X sues Lego, Nestlé and more brands, accusing them of advertising boycott | Hacker News Reader

X sues Lego, Nestlé and more brands, accusing them of advertising boycott

npr.org

68 pointsunsnap_biceps45 comments

Are companies legally obligated to use X for advertising? Can someone explain to me what about a boycott is unlawful or unfair?

The argument is that the brands worked together to form the boycott, and that is the what makes it illegal/unfair. Even that feels like a stretch to be lawsuit worthy and even more of a stretch to being a winnable lawsuit.

I suppose it could be seen as collusion.

But is boycotts illegal? Consumer boycotts aren't illegal, so why is commercial boycott illegal?

Perhaps. For example it may be illegal to boycott Israel in some jurisdictions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws

There are specific cases where coordination is illegal. The examples the FTC uses are all cases where businesses colluded to raise prices – for example, retailers boycotting manufacturers who also sold to a cheaper catalog reseller - and it’s hard to imagine that applying here since the objections weren’t tied to ad rates or kickbacks from a competing social media company. It’s not market distortion if Lego Group chooses not to buy ads on any platform where they can be displayed next to hate speech and Nestle says “us too”.

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

The big question here is whether the Republicans who run the FTC and courts are now willing to compel payment to a key donor’s service.

Basically rich, powerful people feel empowered to use the legal system as a cudgel. Our new president has shown this approach works- as he has extracted multi million dollar settlements from Facebook and abc for hurting his feelings.

I’ve had this done to me by a spiteful neighbor. It’s a terrible place to be, as defending yourself - even against a totally baseless lawsuit - can easily bankrupt an individual. Businesses find its cheaper to pay off than fight, as they are only focused on the bottom line (see for example the success of patent trolls, until brave individuals like Lee Cheng fought back, regardless of the cost)

It's a bit more subtle than that. They're innovating on the frontiers of the science of bribery. If you get someone to pay you $25 million to "settle a civil lawsuit" that you filed against them, it's not a bribe, it's a settlement. It's effectively legally indemnified no matter how ridiculous the lawsuit is (and given that it's a collaborative effort of sorts, the reasonableness of the lawsuit is irrelevant).

Oh, absolutely. And they’ve managed to create multiple diverse income streams as well- so if this little racket is shut down, well we have a shitcoin for sale, or some branded sneakers, how about a bible or watch? Heck why not just have a publicly traded company with your name on it and no business fundamentals as another vehicle for grift.

Any fraction of one of those schemes would have doomed a previous administration. Now we’ve become numb. It’s disappointing.

So boycotting bad but racketeering/extortion good?

That seems to be the current narrative.

Oof. This is incredibly bleak, but also a good insight. Is the "settlement == bribe" comparison yours or did you read it somewhere?

Meta settled a lawsuit with president Trump for $25 million. He was suing them for violating his first amendment for banning his account (along with many other platforms) in the wake of January 6th 2021. This was a completely baseless case which he would have lost had it actually been fought, so many have interpreted this decision to settle as a form of bribe payment. This is especially suspicsious since Zuckerberg's hard pivot towards trying to get in the good graces of the new adminitration.

It seems there’s an economic argument against paying a bribe because paying one opens the door to more.

But such long term thinking conflicts with quarterly targets.

I'd agree if this bribe was made to anyone else, but the reasoning here is a bit different: everyone is afraid of Trump making an example of them. Remember that the new president has stated many times over the last years that he wants to throw Zuckerberg in jail, that he wants to ban media and social networks that are "unfair" to him.

This wasn't a bribe to settle a lawsuit, it was a bribe to get on the good side of an authoritarian who campaigned on being a tyrant.

It is a bit more subtle, as a better analogy is “protection racket” ala the Mob.

Paramount for example is implying that they may settle the lawsuit Trump filed against cbs as this would help their chances to approve a proposed merger with Skydance.

Funny story, my lady's landlord has been doing some blatantly illegal stuff, and then taking her to court. Instead she went on the offensive and suddenly the landlord is extremely willing to fix all the problems and such.

Being on the offensive is far better than on the defensive legally it seems.

It’s a human thing:

Treat people with intimidation, and they’ll be nice to you out of fear.

Treat people nicely, and they’ll walk over you.

(Treat people with cautious respect, and they don’t know where to put you in the hierarchy. Or something like that.)

> Our new president has shown this approach works- as he has extracted multi million dollar settlements from Facebook and abc for hurting his feelings.

Meta chief is simping over the new president, so to get into his good books they settled as well as announced those new policies.

Agreed, this is fishing by Elon to see if advertisers coordinated their boycott, which would arguably be illegal.

Coordination isn’t illegal on its own: only when it distorts the market. If they found that advertisers were boycotting X until ad rates lowered or because Facebook was offering rewards, that’d be one thing but there’s no law (yet) requiring them to spend money because an oligarch needs to pay off his loans.

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

He's an id loosely covered with skin. By now it's not necessary to stop and wonder if something like this makes legal or moral sense.

Much of what is going on right now makes sense through the lense of narcissistic injury and the associated narcissistic rage

The mental fitness bar needs to be higher for the people with access to nuclear launch codes.

The FTC has a page on this (https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...). Companies have a right to independently boycott whoever they’d like, but coordinated boycotts raise antitrust concerns, and Twitter argues that this boycott was strongly coordinated through the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. (The defendants deny this IIRC.)

This comment needs more traction as it explains why this seemingly nonsensical claim may have merit.

Yes. If they do not advertise on X Trump will invade their countries. I also noticed that they did not donate to his inauguration. The case does not look good for them.

Musk has major influence in the legal system. The law is what he demands it is. There's a reason why everyone is settling with trump, gotta kiss the ring.

Logically, your argument absolutely falls square into freedom of speech territory. But we do not live in logical times.

> Musk has major influence in the legal system. The law is what he demands it is.

What is the reasoning for this? If a law needs to be changed it first needs to be drawn up, needs to go through congress, etc.

I wonder, why not expose their “free speech” hypocrisy by signing up to advertise on X with ads that do nothing but taunt Elon? Then, when they ban your account, sue X that they won’t let you advertise on their platform.

Probably because suing X for not allowing a company to advertise on their platform would be fully meritless and have no basis in the law.

And what legal basis does X have in their suit against former advertisers?

Also the current president did successfully extract a settlement from meta for kicking him off their platform for what meta considered at the time violations of their ToS. Not sure what the legal basis was there either.

The fact that some people are abusing the justice system for their own purposes doesn't suggest to me that everybody should start doing it.

Ah, that’s different then. I am sympathetic to your viewpoint but unfortunately it seems that we no longer are playing on a level field.

We have never been on a level playing field. The entire reason that many legislators have implemented anti-SLAPP laws are to provide avenues for this kind of legal action that attempts to use the courts to punish entities for expressive activity.

It’s objectively gotten worse over the past decade+. Unfortunately the anti-slapp laws are fragmented and therefore don’t have the intended effect. Plaintiffs can easily venue shop, and there is no slapp protection in federal court. Even if you do live in a state with an anti-slapp statute, you may still end up with hundreds of thousands of legal fees if the plaintiff just dismisses the suit (essentially a legal DoS). See for example https://horwitz.law/victims-of-slapp-suits-cannot-recover-th...

Not to mention the very lawmakers who need to pass such laws on a national level are the very ones abusing the courts. Devin Nunes is one of the most egregious offenders.

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/truth-social-ceo-devin-...

At this point I feel that this is as close to an end run around the 1a as you can get.

I wish you'd take the extra couple minutes to type out your thoughts before submitting, rather than rapidly sending a 2 line reply and then immediately going back to flesh it out into a full thought.

I think we generally agree more than we disagree, but it's difficult to have a dialog when while I'm typing a response, your existing comment morphs underneath me.

Sorry. I am typing on my phone and researching on a tiny screen is difficult. I don’t have any anger toward you- I am passionate about this subject (although not sure what I personally can do about it)

I’m curious to hear more about your viewpoint. I’ll refrain from editing my comments.

I think the things you're calling out are accurate. There are more people, and especially more prominent/influential people, who are willing to press the seams of the justice system to use it for personal grievances or vendettas.

The existing protections against this are not sufficient: where anti-SLAPP laws exist, they're often not expansive enough to cover the novel ways that the courts are being weaponized, and where they don't exist, plaintiffs continue to venue shop to improve their position.

That still doesn't suggest to me that the solution is for otherwise well-intentioned actors to steer into the skid. At best, Lego/Nestle/etc would make a political point and then lose their case. At worst, they would win, setting damaging precedent for future suits by the very people they're trying to oppose.

Maybe we should though, if we have no way of effectively punishing it. Develop a policy of mutually assured destruction towards actions that are unethical but legally by-the-book.

> And what legal basis does X have in their suit against former advertisers?

Thus, the article...

They didn't boycott, it was just a pause.

It may be that X is just trying to prompt a loyal consumer reaction and hurt their profits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com