According to Texas AG Ken Paxton, choosing not to advertise on ExTwitter deserves being investigated, and Elon is all for it. Remember when these guys pretended to be for free markets and free speech?
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
We're going to be hemorrhaging money over Elon's executive inadequacy. Space garbage. Socmed garbage. EV garbage. Inefficiency garbage. When Elon fails, someone else has to pay.
I recall someone saying "Go F yourselves. We don't want you." Seems like he wants them so bad he's sending daddy to beat them up. Don't do drugs, kids. 😆
If you are going to use your social media platform to unfairly push for a particular social platform or political candidate, not to equally provide advertisements for both sides, you should have NO SAY or right to complain when companies don't want to support your platform with advertisements, etc.
Paxton's words are so loaded - "boycott?" As if companies got together in dark rooms wearing their hoods and conspired to not advertise. How stupid! Proving this form of conspiracy would be so difficult.
Paxton has a lot of criminal baggage. His financial fraud indictment is still open AND he faced impeachment for fraud and abuse of power by his own party members.
After the Gaetz-Gate fiasco, no way was 🟠-man going to risk another loser appointment.
If Paxton were successful in pursuing this, would that mean that any business that placed television advertisements mainly on Fox would need to advertise broadly equally on other television channels?
So let’s think this thru. If I own a taco stand and I advertise on one radio station. Would this mean I have to advertise on every radio station in my city? The country?
Such stupid waste of time and money. Considering Twitter sucks and is demonstrably toxic to brands, any company deciding not to advertise there has a rock solid business reason not.
Oh, Good. The (co)Head of Department of Government Efficiency will be advocating an investigation of people and advertisers leaving his platform by using government and taxpayer money. Hint: He could “sue” using his own money and attorneys.
Attorneys General and Exploitative Capitalists calling for government intervention to stifle corporate “free speech” in advertising, and mandating where they need to spend their advertising dollars???
Can we just get to the part where all the MAGA...along with the rest of us get poorer and they realize what they did? Probably not. It's about religion and their culture crap and not money. Also young dumb boys thinking the crap they do is cool.
It has more to do with targeting Media Matters than anything else because they do an effective jobs of holding up a mirror and reflecting back their words and positions so the public can hold them accountable.
Oh boo hoo. Let's face it, no company wants to see its ads jammed next to some white supremacist screed or a video of a spreadeagled naked woman thrusting her genitals at the screen. The obscene dreck makes people puke.
Companies just don't like what you're selling, Elon.
Good grief! So now companies are not allowed to stop advertising on X, according to Paxton. I think most people understand businesses make advertising decisions based on return on investment. A platform with fleeing users isn’t necessarily attractive to advertisers.
Ken Paxton deserves to go out in the same way those poor women did that he made suffer through miscarriages, septicemia, and DIC. Only God knows how many others there are
this particular instance is *obviously* politically motivated bullshit - but there IS an antitrust angle when a peak industry forum gathers competitors together and instructs them to collectively boycott another company. of course advertising on twitter is a disaster, but decide that yourself.
You have it backwards. Group boycotts are more or less a per se violation of the Sherman Act. There is of course caselaw refining the circumstances under which they not a per se violation, but this is not about forcing coke to pay for twitter, it is about *collectively* deciding not to.
Still cannot force advertisers to use a platform that puts their brand next to hate speech, nazi or white Supremacist bs propaganda. Whether or not if they got together and agreed to boycott the platfor.the government cannot fitness advertisers to spend their money on that platform
No, but I suspect that would not be the remedy sought. But if Paxton's general accusation is correct, the damage is done, and the violation has occurred.
Interested to see which side of the line this lands - boycott with political purpose ('be better, twitter'), or whether a boycott based on brand safety ('our customers will rightly hate us if we party with nazis') has more of an economic purpose? (mostly just hoping for Paxton to shut up)
of course any company can (and should) make the latter decision, but making the latter decision collectively and enforcing it via a peak body is... closer to that line than I would like, even if I think they're right to do it
The last Republican to give a rat's ass about antitrust laws was Teddy Roosevelt, but now they want to use them to bail out a billionaire monopolist. Of course.
If it’s an honest investigation (I know, I know) it would be pretty funny when they learn all those companies came to the conclusion that Twitter is a horrible, toxic place to advertise independently.
Plus their PPC metrics dashboard and any of the copious data on how many of ExTwitter's views aren't even real people 😂
The disclosure on this is going to be fucking hilarious, I can't wait.
We should really stop comparing Elon’s and other MAGA’s activity as if it follows normal “decent” rules. It does not. It does not want to. It does not have to. Because it isn’t. Decent.
Not a lawyer, but I am trying to figure out the monopoly argument here. Is Paxton arguing that the companies explicitly colluded to not buy advertising on Xitter? Again, not a lawyer, but that seems like a stretch.
I don’t know this area of the law but Paxton is referring to unfair competition. I assume the comparison is to a lockout where a group agrees to stop purchasing in order to unfairly drive prices down. It seems like a dumb theory.
This is where I am getting stuck. It seems like a monopsony argument, but they are not trying to drive prices down. They just don't think it is worth their money to advertise to the Nazi bar at any price.
There is a reading of the Sherman antitrust act that says any effort to deprive a business of trade is inherently illegal. They, of course, ignore other cases that say it doesn't apply in cases like this.
Hold on, the party of "I don't have to make a cake for you" thinks that a business should be forced to pay to advertise with social media sites that don't align with their values?
Seems like a real stretch to make it an anti-trust argument. It's not manipulating the market against competing advertisers. It actually creates a cheaper market niche for competing advertisers to buy into.
It’s probably silly to even try to make sense of their argument because it’s nonsense. But I don’t think they’re saying it hurts the advertisers’ competitors; they’re saying it puts X at a disadvantage among its competitors.
Blaming advertisers for Musk’s bad business decisions.
Free-from-consequences speech, you mean... That got immediately obvious any time I talked much to someone espousing this - they just wanted to say whatever they liked without any sort of blowback. Any blowback was "cancelling" or "censorship" and to be fought against. >.<
Hold on, folks. The free-speech, small government, capitalists have something to say! 🤦🏻♀️
I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of fragile, little crybabies in my life, and I have a bunch of nieces and nephews. I’d tell you what I think Paxton can go do, but I don’t want to get suspended.
This is some inverted shit. Like some guys had drinks and agreed that Nazi chaos is bad for business. Isn’t fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders their number 1 priority?
Like, even if it were true that they "colluded" not to advertise, what is the remedy? Force them to? It's absurd. Also, I thought corporations are people. Do they not have the right to vote with their dollar?
Imagine this being used to circumvent all sorts of programming in a weaponized way.
Like if it’s some educational show about climate change, a company owned by a fossil fuel group might insist on running multiple lengthy ads during your show and even dominate your allowed airtime with propaganda.
“Due to section 7.23-10a of the new advertising code, this program and its content has been challenged by companies in the interest of competitive fairness. Therefore you must view the following content that will run at selected times during the show to offer alternative views on the information”
the posters on x are the closest representation we have seen to guy who is mad barista, waitress any women won't go on a date with them. the not advertising is a rejection to them in a similar way
This has nothing to do with anti trust laws. This has to do with customer preferences & EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO THEIR PREFERENCES. The government doesn’t belong anywhere in that. More MAGA-Republican government overreach.
"Hold on a minute, when we said we were going to downsize the government and make it efficient, we never said we weren't going to keep funding the stuff that we use to oppress our political opponents."
This is just ridiculous pandering for Trump's and Musk's attention. Ken Paxton has no business telling private companies where they must spend their advertising dollars.
For this "investigation" wont Elmo have to release the average # of posts,likes and subscribers over a period of time. Companies cant be expected to advertise on a site where people are leaving faster than rats off a sinking ship
Would that be when he took over Tesla in a boardroom coup, ejected the founders, and pretended he was the genius engineer who started it? Or a different time he pretended he was an engineer?
Comments
(asking for a friend)
https://www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carusone/media-matters-statement-winning-injunction-against-texas-ag-ken-paxton-federalv
After the Gaetz-Gate fiasco, no way was 🟠-man going to risk another loser appointment.
Interesting….
I did NAZI that coming…
Companies just don't like what you're selling, Elon.
I guess it would be making the outsourcing of market/ad fit mostly illegal?
Shouldn't have told advertisers to f*ck off.
They did. End of.
That's freedom.
This long-running charade was first hint media had silently quit
The disclosure on this is going to be fucking hilarious, I can't wait.
They are not different, blatant self-proclaiming change nothing in this regard, imho
Couldn't possibly be that they're avoiding the harm to their brands showing up next to bigots and nazis would entail.
Blaming advertisers for Musk’s bad business decisions.
I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of fragile, little crybabies in my life, and I have a bunch of nieces and nephews. I’d tell you what I think Paxton can go do, but I don’t want to get suspended.
Dictators always pick winners a losers.
Like I said before .. when the alliance between capital and the state stays on the low-low then we are fed the "appearance" of democracy.
Once that alliance is permitted to become overt the curtain is drawn back to reveal raw dictatorship.
Lol
Like if it’s some educational show about climate change, a company owned by a fossil fuel group might insist on running multiple lengthy ads during your show and even dominate your allowed airtime with propaganda.
Lots more please!
Just a reminder that the last time around Trump thought the Attorney General‘s office was his own private firm.
I fully expect to hear “my lawyers” the same way he said “my generals” last time.