Walmart is the latest advertiser to pull ads from Elon Musk’s X

argo_yamato@lemm.ee to News@lemmy.world – 488 points –
Walmart is the latest advertiser to pull ads from X, following Elon Musk comments | CNN Business
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“I don’t want them to advertise,” Musk said at the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York. “If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising or money go fk yourself. Go. Fk. Yourself,” he said.

Some people think being wealthy proves that a person is smarter than everyone else or has some special skill that makes them more valuable to society. Then there's the richest man in the world who thinks it's a good idea to curse out his company's primary source of revenue.

I like to imagine what I could have done if my father owned an emerald mine and I could have afforded multiple prestigious universities

My Dad cooked meth in the early 2000s and I dropped out of community college at 17 because my Mom had brain cancer.

I always just look at people who don't see the benefits of standing on the shoulders of others as entitled and childish.

wHy dId yUo cHoOsE tHaT liFe? InSteAd oF geTtiNg yoUr aCt toGeTheR?

The secret is that you have to have emerald mining money without emerald mining parents if you get me.

My dream is to raise my kids middle class and surprise them when they graduate college with 5-figure (or if we're dreaming, maybe 6-figure) lump sums to set them up for life. All the generational wealth without the spoiled attitude.

If that’s your intent you should talk to an estate planner. They can help make sure your plan is on target.

If Elon musk had been in your position, he wouldn’t have dropped out. I mean that in a negative way towards him, because obviously dropping out makes sense if you’re a normal human in that situation (my sister did the same for the same reason, and it fucked her too).

But musk is egotistical and wouldn’t give a fuck about his mom’s cancer if it stood in his way

Yeah I powered through and stayed in college while taking care of my mom for the same condition and it was an intense level of difficult where I’m extremely grateful that I was able to not need to financially support myself or her. I can’t imagine someone able to do all three things well, and I wasn’t the only one caring for my mom, I was just the one most able to drive her to things like doctors appointments

I hope things are looking up for you after those hard times ❤️

That’s part of it though. He was born with insane privilege and no amount of premature balding humbled him.

You were born with hardship and learned humility and empathy. You would cringe at doing the sorts of things that make someone a billionaire.

Give the money back to your Apartheid victims. That's the only correct answer.

lol of course he thinks the companies are “blackmailing him” and not that the companies don’t want to advertise in the cesspool he has turned twitter into.

Even if you didn’t like twitter before, it’s much worse now than Elon has worked his magic. Why would companies want to pay money to have their brands side by side with nazi posts.

It's the "free market in action" when we're forced to keep a job for healthcare, pay for things like food and rent.

But it's "blackmail" when it's against a billionaire's company.

Huh.

But the market never misallocates resources and if it does its the evil gubments fault! -some plutocratic sycophant

“Something something damn regulations, something something taxation is theft!”

I'm willing to bet xitter have some unofficial sources of revenue. Foreign sources.

How evil do you have to be to be too evil for Walmart?

Walmart does what is good for walmart profits.

Having walmart adds placed next to Nazi shit is not good for walmart profits. (and then the public finding out, which is the real problem)

So walmart pulls adds from twitter.

I bet it's more like peer pressure. If everybody else is doing it then they feel they should too to avoid backlash. They don't care about musky's rants or how right wing xitter has become.

Lmao, oh, my, no… this isn’t a moral stance they’re taking… hehehe… oh, sigh

No, they’re protecting their profits. At least some of their customers object and it might affect Walmart’s bottom line, so that’s why they’re pulling their ads. They don’t give a shit about the content on Twitter, or they would have stopped advertising there long ago.

Crazy how people like you think Walmart is any more or less evil than the average for-profit corporation.

They're definitely more evil than average, the average is just also pretty fuckin' evil.

How are they more evil than average? What does Walmart do that Target, Whole Foods, and Kroger does not?

I’m looking forward to seeing how the MAGA Wal Mart boycott plays out.

I'm sure General Dollar will rise to the challenge and once again stand with the troops.

I hope both Twitter and Wal Mart fail.

What in the world would ever make you think Walmart would “fail”?

I mean to be fair they only said they hope.

Apply the same critique to anything someone hopes.

I hope Santa brings me a bike this year!

I hope my cancer goes into remission.

I hope I get to see them in heaven someday.

The presence of hope doesn't necessarily mean the person believes their statement is going to happen though. On the tangent of Walmart, I hope Amazon Fails too :).

No I’m just saying it’s a funny thing to say to someone saying “I hope” I think hope’s just an unrealistic distraction, but I also hope big box stores get collapsed.

Probably one where Amazon overtakes them.

Nah, America's gonna wake up and overthrow our oppressors any day now.

Surely before they destroy the environment beyond hope of redemption.

This made me lol but it is something I fantasize about

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0% chance of happening. Amazon is on the downturn, Walmart is not.

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Why would you want the grocery store with the best deals and largest presence outside of major cities to fail?

Because, while they do provide low prices to consumers. They are absolutely evil to their employees. And source inventory from extremely evil companies (i e. Slave and child labor)...

What about Target, Whole Foods, Kroger, etc? Are they exempt from what you're accusing Walmart of?

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They pulled ads back in October, according to their statement in the article, so it seems to me like this is more a sign of how big companies are no longer seeing X as being worth the money to advertise there.

And it has literally nothing to do with ethics and is profit driven. The entire point of advertising is to make money.

And the fact that they did this in October and no one noticed until now says they made the right choice. They weren’t getting enough eyes on their ads anymore and quietly dropped them.

I bet a lot of the companies that dropped advertising on X were already planning to do so before Elon opened his big mouth.

Is this like the opposite of "go woke go broke"? It sure seems like you lose more money being a hate monger as a public company, or maybe that's just Musk?

Red states are the poorest. "Get woke go broke" was always bullshit.

I hope MAGAs try to cancel WalMart next...

They're going to run out of options

Has there been any analysis on what impact Musk's clear attempt to sabotage Twitter has on electorate engagement in elections?

Because here's my thought: X is becoming a right-wing extremist echo-chamber. A safe space for bigotry. So while reasonable eyes leave, the mold festers largely unchecked.

So going to past elections, was Twitter a greater driver for turning out Democratic voters, or Republican ones? I am genuinely curious.

I feel like that's what's happened with school boards and other such. The reasonable people who used to be in charge were badgered until they gave up in disgust and now all the fuckfaces took over.

Except in the last local elections most of that was undone because the voters are starting to listen. I just hope we aren't to late. We did well in 2018, 2020, and 2022 2023 if you look at the histories of such things.

I do feel we are really trying hard to keep our democracy but at this point in time I feel one bad midterm or presidential election will be our downfall.

I do feel we are really trying hard to keep our democracy but at this point in time I feel one bad midterm or presidential election will be our downfall.

That's basically where we are though. We let it get so bad that now if we take our eyes off the ball they'll end up destroying democracy. Thank God we're finally pushing back, but we really should have done this stuff a couple decades ago.

The exact same strategy has been and continues to be at play with election officials at every level of government. So many election workers have been harassed so much that especially in lieu of the pay and lack of security they don't consider it worth it. So then naturally the nazis fill these spots.