Musk is doing WHAT?

Being rich doesn't make you smart, in fact it can make you a chowderheaded jackass.

I am super busy with work, hence some sparsity of posts (or meaty posts) as I take a slight break, then I read this headline:

(gifted link to the article)

Wha wha wha wut dis I just read? A Broligarch has the audacity to actually file a lawsuit to essentially force advertisers to stop being meanie poopie-heads and to come back and advertise on Twitter¹?

Are we in bizarro world where up is down, and left is right?

I guess if you have $228B dollars, you can help some lawyer-dudes finance their grandchildren’s college, or to buy a second beach house if your fee-fees are hurt.

All this is because when he bought Twitter and laid off about 75% of the staff, including all the trust and safety team, you know, the people who were entrusted with keeping the most odious people and their bilious posts away from the sterling silver advertisers, the ones who actually care that their product placement ads are not next to nazi’s spewing nazi shit².

I mean, Johnson & Johnson really doesn’t want their paid advertising associated with Nick Fuentes. Can’t really blame them.

The suit, filed in federal court in Texas, claims that the coalition, known as GARM, “conspired” with leading brands, including CVS, Unilever, Mars and the Danish energy company Orsted, to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue” that were owed to X, then known as Twitter, in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media company in 2022.

So, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a group that looks out for the interests of these brands who spend $$$ to advertise, is advising their client companies to not bother (or to boycott) Twitter because of the festering cesspool that Twitter has become to feed the Ego of the most fragile male on the planet, Elon Musk.

Allow me to refresh your memory from last November:

Yeah, that is the “smartest man in the universe” right there.

Clearly the “Go fuck yourself” was pretty effective, as ad revenue has fallen like a lead balloon, leaving Musk with no choice but to call out his white-shoe legal eagles to get into a slap-fight.

With the lawsuit, X effectively declared war on advertisers, which provide the bulk of the social media company’s revenue. Since Mr. Musk acquired the company and promised to usher in a new era of unfettered free speech, many advertisers have limited their spending on X, concerned by reports of rising hate speech and misinformation there. By pursuing legal action against GARM, Mr. Musk continued to break with the leaders of other social media companies, who have forged close relationships with advertisers and been responsive to their concerns about offensive online content.

Gee, I spent $44M on this dumpster fire, I fired all the people that made it even slightly tolerable for the average user, welcomed back a shit-ton of shitheels who were banned for being obnoxious racist, antisemitic, nazi trash, and now I am surprised that advertisers are boycotting me?

I mean for fuck’s sake, YOU TOLD THEM TO GO FUCK THEMSELVES, and they promptly did, taking their ad spends to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and other places that are not shitholes.

“To the extent that Elon hadn’t already burned all bridges and ties with the entire advertising community, I don’t see how this will get any advertisers to come back to X,” said Ruben Schreurs, the chief strategy officer at Ebiquity, a marketing and media consulting firm. “It’s a last-ditch effort to force brands who don’t want to be in the cross hairs of this kind of legal action to return to the platform.”

GARM, which represents major brands that are responsible for more than 90 percent of global advertising spending, encouraged advertisers to avoid X after Mr. Musk bought it. In the wake of the takeover, 18 GARM members stopped advertising on the platform altogether, according to the lawsuit. Dozens of others reduced their spending by 70 percent or more, the filing said.

I mean, what the fuck did Musk expect? How bad is revenue there?

The effects on X’s revenue have been severe. In the second quarter of this year, X earned $114 million in revenue in the United States, a 25 percent decline from the first quarter and a 53 percent decline from the same period the previous year, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times. The company aims to reach $190 million in U.S. revenue during the third quarter, bolstered by advertising associated with the Olympics, football and political campaigns, the documents said — but that target would still set X’s quarterly earnings at 25 percent less than they were last year.

Because of reduced advertiser spending, X was forced to drop the price of its ads, the lawsuit said. But even though its ads were inexpensive compared with other social media platforms, advertisers did not come back.

For the record, prior to the sale to Musk, Twitter did about $4.5B in revenue, about 90% of it was display ads. That means that they were clocking about a billion dollars per quarter. Last quarter, they booked $114M in ad revenue.

I don’t care how many of your staff you have terminated, that is a revenue hole that can’t be fixed with some legal paper that is going to get fucking laughed out of the court so goddamn fast his head will spin.

Of course, he is probably counting on Trump to win in the fall, and that will force those mean ol’ advertising firms to come crawling back, and to pay a premium.

(sorry, I was laughing when I wrote that). I need more anti-laugh juice to continue this.

This is the first time I have ever seen someone sue that because they are choosing to not buy their product (ads) that it is anti-competitive. Maybe Lina Kahn should look into this. It might be a good story for the FTC Christmas party.

Of course, Jim Jordan (R-mental institute) feels compelled to weigh in with his mighty intellect and small D energy:

In July, the House Judiciary Committee, led by Representative Jim Jordan, a Republican of Ohio, released a report that said GARM had attempted to influence the kinds of content that appeared online by “starving disfavored content, or even entire platforms, of advertising dollars needed to survive.” And last week, the committee expanded its inquiry into GARM’s activities, sending letters to more than 40 member companies that asked them to preserve documents and answer questions about their relationship with the group.

Uh, look ass-munch, advertisers have options of where to place their ads, and if a site is so toxic that nobody besides Gold pushers, doomsday preppers, and Ivermectin purveyors wants to take any ad space, you can’t force them to use their $$$ to buy ad space on Twitter.

Goddamn, the stupid, it burns. Of course, this is par for the course for Musk:

Mr. Musk has made a habit of taking legal action against X’s critics, particularly when their critique hurts the company’s revenue. Last year, X sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate, or C.C.D.H., which documented a rise of hate speech on the social media platform after Mr. Musk’s takeover. X also sued Media Matters, an advocacy organization, in November, after it published research showing that ads on X appeared next to antisemitic content.

A federal judge dismissed the case against C.C.D.H. in March, ruling that the lawsuit was an attempt to penalize the group for speaking negatively about the company, and that its work was protected under the law. X is appealing the decision. A trial in the Media Matters case is set for 2025.

I will save a bottle of Dom for when Media Matters eviscerates Musk.

1. Yeah, I am deadnaming Twitter, deal with it.

2. I am told that Twitter is now just about all Nazi shit all the time, with Musk himself amplifying the worst of their antisemitism and racist screeds. I left last spring and I am much saner without it, even if I miss my product management peeps.

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