X, formerly known as Twitter, filed a federal defamation suit on Monday in Texas against Media Matters for America, accusing the media watchdog group of kicking off an advertiser exodus with a “harmful” article alleging the social network let top brands display ads near antisemitic and pro-Nazi posts. The liberal-leaning media observer allegedly curated a feed specifically with fringe accounts and those belonging to corporations like IBM, Comcast, Apple, and Oracle, then displayed screenshots of the unsavoury posts appearing near company ads in a critical article, according to the lawsuit. The Media Matters analysis, published last week, also alleges that X owner Elon Musk has increasingly begun a “descent into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories.” The lawsuit does not dispute that some top brands’ ads were featured near the inflammatory content. Rather, it suggests Media Matters gamed X to produce extremely unlikely pairings that are usually screened out by the service’s advertising tools, alleging that one harmful match appeared for “only one viewer (out of more than 500 million) on all of X: Media Matters.” “Not a single authentic user of the X platform saw IBM’s, Comcast’s or Oracle’s ads next to that content, which Media Matters achieved only through its manipulation of X’s algorithms,” the suit continues. “Media Matters created these pairings in secrecy, to manufacture the harmful perception that X is at best an incompetent content moderator (a harmful accusation for any social media platform), or even worse that X was somehow indifferent or even encouraging to Nazi and racist ideology,” the suit argues elsewhere. Media Matters told The Independent in a statement that its analysis of X and its content policies remains valid. “This is a frivolous lawsuit meant to bully X’s critics into silence,” Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said in the statement. “Media Matters stands behind its reporting and looks forward to winning in court.” Top executives at X have railed against Media Matters in recent days. “If you know me, you know I’m committed to truth and fairness. Here’s the truth,” Linda Yaccarino wrote on X on Monday. “Not a single authentic user on X saw IBM’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to the content in Media Matters’ article. Only 2 users saw Apple’s ad next to the content, at least one of which was Media Matters. Data wins over manipulation or allegations.” Mr Musk, meanwhile, called the organisation “pure evil” in an X post of his own. Outside of the disputed accuracy of the Media Matters report, Mr Musk has openly endorsed a right-wing conspiracy theory on X in recent days, prompting criticism that he’s fueling antisemitism. Last Wednesday, the billionaire X owner responded to a tweet echoing claims of the racist and often antisemitic “great replacement” theory, including that Jewish people were “flooding” America with “hordes of minorities” to promote “dialectical hatred against whites.” Mr Musk called the claim “the actual truth.” The theory referenced in the original post was among the hateful ideas directly referenced by the gunman who killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history. “At a time when antisemitism is exploding in America and surging around the world, it is indisputably dangerous to use one’s influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League civil rights group, which monitors antisemitism and other forms of extremism, wrote on X in response to Mr Musk. The White House also weighed in, alleging the tech CEO was contributing to the spread of “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.” “It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” the White House said in a statement. The Independent contacted Mr Musk during the backlash against his response to the post and did not receive an answer. Amid the controversy, Mr Musk has alternatively defended X’s content policies and appeared to mock critics who allege the network is harbouring hateful content. Last week, he shared a clip of someone playing a video game level called “Echo of Hatred,” with the caption “defeating hatred is never easy.” “Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension,” he wrote elsewhere on X on Friday. This summer, a study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate alleged X failed to take down 99 per cent of a selection of hate content flagged by the group. The group alleged that “the platform is allowing them to break its rules with impunity and is even algorithmically boosting their toxic tweets.” Read More Musk's X sues liberal advocacy group Media Matters over its report on ads next to hate groups' posts Elon Musk and Trump aide want journalists jailed over X Hitler exposé IBM pulls ads from Elon Musk's X after report says they appeared next to antisemitic posts Dates and venues for three 2024 presidential debates announced 2024 polls: Three presidential debates revealed for next year Torso found washed up on New York beach could be missing Irish filmmaker: NYPD

Wall Street is returning to climate talks that it largely snubbed last year, as the United Arab Emirates

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Elon Musk has posted a series of explicit tweets about Mark Zuckerberg, including This week, Mr Musk tweeted that “Zuck is a cuck”, and followed it up with a post in which he proposed a “literal dick measuring contest”, alongside a ruler emoji. On Monday, he then responded to a post in which another user speculated that Mr Musk would lose such a contest. “This would so inappropriate & lacking in dignity … let’s do it!!!” Mr Musk wrote in a reply. It is just the latest in Mr Musk’s often intense responses to the launch of Threads, a Twitter competitor launched by Mr Zuckerberg’s company, Meta. He has also threatened to sue Meta over the similarities with his app, suggested that it is falsely joyful, and boosted posts that suggested the launch of Threads had actually helped the launch of Twitter. Mr Musk has also attempted to suggest that Twitter is both free of censorship and the pressure to be happy. “You are free to be your true self here,” he wrote in his most recent post on the topic. He has also promoted a post from Twitter’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, in which she suggested that Threads’ success had actually helped Twitter’s growth. “Don’t want to leave you hanging by a thread… but Twitter, you really outdid yourselves!” she wrote. “Last week we had our largest usage day since February. There’s only ONE Twitter. You know it. I know it.” It is not clear how much the launch of Threads has boosted or hurt Twitter’s usage. But external estimates suggest that the site’s usage is “tanking”, according to experts. Meta’s Threads surged past 100 million signups in its first five days, according to Mark Zuckerberg. In doing so, it became the fastest online platform to hit the milestone, overtaking ChatGPT. The app has been setting new records for user additions since its launch on Wednesday, with celebrities from Jennifer Lopez to Kim Kardashian joining the platform seen as the first serious threat to the Elon Musk-owned microblogging app. Twitter has responded by threatening to sue Meta over the app, alleging that the social media behemoth used its trade secrets and other confidential information. That claim, legal experts say, could be hard to prove. Threads shares some resemblance to Twitter, as do the numerous other social media sites that have cropped up in recent months. It allows posts that are up to 500 characters long and include links, photos and videos of up to 5 minutes. The app’s sprint to 100 million users was much faster than the two months OpenAI-owned ChatGPT took in January, which had made it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS study. Still, Threads has some catching up to do. Twitter had nearly 240 million monetizable daily active users, according to a company statement in July last year. Additional reporting by Reuters Read More Twitter gets strange endorsement from Taliban over rival Threads Tucker Carlson’s Twitter show is haemorrhaging viewers, reports says Twitter traffic ‘tanking’ after record-breaking Threads launch SpaceX smashes reusable rocket record as Elon Musk makes bold Starship claim Twitter restores TweetDeck’s old, ‘better’ version – but for how long? Account tracking Elon Musk’s jet is now on Threads after Twitter suspended it

Spiranac is a vocal advocate for making golf more inclusive so everyone can enjoy the sport

Players can get Nicki Minaj in Warzone Season 5 from her own Bundle, coming in-season, for 2,400 COD points in the store.

The leaked Modern Warfare 3 Warzone map reveals the return of slide cancelling and a Verdansk-like design full of buildings and memorable POIs.

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 14, 2023--

Here's what you need to know about Lies of P's release.

Scientists have grown human kidneys in pigs, for the very first time. Researchers at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuyi University created human-pig chimeric embryos containing a combination of human and pig cells. When they transferred into 13 surrogate pig mothers, they developed kidneys that contained mostly human cells at a rate of 50 to 60 per cent, giving hope for potential transplants in the future. “Rat organs have been produced in mice, and mouse organs have been produced in rats, but previous attempts to grow human organs in pigs have not succeeded,” said the senior author Liangxue Lai. “Our approach improves the integration of human cells into recipient tissues and allows us to grow human organs in pigs.” The kidneys were not entirely human as they included vasculature and nerves made mostly from pig cells, meaning they could not be used for transplantation in their current form, but it is still a pretty impressive step. And apart from the kidneys, the embryos were dominated by pig cells, with very few human cells in the brain or central nervous system. Making brains using human and pig cells is very controversial for ethical reasons, so there are tight regulations for this kind of research. Meanwhile, pig cells tend to outcompete human cells during development, so previous experiments have created embryos that are almost entirely pig. The latest work, published in Cell Stem Cell, overcame this by genetically engineering a single-cell pig embryo so that it lacked two genes needed for kidney development. This created a gap within the embryo that could be filled by human cells. “We found that if you create a niche in the pig embryo, then the human cells naturally go into these spaces,” said Prof Zhen Dai of Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, another senior author. The scientists said that being able to incubate a fully human kidney inside a pig would be likely to take many years. “We would probably need to engineer the pigs in a much more complex way and that also brings some additional challenges,” said Miguel Esteban, also of the Guangzhou institute and a senior author. A central challenge would be to allow human nerves and vasculature to develop within the target organ without nerve cells developing in the central nervous system that could lead to a humanised brain. “Even theoretically it’s not clear how you’d do that,” said Ilic. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.