Elon Musk may have to sell billions in Tesla stock to rescue X

gedaliyah@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 741 points –
Elon Musk may have to sell billions in Tesla stock to rescue X
fortune.com

Musk’s repeated outbursts against advertisers have dried up the main source of revenue for the loss-making company formerly known as Twitter. A recent decision to sue them for heeding his own advice to not buy ads on the platform hasn’t helped. At some point, he will have to provide a fresh infusion of cash to salvage his $44 billion takeover.

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I don't understand how you can sue a company that doesn't want to advertise on your platform

From what I understand, they're trying to (mis)use a law to the effect that companies cant all get together and boycott a competitor in order to try to drive it out of the market. If my understanding is correct then, for example, if say Ford and GM and such happened to also run electric taxi businesses, and those taxi businesses bought cars off the open market where in theory they should buy whatever they think gives them what they need at the best price, even if from another car maker, then it wouldnt be legal for them to all go and say "we make electric cars, and Tesla does too, so lets not buy anything from Tesla, regardless of how cheap or good their products are, so they lose business" (Assuming that the Teslas in question would in fact be perfectly suitable for said taxi companies needs that is). They're trying to sue an advertising industry group, claiming that they've done this kind of thing. Except the members of the group in question arent really competitors to Twitter, and in any case, the quality of advertising is thought to diminish if the ads are next to objectionable and bigoted content, since its thought to hurt the advertised company's image, so if my understanding is correct, it should be simple enough for them to argue "We're not colluding to hurt your company, your product just isnt up to our standards so we arent buying it"