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??
Musk's X sues advertisers over alleged 'massive advertiser boycott' .
Submitted 3 months ago by ModerateImprovement@sh.itjust.works to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
Empricorn@feddit.nl 3 months ago
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 months 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.
trk@aussie.zone 3 months ago
Please drink verification can
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Pure speculation on the only real way it could have merit:
Sometimes there actually are contracts for minimum spending. This happens with actual physical products in exchange for a better bulk price, and would usually take extraordinary events to breach the contract on the manufacturer’s side to break as the purchaser, because it may involve stuff like building up manufacturing capacity. In that context, it’s a perfectly legitimate business practice.
The economics of websites are different, but (without direct knowledge of anyone’s practices) it’s within the realm of plausibility that similar contracts exist on big advertising platforms. It’s valuable for larger advertisers to keep price down, and it’s valuable for the platforms to have a steady base level of advertising.
If those contracts do exist, then the case might have the potential to be interesting. How badly does a platform have to materially degrade the value of their advertising before advertisers are able to back out of pre-existing deals? (The other option is collusion, but good luck showing cause for that.)
nonailsleft@lemm.ee 3 months 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
bender223@lemmy.today 3 months ago
Elon is the dumbest genius 🤦♂️
BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 3 months 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 3 months 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 not just said, this suit is about breach of contract, not conspiracy to boycott a poor billionaires company he is embezzling money to through Tesla?
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You can in case of protected group discrimination sue the business, but suing customers is something new.
magnetosphere@fedia.io 3 months ago
This is hilarious.
Should every company, regardless of whether they’ve advertised on Twitter before, be federally mandated to spend a certain percentage of their advertising budget on Musk’s little shitshow?
What, exactly, is the solution he has in mind?
irotsoma@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Advertising socialism apparently. 🤣
Plopp@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Well it would go well together with the corporate socialism…
mp3@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
We gone full circle.
eee@lemm.ee 3 months ago
More government intervention in markets, because that’s what Republicans stand f- oh wait, er…
Altomes@lemm.ee 3 months 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 3 months ago
Whole I think it will have that effect, Musk isn’t smart enough to have thought about it that deeply.
AstralPath@lemmy.ca 3 months 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.
Hellinabucket@lemmy.world 3 months 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.
NutWrench@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You literally told your advertisers to go fark themselves, Elmo. Several times. This is what consequences look like.
Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Oh God, it only just occurred to me that that will be used as evidence.
dinckelman@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Just because he filed a lawsuit, it doesn’t mean it won’t immediately be thrown out of court.
No one has any obligation to work with him
Telorand@reddthat.com 3 months ago
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months 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.
hddsx@lemmy.ca 3 months 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?
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
Because he’s only a free speech absolutist for himself and for people who agree with him
hddsx@lemmy.ca 3 months 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
Noodle07@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It’s actually fee speech, common misconception
hddsx@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Ah, can I get a waiver if I’m rich and famous?
Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
I hope exhibit A of the defences evidence is Elon telling them all to go fuck themselves.
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 3 months ago
Who does he think he is, Israel?
whoisearth@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Takes one apartheid asshole to recognize another eh? Lol
Avatar_of_Self@lemmy.world 3 months ago
A House Republican lead committee said that the boycott is illegal but also said they don’t know if there’s really a law against it.
Republicans: Corporations should have freedom of expression (Citizens United)!
Also Republicans: Corporations shouldn’t be able to choose what platforms to run ads on!
IllNess@infosec.pub 3 months ago
I can sue X for not advertising on the my Instagram page then? Lol.
DxK@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Elon Musk: Your honor these mean jerks won’t pay to advertise in my nazi bar and it hurts my feels.
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Musk being shocked they don’t like his Apartheid Ad Network.
Bahnd@lemmy.world 3 months 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.
Vanth@reddthat.com 3 months ago
I had to skim quite a few down the search results to find an article that described what it meant by suing for “illegal boycott” in more detail.
variety.com/…/elon-musk-x-sues-advertisers-garm-b…
X’s lawsuit alleged that the advertisers’ “boycott” violated Section 1 the U.S.’s Sherman Act antitrust law, which broadly prohibits agreements among distinct actors that unreasonably restrain trade, “by withholding purchases of digital advertising from Twitter.”
“The conduct of Defendants and their co-conspirators alleged herein is per se illegal, or, in the alternative, illegal under the Rule of Reason or ‘quick look’ analytical framework,” the X lawsuit said. “There are no procompetitive effects of the group boycott, which was not reasonably related to, or reasonably necessary for, any procompetitive objectives of the GARM Brand Safety Standards.”
The “unlawful conduct” alleged by X is the subject of “an active investigation” by the House of Representatives’ Committee on the Judiciary, the lawsuit said. The committee’s interim report issued on July 10 concluded that, “The extent to which GARM has organized its trade association and coordinates actions that rob consumers of choices is likely illegal under the antitrust laws and threatens fundamental American freedoms. The information uncovered to date of WFA and GARM’s collusive conduct to demonetize disfavored content is alarming.”
lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
But what would it even change? The businesses would no longer be able to make an explicit agreement, probably have to pay a fine, but can they be forced to advertise or will they just proceed to coincidentally all decide not to advertise without explicitly colluding?
Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
“We decided not to advertise with this company because they sued us.”
weew@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
If Musk is part of that collusion, then is it still a conspiracy?
He told them to fuck off, they fucked off.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
This requires proof for collusion, does it not?
Vanth@reddthat.com 3 months ago
I would think. And if that proof exists, it will come up at the appropriate time during legal proceedings. I’m skeptical there is any.
I guess they could call the entire existence of GARM to be collusion; companies banding together to “punish” companies who don’t follow their guidelines. But X is (was?) a voluntary member of GARM, so it seems that would be a difficult argument for them to make without implicating themselves too.
2pt_perversion@lemmy.world 3 months ago
He’s trying to claim that companies colluded to stop advertising on X and that violates antitrust laws.
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?
Red_October@lemmy.world 3 months 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.
AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Wait. What?
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 3 months 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 moron, you can’t force people to buy your products.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 months ago
How dare u boycott me >:3
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
he’s gonna sue twitter users for using adblockers on the site isn’t he?
billiam0202@lemmy.world 3 months ago
And then he’ll promptly be sued by Axel Springer for stealing their idea.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 3 months ago
what a pathetic weird dumbass
billwashere@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Elon: Moooom, make the advertisers pay me
Mom: Well maybe quit being a little shit and being a whiny little spoiled bastard, hmmm?
Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I remember when this was announced 2 years ago. Any update?
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Former twitter is still shit.
TheBigBrother@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Elon’s temper tantrum…
todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 3 months 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?
RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 3 months 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.
ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world 3 months ago
He can sue, but he won’t win in any sane court.
solomon42069@lemmy.world 3 months ago
No sane court? So it has a real chance of being decided by The Supreme Court…
helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 months ago
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.
I don’t know if that’s illegal or not.
seaQueue@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Ah yes, the pinnacle of small govt: legislating how advertisers spend their money when they won’t spend that money on Republican platforms
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 3 months 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.