I think it's a last ditch because there aren't any more new ones, and the existing ones don't pay anything like enough. So funny. Musk buys out a popular ball court, then smear [filth] all over...
I think it's a last ditch because there aren't any more new ones, and the existing ones don't pay anything like enough.
So funny. Musk invite kids to come play ball buys out a popular ball court, then smear [filth] all over the ball, and then cry about how unfair it is when the kids leave and go home.
If the entire case is companies acting against their interests, that should just get thrown out immediately right? Companies have to protect their own earnings and assets. Assets including the intangible brand, which is worth a lot to protect.
I don't know about their antitrust angle - remotely legit ?
I say, though, Musk isn't that much of an idiot. He just bought himself a shiny pair of democratically electable candidates. He doesn't have to have legal legs to stand on if he can prop it up with briebery.
It's hilarious, Mr Absolute-Free-Speech, free market man wants to sue corporations for making their own PR and business decisions when it doesn't benefit him.
It's hilarious, Mr Absolute-Free-Speech, free market man wants to sue corporations for making their own PR and business decisions when it doesn't benefit him.
If anything I have a better impression of said companies now. As they're actually looking at what they're advertising on. Effectively not enabling a company that is a platform for racism, bigotry...
If anything I have a better impression of said companies now. As they're actually looking at what they're advertising on. Effectively not enabling a company that is a platform for racism, bigotry and the far right in general.
Ehh, if the polls suggest aligning with alt right is more popular tomorrow, they'll switch in a heart beat. The move to leave twitter wasn't about doing what's right, it's about corporate image...
Ehh, if the polls suggest aligning with alt right is more popular tomorrow, they'll switch in a heart beat. The move to leave twitter wasn't about doing what's right, it's about corporate image which happens to coincide with doing what's right
I'm not a big fan of big companies in general, but it's kind of surprising that I can't think of any major controversy in regards to Mars or Unilever; the biggest things I can think of are...
I'm not a big fan of big companies in general, but it's kind of surprising that I can't think of any major controversy in regards to Mars or Unilever; the biggest things I can think of are concerns over the quality of their food products. And even then I'd say that they're probably better than most international food corporations. To be fair, though, most of their products are sold with branding that makes it difficult to realize who is making it unless you look for it.
I may be misremembering, but wasn't Mars one of the companies along with Nestlé that was involved in using foreign child labor to make their chocolates?
I may be misremembering, but wasn't Mars one of the companies along with Nestlé that was involved in using foreign child labor to make their chocolates?
Probably, and that's completely fair, but child labor is involved in a shocking number of consumer products, especially chocolate. There's also palm oil, sugar, coffee, and clothing, just to name...
Probably, and that's completely fair, but child labor is involved in a shocking number of consumer products, especially chocolate. There's also palm oil, sugar, coffee, and clothing, just to name a few.
I don't mean to say this to forgive Mars or anyone else for this practice, though.
There's a ton of child labor in chocolate and even the companies that led in marketing have issues (e.g. Tony's). Not to give a pass just that dealing in chocolate at scale means you're likely...
There's a ton of child labor in chocolate and even the companies that led in marketing have issues (e.g. Tony's). Not to give a pass just that dealing in chocolate at scale means you're likely utilizing product that has unethical sources.
Tony's doesn't claim to be slave free, they claim to try to be slave free. Big distinction. It aligns with what you're saying: operating at scale means you're involved in slave or child labor.
Tony's doesn't claim to be slave free, they claim to try to be slave free. Big distinction. It aligns with what you're saying: operating at scale means you're involved in slave or child labor.
Er, Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for 66 billion and it's been defunct since Kraft Heinz tried to buy Unilever for 143 billion in 2017 and failed. Bayer doesn't own Unilever. Monsanto never did as...
Unilever is owned by Monsanto, and you are in for a big surprise if you start looking into this corporation.
Er, Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for 66 billion and it's been defunct since
Kraft Heinz tried to buy Unilever for 143 billion in 2017 and failed.
Bayer doesn't own Unilever. Monsanto never did as far as I can tell.
Your analogy of the ball court is missing the spot where Musk makes a joke about buying the popular ball court, which the owners treat as a serious offer. They then run to the SEC to make the joke...
Your analogy of the ball court is missing the spot where Musk makes a joke about buying the popular ball court, which the owners treat as a serious offer. They then run to daddy the SEC to make the joke offer be taken seriously.
Now, he’s taken it as a writeoff and now uses it as his personal playground.
If by "makes a joke" you mean "deliberately manipulating the value of a stock he holds", sure.
Your analogy of the ball court is missing the spot where Musk makes a joke about buying the popular ball court, which the owners treat as a serious offer.
If by "makes a joke" you mean "deliberately manipulating the value of a stock he holds", sure.
I wonder what metrics Twitter is claiming to meet or exceed. Is the bar that low? Anecdotally, my experience is rife with toxic content. I’m only there to follow and interact with artists that...
X said in its lawsuit that it had applied brand-safety standards that are comparable to those of its competitors and that “meet or exceed” measures specified by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.
I wonder what metrics Twitter is claiming to meet or exceed. Is the bar that low? Anecdotally, my experience is rife with toxic content. I’m only there to follow and interact with artists that don’t post elsewhere. The FYP is good at showing me new artists I don’t follow but it’s mixed in with awful transphobic and racist content. I report some of the more vile posts but it’s never removed unless it’s directly threatening violence.
Another thing, they removed the ability to block from the feed some time ago. If I saw a terrible post I could tap the three dot menu and block that user instantly. That’s gone now, I have to click to view their profile which ups their engagement numbers and probably projects their message to more feeds. I’ve blocked 1700+ accounts and they’ve only made it harder.
Yeah, given what's going on in the UK, and now with this... I can only imagine how this'll look in the history books. The effects of social media not being pretty was already obvious, and the...
I’m only there to follow and interact with artists that don’t post elsewhere. The FYP is good at showing me new artists I don’t follow but it’s mixed in with awful transphobic and racist content.
Yeah, given what's going on in the UK, and now with this... I can only imagine how this'll look in the history books.
The effects of social media not being pretty was already obvious, and the corona pandemic really twisted it further. The toxic parts of society that we pushed down but didn't confront completely are now rising up again. Whether that'll destroy us or make us better is up to us imo.
Oh, and Musk is an idiot. Given his recent actions on Twitter I wouldn't want to advertise there either.
I'm reading Musk and Yaccarino's PR quotes and I feel like we're on completely different planets: Do they think these 3 companies, while big, are disrupting the multi trillion dollar industry that...
I'm reading Musk and Yaccarino's PR quotes and I feel like we're on completely different planets:
“People are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is constricted. No small group of people should monopolize what gets monetized.”
Do they think these 3 companies, while big, are disrupting the multi trillion dollar industry that is adtech (let alone ads in general)?
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
So it's okay when X is the monopoly for social media? Also, this is probably the most romantic view of ads I ever heard. "Deprived of ads in the global times square". Doesn't X let you pay to remove ads? Oh, it's worse than I thought:
Is Premium ad-free? Those who subscribe to our Premium tier will receive approximately 50% fewer ads in their For You and Following Timelines, and our Premium+ tier receives no ads in the For You and Following Timelines. The Basic tier does not offer reduced ads on X.
You need to subscribe to tier 2 for that! Tier 1 only gives "less ads". Hilarious.
X said in its lawsuit that it had applied brand-safety standards that are comparable to those of its competitors and that “meet or exceed” measures specified by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.
I'm not convinced (someone actually on X feel free to give more insight on this), but even if I gave the BOTD: some bridges stay burnt. You deciding to fix yourself up doesn't entitle you to forgiveness from others, let alone ad revenue .
By no means do I want to defend Twitter/Elon/Yaccarino with this comment, but wanted to provide some more information to maybe balance the conversation. Advertising is, at best, a $170 billion...
By no means do I want to defend Twitter/Elon/Yaccarino with this comment, but wanted to provide some more information to maybe balance the conversation.
these 3 companies, while big, are disrupting the multi trillion dollar industry that is adtech
Advertising is, at best, a $170 billion dollar industry in total. Adtech makes the portion leftover from TV advertising (currently pegged at $60B in the US, and $131B globally). That’s about $40 billion distributed across the entire Internet. While not chump change, this money is concentrated in a few companies, and Twitter very much depends on these big advertisers for the lion’s share of its revenue. Again, not defending their behavior, but advertisers of this size fleeing their platform put the company financials in serious jeopardy. The reality is those marketing budgets were destined to be spent online anyways, and are now just spent at competitors (i.e. Instagram, Snapchat, and other digital platforms more amenable to an advertiser’s target audience).
perhaps the intent - of this boycott was to seek to deprive X’s users […] of the Global Town Square
Calling Twitter a Global Town Square disregards the real competition it has from Reddit, TikTok, and even Mastodon. I think the (accidental?) comparison to Times Square is more apt: an ad-infested monument to capitalism that only the most casual/noob users are attracted to before eventually discovering more appropriate online venues to suit their niche interests.
X said in its lawsuit that it had applied brand-safety standards that are comparable to those of its competitors
Brand safety in adtech is a joke. It’s a wicked problem that has no solution. For example, most brand safety mechanisms are keyword/topic based today, resulting in logic similar to this:
USA Gymnastics - OK, just don’t reference Larry Nassar
Drama - negative sentiment word, avoid
Viral - forgot to update our blocklist since Covid, this is also a word to avoid
Ultimately a brand may decide not to advertise on this article that could still have favorable associations within its target demographic, and regardless would’ve generated many impressions (views) useful for brand recognition.
How is Twitter to compete when its platform seemingly incentivizes divisive dialogue? I don’t think I’ve seen a single Twitter post in the past year that doesn’t have some reactionary hot take comments posted to drum up more outrage engagement.
The platform has decayed to a point where most comments are either: AI slop, crypto scams (ie: AI slop), porn/OF marketing (usually AI slop), or extremists spouting off the talking point of the day (basically AI slop). The original posts are the only value left and that’s quickly sliding away as the general populace feels “the ick” from visiting Twitter and become more OK with seeking information from less murky parts of the Internet.
Elon did this to himself and my cynical view is that he’s hoping Trump wins so that this case gets decided under a Trump appointee that can be easily bribed. Quite a gamble, but also hilarious that he thinks just $45mil/month should be enough of a donation to win the election when he’s literally the richest man in the world (on paper, at least) and can lose billions for making the wrong bet.
This seems absurd on a variety of levels. Can anyone with more legal knowledge than me clarify how this suit has any chance whatsoever of succeeding? Or, if not, what the endgame could be? From...
This seems absurd on a variety of levels. Can anyone with more legal knowledge than me clarify how this suit has any chance whatsoever of succeeding?
Or, if not, what the endgame could be? From here it looks like 100% downside.
It sounds like he's accusing the companies involved of being a cartel - a group that works together to affect the market. I don't think they would do this without thinking there was a chance of...
It sounds like he's accusing the companies involved of being a cartel - a group that works together to affect the market. I don't think they would do this without thinking there was a chance of winning, but I absolutely hate that anyone would even try to construe the laws in this way. In any case, I'm no legal scholar so take everything I said with a huge grain of salt.
Personally I am hoping that this encourages more individual advertisers to leave the platform, because this kind of precedent is certainly a liability to them.
Ehhhhh. Musk has shown quite clearly he thinks of the legal system as his cudgel, because often the matchup is imbalanced enough it can be. The twitter buy showed what happened when he ran into...
I don't think they would do this without thinking there was a chance of winning,
Ehhhhh. Musk has shown quite clearly he thinks of the legal system as his cudgel, because often the matchup is imbalanced enough it can be.
The twitter buy showed what happened when he ran into someone willing to push back, and basically made him, and his lawyers, look like complete fools. Now I know he's been trying to maneuver his company and other nonsense so it's in a "favorable" legal region, but not sure how much that will apply here.
In short every lawyer in the world would just love if their client would shut the fuck up and listen to their advice There are precious few people who are probably worse than Musk at both of those things.
I'm actually not so sure of that. Musk is almost certainly only working with lawyers who are willing to follow his orders regardless of how good his legal standing is, and he's exactly the sort of...
I don't think they would do this without thinking there was a chance of winning
I'm actually not so sure of that. Musk is almost certainly only working with lawyers who are willing to follow his orders regardless of how good his legal standing is, and he's exactly the sort of rich guy who loves filing retaliatory lawsuits. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that it's often very easy for someone with deep pockets to sue over something that would absolutely get laughed out of court, simply because the cost of defending the suit is often enough to intimidate the other party into complying with what they want.
The problem here is that these businesses he's suing are not exactly short on funds and almost definitely have their own in-house legal teams, so they're not likely to be financially devastated by defending. So the usual retaliatory lawsuit tactic is unlikely to work. Under these circumstances I think most lawyers would not recommend filing the suit... but as I said above, Musk seems extremely unlikely to be the kind of guy who can work with a lawyer who would tell him "no."
It also really gives them a specific reason to stop dealing with X as a company that is explicitly and clearly not due to any alleged conspiracy. One can hope.
It also really gives them a specific reason to stop dealing with X as a company that is explicitly and clearly not due to any alleged conspiracy. One can hope.
I'd just like to point out the hilarity of the anti-trust basis for the case. The WSJ has this gem: Self-citation of a self-published work as support for a lawsuit against the largest companies in...
I'd just like to point out the hilarity of the anti-trust basis for the case. The WSJ has this gem:
"... [I]n meetings with on Capitol Hill Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), Musk complained about advertisers boycotting X and complained about Global Alliance for Responsible Media. ... Last month, the House Judiciary Committee, which Jordan is the chairman of, published: 'Garms Harm: How the World's Biggest Brands Seek to Control Online Speech.' The lawsuit references that report ...
Self-citation of a self-published work as support for a lawsuit against the largest companies in the world... seems brazen.
He's alleging that participating in this 'Global Alliance for Responsible Media' is a form of collusion that can illegally freeze out companies from advertising revenue. GARM describes itself like...
He's alleging that participating in this 'Global Alliance for Responsible Media' is a form of collusion that can illegally freeze out companies from advertising revenue. GARM describes itself like this:
The goal is to accelerate and advance the role that advertisers can play in collectively pushing to improve the safety of online environments. This alliance drives uncommon collaboration to improve the safety, trustworthiness, and sustainability of media.
It seems this group organises advertisers to collectively pressure platforms to moderate toxic behavior including misinformation. And he's legally challenging their right to do that as basically conspiring against platforms that don't play ball.
In other words, the right-wing agitator found semi-plausible legal grounds to dismantle an industry group that pushes back against misinformation.
I mean there's another very obvious way of interpreting this: advertisers are notoriously risk-averse and don't want to advertise on platforms which place their ads next to far-right conspiracy...
It seems this group organises advertisers to collectively pressure platforms to moderate toxic behavior including misinformation. And he's legally challenging their right to do that as basically conspiring against platforms that don't play ball.
I mean there's another very obvious way of interpreting this: advertisers are notoriously risk-averse and don't want to advertise on platforms which place their ads next to far-right conspiracy theorists. What Elmo describes as anticompetitive behaviour is actually just what happens when you make your product so unappealing that your customers no longer want to buy it.
For example if you started selling bananas at $10 a pop and the world banana purchasing members group published "guidance on how to sell bananas" in response the problem might be the $10 and not the banana industry member association.
I know it's not the intended way to this headline, but for a moment I thought about the absurdity of Musk pushing to sue the fourth planet in the solar system for its inhospitability.
I know it's not the intended way to this headline, but for a moment I thought about the absurdity of Musk pushing to sue the fourth planet in the solar system for its inhospitability.
Weird, I seem to recall Musk very publicly telling advertisers to go F themselves.
What a great way to win new customers – sue the old ones very publicly for leaving!
I think it's a last ditch because there aren't any more new ones, and the existing ones don't pay anything like enough.
So funny. Musk
invite kids to come play ballbuys out a popular ball court, then smear [filth] all over the ball, and then cry about how unfair it is when the kids leave and go home.If the entire case is companies acting against their interests, that should just get thrown out immediately right? Companies have to protect their own earnings and assets. Assets including the intangible brand, which is worth a lot to protect.
I don't know about their antitrust angle - remotely legit ?
I say, though, Musk isn't that much of an idiot. He just bought himself a shiny pair of democratically electable candidates. He doesn't have to have legal legs to stand on if he can prop it up with briebery.
It's hilarious, Mr Absolute-Free-Speech, free market man wants to sue corporations for making their own PR and business decisions when it doesn't benefit him.
If anything I have a better impression of said companies now. As they're actually looking at what they're advertising on. Effectively not enabling a company that is a platform for racism, bigotry and the far right in general.
Ehh, if the polls suggest aligning with alt right is more popular tomorrow, they'll switch in a heart beat. The move to leave twitter wasn't about doing what's right, it's about corporate image which happens to coincide with doing what's right
I'm not a big fan of big companies in general, but it's kind of surprising that I can't think of any major controversy in regards to Mars or Unilever; the biggest things I can think of are concerns over the quality of their food products. And even then I'd say that they're probably better than most international food corporations. To be fair, though, most of their products are sold with branding that makes it difficult to realize who is making it unless you look for it.
I may be misremembering, but wasn't Mars one of the companies along with Nestlé that was involved in using foreign child labor to make their chocolates?
Probably, and that's completely fair, but child labor is involved in a shocking number of consumer products, especially chocolate. There's also palm oil, sugar, coffee, and clothing, just to name a few.
I don't mean to say this to forgive Mars or anyone else for this practice, though.
There's a ton of child labor in chocolate and even the companies that led in marketing have issues (e.g. Tony's). Not to give a pass just that dealing in chocolate at scale means you're likely utilizing product that has unethical sources.
Tony's doesn't claim to be slave free, they claim to try to be slave free. Big distinction. It aligns with what you're saying: operating at scale means you're involved in slave or child labor.
Unilever has a lot of human rights issues though.
They both have terrible reputations as far as animal testing and cruelty are concerned.
Unilever is owned by Monsanto, and you are in for a big surprise if you start looking into this corporation.Er, Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for 66 billion and it's been defunct since
Kraft Heinz tried to buy Unilever for 143 billion in 2017 and failed.
Bayer doesn't own Unilever. Monsanto never did as far as I can tell.
Source?
Your analogy of the ball court is missing the spot where Musk makes a joke about buying the popular ball court, which the owners treat as a serious offer. They then run to
daddythe SEC to make the joke offer be taken seriously.Now, he’s taken it as a writeoff and now uses it as his personal playground.
Is making a filing with the SEC typically part of the joke-crafting process?
Trolling is a art.
If by "makes a joke" you mean "deliberately manipulating the value of a stock he holds", sure.
"The free market is awesome. Wait no, not like that."
I wonder what metrics Twitter is claiming to meet or exceed. Is the bar that low? Anecdotally, my experience is rife with toxic content. I’m only there to follow and interact with artists that don’t post elsewhere. The FYP is good at showing me new artists I don’t follow but it’s mixed in with awful transphobic and racist content. I report some of the more vile posts but it’s never removed unless it’s directly threatening violence.
Another thing, they removed the ability to block from the feed some time ago. If I saw a terrible post I could tap the three dot menu and block that user instantly. That’s gone now, I have to click to view their profile which ups their engagement numbers and probably projects their message to more feeds. I’ve blocked 1700+ accounts and they’ve only made it harder.
Yeah, given what's going on in the UK, and now with this... I can only imagine how this'll look in the history books.
The effects of social media not being pretty was already obvious, and the corona pandemic really twisted it further. The toxic parts of society that we pushed down but didn't confront completely are now rising up again. Whether that'll destroy us or make us better is up to us imo.
Oh, and Musk is an idiot. Given his recent actions on Twitter I wouldn't want to advertise there either.
I'm reading Musk and Yaccarino's PR quotes and I feel like we're on completely different planets:
Do they think these 3 companies, while big, are disrupting the multi trillion dollar industry that is adtech (let alone ads in general)?
So it's okay when X is the monopoly for social media? Also, this is probably the most romantic view of ads I ever heard. "Deprived of ads in the global times square". Doesn't X let you pay to remove ads? Oh, it's worse than I thought:
You need to subscribe to tier 2 for that! Tier 1 only gives "less ads". Hilarious.
I'm not convinced (someone actually on X feel free to give more insight on this), but even if I gave the BOTD: some bridges stay burnt. You deciding to fix yourself up doesn't entitle you to forgiveness from others, let alone ad revenue .
By no means do I want to defend Twitter/Elon/Yaccarino with this comment, but wanted to provide some more information to maybe balance the conversation.
Advertising is, at best, a $170 billion dollar industry in total. Adtech makes the portion leftover from TV advertising (currently pegged at $60B in the US, and $131B globally). That’s about $40 billion distributed across the entire Internet. While not chump change, this money is concentrated in a few companies, and Twitter very much depends on these big advertisers for the lion’s share of its revenue. Again, not defending their behavior, but advertisers of this size fleeing their platform put the company financials in serious jeopardy. The reality is those marketing budgets were destined to be spent online anyways, and are now just spent at competitors (i.e. Instagram, Snapchat, and other digital platforms more amenable to an advertiser’s target audience).
Calling Twitter a Global Town Square disregards the real competition it has from Reddit, TikTok, and even Mastodon. I think the (accidental?) comparison to Times Square is more apt: an ad-infested monument to capitalism that only the most casual/noob users are attracted to before eventually discovering more appropriate online venues to suit their niche interests.
Brand safety in adtech is a joke. It’s a wicked problem that has no solution. For example, most brand safety mechanisms are keyword/topic based today, resulting in logic similar to this:
Recent Article : The Team USA gymnastics drama is going viral - but what's it all about?
Ultimately a brand may decide not to advertise on this article that could still have favorable associations within its target demographic, and regardless would’ve generated many impressions (views) useful for brand recognition.
How is Twitter to compete when its platform seemingly incentivizes divisive dialogue? I don’t think I’ve seen a single Twitter post in the past year that doesn’t have some reactionary hot take comments posted to drum up more outrage engagement.
The platform has decayed to a point where most comments are either: AI slop, crypto scams (ie: AI slop), porn/OF marketing (usually AI slop), or extremists spouting off the talking point of the day (basically AI slop). The original posts are the only value left and that’s quickly sliding away as the general populace feels “the ick” from visiting Twitter and become more OK with seeking information from less murky parts of the Internet.
Elon did this to himself and my cynical view is that he’s hoping Trump wins so that this case gets decided under a Trump appointee that can be easily bribed. Quite a gamble, but also hilarious that he thinks just $45mil/month should be enough of a donation to win the election when he’s literally the richest man in the world (on paper, at least) and can lose billions for making the wrong bet.
This seems absurd on a variety of levels. Can anyone with more legal knowledge than me clarify how this suit has any chance whatsoever of succeeding?
Or, if not, what the endgame could be? From here it looks like 100% downside.
It sounds like he's accusing the companies involved of being a cartel - a group that works together to affect the market. I don't think they would do this without thinking there was a chance of winning, but I absolutely hate that anyone would even try to construe the laws in this way. In any case, I'm no legal scholar so take everything I said with a huge grain of salt.
Personally I am hoping that this encourages more individual advertisers to leave the platform, because this kind of precedent is certainly a liability to them.
Ehhhhh. Musk has shown quite clearly he thinks of the legal system as his cudgel, because often the matchup is imbalanced enough it can be.
The twitter buy showed what happened when he ran into someone willing to push back, and basically made him, and his lawyers, look like complete fools. Now I know he's been trying to maneuver his company and other nonsense so it's in a "favorable" legal region, but not sure how much that will apply here.
In short every lawyer in the world would just love if their client would shut the fuck up and listen to their advice There are precious few people who are probably worse than Musk at both of those things.
I'm actually not so sure of that. Musk is almost certainly only working with lawyers who are willing to follow his orders regardless of how good his legal standing is, and he's exactly the sort of rich guy who loves filing retaliatory lawsuits. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that it's often very easy for someone with deep pockets to sue over something that would absolutely get laughed out of court, simply because the cost of defending the suit is often enough to intimidate the other party into complying with what they want.
The problem here is that these businesses he's suing are not exactly short on funds and almost definitely have their own in-house legal teams, so they're not likely to be financially devastated by defending. So the usual retaliatory lawsuit tactic is unlikely to work. Under these circumstances I think most lawyers would not recommend filing the suit... but as I said above, Musk seems extremely unlikely to be the kind of guy who can work with a lawyer who would tell him "no."
It also really gives them a specific reason to stop dealing with X as a company that is explicitly and clearly not due to any alleged conspiracy. One can hope.
I'd just like to point out the hilarity of the anti-trust basis for the case. The WSJ has this gem:
Self-citation of a self-published work as support for a lawsuit against the largest companies in the world... seems brazen.
He's alleging that participating in this 'Global Alliance for Responsible Media' is a form of collusion that can illegally freeze out companies from advertising revenue. GARM describes itself like this:
It seems this group organises advertisers to collectively pressure platforms to moderate toxic behavior including misinformation. And he's legally challenging their right to do that as basically conspiring against platforms that don't play ball.
In other words, the right-wing agitator found semi-plausible legal grounds to dismantle an industry group that pushes back against misinformation.
I mean there's another very obvious way of interpreting this: advertisers are notoriously risk-averse and don't want to advertise on platforms which place their ads next to far-right conspiracy theorists. What Elmo describes as anticompetitive behaviour is actually just what happens when you make your product so unappealing that your customers no longer want to buy it.
For example if you started selling bananas at $10 a pop and the world banana purchasing members group published "guidance on how to sell bananas" in response the problem might be the $10 and not the banana industry member association.
I know it's not the intended way to this headline, but for a moment I thought about the absurdity of Musk pushing to sue the fourth planet in the solar system for its inhospitability.
Feels like the retainer on his lawyers just kicked in.