The IT Nerd

Since it came to light that Elon Musk is an antisemite that supports antisemitism on Twitter, brands such as IBM and Apple have paused advertising on Twitter. But according to CNN, some ads are going one step further, they’ve stopped interacting with followers on Twitter entirely:

In recent days, a number of prominent media brands have not only paused their paid marketing campaigns on the embattled Elon Musk-owned social platform, but have ceased posting on it altogether, going silent on the once essential site that sought to be the world’s “digital town square.”

The flagship accounts belonging to Disney, Paramount, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN’s parent company) have not posted on the platform in roughly 10 days, following Musk’s disturbing endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, which he still has not apologized for.

None of the studios commented on the record when CNN reached out for comment. But people familiar with the social media strategies of Paramount and WBD confirmed under the condition of anonymity that it’s no coincidence: the companies have made the active decision to stop posting under certain handles on X due to concerns, including brand safety.

The blackout on X extends beyond these companies’ corporate accounts, in some cases. For instance, the most high profile accounts affiliated with Disney have gone dark on X, such as @StarWars, @Pixar, and @MarvelStudios, which were previously posting multiple times a day on the platform to their millions of followers. Instead, these brands have switched over to the Meta-owned rival Threads, where they have started actively posting.

Here’s the thing. If enough brands stop posting to Twitter and instead post to other platforms such as Threads, people will follow and Twitter becomes less relevant. That in turn makes other advertisers say “why is my brand on Twitter as there’s less people here”? And they’ll go to where the people are. Which will make Twitter even less relevant. Ultimately, it will end with Twitter being driven into extinction and Elon Musk looking like the loser that he is for paying $44 billion for a company and running it into the ground due to his on ineptitude. Frankly that’s what he deserves given his behaviour over the last year.

First some background. Here’s a definition of the Streisand effect:

The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead backfires by increasing awareness of that information. It is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attempt to suppress the California Coastal Records Project‘s photograph of her cliff-top residence in Malibu, California, taken to document California coastal erosion, inadvertently drew far greater attention to the heretofore obscure photograph in 2003.

Now here’s how it applies to Elon Musk. His lawsuit against Media Matters for exposing antisemitic posts on Twitter being served up beside ads from big name advertisers, who then pulled their ads from Twitter, is has basically resulted in the Streisand effect coming into play according to TechDirt:

in making a big deal out of this and filing one of the worst SLAPP suits I’ve ever seen, all while claiming that Media Matters “manipulated” things (even as the lawsuit admits that it did no such thing), it is only begging more people to go looking for ads appearing next to terrible content.

And they’re finding them. Easily.

As the DailyDot pointed out, a bunch of users started looking around and found that ads were being served next to the tag #HeilHitler and “killjews” among other neo-Nazi content and accounts.

SLAPP stands for Strategic lawsuit against public participation by the way. But I digress. The point is that he’s adding to the reasons that Media Matters is going to win this lawsuit. The fact is that what they said is true and evidence of antisemitism and Nazi posts are easily found if you go looking for them. And you apparently don’t have to try all that hard to find them. The only lawsuit that’s going to be even easier to win than this one is the dBrand vs. Casetify lawsuit. The fact is that Elon is going to get pwned in court as well as the court of public opinion at the rate he’s going. Thus if he were smart, he’d make this go away and do something more than go on the apology tour that he’s planning to go on. But as has been proven recently, he’s not smart. Which is why this will be one more thing that hurts him.