A UC Riverside graduate who says he was harassed after Elon Musk amplified posts on his social media platform X/Twitter that falsely positioned the person at a confrontation involving far-right protesters sued the billionaire for defamation in a lawsuit filed Monday.
Benjamin Brody, 22, is represented by Mark Bankston, a Texas lawyer who received a defamation case final yr towards conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a lawsuit introduced by households of the Sandy Hook Elementary taking pictures. Brody is in search of a jury trial in Austin, Texas, and unspecified damages of no less than $1 million.
Attorneys for Musk didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark left by a spokesperson.
In June, video posted to X confirmed a confrontation involving protesters close to a Pleasure competition in Oregon. A few of these concerned wore the identical colours of the Proud Boys extremist group, in line with The Oregonian.
On X, some customers falsely recognized one of many members as Brody, highlighting his post-college plans to work for the federal government to unfold baseless assertions that federal brokers had been concerned.
The lawsuit contains screenshots of Musk partaking with customers spreading the posts involving Brody, together with one by which Musk described it as a “possible false flag scenario.” Brody, a current faculty graduate who stated he was in California when the occasion occurred, got here underneath harassment due to Musk’s attain, in line with the lawsuit.
The posts by Musk had been nonetheless on X as of Monday.
It’s not the primary time Musk has been sued for defamation. He defeated a lawsuit in 2019 from a British cave explorer who claimed he was branded a pedophile when the Tesla CEO known as him “pedo man” on what was then known as Twitter.
Musk’s tech firm has additionally taken others to court docket over what’s posted on the location. In August, X sued a bunch of researchers over accusations that their work highlighting a rise in hate speech on the platform price the corporate tens of millions of {dollars} of promoting income.
