X's Sales Pitch: Give Us Your Ad Business or We'll Sue | Hacker News Reader

X's Sales Pitch: Give Us Your Ad Business or We'll Sue

wsj.com

90 pointsboplicity15 comments

"People close to X said the platform pressed vendors that were supplying it with goods or services to spend money on advertising. X is a customer of Amazon Web Services, its cloud-computing unit, and had past-due bills for that. X used those unpaid bills as leverage during negotiations, according to people familiar with the matter."

So Elon doesn't pay his bills either. Not surprising. I wish Amazon just cut services until bills paid, see who actually has leverage in that situation when nothing operates to run ads on and the cesspool can't spread.

Of course he doesn't. You don't get ultra wealthy by being fair. I would like to introduce the "Ascensional Triad Theory of Success".

In order to be extremely successful, you must have 2 of the following 3 ingredients:

   * Unusual skill
   * Serendipity
   * Ethical laxity

The Russian maxim "Never ask a Billionaire how he made his first million" comes to mind.

Probably less worried about losing the suit than ending up like Harvard and Perkins Coïe. This is so hilariously like mob rule.

https://archive.ph/glCE5

I wonder if the additional ad revenue X gets by suing companies that aren't advertising with them will be enough to cover the expenses of suing companies that aren't advertising with them.

Well, they’re hoping that all these companies just fold. Which, let’s face it, they might: companies aren’t at all known for bravery. Still, it probably would have been better for X to sue before Musk and Trump had their Very Public Breakup, since there would be that additional threat of government intervention.

I thought they were back together as of today?

I dunno, I have trouble keeping up with celebrity relationships.

Now that Musk has fallen out with Trump (if real) he can't rely on Trump's corruption to help him.

Yeah, this would have been a much better shakedown a few weeks ago.

Interesting move from such a self-proclaimed champion of meritocracy. Especially rich buddies helping push companies into capitulating.

> Activist investor Nelson Peltz, who has been a Unilever board member since 2022 and has had a close relationship with Musk, helped Unilever negotiate its deal

In Soviet Muskland, you do not send overdue accounts to collections. Collections sends overdue accounts to you.

After Musk's purchase of twitter, I recall Musk making claims that there was a lot of bot traffic, and the numbers that had been used for valuation purposes were inflated. Even if companies weren't afraid of their brand being tainted by being shown alongside distasteful or offensive content, or by being on the platform of a highly divisive political figure who seems to create daily PR crises, isn't there still a basic question of "how many of the impressions that we buy are shown to actual humans?"

According to Elon Musk: "Disney (...) are the world’s biggest example of go woke, go broke" Does this mean that there is legal precedent to force him and others to buy their new movies?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1730843646511988779

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