A reader pointed me towards this Tweet from Twitter sock puppet for Elon CEO Linda Yaccarino which is firmly in the realm of mind blowing:
Every day, hundreds of millions of people come to X to be part of the only global, real-time conversation. They come to share their thoughts and hear others. To share their content and see more. To debate and be debated. To entertain and be entertained. To inspire and be inspired. There is no substitute for X.
The power of this community to bring global conversations to life was the reason I was so excited to join X as CEO in June 2023.
After a career in media and advertising, I thought I had seen everything. Then I read the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s report entitled “GARM’s (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) Harm” last month. The report disclosed that their investigation had found evidence of an illegal boycott against many companies, including X. As their report found: “Evidence obtained by the Committee shows that GARM and its members directly organized boycotts and used other indirect tactics to target disfavored platforms, content creators, and news organizations in an effort to demonetize and, in effect, limit certain choices for consumers.”
The consequence – perhaps the intent – of this boycott was to seek to deprive X’s users, be they sports fans, gamers, journalists, activists, parents or political and corporate leaders, of the Global Town Square.
To put it simply, people are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is undermined and some viewpoints are not funded over others as part of an illegal boycott.
This behavior is a stain on a great industry, and cannot be allowed to continue.
That is why, today, X has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and GARM members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever. This is not a decision we took lightly, but it is a direct consequence of their actions.
The illegal behavior of these organizations and their executives cost X billions of dollars.
Since arriving at X, I made it my mission to continue to build a platform where people, brands and advertisers can thrive in our unique, dynamic and safe environment.
And because of this commitment to our users, even despite the boycott, usage has reached all time highs. Using a Twitter legacy metric, user active minutes, in August 2022, people spent 7.2 billion active minutes on the platform. Today, that number is more than 9 billion, a 25% increase.
The same is true for video – even compared to last year, daily video views are up 45% to 8.2 billion. X is innovating and growing.
We have met and surpassed the requests made by advertisers and groups such as GARM for new tools, both to improve advertiser controls and the effectiveness of our products to drive increased value for our customers.
We have proven our platform provides advertisers a way to showcase their brands and reach their target audiences safely, efficiently and effectively. That’s why I’ve worked in good faith with marketers across the globe to showcase our innovations and allay any concerns with brands whom I’ve partnered with for decades. The unfortunate reality is that despite all our efforts, hundreds of meetings and research to the contrary, many companies chose to dismiss the facts.
To those who broke the law, we say enough is enough. We are compelled to seek justice for the harm that has been done by these and potentially additional defendants, depending what the legal process reveals.
It’s also clear that there are likely others who suffered at the hands of this activity. This case is about more than damages – we have to fix a broken ecosystem that allows this illegal activity to occur.
We will continue to innovate and ensure X has a vibrant future while the courts will hold accountable those who engaged in illegal behavior.
To all of you who have been part of the transformative journey we are on, thank you. Rest assured, we will not stop defending our global town square.
Linda
This was retweeted by Elon Musk, along with this:
Now let me add some context here, because context is important:
- The committee that is being referred to in this lawsuit is led by Republicans on Capitol Hill. Given Elon and Linda’s right wing leanings, along with the fact that Twitter has gone toward the right since Elon took over, that’s enough to make one say “hmmmmm…”
- The lawsuit’s allegations appear to canter on the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover and not a more recent dispute with advertisers that came a year later which caused advertisers to flee the platform en masse.
This really seems to me to be a “Hail Mary” of sorts from Elon. As in he’s sending a message to say that if you don’t back him and his toxic platform, he’ll sue you. Which in turn should make it clear what the response of anyone who is still advertising on that platform should be. Which is that you should flee the platform now. Don’t wait for this case to play out in court. Leave now. By extension, if you as an individual happen to still be on Twitter, you should leave as well. Elon needs eyeballs to make money, and if you don’t consume the content on Twitter, you deprive him of money. Because to be frank, Elon and his sock puppet CEO Linda have lost the plot here. And there is zero reason why they need to be accommodated any longer.
Elon Musk May Have To Sell More Tesla Stock To Keep Twitter Alive
Posted in Commentary with tags Twitter on August 18, 2024 by itnerdA new report by Fortune paints a pretty grim picture for Elon Musk and his involvement in Twitter. Thing look pretty dire at Twitter. How dire you ask? How about this:
Musk’s repeated outbursts against advertisers have dried up the main source of revenue for the loss-making company formerly known as Twitter. A recent decision to sue them for heeding his own advice to not buy ads on the platform hasn’t helped. At some point, he will have to provide a fresh infusion of cash to salvage his $44 billion takeover. And that might mean Musk sells Tesla stock to raise the money—hurting anyone who holds the carmaker’s shares.
“I would be expecting something between $1 and $2 billion in stock,” said Bradford Ferguson, president and chief investment officer of asset manager Halter Ferguson Financial, in comments posted to YouTube on Wednesday. This alone could cause the stock to lose between 5% and 10% of its value. “It’s a massive hole they need to plug.”
If you’re a Tesla shareholder, that has to freak you out. After all, Elon has sold Tesla stock at least two times before to finance his shenanigans at Twitter. Here’s the specifics as to why he needs that money:
Ferguson based his assessment on internal second-quarter figures recently obtained by the New York Times. According to this report, X booked $114 million worth of revenue in the U.S., its largest market by far. This represented a 25% drop over the preceding three months and a 53% drop over the year-ago period.
That already sounds bad. But it gets worse. The last publicly available figures prior to Musk’s acquisition, from Q2 of 2022, had revenue at $661 million. After you account for inflation, revenue has actually collapsed by 84%, in today’s dollars.
No one knows how much longer X can survive, since the company doesn’t release financial results. But in November, Musk himself admitted X could face bankruptcy due to the advertiser boycott
So for a guy who loves to pay the game of FAAFO, it’s pretty clear that he’s in the “find out” phase of that. And what’s bad about this is that he’s completely willing to take Tesla, his shareholders and who knows what else down with him.
And I thought that Elon was supposed to be smart.
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