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!
I can sue X for not advertising on the my Instagram page then? Lol.
Who does he think he is, Israel?
Takes one apartheid asshole to recognize another eh? Lol
I remember when this was announced 2 years ago. Any update?
Former twitter is still shit.
what a pathetic weird dumbass
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??
You can in case of protected group discrimination sue the business, but suing customers is something new.
I can’t wrap my head around the ridiculousness of it. Or grasp why some US political figures are lapping it up.
Imagine McDonald’s suing you because you didn’t buy enough big macs this quarter. It’s crazy. You’re not automatically entitled to having customers.
Please drink verification can
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.
So what you are thinking is all the media outlets are so shit they didn’t read the case and none of them found it saying, breach of contract. Could be true with how a lot of reporting goes these days, but why would the lawyers for X have not just said, this suit is about breach of contract, not conspiracy to boycott a poor billionaire’s company he is embezzling money to through Tesla?
I haven’t read the case either. But what I do know is the news media isn’t always as nuanced in their reporting of court cases, as the cases warrants.
If that is the case here I don’t know. Musk is a POS, so everything is definitely possible. All I’m saying is that if it actually is a breach of contract, then Musk could have a case.
But imagine signing a contract, where you have to buy a set amount of advertising, with no clause about the site’s conduct and reputation.
Elon is the dumbest genius 🤦♂️
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
He’s trying to claim that companies colluded to stop advertising on X and that violates antitrust laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_boycott
But it’s strange because this refusal to advertise on twitter doesn’t really harm competition in anyway. Concerted refusal to deal is supposed to be like when 3 big bad companies want to hurt a smaller competitive company so they get together and boycott any suppliers that deal with this competitor or force them to get a worse deal.
The companies GARM (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) represents are big enough (90% of advertising $) but they aren’t really competitors to twitter. If say facebook and tiktok got together and told GARM they wouldn’t run any of their ads unless they stopped working with twitter that would be much more in the spirit of the law.
But Twitter might still have a tiny bit of a case if they can prove they met GARM’s standards but were still excluded anyway. I doubt that’s enough for any major payouts though unless the judge is crazy. And honestly I think it’s still dumb because even if GARM settles it just tells advertisers “Okay you can advertise on twitter if you want they meet our standards”…but are advertisers really going to want to advertise on the site that just sued them?
Also I don’t even think GARM prohibits members from advertising with companies it doesn’t recommend and just offers suggestions, which makes this case even more insane if that’s true. In that situation it’s like the health inspector gives a restaurant a “D” and the restaurant sues customers for not eating there anymore.
Don’t forget the customers of the restaurant also saw the head chef personally farting on all the plates before the food was placed on them. It’s not just the health inspector’s report.
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
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?
It’s actually fee speech, common misconception
Ah, can I get a waiver if I’m rich and famous?
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
You literally told your advertisers to go fark themselves, Elmo. Several times. This is what consequences look like.
Oh God, it only just occurred to me that that will be used as evidence.
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I really hope it’s tossed out with prejudice
Nah.
Drag it out. Then order him to pay legal fees.
He paid 44 billion for twitter. He could pay the legal fees of every American for a year and it would hardly dent his wealth. It’s obscene how much money one person can have.
I find this to also be acceptable
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.
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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.
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Ah yes, the pinnacle of small govt: legislating how advertisers spend their money when they won’t spend that money on Republican platforms
Even funnier, he literally told advertisers to go fuck themselves lol. Now he goes whining back to Mommy for new rules for his little kingdom.
He can sue, but he won’t win in any sane court.
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They’d never even hear it. To give this lawsuit any credibility, they’d have to effectively say that businesses spending/donating money is not free speech. Which would effectively be the opposite of Citizens United.
Maybe they’ll say billionaires can sue as long as it’s an official act.
You think they give a shit about consistency?
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he’s gonna sue twitter users for using adblockers on the site isn’t he?
I hope exhibit A of the defences evidence is Elon telling them all to go fuck themselves.
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.
ETA: He really is a 13yo in a 53yo body.
