The social media platform formerly known as Twitter just sued a global advertising alliance and several major companies, accusing them of unlawfully conspiring to shun the social network and intentionally causing it to lose revenue. Elon Musk accused the defendants of a “massive advertiser boycott”. Imagine the audacity of these companies, not wanting their ads to appear next to pro-Nazi content! Via The Guardian:
X filed the lawsuit in federal court in Texas on Tuesday against the World Federation of Advertisers as well as the companies individually.
“We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war,” Musk tweeted on Tuesday.
The lawsuit said advertisers, acting through a World Federation of Advertisers initiative called Global Alliance for Responsible Media, collectively and maliciously withheld “billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from X. The company said they acted against their own economic self-interests in a conspiracy against the platform that violated US antitrust law.
In a statement on Tuesday about the lawsuit, X’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, said: “People are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is constricted. No small group of people should monopolize what gets monetized.”
“The consequence – perhaps the intent – of this boycott was to seek to deprive X’s users, be they sports fans, gamers, journalists, activists, parents or political and corporate leaders, of the Global Town Square,” she wrote.
[…] Ad revenue at X slumped for months after Musk bought the company in 2022. Brands had been wary of rapid changes initiated under Musk’s ownership. Watchdog groups have catalogued a sharp rise in antisemitic content on X, including ads running beside posts expressing pro-Nazi sentiments, after Musk gutted the social network’s content moderation teams. A suit filed by X against one such organization, Media Matters, is scheduled for trial in April 2025.
How. Fucking. Dare. They. Don’t they know who he is? No one puts Elon “Free Speech” Musk in the corner!
