How Tech Billionaires Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left”

From Taibbi v. Higgins, decided yesterday by Judge George Daniels (S.D.N.Y.):

This action centers around Owned: How Tech Billionaires Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left (“Owned” or the “Book”), a book authored by Higgins and published by Bold Type Books. Owned purports to explore “how tech elites and formerly left-wing journalists forged an alliance” to create a “new right-wing media ecosystem.”

As relevant here, the Book depicts Plaintiff as one of several independent journalists whose politics shifted in recent years to attract a more conservative audience. Plaintiff began his writing career in post-Soviet Russia. In 2004, Plaintiff joined Rolling Stone, where he gained acclaim reporting on “the big banks and the excesses of Wall Street” during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. According to the Book, Plaintiff’s image among liberal pundits declined after Plaintiff pushed back on allegations of Russian electoral interference in the 2016 presidential election and “old misogynistic writings resurfaced,” The Book claims that “[a]fter his rejection by the left, [Plaintiff] turned to a new right-wing audience and became increasingly beholden to their priorities.” In 2020, Plaintiff left Rolling Stone for Substack, a subscription-based newsletter service.

In 2022, Elon Musk purchased the social media website Twitter (now known as X). The Book states that Musk, in an effort “to expose the rot at the core of the entire company,” sought out reporters to review internal company documents. These documents would purportedly “show[ ] how Twitter had responded to requests for censorship from the government and made decisions on questionable content.” Musk eventually offered Plaintiff the opportunity to review the “Twitter Files,” so long as he published his reporting on the platform.

On December 2, 2022, Plaintiff released his initial reporting on the Twitter Files. Among other things, Plaintiff reported on “Twitter’s decision to suppress a New York Post article on [Hunter Biden’s laptop] in advance of the 2020 election,” and that the “Trump Administration routinely demanded material be taken down” by Twitter,.

The Book asserts that due to the increased exposure Plaintiff gained from the Twitter Files project, Plaintiff’s “Twitter account blew up, and his Substack—already incredibly successful—gained thousands of subscriptions.” The Book also claims that Plaintiff’s Twitter Files reporting “generated a financial windfall.” Plaintiff pleads, however, that “during the second and third months of the project, [he] experienced 4,844 subscriber cancellations and a $20,644 loss in revenue, as readers [of his Substack] became frustrated that [he] was publishing his work on another platform.” Altogether, 13.7% of Plaintiff’s Substack subscribers joined after publication of his Twitter Files reporting.

In 2023, Musk asked Plaintiff to leave Substack and move to his new “Twitter Subs” platform., where Musk claimed that Plaintiff would “get far more subscribers.” According to the Book, Musk made the offer after he instituted “a blanket search ban on Twitter of all Substack links.” Higgins, supra at 195. Plaintiff refused Musk’s offer, stating that “people would say I’m essentially an employee of Twitter and both of us would never hear the end of it” and that “the optics would be really bad, journalistic ethics-wise.” Plaintiff alleges that after refusing Musk’s offer, Musk immediately kicked him off of the Twitter Files project and Plaintiff’s Twitter following was “frozen and deamplified.”

On February 2, 2025, Higgins requested an interview with Plaintiff to discuss the yet to be published Book. Specifically, Higgins framed the interview as an opportunity to discuss “how [Plaintiff’s] audience changed and, more broadly, how [Plaintiff] see[s] the left/right political landscape.” Plaintiff declined with the message, “Lol. Pass.”

Bold Type Books published the Book on February 4, 2025. Plaintiff alleges that following publication, Higgins admitted that the Book does not contain evidence of a direct financial deal between Plaintiff and Musk….

Plaintiff sued for defamation, focusing on the following statements (allegedly defamatory material set in bold by the court):

1. “Owned.“
2. “Bought.“
3. “Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi’s decades-long journey from the world of alternative journalism into the snug patronage of billionaires is a story with profound and troubling implications for the future of journalism and unfettered thinking.”
4. “In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence. Their cronies are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi….
5. “Owned follows the money, names names, and offers a chilling portrait of a future social media and news landscape.”
6. “It is a biting expose of journalistic greed, tech-billionaire ambition, and a lament for a disappearing free press.” ..
7. “Taibbi’s Twitter Files reporting is a perfect example: he spent decades building up credibility and credentials only to, in one high-profile moment, cash in to launder a CEO’s cherry-picked corporate opposition file on his opponents.”
8. “His Twitter account blew up, and his Substack—already incredibly successful—gained thousands of subscriptions. The reporting generated a financial windfall for the writer, even if its findings were dismissed by more sober commentators.”
9. “His Substack had exploded after the Twitter Files reporting and he’d promised to continue exposing censorship of the social media site.”
10. “It was this threat to Taibbi’s bottom line that finally motivated the journalist to act.”
11. “After years of confrontational commentary on the financial industry and questioning the mainstream, Taibbi fully dispensed with any pretense of challenging power late in 2022.”

The court concluded that, in context, the statements were opinion and not actionable:

Statements 1 and 2, the words “Owned” and “Bought” on the Book’s front cover, are susceptible to both literal and metaphorical meanings depending on the surrounding context. Plaintiff acknowledges, however, that the contents of the Book cannot support a literal reading, stating that the “[t]he Book contains no evidence of any financial transaction, payment, contract, or quid pro quo involving Plaintiff.”

In this context, “Owned” and “Bought” naturally read as attention-grabbing rhetoric used to signify Higgin’s opinions and the Book’s conclusions. Aside from the scattered words and phrases discussed below, Plaintiff does not dispute the accuracy of the vast majority of the Book’s factual content that informs these views or point to language suggesting the opinions are based on facts other than those disclosed in the book. Plaintiff may not like Higgins’s subjective conclusions, or agree with their accuracy, but that does not make them actionable defamation.

Statement 3, that Plaintiff was in “the snug patronage of billionaires,” is also a nonactionable opinion. Just like “Owned” and “Bought,” the language “snug patronage” does not have a readily understood precise meaning, so there is no way for a reader to determine whether the statement is true or false. The statement also appears as a reviewer comment on the back cover under the heading “Praise for Owned.” From this context, a reader would likely intuit this statement as an opinion of the reviewer, supported by the facts disclosed in the Book, and not a statement of fact about Plaintiff.

Statement 4 is a passage from the Book’s left flap that states that Plaintiff was one of the right-wing technology billionaires’ “cronies.” Courts in this district have previously held that calling someone a “crony,” without more, is nonactionable rhetorical hyperbole. The same is true here. The assertion that Plaintiff is a billionaire’s crony is the sort of excessive, unverifiable language that signals to a reasonable reader that they are reading the speaker’s opinion, and not a statement of fact.

Statement 5 also appears on the left flap and states that the Book “follows the money, names names,” and is a “biting expose of journalistic greed.” Plaintiff alleges that “follows the money” and “names names” “represents to readers that the author has traced actual financial relationships and identified specific recipients of improper payments or patronage.” “In New York, a plaintiff cannot sustain a libel claim if the allegedly defamatory statement is not ‘of and concerning plaintiff but rather only speaks about a group of which the plaintiff is a member.” Statement 5 does not indicate that it is “of and concerning” Plaintiff—it describes Higgins’s investigative process for ail the Book’s subjects, not only Plaintiff. A reasonable reader would, therefore, not interpret “follows the money” and “names names” as a false statement of fact about Plaintiff.

Statement 6 states that the Book is an “expose of journalistic greed,” which Plaintiff alleges “asserts professional dishonesty and unethical conduct.” But whether someone is motivated out of greed or ambition is a subjective determination that is not capable of being proven true or false. Further, the context surrounding the statement, including its placement on the left flap of the Book’s cover, clearly implies that the facts on which this opinion is based can be found within the Book.

Plaintiff acknowledges that these statements “might be protected opinion standing alone.” But he claims that when viewed together, the statements on the Book’s cover and jacket “become implied factual assertions that the accused was actually paid.” Plaintiff is correct that otherwise nonactionable statements may create “false suggestions, impressions, and implications,” and that these false implications can serve as the basis of a defamation claim. But plaintiffs alleging defamation by implication must “make a rigorous showing that the language of the communication as a whole can be reasonably read both to impart a defamatory inference and to affirmatively suggest that the author intended or endorsed that inference.”

Even assuming that Plaintiff has affirmatively alleged a defamation by implication claim—despite not labeling his sole cause of action as such—Plaintiff has failed to allege facts showing that Defendants intended or endorsed the defamatory inference. As stated above, Plaintiff admits that “the Book contains no evidence whatsoever that Plaintiff received payments, sponsorship, or financial inducement from Elon Musk or any other billionaire.”

Instead of endorsing the alleged defamatory implication, the Book argues that Plaintiff’s central reason for agreeing to participate in the Twitter Files was to “gain access.” Plaintiff also claims that Higgins “admitted contemporaneously that readers expecting proof of who was ‘bought’ would be disappointed.” In short, the Book’s contents and Higgins contemporaneous statements distance the Book from the defamatory implication Plaintiff alleges. Without any additional facts pointing to Defendants’ intent, Plaintiff’s defamation by implication claim fails….

The alleged defamatory statements within the Book are also nonactionable. First, in statement 7, “cash in” and “launder” are directly preceded by a reference to the “decades” Plaintiff spent “building up credibility and credentials.” This context makes clear that the Book’s reference to “cash in” is not referring to literal money, but rather the idea that Plaintiff traded his reputation for access to the Twitter Files. This sort of loose, figurative language would naturally lead a reasonable reader to interpret this as a statement of opinion.

Similarly, statement 8 is a nonactionable subjective determination, Statement 8 claims that Plaintiff’s Substack “gained thousands of subscriptions” following his work on the Twitter Files, which translated to a “financial windfall.” But as Plaintiff’s counsel acknowledged during oral argument, this statement, “in the abstract,” is not defamatory because it does not tend to injure Plaintiff’s reputation. And even if one could read a defamatory meaning into these words, Plaintiff admits that he did in fact gain thousands of Substack subscribers following the Twitter Files reporting. Whether this “small percentage” of increased subscribers represented a “financial windfall” is a subjective determination.

Statements 9, 10 and 11 are also nonactionable opinions. Statement 9 claims that Plaintiff’s Substack “exploded” following the Twitter Files. Just like the term “financial windfall,” whether something “exploded” in value is a subjective determination. Finally, neither Statement 10, which states that Plaintiff was motivated by a “threat to [his] bottom line,” or Statement 11, which claims that “Plaintiff fully dispensed with any pretense of challenging power late in 2022,” are capable of being proven true or false. What motivated Plaintiff to leave Twitter and whether he adequately challenged power are matters of opinion….

Liz McNamara and Leena Charlton (Davis Wright Tremaine LLP) represent defendants.