As opposed to letting advertisers be our mental jailors by chilling the discourse as they pressure the hubs where communication takes place to collapse down to the lowest common denominator of anodyne politically correct corporate approved goodthink like they have over the last 10 years. Cry me a river. I'm morally outraged all the way back into my cage, Mr. PepsiCo!
>As opposed to letting advertisers be our mental jailors by chilling the discourse
Chilling what discourse? To which specific discourse and topics are you referring?
I'm not being snarky here, I don't use Twitter/X/whatever or other "Social Media" sites like FB/IG. Nor do I use any federated ActivityPub[0] sites.
As such, I'm really not sure what speech you believe is being "suppressed" by advertisers.
What's more IIUC, Musk/X are claiming that advertisers should be required to advertise (and pay for those advertisements) on Twitter/X. Unless I'm missing something important, that makes absolutely no sense.
It would be like McDonald's suing you because you don't buy their food, or Tesla suing you because you bought a Chevy instead of a Tesla.
And so, assuming I'm not missing anything important (am I?), the whole premise is risible[1]. No one owes Musk/X/Twitter any advertising revenue, and forcing folks to pay to run ads where they don't want to run such ads is ridiculous -- or is it your contention that advertisers (or anyone else, for that matter -- since if they can be forced to do this, so can you or me) must pay Elon Musk?
I'd be very interested to hear how such a position is compatible with capitalism and a free society. Do tell.
> What's more IIUC, Musk/X are claiming that advertisers should be required to advertise (and pay for those advertisements) on Twitter/X. Unless I'm missing something important, that makes absolutely no sense.
Agreed. It doesn’t. Companies are free to spend their ad dollars how they choose to. It’s a free country last I checked.
Elon tells advertisers to go fuck themsleves, turns Twitter into a cesspool and a hollow shell of its former self and then sues when they decide as companies to not advertise on his now toxic platform? Seems logical to me on the part of the advertisers.
If this doesn’t track for you did causality break in the universe?
I'd add that even though Advertising (well, more specifically, Advertising Market Research) put a roof over my head, clothes on my back and food in my belly for the first 18 years of my life, then for another five years in my early 20s, I despise advertisers, advertising and all that goes with it.
I take great pains to avoid viewing/hearing ads anywhere and wish that scum would just go away.
I'm not "rooting for the ad industry"[0]. In fact, I wish it was abolished or at least heavily regulated.
That said, forcing folks to endorse speech they don't wish to endorse, and/or forcing folks to pay to endorse such speech (showing an ad next to a tweet serves as a de facto endorsement of that tweet) is wrong.
And as much as I hate advertisers, I love freedom of expression and freedom of (or, in this case, from) association for everyone, including those triple-damned advertisers.
> That said, forcing folks to endorse speech they don't wish to endorse... is wrong
Ehh, suppose advertisers didn't want to have ads appear next to tweets by users of specific ethinicities or religious affiliations? Do you think they should have a choice there, or should they not be given one?
I mean, maybe at social platform level granularity it's just economic freedom of association. But you made a generic argument (or at least that's how it reads)
I think folks should follow the law. I'll let you extrapolate WRT "protected classes"[0] and the like, although (since IANAL) I'm not sure how such would apply in the case of placing ads. Especially since one can place ads to be shown only to 18-34 year-old [men|women|non-binary] with a specified educational attainment, a specified floor for income, specified marital status, parentage status in a specific zip code.
All that said, we're talking about a specific platform here (X) and you're moving the goal posts, which just smacks of bad faith. This is your last feeding from me. Now get back under your bridge!
According to Musk, Twitter is busier than ever and about to start being a financial company. Why do they need advertisers in the first place?
Rather than sue a bunch of advertisers why doesn’t Elon, who is clearly a once in a generation business genius, execute on his plan and show the world why we don’t need advertisers?
Most of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising. If you run a business that's dependent on ad sales then guess what: you're dependent on advertisers. They are your customers. That's where the money comes from.
If your customer doesn't like what you're selling then they're not going to buy it. And when you then tell your customers to go fuck themselves your business is unlikely to thrive.
If Musk doesn't like the fact that Twitter is no longer a compelling product for his customers then he either needs to fix the product so it's something his customers want or change the business model to no longer be advertising based or get out of the social media business altogether.
I don't think his goal here is to demand that advertisers pay him, and claims like that are absurd on their face. "How ridiculous someone must be to demand third parties contract with them" yes, very ridiculous, which is why you should be skeptical of such a statement, and examine the veracity of such a statement and reconsider the credibility of anyone who frames what is happening in that way.
Their claim is that a ideologically motivated organization called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media was used to create an illegal cartel agreement between advertisers to shut them out. I think there's merit to that, this wasn't just independent companies deciding not to advertise there, this was a coordinated effort, brazenly so, people were cheering about it at the time. There's a case to be made at the very least, let's see how it plays out.
Looked at through a lens of normal practice their claim has little merit; GARM provides advice to members which members subscribe to and ask for, X-Twitter itself is a current GARM member. Members have individual agency (unless X-Twitter has joined a borg) and are under no obligation to follow the advice of GARM.
I myself have been part of a company that provided advice to subscribers, it wasn't a cartel and not all subscribers followed the leads provided.
The Register is UK based but captured the essence of the whine at play here, Musk told advertisers to fsck off, they did, and now he is upset they did so.
That action itself will undermine Musk's case .. maybe it was a cartel action, probably it was not unexpected follow through in understandable reaction to Musk's attitudes and open armed welcoming and support of the kind of people that stoke far right rioting.
> Their claim is that a ideologically motivated organization called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media
Coordinating an ideologically motivated boycott is totally legal. Where they'd run into problems is if the coordination was meant to e.g. lower X's prices.
A story can have multiple bad guys. Some are worse than others, in a given context.
For example: Liz Cheney is someone I would never vote for (not that I have had to make this decision), yet I applaud her role in the J6 hearings, and her attitude toward Trump in general.
I don't support the ad industry at all, but I absolutely support their right to choose who they do business and associate with. It is a matter of personal freedom.
So, if this does get some where with Jim Jordan also on this, what would be the standard? You have to document that your advertising spend is not based on viewpoint?
As I understand it advertising benefits from Twitter are notoriously hard to quantify in the first place.
I’m narrowly empathetic to the idea that we shouldn’t starve certain view points (though I think that suggesting that there are only two “significant” viewpoints in America cemented in law is a very bad precedent) but these kind of freedoms are also what makes America so good for business.
I watched Yaccarino's message - she looks and sounds like a hostage (which she kind of is - I doubt she will find another respectable job after X).
Besides the usual confirmation that Musk is going broke / prison soon-ish, and that explains the increasingly erratic actions, I wonder what winning looks like here ?
Let's say they win - they will get some compensation for past damages. But what about the future ? We're going to force companies to advertise on their platform ? Like a % based on users ? It all seems quite absurd to me.
I think their ultimate goal is to essentially either eliminate or turn the type of organizations that do this type of organizing.
I think an overall perception and strategy of the right now is that many institutions in America support liberal outcomes and that in order to change that you have to attack these institutions.
So either get rid of GARM or take over GARM and change the standards of what safe media is.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 71.6 ms ] thread[0] https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/how-worlds-...
Edit: Fixed prose.
Chilling what discourse? To which specific discourse and topics are you referring?
I'm not being snarky here, I don't use Twitter/X/whatever or other "Social Media" sites like FB/IG. Nor do I use any federated ActivityPub[0] sites.
As such, I'm really not sure what speech you believe is being "suppressed" by advertisers.
What's more IIUC, Musk/X are claiming that advertisers should be required to advertise (and pay for those advertisements) on Twitter/X. Unless I'm missing something important, that makes absolutely no sense.
It would be like McDonald's suing you because you don't buy their food, or Tesla suing you because you bought a Chevy instead of a Tesla.
And so, assuming I'm not missing anything important (am I?), the whole premise is risible[1]. No one owes Musk/X/Twitter any advertising revenue, and forcing folks to pay to run ads where they don't want to run such ads is ridiculous -- or is it your contention that advertisers (or anyone else, for that matter -- since if they can be forced to do this, so can you or me) must pay Elon Musk?
I'd be very interested to hear how such a position is compatible with capitalism and a free society. Do tell.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/risible
Edit: Added the missing links. Added reference '[1]' to one link.
Agreed. It doesn’t. Companies are free to spend their ad dollars how they choose to. It’s a free country last I checked.
If this doesn’t track for you did causality break in the universe?
I take great pains to avoid viewing/hearing ads anywhere and wish that scum would just go away.
I'm not "rooting for the ad industry"[0]. In fact, I wish it was abolished or at least heavily regulated.
That said, forcing folks to endorse speech they don't wish to endorse, and/or forcing folks to pay to endorse such speech (showing an ad next to a tweet serves as a de facto endorsement of that tweet) is wrong.
And as much as I hate advertisers, I love freedom of expression and freedom of (or, in this case, from) association for everyone, including those triple-damned advertisers.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41175240
Ehh, suppose advertisers didn't want to have ads appear next to tweets by users of specific ethinicities or religious affiliations? Do you think they should have a choice there, or should they not be given one?
I mean, maybe at social platform level granularity it's just economic freedom of association. But you made a generic argument (or at least that's how it reads)
All that said, we're talking about a specific platform here (X) and you're moving the goal posts, which just smacks of bad faith. This is your last feeding from me. Now get back under your bridge!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group
Rather than sue a bunch of advertisers why doesn’t Elon, who is clearly a once in a generation business genius, execute on his plan and show the world why we don’t need advertisers?
If your customer doesn't like what you're selling then they're not going to buy it. And when you then tell your customers to go fuck themselves your business is unlikely to thrive.
If Musk doesn't like the fact that Twitter is no longer a compelling product for his customers then he either needs to fix the product so it's something his customers want or change the business model to no longer be advertising based or get out of the social media business altogether.
I'm not not inclined to support anyone demanding more advertising as a point of lawfare.
Their claim is that a ideologically motivated organization called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media was used to create an illegal cartel agreement between advertisers to shut them out. I think there's merit to that, this wasn't just independent companies deciding not to advertise there, this was a coordinated effort, brazenly so, people were cheering about it at the time. There's a case to be made at the very least, let's see how it plays out.
I myself have been part of a company that provided advice to subscribers, it wasn't a cartel and not all subscribers followed the leads provided.
The Register is UK based but captured the essence of the whine at play here, Musk told advertisers to fsck off, they did, and now he is upset they did so.
That action itself will undermine Musk's case .. maybe it was a cartel action, probably it was not unexpected follow through in understandable reaction to Musk's attitudes and open armed welcoming and support of the kind of people that stoke far right rioting.
As you say, we'll see how it plays out in court.
Coordinating an ideologically motivated boycott is totally legal. Where they'd run into problems is if the coordination was meant to e.g. lower X's prices.
For example: Liz Cheney is someone I would never vote for (not that I have had to make this decision), yet I applaud her role in the J6 hearings, and her attitude toward Trump in general.
As I understand it advertising benefits from Twitter are notoriously hard to quantify in the first place.
I’m narrowly empathetic to the idea that we shouldn’t starve certain view points (though I think that suggesting that there are only two “significant” viewpoints in America cemented in law is a very bad precedent) but these kind of freedoms are also what makes America so good for business.
Besides the usual confirmation that Musk is going broke / prison soon-ish, and that explains the increasingly erratic actions, I wonder what winning looks like here ?
Let's say they win - they will get some compensation for past damages. But what about the future ? We're going to force companies to advertise on their platform ? Like a % based on users ? It all seems quite absurd to me.
I think an overall perception and strategy of the right now is that many institutions in America support liberal outcomes and that in order to change that you have to attack these institutions.
So either get rid of GARM or take over GARM and change the standards of what safe media is.