Big brands keep dropping X over antisemitism; $75M loss, report estimates | Hacker News Reader

Big brands keep dropping X over antisemitism; $75M loss, report estimates

arstechnica.com

43 pointsjrflowers53 comments

This whole thing is so incredibly overblown. Advertisers can flee (although the article only says X is on pace to lose about 75 million) but unless the users do, it's meaningless and they'll come back.

Media Matters is a professional political psychological manipulation outfit. Musk's tweets were dumb and offensive, but Media Matters is milking this for every penny it's worth and trying to make it seem much larger than it is. (as they are incentivized to do).

Leaving gives advertisers an opportunity to measure the ROI of their ad spend to a degree they can't usually acheive. Rolling out a campaign is usually speculative and many were initiated when Twitter was exponentially growing, making quantitative assessment hard. Twitter (and the market) is no longer in that state.

Whether they return probably has more to do with what they discover in this de facto A:B test than whether users stay or leave.

And if they don't return, ad pricing will plummet and draw in more cheap and scam/fringe-market ads, changing the feel of the site for users.

Musk is suing Media Matters not just because of his personal ego or sense of principle, but because the advertiser bleed it triggered could become a really bad thing for his darling.

Counter: Pornhub has lots of users, but no big brands. Is X at that state? No, but the point is that brand safety is important, advertisers pay attention to it, and it impacts the publishers bottom line.

I'm not convinced PH would make substantially more money if there were ads for Airbnb and Coca-Cola on it.

I assume Pornhub is doing ok (you say it has lots of users). Are you suggesting it would somehow be better with Disney ads?

I guess one has to buy into the concept that targeted advertising works to actually think that someone's ad appearing next to questionable content was there because the company sought out that content to appear next to. Of course, reality shows that targeted advertising doesn't work like that, and it's pretty much a random "who has the ad budget remaining to fund an ad display for this page load" which means it'll always be a major company with deep pockets for advertising

You are mixing up two events. MM reported on ads next to neo-nazi content AND Musk tweeted something anti-semitic. MM didn't make Musk do that nor was it even called out in their post because it happened before he said it.

Doubtless each of these companies have number-crunchers in back rooms trying to estimate the costs of tarnishing their brand if they continue to advertise on X. These sort of allegations can stick - Disney won't want to be remembered as the company that supported anti-Semitism. If X's reputation continues to go down, so will its advertisers.

Plus not all users are alike. I've never been in a backroom, but I'm guessing that they are more concerned with the users with more spending capital.

They cancelled "All-American Muslim" because they couldn't get advertisers even though it was averaging 1 million viewers per show which would made it one of the most popular show on TLC.

https://ustvdb.com/networks/tlc/shows/

> They cancelled "All-American Muslim" because they couldn't get advertisers even though it was averaging 1 million viewers per show which would made it one of the most popular show on TLC.

To add context, this was after a few large companies canceled their ads for that show after push back from a very small number of evangelical christians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-American_Muslim#Sponsorshi...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-attack-on-a...

I imagine TV advertisements are an entirely different beast. I'd suppose it's much more difficult to fill TV airtime because the barrier to creating a good TV advertisement is so high. And the expected revenue was probably pre-priced in, and also there's very limited airtime so why run something that isn't performing as well as something else could?

Whereas, Twitter is infinite, and theoretical advertising is unlimited. Additionally, the barrier to a Twitter ad is much less. Just speculating, though.

Reactionary talk radio has tons of listeners, but few if any mainstream advertisers. It's all pointers to other demagogues, dubious legal services, prepper supplies, and overpriced gimmicks where the value add is the political identity marketing itself. I don't see why Twitter would end up any different.

Losing 75 million _through the end of the year_, over something which happened in mid November, is non-trivial. Like, this is not the total bill for Musk spouting his mouth off forever and ever.

I doubt it's even $10m losses. To your point -- presumably, if it's cheap enough people will start advertising who can't normally afford it.

I would point out that advertising $$$s is basically zero sum.

I agree with the premise that if $75m is removed from the supply prices will go down and then new $$$s will come into the platform, so it's not a 1:1 drop in revenue, but you probably aren't going to see $75m of new money enter the market.

Of course Tesla or SpaceX could decide they want to start running ads?

I see almost 0 hate or negative messages on X. I must be doing something wrong/right or following different groups. I'd like to understand why some people aren't seeing it and if groups/regions are being targeted with different content.

Are you familiar with the recent activities of the owner, chairman, and CTO of X? People may object to X without having any concerns about the content of X.

Just say what “activities” you’re talking about. Your statement begs a lot of questions.

“Okay. Jewish [communities] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” the post read.

“I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much,” the user continued, adding, “You want truth said to your face, there it is.”

Musk replied: “You have said the actual truth"

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4312813-elon-musk-facing-...

I'm aware that many people would not classify this as anti-Semantic, but many others do. Those that do are not necessarily concerned about the content of X.

There’s a lot going on in those quotes and I don’t think it boils down to “Jews bad”.

Upstream a poster noted that they never saw anti-Semantic content in their feed. The whole of my point is that many people who object to X are not concerned about its content.

I ask people “what’s so deplorable about Musk?” and their complaints are always vague. He’s not in lockstep with MSNBC so he’s a nazi or something? idk makes no sense to me.

There's nothing vague about it. E.g. just to use the obvious example these stories are about: He lauded, without adding qualifications, a comment that arguably was over-broad and promoted hatred based on race/religion. Again, arguably; but also obviously - as in, that interpretation is an obvious potential one, even if you don't agree with it. And yet, knowing that, he still chose his action. He could have expressed a more reasonable opinion in any of various different ways, or in response to any of the various more reasonable criticisms of e.g. the ADL - but he explicitly chose not to.

So, you may agree or disagree with the position I'm describing as "arguable", but the position is not "vague", and it of course implies none of the hyperbole you've resorted to in painting your opponents.

How are the twitter alternatives doing? The last I checked maybe 6 months ago, it seemed like:

- mastadon was too complex for normal people

- threads was scary, due to meta, and tried to bury discussions about anything controversial

- bluesky was unable to handle the load, and was trickling invite codes out very slowly.

Has anything changed?

- Mastodon has become a bit friendlier for normal people to use, but it still has a very strong tech-leaning userbase that is very protective of the "culture" they've built so far. In some spaces, it can be openly hostile to anyone hoping for an old Twitter-like culture.

- Threads has eased up on the burying controversial topics and threads thing. But it still has, overall, very low engagement and very poor discoverability. Plus, it forces you to attribute your Instagram account to your Threads account, which ruins anonymity for many normal users. A hallmark of what made Twitter attractive.

- I've never bothered with Bluesky so I have no clue how they're doing right now.

Ignoring TikTok, I think things like Discord and Whatsapp Groups/Channels are soaking up a lot of what's been falling off Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc

The pendulum seems to be swinging back from consolidated forums to fragmented ones, without much concern over whether the undelying platforms are still all being hosted by one entity or are technologically decentralized.

Mastodon is a different product than what I use Twitter for, but for some use cases and communities seems pretty great. Zero chance of replacing Twitter.

Threads is terrible. Not infeasible that it makes it eventually but it’s just so bad I can’t see how it’s a serious threat.

Bluesky feels very different, maybe like the early days of Twitter and seems to possibly be sanely architected as well as having decent “safety” tools. Seems to be growing. One to watch, and the most likely replacement candidate, but not there yet.

I also have one eye on Nostr and another on Discord, WhatsApp, and YouTube.

Most likely though, I think the new Twitter will be Twitter. It’s not going anywhere, that I can see.

I stopped using it as most of the community I was interested in did too and I didn't like tacitly supporting Musk and his fans. I tried all three of the above, they are all not good for different reasons. In the end the alternative was just nothing. It turns out that none of the above is totally viable. We don't actually need this type of thing in the end.

Bluesky’s trickle of invites has become a flood; I gave out 10 over the last two days, and now that I check, it has just given me another one. I’ve got to imagine they’re not too far from just opening the floodgates.

I don’t entirely buy the “mastodon is too complex for normal people” thing; I follow lots of normal people on Mastodon. It is not all nerds.

Twitter and it's alternatives are dead. The truth no one seems to get is that the demographic shift does not bode well for Twitter or any of it's alts. The only demo with any growth on these platforms is 55+, 35 and under are moving to other forms of social media.

Bigger question is are there less users total in aggregate.

The entire premise might be toast.

X posted recently that usage is at an all time high.

Using a very specific, ill-defined metric that no-one has ever heard of before, so, y’know…

and why should we believe their claims?

I don’t know or care enough to question it. I am assuming them making false claims like that would open them up to some kind of lawsuits WRT advertisers or something?

Surprisingly, it looks like Bluesky is outperforming Mastodon:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today+5-y&q=bl...

If this holds true, it is a big win for interface over functionality and under-the-hood-technology.

Mastodon is based on a pretty good protocol (ActivityPub) and has many instances. But the usability is terrible. Bluesky on the other hand only has a single implementation and instance, and I find the protocol (The AT protocol) harder to grok. But the interface of the one instance is way better than any Mastodon instance I have seen.

Imagine when the big brands find out what is going on with Instagram. That place is WILD now if you doomscroll.

how has the infrastructure not keeled over and died? let alone anyone still wanting to use it

Antisemitism? This sort of talk is exhausting. Can we stop playing this petty and vindictive game already? That’s what’s bad for business.

This all seems so backwards to me.

I had cut my use of Twitter by probably >90% and uninstalled the app after they killed 3rd party clients, in a large part because that meant I was now seeing any ads at all.

I started paying for Premium+ and reinstalled the app once I realised it meant no ads, and am a regular user again now. I’d still rather be using Tweetbot but the “following” tab and ad-free is more than fine enough.

So really the ideal number of brands advertising on X is zero. I don’t care what big brands are doing, as long as they don’t do it anywhere near me.

If that means charging for a premium experience, or for businesses wanting to embed Tweets or analyse data, or whatever, instead of targeting innocent victims with advertising, great!

My complaint about X/Twitter remains that someone/some company/some government can still control who can post and what they can post. That control needs to be designed out entirely and replaced with safety tools that reduce the reach of objectionable content and allow people to collaborate over more restrictive blocklists to suit their sensibilities, without creating any point of control.

Given how niche Twitter would become if it was entirely subscription-based, I too am ok with this.

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