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Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

Fyi... a commenter[1] in a reddit thread focused on whether the alleged collusion tried to "extort something of economic value from Twitter/X" -- such as forcing Twitter to offer cheaper ad pricing. An association watchdog like GARM telling their members that a social platform is unsafe for their brand and causing them to pull advertising from it isn't an example of extorting a thing of value from Twitter.

I don't know if his legal analysis is correct but it sounds interesting.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1enote4/...

https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1enote4/...

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Right — this use of the Sherman Act implies that advertisers were attempting to collude to force Twitter into lower ad prices for an eventual return, when all available evidence suggests that Twitter’s advertising segment is toxic to their public image and thus not worth any money at all.

I think the closest comparison would be 4chan complaining that they can’t charge more for ads: ads are cheap on 4chan not because of collusion, but because virtually no company wants their brand associated with 4chan’s content.

> when all available evidence suggests that Twitter’s advertising segment is toxic to their public image and thus not worth any money at all.

This is in contradiction with the argument put forward by the lawsuit: that brands were willing to boycott X only as long as they were sure their competitors were doing the same. If it were true that brands avoid X because "it's toxic to their public image", then they should be delighted to know that their competitors are still advertising there!

At the end of the day it's supply and demand. When company A stops advertising it creates less demand so company B gets a lower price which may make advertising "worthwhile" again.

Assuming that companies were just distributing their marketing budget elsewhere twitter essentially became an outside option for companies that were willing to bear the "risks".

"worth less money" is not the same as "worth no money at all" as the gp wrote. If X were toxic to brand value, ads on X could only sell for a negative amount of money.

That's not really the operative part of my comment. It's my opinion that Twitter advertising is worth nothing, but it's clear that it's still worth something to the people who still pay for it. Just not as much as Twitter thinks it's worth.

> it's still worth something to the people who still pay for it.

Sorry, you're being deliberately obtuse here. If what the lawsuit claims is true (irrespective of whether it's legal or not), ads on Twitter are still worth something also to those who DO NOT pay for them, because otherwise they would not need to collude with their competitors to make sure they're also boycotting.

I'm not saying that this can be proved to be an anti-competitive behaviour. Just that it destroys the narrative of "ads on Twitter are a negative value for the brands that advertise there".

The question I have is how many advertisers that pulled out, that actively posted on Twitter under a brand account, ceased posting under said account and/or deleted it outright? I would assume if Twitter is too toxic of a platform to advertise on, then they would want to cease brand association entirely no?

My understanding is that Twitter allows for username reuse, so a major company deleting their account would be an even greater brand risk than just letting it go idle.

(But even if the account doesn’t go idle: I think there’s a significant difference in kind between a company’s account being generally active and paying for advertising to appear next to increasingly extreme and negative content.)

These are effectively different spaces, all major corporations will have accounts on Twitter and post stuff so you're in good company, or at least amongst a broad variety of users.

Sponsored content would be side by side with (last time I checked) crypto scams and porn. There's actually a risk of devaluing your brand by promoting it alongside tat.

> Sponsored content would be side by side with (last time I checked) crypto scams and porn. There's actually a risk of devaluing your brand by promoting it alongside tat.

Are you saying X/Twitter doesn't let you choose whether or not your ad is displayed with adult content? Or doesn't let you choose content categories to run it against or not?

I thought most advertising platforms let advertisers choose which content categories to run (or not run) the ad for–e.g. "I only want this ad displayed on content related to motor vehicles, fishing or firearms". Or even keywords – e.g. "don't run this ad on any content mentioning [competitor_name]"

Is being placed next to other random content a real risk? Or is it just portrayed like that by a vocal minority that likes to deplatform? I don’t see why a random person outside of HN or political activism would associate two different pieces of content on the same page.

It's not random though, it's the determined content for Twitter's target marketing demographics. Wrestling had this issue for years trying to attract new advertisers. The ones that were already there were firmly for less in demand demographics that more greatly represented wrestling's historical viewership and their presence had the effect of making it a less attractive option for higher status brands.

A random person outside of HN mightn't consciously notice anything, a marketer absolutely will and they'll notice how all these kinds of factors will impact the efficacy of a campaign actually increasing sales rather than just being viewed

I don't really see how this would be that relevant. A corporate account making announcements and ads are pretty different in content, cost, perception, etc.

The conduct that the Sherman Act prohibits is broader than what you are describing. But even if it were not, the thing of value that is allegedly being extorted here is control over brand safety policies. The advertisers are accused by X of colluding with competitors to use their combined market power to deprive X of more revenue than if each advertiser made its decision independently.

I don't necessarily agree with the lawsuit, but those are the legal issues at play.

It would divert the ad spend from X to the NYT and other traditional media though, so you could argue they have something to gain from the boycott. News outlets have lost a lot of money to social media companies the past two decades.

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