X, the company formerly known as Twitter, has filed a lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a group that represents many major advertisers.
In an open letter on X, CEO Linda Yaccarino accused GARM and its members of carrying out an “illegal boycott” of the social media platform.
A Message to X Users pic.twitter.com/6bZOYPhWVa
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) August 6, 2024
“To put it simply, people are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is undermined and some viewpoints are not funded over others as part of an illegal boycott,” Yaccarino argued.
“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 also said the boycott has cost X “billions of dollars.”
Despite this, she claims daily Twitter usage has increased by 25 percent since August 2022, with daily video views, in particular, rising 45 percent since last year.
“We tried being nice for 2 years and got nothing but empty words,” said X owner Elon Musk in his own post. “Now, it is war.”
It should be noted, however, that both Yaccarino and Musk failed to address common criticisms of X that would have naturally led advertisers to leave the platform.
In particular, there’s been a massive rise in hate speech on X since Musk acquired it, with people like controversial influencer Andrew Tate — who’s being investigated for rape and human trafficking — being freely allowed to use racial slurs. (However, Musk’s X draws the line at “cisgender,” which it claims is a “slur” — but not, you know, something like the n-word.)
https://t.co/UKFq3g9zaT pic.twitter.com/hmbu2G726p
— Gary Dunion 🍉 (@garydunion) August 6, 2024
Last year, Disney CEO Bob Iger attributed the company’s decision to pull advertising from X to one of Musk’s anti-Semitic comments. “And by him taking the position that he took in quite a public manner, we just felt that the association with that position and Elon Musk and X was not necessarily a positive one for us,” said Iger.
How did Musk respond? Contrary to his “we tried being nice for 2 years” assertion, he simply told Iger and other former advertisers to “f*** off” and even called for the executive to be fired.
So far, Toronto-based Rumble, an online video platform popular among conservative and far-right users, has said it will join X in suing advertisers over the so-called “illegal boycott.” Musk called on other companies to follow suit.
Image credit: CBS
Source: Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX)
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