• Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    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.

  • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    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?

        • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          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.

            • solomon42069@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              All that matters is the sponsorship tier - will you be flying the judge out to a vacation? Buying their mother a house? The outcome is solely dependent on your investment in the court. Justice.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        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.

        • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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          1 month ago

          Did you just not read the comment you replied to? None of those things involve any sort of collusion.

      • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Ah yes, the pinnacle of small govt: legislating how advertisers spend their money when they won’t spend that money on Republican platforms

    • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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.

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    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.

  • Altomes@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    One of the most poignant comments I’ve seen on this is it’s a ploy to draw attention from his PAC and other negative media

    • pikmeir@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      While I think it will have that effect, Musk isn’t smart enough to have thought about it that deeply.

      • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        Don’t underestimate him. He’s shown he’s a spoiled brat, but he’s not shown that he’s incapable of elaborate and spiteful plots to get his way.

        A smart decision in his eyes might be a dumb one in ours but that doesn’t mean he’s actually stupid.

        Writing him off as an idiot is a one way ticket to being blindsided while you’re distracted by something else.

        • pikmeir@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          But I do think he’s an idiot. There’s nothing to suggest he is intelligent beyond the average person, and many decisions he’s made that suggest he’s less intelligent.

    • Hellinabucket@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Dunno how much attention it’s gonna draw away from it when it inevitably comes out that his PAC funded the committee that turned over the “evidence” that’s being used to prop up his court case.

  • DxK@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Elon Musk: Your honor these mean jerks won’t pay to advertise in my nazi bar and it hurts my feels.

  • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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    1 month ago

    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??

    • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        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?

        • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          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.

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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.

    • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      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

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      You can in case of protected group discrimination sue the business, but suing customers is something new.

  • 2pt_perversion@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    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.

    • Red_October@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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.

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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      1 month ago

      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.

  • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    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?

      • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        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

  • NutWrench@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    You literally told your advertisers to go fark themselves, Elmo. Several times. This is what consequences look like.