Elon Musk declares "it is war" on ad industry as X sues over "illegal boycott"
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I'm not not inclined to support anyone demanding more advertising as a point of lawfare.
Their claim is that a ideologically motivated organization called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media was used to create an illegal cartel agreement between advertisers to shut them out. I think there's merit to that, this wasn't just independent companies deciding not to advertise there, this was a coordinated effort, brazenly so, people were cheering about it at the time. There's a case to be made at the very least, let's see how it plays out.
I myself have been part of a company that provided advice to subscribers, it wasn't a cartel and not all subscribers followed the leads provided.
The Register is UK based but captured the essence of the whine at play here, Musk told advertisers to fsck off, they did, and now he is upset they did so.
That action itself will undermine Musk's case .. maybe it was a cartel action, probably it was not unexpected follow through in understandable reaction to Musk's attitudes and open armed welcoming and support of the kind of people that stoke far right rioting.
As you say, we'll see how it plays out in court.
Coordinating an ideologically motivated boycott is totally legal. Where they'd run into problems is if the coordination was meant to e.g. lower X's prices.
For example: Liz Cheney is someone I would never vote for (not that I have had to make this decision), yet I applaud her role in the J6 hearings, and her attitude toward Trump in general.
Besides the usual confirmation that Musk is going broke / prison soon-ish, and that explains the increasingly erratic actions, I wonder what winning looks like here ?
Let's say they win - they will get some compensation for past damages. But what about the future ? We're going to force companies to advertise on their platform ? Like a % based on users ? It all seems quite absurd to me.
I think an overall perception and strategy of the right now is that many institutions in America support liberal outcomes and that in order to change that you have to attack these institutions.
So either get rid of GARM or take over GARM and change the standards of what safe media is.
As I understand it advertising benefits from Twitter are notoriously hard to quantify in the first place.
I’m narrowly empathetic to the idea that we shouldn’t starve certain view points (though I think that suggesting that there are only two “significant” viewpoints in America cemented in law is a very bad precedent) but these kind of freedoms are also what makes America so good for business.
[0] https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/how-worlds-...
Edit: Fixed prose.
Chilling what discourse? To which specific discourse and topics are you referring?
I'm not being snarky here, I don't use Twitter/X/whatever or other "Social Media" sites like FB/IG. Nor do I use any federated ActivityPub[0] sites.
As such, I'm really not sure what speech you believe is being "suppressed" by advertisers.
What's more IIUC, Musk/X are claiming that advertisers should be required to advertise (and pay for those advertisements) on Twitter/X. Unless I'm missing something important, that makes absolutely no sense.
It would be like McDonald's suing you because you don't buy their food, or Tesla suing you because you bought a Chevy instead of a Tesla.
And so, assuming I'm not missing anything important (am I?), the whole premise is risible[1]. No one owes Musk/X/Twitter any advertising revenue, and forcing folks to pay to run ads where they don't want to run such ads is ridiculous -- or is it your contention that advertisers (or anyone else, for that matter -- since if they can be forced to do this, so can you or me) must pay Elon Musk?
I'd be very interested to hear how such a position is compatible with capitalism and a free society. Do tell.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/risible
Edit: Added the missing links. Added reference '[1]' to one link.
Agreed. It doesn’t. Companies are free to spend their ad dollars how they choose to. It’s a free country last I checked.
If this doesn’t track for you did causality break in the universe?
I take great pains to avoid viewing/hearing ads anywhere and wish that scum would just go away.
I'm not "rooting for the ad industry"[0]. In fact, I wish it was abolished or at least heavily regulated.
That said, forcing folks to endorse speech they don't wish to endorse, and/or forcing folks to pay to endorse such speech (showing an ad next to a tweet serves as a de facto endorsement of that tweet) is wrong.
And as much as I hate advertisers, I love freedom of expression and freedom of (or, in this case, from) association for everyone, including those triple-damned advertisers.
Ehh, suppose advertisers didn't want to have ads appear next to tweets by users of specific ethinicities or religious affiliations? Do you think they should have a choice there, or should they not be given one?
I mean, maybe at social platform level granularity it's just economic freedom of association. But you made a generic argument (or at least that's how it reads)
All that said, we're talking about a specific platform here (X) and you're moving the goal posts, which just smacks of bad faith. This is your last feeding from me. Now get back under your bridge!
Rather than sue a bunch of advertisers why doesn’t Elon, who is clearly a once in a generation business genius, execute on his plan and show the world why we don’t need advertisers?
If your customer doesn't like what you're selling then they're not going to buy it. And when you then tell your customers to go fuck themselves your business is unlikely to thrive.
If Musk doesn't like the fact that Twitter is no longer a compelling product for his customers then he either needs to fix the product so it's something his customers want or change the business model to no longer be advertising based or get out of the social media business altogether.