Advertisers Say They Do Not Plan to Return to X After Musk’s Comments
stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to 
nytimes.com
Elon Musk, the owner of X, criticized advertisers with expletives on Wednesday at The New York Times’s DealBook Summit.
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Yeah, that's just capitalism.
Obviously you don’t understand capitalism and your just going off what people who want communism and socialism are saying.
Please explain to me how advertisers exercising their agency in choosing who to advertise with is "communism" or "socialism".
When I mentioned communism and socialism I was pointing to the mischaracterization of capitalism. Capitalism is just the free and open market and when companies collude together to manipulate the market that’s not capitalism. Capitalism has built in rules against market manipulation and monopolies unfortunately that requires the government to do it’s job to enforce it, which it’s been doing a piss poor job of.
It most assuredly does not. Addressing these externalities is the responsibility of government.
The fact that it requires a free and open market are the rules and since it’s a component of the government the government has to make sure the system is free and open.
I'm sorry, you think Twitter is a component of the US government?
No, capitalism is a component of the government. The point is to get the government out of twitter which records have shown the government was in twitter prior to Elon’s takeover.
Capitalism is not, and definitionally cannot be, a component of the government. It is an economic system
I use the word component loosely
Can you explain what you mean using other words? I am not great with loose language in general.
By stating that, it was a component of the government. In that context I was using component loosely.
I'm aware of that. What was the thing you intended?
no no. dig UP, stupid
What evidence is there that the companies are colluding? Are there communication logs where they all conversed and decided to pull ads? Is there any evidence at all that the companies had any interaction with each other about this and made a unifying decision to cancel their ads?
Collusion requires entities to work together to achieve a mutual goal. Otherwise, it's just a coincidence of timing.
At the moment it’s speculation, but from past events involving these same companies we’ve witnessed collusion.
What past events with which companies?
And who is this "we" you're referring to? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?
So far you've admitted to speculating on ethereal events and are using that as your basis for claiming foul play while providing no evidence for any of it.
There has been multiple government hearings with Facebook, Apple, Google involving collusion. Also, look at the targeted takedown of Parlor by Amazon, Google, and Apple when it was a threat to the old twitter.
Did any of those hearings end with a conclusion and solid evidence of collusion? How many of those companies or executives at those companies got convicted of market manipulation or conspiracy, or even charged?
Once again you are pointing to multiple independent companies, who are each other's direct competitors, doing something at the same time and attributing that to collusion when there is no evidence for that at all. Is it that hard to imagine that multiple companies would decide at the same time to stop offering an app that harms their brand? Especially when those companies were getting heat because Parlor was used to organize the Insurrection and had many calls for violence? Also, are you now claiming that they previously colluded in support of Twitter but are now colluding against it?
You seem to have a tenuous grasp on....well, everything, but certainly reality. Companies do what they think will make them the most money. If all three thought that having Parlor on their app store, or ads on Twitter next to neonazis would make them less money than not doing those things, they would decide not to do them. It's really really basic stuff.
Parlor and Facebook more so Facebook was use to organize the protest but Facebook didn’t receive the same action against them. Yes you’re right that I’m all over the place putting all those companies together. All that has happened in each of their hearings was finger wagging and back door talking to show further evidence, which didn’t amount to anything in the public eye.
Facebook faced a ton of backlash for it and only stayed around because they are big enough that companies thought they'd lose more money by not offering their app then they'd lose by offering it. Also, as bad as Facebook moderation is, they were actively removing posts and banning users for things they said about J6 (odd to call it a protest but ok), which Parlor was refusing to do until after they were removed from the app stores. Parlor wanted to be all about free speech (hmmm just like Twitter now says they want to be) and refused to moderate the calls for violence until they were forced to by the big three, which led a lot of users to be angry at them and leave for other free speech platforms even less moderate than FB or Parlor.
So, are you saying you don't have any evidence they colluded in the past, and no evidence that they colluded now, but are still believing it?
So, are you suggesting regulation of the market?
No, some level of punishment of those that try to manipulate/manopolize the market.
So you want to regulate it under threat?
Unfortunately when you involve the government it’s always a matter of threat. But, the government involvement should stop at making sure everyone is playing a far equal and fair game.
Did I misunderstand, but you said you want the government to stop from intervening and making sure everyone plays and equal and fair game? This would mean you condone these companies from banding together.
Example: people are free to assemble, but it’s against the law if that assembly is to carry out crimes.
So then you want government regulation?
Limited government regulation
Your definition of capitalism in this argument is simply a no true scotsman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman.
Just because you’re able to lookup fancy words doesn’t make my sentence invalid. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
I looked up and provided the wikipedia article purely for your benefit so you could know which (informal) fallacy your tired, trash argument falls under.
You stating I’m wrong about something when you don’t understand something doesn’t make my argument invalid.
This is the same way that a (straw man) communist would argue: "it wasn't true communism, we still haven't tried true communism" based upon whatever ideal definition they have in their (fictitious, straw man) head.
I don't even have to know the content of the argument when it's couched in rhetoric like this to know that it's a warmed over brick of dog shit.
No, capitalism is capitalism I’m not saying there’s a better version of it out there and that we haven’t tried it yet what I’m saying is that the government is in bed with a lot of these companies and because of that what we currently have is being poorly managed
Which you're trying to say is not capitalism...but that's capitalism.
We didn't switch to socialism or some other economic system because we've, in your words, "poorly managed" our economic system. It's still capitalism we're running even if it's in your opinion "poorly managed".
Venezuela wasn’t socialist until it became socialist. I’m simply pointing out the country is moving in a bad direction. Before there was a balanced government and capitalist system now it’s less so.
You're trying to say that corporations all boycotting a POS social platform's ad buys at the same time is some form of "corporate communism" but you're too much of a weasel to say it outright because you know that it's empty rhetoric akin to something that would dribble out of Boebert's or MTG's lips and will be straightforwardly recognized as such by the audience here.
I think you might be having difficulty grasping the idea that people have marketing budgets and if say the ceo of a company you advertise on very publicly endorses hate speech it does create a brand management problem.
You want your products to not be associated with things like, say, racism, which are kind of "yucky" to a lot of people.
As a result you might refocus spending. If a bunch of people do this at once this doesn't mean there's collusion. For example, during a thunderstorm you might see less people outside. This isn't because they all colluding - people don't like being struck by lightning. Similarly, companies don't want their brands to be "yucky" to the average consumer and often its just a matter of moving the ad spending to another platform without the baggage.
You could ONLY limit this effect by banning advertising entirely.
Yes you’re right about public image and a company wanting to preserve it. And I might be a little hyperbolic about what I’m saying. But really if it was just public image along with their ads, they would delete/(stop using) all of their accounts to show that they didn’t want anything to do with Twitter as long as they had hateful content on there.
That doesn't follow. Diverting ad spending is very different than closing feedback channels. For one, its likely to be handled by different departments in most companies and marketing budgets are likely to be far higher and more contentious than like micromanaging a social media handler.
Lol at someone insulting others understanding when they conflate communism and socialism.
I’m not conflating the two I’m simply saying the people that have an issue or misunderstanding and capitalism usage fall in either camp.
I'm entirely pro-capitalism. Why should the free market not be allowed to act here?
In this context if they disagree so much they should just leave the platform and then it would fall under capitalism. What they want is to stay on the platform and dictate how it should be run and if they don’t get their way they make threats and ultimatums, which is a form of manipulation, I.e anti-capitalism.
It's not manipulation to say "we're leaving because you did this thing and won't be back until you don't do this thing." This is simply the market forces articulating their preferences.
If I stop buying a company's products because I disagree with the direction it's going, I am voting with my wallet, not manipulating the company.
Yes vote with your wallet and leave, but don’t bring up false information to try and get others to leave, don’t use subsidiary companies, you own to lie and badmouth, when you leaving didn’t change the companies stance.
Can you cite any examples of the above happening?
And explain what this means?
Media Matters stated that ads were showing up beside questionable content, which was proven to be them gaming the system to get that to happen. Disney, Amazon, Paramount owns a large amount of media companies that are smearing the website.
And how did they game the system, exactly? By hitting refresh?
By following those questionable feeds, and just those feeds on a brand new account until they were able to get ads to show up along with those feeds and then state that it’s always showing up beside those feeds
Yes, so they were able to get them to show up then. That means there are not mechanisms in place at Twitter that would prevent those ads from showing up next to Nazi posts. Which means the companies absolutely had a reason to pull ad funding. If you owned a company and were spending millions on ads, would you be ok knowing that it's possible your ad shows up next to Nazi posts or Holocaust denial? Would it matter that it doesn't happen most of the time? If it's possible then Twitter has massively dropped the ball.
Where in the article do they say those ads "always" show up beside Nazi posts? They outlined their methods, and showed screenshots for proof. Even the CEO confirmed that those ads did show up next to Nazi posts, she just claimed it didn't happen often. Media matters never claimed they happened all the time with every ad. If you had above a 5th grade reading level or had read the original article you'd know better.
With or without people monitoring twitter you’re still get that type of content on any platform. You can only reduce the chance never completely stop. The point is you would have to be in those groups following those feeds to see that content.(allegedly) If it took Media Matters having to follow those groups for hours and then following Disney or any other company to show that, then twitter is working to make it harder for that to happen. If this is about a company’s image, even if a Nazi account would happen to see ads in their feed unless they were out her telling you, you would be none the wiser. I highly doubt if they did the same thing on any other left lining platform that towed the line, would there be the same reaction?
There would be the same reaction if FB or Instagram or any other big platform was found to be allowing ads next to objectionable content (content the company in the ads would not want associated with their brand) AND that platform said that it wasn't an issue, they won't change policies to prevent it, and told them to go fuck themselves.
Twitter could absolutely have filters in place to prevent ads from showing up next to literal Nazi posts with a simple word list. The posts Media Matters showed were not subtle or underhanded, they were saying the quiet parts out loud. It would be trivial to prevent ads entirely from those posts, but then they'd lose ad space. It would mean less if this had happened with borderline posts or posts using coded language.
That isn't gaming the system. That means they if someone follows mostly far right accounts, they'll see the ads show up next to far right content.
If they make no effort to deprioritize Nazi content or treat it differently, then ads will run with that content. They have to purposely sandbag that content so it doesn't appear.
Honestly, the methodology here just confirms the argument. If someone is following mostly Nazis, they'll be suggested content that is mostly Nazis, and ads are going to run alongside it. I suspect that's not a negligible share of the accounts.
Customers expressing their opinions on your product is part of the market articulating its desires.
Yes, I don’t disagree my point is there are people that go farther then just voting with there wallet and try to smear other/companies to get what they want.
I just don't see this happening based on your above claims.
More to the point, I don't see a motive or purpose behind doing this. X is not a competitor for them. It makes no sense for them to try to manipulate the market against X.
It’s a tool that they could use and were using to manipulate the American people. Because of a lawsuit with HBO Max it has come to light that the CEO was forcing their interns to make fake Twitter post to shut up their dissenters.
You're losing me there bud.
This doesn't make sense as written
So capitalism bans collusion? How?
Government regulations. Capitalism is a component of the government so it should take government action to enforce it.
Really? Because I've been repeatedly told by libertarian types (not socialists or communists) that any government regulation is not capitalism.
You're free to disagree with them, but then I'm going to ask what your definition of capitalism is that assumes this regulation (not just allowing it, but mandating it).
. Because I’ve been repeatedly told by libertarian types (not socialists or communists) that any government regulation is not capitalism
Found your problem. That's like asking flat earthers about gravity. They may think it exists but their concept of it is a fiction meant to align to their worldview.
Musk himself tends to identify with libertarianism; we can still critique him from his own standards without accepting them outright.
Well sure but that just makes him more wrong, not libertarians more credible.
No matter the system you need some level of regulation otherwise it’s just anarchy. What you want is a balanced regulation that not overbearing and keeps thing running smoothly.
WTF regulation would exist to possibly prevent a corporate boycott of X ads anyway?
"We hereby mandate that you buy ads on Xitter!"
That's your version of the one true capitalism? GTFOH
There is already laws on the books for collusion, and if they have been founded to have colluded to manipulate a company, those law apply to them
As far as I know, a corporate boycott of a thing isn't at all illegal.
You sound like fucking Ruxin from The League.
COLLUSIONNNNN!!!!
Oh, never watched
OK, but the libertarian types who generally worship Musk are not going to like you one bit for saying it.
I don’t fall into teams and I’m not part of a cult I’m looking at the big picture.