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Comment by aerodog | Hacker News Reader

X's spat with the ADL revealed how substantial their lobby power is. That ad revenue plunged 60% due to their prejudices (against Elon and his management) testifies to a strong hold they have on media of all types. I don't trust Meta to reverse their behaviors like this, which they have likely done many, many times.

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Not gonna lie, I'm not struggling to think of reasons why Twitter's ad revenue dropped that don't involve the ADL...

Would it explain why it fell in US and EU, but not Asia?

Are you saying the only plausible explanation is, "the Jews?"

No. Where did you hallucinate me saying that? According to Elon it's just the ADL lobbied hard in US & EU.

And why did they lobby? It’s not like Twitter has become some utopia since he bought it. It’s gone to shit and is increasingly filled with a huge amount of racist and antisemitic sentiment. After that, there’s (exaggerated) a billion crypto scams.

Could be millions of reasons. Maybe they don't like way Elon is running the place. Maybe they lost contacts in purges Elon did. They disagree with people he let onto the platform.

As if that had anything to do with it? Twitter under Musk has been a disaster, I’m not surprised companies are withdrawing from it. A lot of dropping off who were once very active users too, and basically no part of any of that has anything to do with the ADL.

Twitter's ad revenue plunged due to mismanagement and current economic conditions. Lest we forget, when Musk took over, the workforce dropped by 80%, which meant, first of all, that a lot of advertisers lost over night their contacts at Twitter. And while moderation may have stayed in place, Elon Musk also started unblocking far-right accounts and he can't keep his mouth shut.

I can't speak for Asia, but multinational brands (like Coca-Cola) are actively avoiding controversy and you don't need activists for such an effect.

Fair points, but I sense a discrepancy. If multinationals are leaving X in droves, why wouldn't they leave it in Asia?

Because the hate and outrage peddlers that Musk un-banned are not posting in anything but English.

and it's a relatively marginal revenue stream that was expected to grow, and Elon's erratic behaviour and vice signalling garners few column inches there.

For the same reason Musk's invitation to cover the legal costs of people getting cancelled for what they post on twitter didn't apply to the Saudi man who was sentenced to death: What happens in other parts of the world isn't of much interest to Americans.

> multinational brands (like Coca-Cola) are actively avoiding controversy

You think that multinational brands (like Adidas, Target, PepsiCo, and Anheuser-Busch) have been striving to avoid controversy lately? Really?

It's more correct to say that multinational brands avoid controversy in one political direction. They seem to have no qualms embracing it in the other.

Maybe the cooling of the tech sector in the US/EU has something to do with it. Tech in Asia seems to be fine.

I must be mistaken, but your comment really sounds like you're blaming Twitter's revenue problems -- easily explained by mismanagement -- on an all powerful cabal of Jews.

More like an institution that defames organizations, took until 2007 to recognize the Armenian Genocide and is propped up by an Apartheid State. Admittedly, their point is an oversimplification (X has many problems), but it's dishonest to equate criticism of the ADL to "the Jews run the world".

It's not dishonest, because the accusation that Twitter has lost its ads revenue due to ADL is bollocks. And when such accusations are so unreasonable, given everything else that happened (e.g., Twitter's workforce plummeting, unblocking far right accounts, or Elon Musk not able to keep his mouth shut), one has to consider antisemitism.

You are totally right, the whole statement is ironically antisemitism here on Hacker News: Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg and Israel.... what is the connection. It's clear the poster is on X/Twitter and you can see what Elons behaviour perpetuates.

Elon Musk doesn't know how the advertising business works, get's rid of moderation and let's banned people back. Which obviously leads to an increase of antisemitism on Twitter and the ADL justly fights against it.

Now after the lawsuit this guy thinks: Elon is a genius, it must be the jews who control the media who have prejudices against Elon and his management.

You talk about Elon and Twitter users like some specific people talk about Soros and the Jews. Both are a form of blaming groups of people for some random, different person deeds. Not acceptable.

No, I talk about the ADL having a point and his recent behaviour, including the lawsuit, leading to an increase in antisemitism.

Which lawsuit?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/05/elon-musk...

https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/adl-statement-xt...

Just from the wording my quick judgment is that ADL is the bully here. You can't walk around calling people "unrepentant bigots", and doing that in public is IMHO indeed defamation, which Musk is suing for.

I'm sorry but under Elon X has become a platform where racists, xenophobes, conspiracy theorists, antisemites, islamophobes etc. have thrived - the ADL blame game from Elon smells of deflection from the reality that advertisers don't want to be associated with a platform that mainstreams unhinged content.

By lumping ADL and Meta together, and saying "they" have a strong hold on media of all types, this post crosses the line.

> X's spat with the ADL revealed how substantial their lobby power is.

Lol what? Advertisers literally pulled out because their ads showed up to actual Nazi, holocaust denying content. The ADL didn't (have to) do anything, the brands' brand safety teams did.

This opinion piece, written by an attorney who worked as an intern at ADL in the 1980s, agrees with Musk.

https://www.newsweek.com/adl-has-lost-its-way-elon-musk-righ...

Do you have sources on the X - ADL connection? I thought that was just a conspiracy theory.

It is. Computer nerds undeniably buy into anti-Semitic conspiracies more than other conspiracies because of the amount of peddling they get in silly 4chan et al culture.

Thats why i'm asking for evidence

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1699472464076525970

It's not the first time the ADL has lead a pressure campaign on advertisers of a social media company. They did the something similar with Facebook in 2020.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/06/29/adl-ceo-facebook-adver...

Few things are more emblematic of Musk’s descent into madness than tweeting to dozens of millions of his acolytes that the (((jews))) are engineering his failures.

Did you just really take Elon Musk's completely random figure of ads revenue drop as fact?

I'm sure you are a better authority to report on the company's revenue than the owner

The drop isn’t nearly as up for debate as the cause is. Let’s not get distracted here.

Some people need more evidence than this before they place blame on a group with such a history of prejudice against them.

Hell, I’m from a country that is far less touchy about the plight of the Jewish people compared to, say, the US. But inferring anything from this correlation without considering the wider context is absurd.

GP very obviously thinks that using 2-3x more words to essentially say “Jews control the media” gives their comment more intellectual standing

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