Is failing to give you lots and lots of money a crime? Elon Musk is trying to say so in his latest effort to prove that he is a complete idiot.
Elon Musk has established to the world that he is a complete idiot. Musk, who obtained his massive wealth through inheritance via slave labour at an emerald mining operation, has taken considerable hits to his credibility over the years.
His stupidity became world famous shortly after he bought Twitter for $44 billion. Shortly after, he took steps to run one of the biggest platforms into the ground. This after, among other things, killing API access, massively laying off the moderation teams, destroying the credibility of verified users, and repeatedly chasing off advertisers among other things.
While Twitter isn’t necessarily dead yet because it takes a heck of a lot of effort to kill one of the worlds largest platforms, Musk is certainly doing a heck of a job killing Twitter. The deteriorating situation on Twitter has given rise to porn botnets and right wing extremism hijacking the platform, forcing its users to leave the platform altogether. This, in turn, has given rise to alternative platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky.
Musk’s efforts have even gone so far as to harm one of his other operations, Tesla. A once rapidly growing car manufacturer that has since taken hits to its value thanks to Musk endorsing Trump – a presidential candidate that had declared war on electric vehicles. This while Musk’s attention appeared to be divided between Tesla and Twitter from the shareholders perspective. If Musk wanted to send a message to the world that he is a complete idiot, he is certainly succeeding. Little wonder why this meme was inspired:
Today, we learned, that all of this and more wasn’t enough for Musk to prove to the world what a complete idiot he is. Recently, we learned that Musk has launched another round off effort to prove to the world that he is a complete idiot. Apparently, he is now suing advertisers for railing to give him lots and lots of advertising dollars. From the BBC:
Elon Musk’s X/Twitter is suing a group of advertisers and major companies, accusing them of unlawfully agreeing to “boycott” the site.
It has filed a claim against the food giants Unilever and Mars, private healthcare company CVS Health, and renewable energy firm Orsted – along with a trade association called the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) – in a Texas court.
X claims they have deprived it of “billions of dollars” in revenue.
Legal experts say the case is unlikely to succeed as any collusion or agreement between companies will be hard to prove.
The lawsuit relates to the period in 2022 just after Mr Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, when advertising revenue dived.
Some companies had been wary of advertising on the platform as concerns rose that its new owner was not serious enough about removing harmful online content.
One of the concerns for advertisers is that their advertising has repeatedly appeared next to neo-nazi content. When someone posts antisemitic or Islamophobic content, there’s a good chance that such posts would be inadvertently sponsored by big name brands. Even after promises to ensure that this didn’t happen, the problems repeatedly happened, causing many advertisers to leave after giving Musk another chance. Musk, for his part, threatened to sue news organizations that reported this problem. This isn’t even getting into how Musk told advertisers to “go fuck” themselves when they had enough of the shenanigans Musk was pulling. Does Musk want advertisers or not?
Anyway, it’s unlikely that such a lawsuit is going anywhere. I mean, advertisers can freely choose who they will or won’t advertise with. There isn’t a law out there saying that advertisers must spend a certain amount of money on X/Twitter (and even if there were, it would get litigated for being obviously unconstitutional). So, what the heck kind of case does Musk think he has in the first place?
Others are also dismissing this lawsuit as ridiculous for all the obvious reasons. From TechDirt:
But none of this should matter. The entire crux of the case is the ridiculous belief that advertisers have no right to pull their advertisements from Twitter.
In announcing the lawsuit, Linda Yaccarino put out a laughably stupid video in which she (1) wore a necklace that said “free speech” and (2) argued that not advertising on ExTwitter was an attack on free speech (and, hilariously, on ExTwitter’s users). I mean, you can’t make this shit up:
These organizations targeted our company, and you, our users. The evidence and facts are on our side. They conspired to boycott X, which threatens our ability to thrive in the future. That puts your global town square — the one place that you can express yourself freely and openly — at long term risk. People are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is restricted.
I mean, what? Deciding not to give Elon money is somehow an attack on users of ExTwitter? Did anyone with half a brain read this through? The marketplace has rejected your terrible understanding of trust & safety, and advertisers (and users) have gone elsewhere. That’s free speech and the free market in action.
There’s no requirement that anyone advertise on your terrible platform.
And no, ExTwitter is not “the one place that you can express yourself freely and openly.” That’s the wider internet. There are many places that allow people to express themselves freely and openly, while ExTwitter has shown a frequent willingness to remove content that Elon dislikes.
Free speech rights include freedom to not associate with someone, and that’s all advertisers are doing. If the marketplace isn’t accepting of that, then, well, that’s the marketplace telling you your ideas suck.
I wish I could say this level of stupidity shown by Musk was a uniquely American thing, but I, unfortunately, know better. It’s not that dissimilar from the effort by Canada’s mainstream media saying that they are entitled to free money from platforms because they posted links on there – and that refusing to pay the mainstream media free money was somehow “theft” of their work. Musk saying that advertisers refusing to advertise on his platform is not really that far removed from that level of idiocy and entitlement.
At any rate, it’s difficult to see there being a case at all for Musk. Musk is suing because he is repeatedly screwing up his platform and wants to evade the consequences of his actions. What’s more, reasonable people are reacting to his latest action with a collective facepalm.
