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If you woke up this morning and thought to yourself, “I wonder what f-ckery Elon Musk is up to today,” then I’ve got great news for you! And if you didn’t, well, then I’ll try to make this as entertaining and informative as possible. As you know, Elon has fully embraced his inner right-wing demon over the past few years. With that, comes grievance. Oh, so many grievances. Elon’s latest grievance comes as a result of the consequences of his own actions, which also happens to be a right-winger’s right-of-passage. Space Karen is suing the World Federation of Advertisers and their membership companies, including Mars, CVS Health, and more, for a “systematic illegal boycott” of Twitter/X after he bought it in November 2022. At least he’s picking on someone his own size this time?
Elon Musk’s social media platform X has sued a group of advertisers, alleging that a “massive advertiser boycott” deprived the company of billions of dollars in revenue and violated antitrust laws. The company formerly known as Twitter filed the lawsuit Tuesday in a federal court in Texas against the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted.
It accused the advertising group’s initiative, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of helping to coordinate a pause in advertising after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and overhauled its staff and policies.
Musk posted about the lawsuit on X on Tuesday, saying “now it is war” after two years of being nice and “getting nothing but empty words.”
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a video announcement that the lawsuit stemmed in part from evidence uncovered by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee which she said showed a “group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott” against X.
The Republican-led committee had a hearing last month looking at whether current laws are “sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.”
The lawsuit’s allegations center on the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover and not a more recent dispute with advertisers that came a year later. In November 2023, about a year after Musk bought the company, a number of advertisers began fleeing X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Musk later said those fleeing advertisers were engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.
The Belgium-based World Federation of Advertisers and representatives for CVS, Orsted, Mars and Unilever didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
My first reaction is to make a snide comment about free speech and the free market and all that. However, I didn’t know if Elon has a real case or not. So, I went to – where else – Legal Twitter to see what they had to say. Basically, their point is that Elon has no standing here. He’s crying that his very precious belief in free speech (LMAO) is under attack, except that Twitter is a privately owned company, so no one is legally forcing him to do things like restrict content. Most advertisers probably would have even settled for him drawing the line between sh-tposters and actual Nazis. When he wouldn’t do that, they chose not to advertise on his platform. He’d have to prove collusion, which isn’t that easy to do. Also, It seems counterintuitive to sue the people that you want money from rather than turning on some business charm and wooing them to come back, no? I mean, at the end of the day, I always refer back to that old tried-and-true adage: “If you have the same problem with everyone, then you are the problem.”
Thanks to @RollingStone for including my thoughts on X's "boycott" lawsuit.https://t.co/GdDvthJcDh pic.twitter.com/vaJ7SaTkAa
— Rob Freund (@RobertFreundLaw) August 7, 2024
For the visual learners who read the NYT report on his antitrust lawsuit, here is Elon Musk telling advertisers to "go f—" themselves and that he doesn't need them: pic.twitter.com/gV26TTgSew
— Brandi Buchman (@Brandi_Buchman) August 7, 2024
Photos credit: Olivier Huitel/Avalon, Best Image/Backgrid, Getty
He has no case because he understands free market capitalism as well as he understands free speech. If I’m an asshole to multiple people, and those people get together to talk about how they all can’t stand me because I’m an asshole they aren’t colluding against me. He regrets purchasing Twitter because he was doing it just to show off for the dude Bros, and was pissed that he was held to his word. He went in and decided he was the smartest person in the room fired all the people that actually made it work, chased off a lot of celebrities who drove traffic to the site, and told advertisers screw you I’m not changing anything if you don’t like it leave. Well they left. You got what you were looking for, it isn’t unfair and it isn’t illegal.
Elon Musk desperately wants attention. His douche bro act got squashed like an ant on the bottom of Kamala Harris’ shoe and he is flailing about for something to make him relevant again. He’ll be as relevant as he is funny, which is to say not at all.
@Megan I think you’re right. He’s doing this as a publicity stunt so that he can try to claim he’s right to people who think suing means that you actually have a case (you know, like how the BM and royalists point to Samantha Markle’s lawsuits as evidence that Meghan is awful). He is, absolutely, expecting this to be laughed out of court and would probably shit a brick if someone took him up on it because discovery would be very bad for Twitter, though I’d love to see how many of those blue checks are known to Twitter to be propaganda bots
Right? Like, don’t even talk if you haven’t read Adam Smith. That’s not what is intended by the “free market”, Elon. And I’m sick of the right believing Free speech means they get to say whatever they want and anyone else exercising their Free speech to disagree is impeding on the right’s Free speech
What a🤡. Guess his false bravado isn’t working for him and the jerk realizes he needs those advertising dollars to keep that cesspool website running. Classic case of FAFO. Too bad his citizenship can’t be revoked so he can be deported back to South Africa.
Seriously, I’ve been wondering if this is actually possible. As in: if a naturalized citizen deliberately engages in behavior that threatens the stability of the country, is there a process for revoking citizenship?
No one is revoking the citizenship of the world’s richest man.
There is a process to denaturalize a person but the US government is already in bed with Musk (billions of dollars of subsidies are going to his companies, what a damn grift) so they aren’t going to deport him.
Thanks @BlueNailsBetty. I appreciate the information about the existence of a denaturalization process.
As a marketer who purchases advertising on social media platforms, Twitter netted ZERO ROI for my company. As an individual who hates Elon Musk, bitch, go cry some more. You can’t tell companies where they can advertise. And I seriously doubt the C-level teams at Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted got together in a boardroom Zoom boycott session saying “Let’s do this.” Try to prove that in court, you POS.
Well, he literally told advertisers in general to go F themselves.
I guess this is the part where he finds out, right?
A man who has made his own bed and is paying for pissing in it so he seeks escape from his own doing….. Musk is the biggest troll across the globe but he sees himself as the some king and expects to be treated as such and not face any consequences for his own abhorrent behaviour. Not surprising that the Repugnant’s would take on this fight for him since he does spread their messages of hate as he continues to stoke their agenda. Musk can F OFF!!
What a “great” businessman he is.
Anyway, vote Harris/Walz if you’re in the US and vote for other not-crazy people in you’re in another country 🙂
Linda Yaccarino’s video was so hilariously Katie Britt. Elon doesn’t care about money or he wouldn’t have bought Twitter in the first place. This suit feels like a set-up to shut the whole place down, since it’s uncontrollable, even with bot swarms. (Shitposters for the win!) BTW, is anyone else so traumatized by Elon, Trump, and other Putin minions it feels like the sky is actually falling? The Harris-Walz ticket is just a glimpse of “Happy Days are Here Again” and make the present threatening reality even more harsh and dystopian.
Yes. The normalization of trumpism (he, his goons, space karen and the rest) wakes me up in a cold sweat every night. It’s like people don’t know right from wrong anymore.
I think a lot of people are doing a good job fighting back by saying it’s not normal.
“weird” is a good start.
Some more words:
Strange, grotesque, freaky, nutty, crazy, odd, batty, peculiar.
There’s probably more than that 😀
I always felt Space Karen was going to run it into the ground before shutting it down – look at what he’s done to Tesla.
He was goaded into buying Twitter – Jack Dorsey laughed all the way to the bank. Twitter’s bubble was always going to burst, why do you think Dorsey wanted rid of it.
Also whats Musks obsession with the letter ‘X’?
Speaking of Tesla, I saw one of those trucks in real life today. The is the stupidest, ugliest vehicle on the road. I mean, it’s just laughably bad.
Can we deport Elon? Seriously. What’s his immigration status? I know it wouldn’t change anything, but it would feel good if he got the boot out of the US. And maybe it would help Grimes get her kids back.
😂😂😂Crybaby can’t handle businesses don’t want to do business with him. It’s their right to do business with whom they want.
Legal peeps, correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t they also have to prove intent to take Twitter down, specifically? Like “we are boycotting this company specifically to destroy it” vs just saying “this isn’t good for our brands anymore so we’re not spending money here”
No one wants their ads next to hate speech.
And X delivers zero ROI.
Maybe he needs to be a better CEO.
I only have my Twitter still to follow a narrow set of artists who are limited in platforms because they produce adult content, and even they’re having to pull their material and increasingly lock it behind Patreon and other services because it’s such a conservative hive now that they’re getting attacked over the content – and most of them don’t want it being used to train AI. It’s a bot ridden hellhole outside of that. Any advertiser would be a fool to put their content on there. I would bet almost half of its userbase isn’t even real people at this point.
Grateful to him for laying the groundwork of dismantling the movement Against boycotting and divesting. He’s using an israeli playbook move. Any one w half a brain can see that in its absolute unAmerican spirit . thank you Elon for finally doing some good. Ignorantly and wholey unintended but thanks Anyway
Space Karen hahaha, did that start here or has it been his name on social media?
He thinks he’s been nice for the last two years? He was at peace before now?
I look forward to the day that SpaceX and Star Link are wrested from his control. Tesla may be salvageable, if he and his board get replaced by competent people. Twitter would be a total teardown reno, but it could be rebuilt if someone picked it up for a deep discount and turned it into a nonprofit.
It musk suck to have paid all that money for hair plugs just to be going bald again.
Everytime I read about Muskrat experiencing consequences for his lousy behavior and crying about his actions having consequences to the magats, I hear James Hetfield of Metallica shreaking, “Free Speech For the Dumb.” (Cover of a Discharge song from Metallica’s covers album). Vote blue and force these creepy billionaires to face legal consequences and pay their share of taxes.