The IT Nerd

Well, Elon Musk has officially lost his marbles.

I say that because in the wake of IBM, followed by Apple, followed by a host of other advertisers pulling their ads from Twitter, Elon Musk is now threatening Media Matters who outed the fact that big name advertisers were appearing next to Nazi and hate speech content with a lawsuit:

Let’s recap something here:

• Media Matters found that Nazi and hate speech was appearing next to big name advertisers.
• Twitter when they were called on it said “its system does not intentionally place brands “actively next to this kind of content”, and the content cited by Media Matters would no longer be able to make money off its posts.” Which to me sounds like an admission that what Media Matters said was accurate.
• Elon himself also “endorsed an antisemitic post on X that falsely claimed members of the Jewish community were stoking hatred against white people.”

Thus I am failing to see how this is fraudulent to use an Elon phrase. I also don’t see how any lawsuit that he files would last five seconds in court. Having said that, I’m a computer nerd and not a lawyer.

But his threats of lawsuits against people who show Twitter for what it is, which is a tactic he’s used before, is meant to ensure that nobody shines a light on everything that is bad about Twitter. The thing is that this time it will not work. Because I believe that we’ve now reached a point where Elon’s bad behaviour is no longer acceptable and advertisers are taking their advertising budgets elsewhere. And that’s good as far as I am concerned because taking advertising cash out of Elon’s pocket will do one of two things. Either he will alter his behaviour. Which for the record I do not see happening. Or he will be forced to use his own resources, be it selling Tesla or SpaceX stock, to fund Twitter. And that is sure to hurt him and his businesses and make him feel some pain. And it’s high time he has to face some consequences for his behaviour because it is abhorrent and unacceptable.

This entry was posted on November 18, 2023 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.