Elon: Moooom, make the advertisers pay me
Mom: Well maybe quit being a little shit and being a whiny little spoiled bastard, hmmm?
You can’t sue people for… making normal business decisions? You’d think Musk would understand that if he was a real businessman, LOL RIGHT he’s not.
You can sue people for choosing not to do business with you?
Musk is such a fucking baby. He has no basis for this. He made major changes to the site, including a complete rebrand, and advertisers left. That’s the fucking free market, and he’s gonna sue?
He can sue, but he won’t win in any sane court.
You can sue people for choosing not to do business with you?
You can sue people for whatever you want. But that’s not what they’re suing them for, if you actually read the article. They’re suing for collusion.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a video announcement that the lawsuit stemmed in part from evidence uncovered by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which she said showed a “group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott” against X.
The Republican-led committee had a hearing last month looking at whether current laws are “sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.”
I don’t know if that’s illegal or not.
It would make an interesting precedent. Bud Light can then sue over the boycott with the whole LGBTQ thing because some didn’t buy their beer. Celebrities being cancelled can try to sue magazines for not running their articles or ads. It’s going to be such an unholy mess.
Did you just not read the comment you replied to? None of those things involve any sort of collusion.
Ah yes, the pinnacle of small govt: legislating how advertisers spend their money when they won’t spend that money on Republican platforms
Elon Musk: Your honor these mean jerks won’t pay to advertise in my nazi bar and it hurts my feels.
Musk being shocked they don’t like his Apartheid Ad Network.
I hope exhibit A of the defences evidence is Elon telling them all to go fuck themselves.
Elon’s temper tantrum…
ETA: He really is a 13yo in a 53yo body.
I had to skim quite a few down the search results to find an article that described what it meant by suing for “illegal boycott” in more detail.
https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/elon-musk-x-sues-advertisers-garm-boycott-1236097110/
X’s lawsuit alleged that the advertisers’ “boycott” violated Section 1 the U.S.’s Sherman Act antitrust law, which broadly prohibits agreements among distinct actors that unreasonably restrain trade, “by withholding purchases of digital advertising from Twitter.”
“The conduct of Defendants and their co-conspirators alleged herein is per se illegal, or, in the alternative, illegal under the Rule of Reason or ‘quick look’ analytical framework,” the X lawsuit said. “There are no procompetitive effects of the group boycott, which was not reasonably related to, or reasonably necessary for, any procompetitive objectives of the GARM Brand Safety Standards.”
The “unlawful conduct” alleged by X is the subject of “an active investigation” by the House of Representatives’ Committee on the Judiciary, the lawsuit said. The committee’s interim report issued on July 10 concluded that, “The extent to which GARM has organized its trade association and coordinates actions that rob consumers of choices is likely illegal under the antitrust laws and threatens fundamental American freedoms. The information uncovered to date of WFA and GARM’s collusive conduct to demonetize disfavored content is alarming.”
But what would it even change? The businesses would no longer be able to make an explicit agreement, probably have to pay a fine, but can they be forced to advertise or will they just proceed to coincidentally all decide not to advertise without explicitly colluding?
This requires proof for collusion, does it not?
I would think. And if that proof exists, it will come up at the appropriate time during legal proceedings. I’m skeptical there is any.
I guess they could call the entire existence of GARM to be collusion; companies banding together to “punish” companies who don’t follow their guidelines. But X is (was?) a voluntary member of GARM, so it seems that would be a difficult argument for them to make without implicating themselves too.
If Musk is part of that collusion, then is it still a conspiracy?
He told them to fuck off, they fucked off.
A House Republican lead committee said that the boycott is illegal but also said they don’t know if there’s really a law against it.
Republicans: Corporations should have freedom of expression (Citizens United)!
Also Republicans: Corporations shouldn’t be able to choose what platforms to run ads on!
You can sue your… customers, basically for choosing not to do business with you!?
Even if he wins a one-time payment (no way), how could this do anything but make everyone not want to advertise on Twitter??
To quote Legal Eagle on Nebula: it depends. Suppose that the customers had a deal with Twitter granting them special pricing, but on the condition that they spend a certain amount during a given period. Then the customers could be breaching the terms of the contract by dropping out halfway through. I’m not saying that’s what’s happening here, and IANAL of course, but it seems plausible to me.
Elon is the dumbest genius 🤦♂️
You can in case of protected group discrimination sue the business, but suing customers is something new.
You don’t understand. Bad publicity is good publicity.
Or maybe, in this particular case… No publicity.
No publicity is good bad publicity like… Well yeah you might have a point there
My head-cannon from the lawyers going something like this.
“Thank you Mr. Musk for the lawsuit, we had a lot of fun reading it. Especially the parts you drew (I liked the blue dinosauar). Before we begin, we would like to let you know the legal fees for this case are coming directly from the portion of the advertising budget we allocated to the website formerly known as Twitter”
Probably more entertaining than the actual cases.
he’s gonna sue twitter users for using adblockers on the site isn’t he?
Who does he think he is, Israel?
Takes one apartheid asshole to recognize another eh? Lol
Just like you exercised your free speech to give Trump’s PAC a gratuity of $45 million, advertisers exercised their free speech by not spending it on twitter.
Aren’t you a free speech absolutist? Why are you trying to force advertisers to exercise their free speech on your platform?
Because he’s only a free speech absolutist for himself and for people who agree with him
Yeah, he doesn’t care about free speech. He just wants to be able to say whatever he wants without consequences because he knows he’s an asswipe
Wait. What?
Conservatives are hypocrites and morons.
But, hey, if he wants to argue that money isn’t expression and corporations don’t have freedom of speech I won’t try to stop him accidentally overturning Citizens United.
Even if he wins, that still wouldn’t even work, the fucking lemon, you can’t force people to buy your products.
How dare u boycott me >:3
