filed this train wreck (assuming it stays in that court) will have to apply the same substantive law to this case as a Texas state court would. Assuming Texas state courts honor contractual choice-of-law provisions, and I have yet to hear of any state that categorically refuses to honor them, the TX federal court would likely have to apply CA law.

The complaint includes common law tort claims that (I think) every state recognize - tortious interference with contracts, disparagement/defamation, and tortious interference with prospective business opportunities - but it seems to me that the broadly-worded COL clause opens the door to applying California's anti-SLAPP legislation.

[seebs]

There is always a whole lot of "I guess we'll find out when we ask a judge" to stuff like that.

The question is whether the judge is more motivated to help Elon no matter what, or get this shit out of his court as fast as possible. I have gotten the impression that the latter may be a compelling motivation, this suit seems insane.

Although they may have filed a followup amendment or something in which they allege at all any facts to do with the human they listed as a defendant.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by seebs

The question is whether the judge is more motivated to help Elon no matter what, or get this shit out of his court as fast as possible.

One should never underestimate the penchant of jurists for scraping litigation turds off their shoes as soon as possible.

[seebs]

Yeah. Like, a huge central part of the problem here is just that X's complaint basically states that the things Media Matters reported were in fact true. Repeatedly.

That seems exceedingly prejudicial to an attempt to get a court to require them to stop saying those things.

Kathryn Tewson wrote about this, using simple language.

In short: Elon is having a bad problem, and he will not go to space today.

[ShottleBop]

Elon Musk has unveiled an incredible new tweet feature #dailyshow #elonmusk #desantis - YouTube

[JoeP]

Now the fucker's gone to Tel Aviv to talk to Netanyahoo.

Elon Musk begins wartime visit to Israel, aviation tracker says | Arab News

Hope they're both blasting off to Mars soon.

[Stephen Maturin]

Apartheid "Jews will not replace us" Karen is a source of endless entertainment. Hard to say what's luzlier, his apparent belief that Bibi is the King of the Jews or the child's backpack strapped to his flobbery chest.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

You take your erotica where you can.