Ad industry initiative abruptly shuts down after lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X

some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org to Technology@lemmy.world – 312 points –
Ad industry initiative abruptly shuts down after lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X
arstechnica.com
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The frivolous lawsuit worked then.

More economically to shut down and reincorporate than to spend a bunch of money on lawyers.

But I doubt Musk is going to see a flood of new ad revenue out of this.

new ad revenue

I'm no marketing guy, and all other things aside, signing an advertising agreement with X would be a hard "NO" after this suit.

Maybe it's a Win win. Less advertisers and Elon looks like a psychopath and disuades further ad income for his hate platform

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Musk: starts allowing Nazi shit on Xitter

Advertiisers: Hey, we don't like Nazi shit. We might stop advertising if that keeps happening.

Musk: Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.

Advertisers: stop doing business with the guy who told them to go fuck themselves

He literally bullied a non-profit organisation set in the world to use advertisement money responsible into ceasing operations.

Loss for the world once again, and the article even says that Republicans celebrated. That country is sick.

Even if this group shuts down completely, all this does is waste twitter's money while it also tells advertisers to stay the fuck away from ever do any business on Twitter.

And now he has to sue the advertisers individually if he wants to continue this idiotic plan. That'll surely convince people to spend money on X

I read this similarly. Most significantly, advertisers in the group are probably less likely to spend on tweeter now. The complete opposite of Elen's goal. The advertisers simply "deleted" the group (not any actual ad agencies), because it was calculated to cost the least. The group, GARM, was an attempt to collectively manage harm to their brands, which they will obviously continue to do in other ways.

THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING.
He didn't shut down advertisers, he shut down an organisation for best practices in advertising.

Wiki World Federation of Advertisers

WFA's aim is to champion effective and sustainable marketing communications worldwide. ..

...WFA formed the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a global cross-industry alliance which aims to improve digital safety and eliminate harmful online content....The alliance has introduced guidelines concerning misinformation and new standards on ad placements...

...WFA is a founding member of the Unstereotype Alliance, UN Women's flagship partnership with the marketing industry to eradicate harmful gender stereotypes in advertising...It is also a founding member of the Coalition for Better Ads, a cross-industry initiative to improve consumers’ experience with online advertising.

WFA holds Global Marketer Week, a series of events bringing together brand marketers to learn about the latest public affairs issues and best practice in marketing.

Sounds to me like all advertisers should just assume that on Xitter, their ads will show alongside Nazi/Alt-Right/Hateful content. GARM, the project that Elmo just killed, used to inform them when that sort of thing happened. So with the warning system down, Ad companies should revert to a fail-safe state and abandon the platform completely.

And the rest of us should ABSOLUTELY make a habit of blasting out screenshots of ads next to heinous shit, and ask the company why they support that kind of content.

And the rest of us should ABSOLUTELY make a habit of blasting out screenshots of ads next to heinous shit, and ask the company why they support that kind of content.

This is the way

And the rest of us should ABSOLUTELY make a habit of blasting out screenshots

Good idea, but stopping using xitter completely would be even better.

Note to myself: Whenever I do contracts or somehow being responsible, I‘ll put a proxy company in between. If things go bad, I just shut down that responsible proxy and am out of duty.

Just an interesting observation about business behavior.

I feel like this will only hurt him in the long term, advertisers in general are probably more likely to avoid X in the future. I know I would.

jk rowling, elon musk.. what is it with billionaires suing people to silence criticism

They are all the biggest snowflakes. The slightest criticism breaks their fragile egos. Billionaires really require a safe space.

TBH the whole planet is a safe space for billionaires, not so much for everybody else.

It's cheap to them and bankrupts their victims or forces them to settle. There should be a way to punish frivolous lawsuits by %income/assets.

That's a SLAPP suit.

It definitely is, but they filed in Texas which doesn't have anti-SLAPP laws for federal cases

I wish Elon treated the whole planet like his children.

He would just jet off and never communicate again, we would be free of this cancer for good.

They are getting all this great free press about why to avoid Musk, must have figured their job is done.

On the one hand I hate Elon Musk. On the other hand I also hate advertisement.

So.... win / win?

Idk, advertisers didn't get shut down, a group promoting best practices in advertising got shut down.

You're about to dislike ads even more.

Lose/lose situation here unfortunately.

Basically he threw a fit. It worked.

It affected something that it should not have.

Good. They don't get to fucking bully whoever they want.

Elon didn't like their shit, and called them on it.

And they fucking cried and gave up, right away. lmao

Hey

You aren't advertising with me. Stop bullying me and give me money.

If you don't give me money right now, you're bullying me.

Yep, the irony of two bullies calling each other bullies is awesome to watch!

But Elon won, cuz the other side shut down quick! lmao

What did he win? They aren't going to resume advertising with him. They got out of the lawsuit without having to pay lawyers or change their behavior. What did he win?

So do you honestly think he just wanted their money?

You don't think that Elon Musk is over there laughing because they dropped the lawsuit, and thinking that he's top dog cuz they went away?

Have you seen his ego?

I mean, I like Elon, but he's def a slave to his ego. I still like him, but come on...lol

He started a legal fight with someone, they backed down. Money losses or not, he definitely won. Because they dropped.

And he is grinning.

I mean, I def would prefer money. But I don't think that's always his goal.

I mean, I like Elon

Honest question, why?

Because he has the balls to do what he wants. Even when all you guys scream and cry.

Regardless of whether you like him or hate him, he works hard, gets shit done. Even if you don't like it.

Now having said that, I also don't give a shit if he loses it all. I admire him, but I don't worship him.

And I fucking LOVE what he did with Twitter. Liberals cry censorship now that it doesn't always favor them on the platform, but they laughed when republicans cried censorship on the old twitter.

By the way, censorship sucks regardless of platform. I just find it laughingly ironic how you all cry now, but where laughing then.

In other words, you think it's fine to censor republican stuff. But get fucking mad when democrat stuff gets censored.

You all were doing the same fucking thing!

Regardless of whether you like him or hate him, he works hard, gets shit done. Even if you don’t like it.

The guy is terminally online talking shit on xitter all day how the fuck he works hard?

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I don't get it. Elon didn't win a thing, he lost harder.

He complained advertisers were banding together and boycotting his platform. He starts a frivolous lawsuit.

So now even more advertisers are boycotting his platform.

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how do you mean? they just "hydra'd" on him. If he wants to sue them now for leaving xitter he will have to go after them individually.

you hate people bullying people yet you love elon bullying a non profit into silence?

also this isn't going to bring advertisers to twitter.

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A multi-billion dollar social media company sued an ad industry group that was trying to have help companies have some kind of brand safety standards to prevent a company's ads from appearing next to objectionable content. They reportedly had two full-time staff members. This isn't some big win, it's bullying itself.

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