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Musk sues advertisers that boycott X

steenkh

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Elon Musk's X sues Lego, Shell, more companies over advertising 'boycott' from platform

Apparently it possible for Musk to sue companies that do not want to support him. How is that possible? Can a company not decide where it wants to advertise, and stay away from supporting a site that promotes misinformation and far right politics?

The lawsuit was started last August against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, but that organisation folded immediately because it did not have money to fight a lawsuit brought on by the deepest pocket in the world.
 
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You can sue anyone for anything. If the defendant capitulates before the case can be tried, and its merits tested, you still win. Justice for the wealthy.
The two antitrust legal theories are group boycott and information sharing. There really is no doubt that there was a conspiracy among entities to stop advertising and hurt Twitter. But it will probably end in a settlement.
 
The two antitrust legal theories are group boycott and information sharing. There really is no doubt that there was a conspiracy among entities to stop advertising and hurt Twitter. But it will probably end in a settlement.
In which case I’m sure that the boycott can’t continue, and the companies are forced to advertise on X, and Musk has won.
 
The two antitrust legal theories are group boycott and information sharing. There really is no doubt that there was a conspiracy among entities to stop advertising and hurt Twitter. But it will probably end in a settlement.
They had a legal obligation to their shareholders to not tank the value of their companies by associating with Twitter, a company perceived by their customers as tainted (and tainting what it touched). Hurting Twitter is not the goal, it's saving themselves from customers thinking they're with Twitter.
 
The two antitrust legal theories are group boycott and information sharing.
Yes, I understand that. And I can understand why others perhaps don't.

Anti-trust law (which Republicans generally don't like) prevents companies from forming a trust in order to collectively decide not to do business with another company, or to act collectively in a way designed to hurt that company. The problem is not that a potential advertiser decided not to advertise with an odious outlet, or that doing so was good or bad for its own business. The problem is that you can't get together as companies and all agree to this sort of anti-competitive behavior. It's just the corollary to forming a trust to benefit those who belong to it at the expense of those that don't. Musk's claim is that these companies got together and decided as a group not to advertise on Twitter. It's the getting-together and group decision that is legally iffy. So if Musk wins, companies won't be forced to advertise on Twitter. They're just prevented from organizing an effort whereby participants agree not to advertise on Twitter.

There really is no doubt that there was a conspiracy among entities to stop advertising and hurt Twitter. But it will probably end in a settlement.
In the ideal world, the veracity of those facts and the viability of those legal theories would be tested in court. But we live in a land where anyone can sue for anything. You just have to toss together a legally sufficient pleading and call out whatever you want to be your cause of action. And in the case of wealthy plaintiffs and poor defendants, the strength of the claim may never get a test. The defendant is simply bullied and strong-armed into a settlement and we never get to know whether the facts were true and the legal theory holds up.
 
And in the case of wealthy plaintiffs and poor defendants, the strength of the claim may never get a test. The defendant is simply bullied and strong-armed into a settlement and we never get to know whether the facts were true and the legal theory holds up.

The only thing I'll contest in your post is that I don't think Musk is exactly going up against the poor. He's named HUGE companies in this lawsuit.
The newest complaint, filed over the weekend, adds Shell International, Nestlé, Abbott Laboratories, Colgate-Palmolive, Lego, Tyson Foods and Pinterest to the growing list of companies.

____________________________________________________________

The original suit took aim at the World Federation of Advertisers and its Global Alliance for Responsible Media initiative that boycotted X. The suit accused Unilever, Mars and CVS, among others, of violating antitrust law and evading the competition process.

There's a metric ◊◊◊◊ ton of money in those companies, and I highly doubt they'll settle for the money Musk wants. Collectively I'd bet they have a better legal team than anything Musk is going to put forth.

I won't be shocked at all if there's a settlement with this lawsuit, but I'd bet a) it'll be sealed and b) Musk won't get any money from it (which is why it'll be sealed). He might get an agreement that the companies won't band together to boycott Musk. Maybe some attorney's fees but I doubt even that. If I'm understanding a lot of the legal mumbo jumbo accurately WFA and the GARM didn't require anyone to join their "boycott". It was merely a suggestion from professionals. There wasn't anything to force those companies into complying so it wasn't really a conspiracy. That's my layman's understanding, but I'm always open to being wrong. Especially with corporate law. I tend to have a better understanding of criminal law.
 
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The only thing I'll contest in your post is that I don't think Musk is exactly going up against the poor. He's named HUGE companies in this lawsuit.
That's a good point. The organization that embodied the allegedly unlawful trust has folded, however, under the weight of this suit. The constituent companies are likely to fare better.

If I'm understanding a lot of the legal mumbo jumbo accurately WFA and the GARM didn't require anyone to join their "boycott". It was merely a suggestion from professionals. There wasn't anything to force those companies into complying so it wasn't really a conspiracy. That's my layman's understanding, but I'm always open to being wrong. Especially with corporate law. I tend to have a better understanding of criminal law.
Indeed, there are factual and legal questions to be answered. Every complaint contains a legal theory tied to a cause of action, so simply stating that a legal theory for liability exists doesn't answer any questions. That theory is meant to be tested. Every complaint contains allegations of fact that may or may not turn out to be true. They are meant to be tested. That's why I say—in the general case, not necessarily limited to this suit—that bully plaintiffs with vast resources don't make good law.

In addition to questions over whether GARM did anything to compel obedience, you have questions over the targeted nature of the advisory. I personally and my company collectively belong to standards and industry organizations that collectively agree to meet certain norms of engineering practice and business conduct. These are generally aimed at simplifying and streamlining cooperation and enforcing good practices among companies that are at once competitors and collaborators. If some company out there refuses to meet our agnostically-established standards, and we don't do business with them on that basis, have we unfairly targeted that company? A company has a right not to be unfairly targeted for systematic, concerted adverse action in the marketplace. But what if you're the only company that fails to meet standards that are otherwise reasonable?
 
Was it: Lots of companies world-wide all banded together and decided collectively that they were not going to advertise on X?

Or was it: Lots of companies world-wide all recoiled in horror at the Nazi ◊◊◊◊-show that Elon created, and decided individually that it was a very bad business model to be associated with anyone who advertises on X.
 
This is why anti-SLAPP laws and causes of action were created. But it seems that money can buy anything these days, including Supreme Courts.
We also don't have any federal anti-SLAAP laws. Not that it matters. The punishment is a fine.
 
We also don't have any federal anti-SLAAP laws. Not that it matters. The punishment is a fine.
This is true, but I'm looking at the grounding of this legal principal from a moral philosophy standpoint. If we agree that might shouldn't make right, then we will want to introduce elements into our enforcement systems to prevent mighty people from imposing their will upon weaker ones via our justice system without an assessment of the moral praiseworthiness of the claim per se. Ironically this cuts both ways, since the moral basis of antitrust law is that economic might should not overcome morally righteous principles of fair business competition.

It's a bit ironic that "righteousness" in the context of this lawsuit means the right to espouse widely distasteful views in conjunction with the doing of one's business, but that's what makes law appear quirky and often disturbingly amoral. A broader and less legally formalistic way of seeing this is that a business's desire to publicly embrace distasteful things should be allowed to have consequences for its appeal in the marketplace. But then you have to wonder whether the economic power that success in the marketplace creates is a just dessert that should be exercised without undue fetter.
 
I doubt it. I haven't seen any evidence of a conspiracy between these companies. But if you have, please share it.

GARM's goal also wasn't to "hurt Twitter", which becomes a huge point in this lawsuit. They were trying to protect their company's reputation by not having it advertised next to child porn, nazi and hate speech. It's the same reason every reputable company doesn't advertise on 4 and 8 chan. It's a cesspool of hate and dumb ◊◊◊◊ that they don't want to be associated with. There's nothing illegal in that and when the companies that are named in the lawsuit show the irrefutable evidence that hate speech, child porn, etc. postings have increased substantially then there won't be too many avenues left for X and Musk to go.

Businesses get to make the best decisions for their shareholders and profit for the company.
 
The two antitrust legal theories are group boycott and information sharing. There really is no doubt that there was a conspiracy among entities to stop advertising and hurt Twitter. But it will probably end in a settlement.
Gee companies do not want to advertise on a network where their ads might appear on Neo Nazi sites, a very bad look. How unfair of them.
But then being racist to some people is a feature, not a bug.
 
They were trying to protect their company's reputation by not having it advertised next to child porn, nazi and hate speech. It's the same reason every reputable company doesn't advertise on 4 and 8 chan.
Brand safety is a legally cognizable business interest. So is profit. Antitrust law says you can't get together with your friends and maximize your profit by using your combined clout unilaterally to bury a small competitor, set arbitrarily high prices for your goods, and so forth. You can still bury him, but you have to act as individual market agents and presumably preserve the urge to try to bury each other too. Similarly antitrust law says you can't get together with your friends and boycott a business you don't like if that business depends on patronage from your industry. You can still boycott it, but you have to act as individual market agents and accept that some of your competitors won't boycott.

What's special here is that online advertising is not a direct advertiser-to-outlet proposition. Ad agencies do the physical work of interfacing with outlet platforms, serving ads whose content is provided by their advertiser clients, and collecting the promotional fees from the outlet. This results in considerable efficiency for all involved. If we accept that brand safety is a legitimate legal concern for advertisers, it follows that the ad agency is the place where such safety concerns are best enforced. It also follows then that a broker's formulation of a solution for brand safety is part of his competitive advantage.

Acme Industries supplies ad content to Bob's Ad Agency, who then contracts with the social media sites Nosebook and Flubr to broker Acme's ads along with other companies, some of whom may be competitors to Acme. Bob maintains a list of objectionable content that he will not let his clients' ads appear alongside, and this is a condition of his contracts with those platforms. On the flip side, that list of objectionable content—and a promise to prevent advertisers' brands from being associated with it—is part of Bob's advantage in the marketplace of ad brokerage. If Nosebook is able to meet Bob's content standards, but Flubr is not, have all of Bob's clients created a trust to conspire to target Flubr for destruction? If Acme helps Bob out by any means besides contractual considerations, does that change the nature of Bob's business and make it a trust? To what extent is Flubr responsible for its own situation by means of its own business decisions that broadly alienate its potential advertisers? To what extent can the breadth of that alienation be lawfully expressed in rules meant to apply to everyone?
 
Elon Musk's X sues Lego, Shell, more companies over advertising 'boycott' from platform

Apparently it possible for Musk to sue companies that do not want to support him. How is that possible? Can a company not decide where it wants to advertise, and stay away from supporting a site that promotes misinformation and far right politics?

The lawsuit was started last August against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, but that organisation folded immediately because it did not have money to fight a lawsuit brought on by the deepest pocket in the world.
In the US you can pretty much bring a lawsuit against anybody for any reason. Trick is to actaully get a ruling in your favor.
 
Gee, I thought that Trausti was a free market let buisnesses make their own decisions kind of guy............
Well, generally, yes. But the purpose of antitrust is to protect against collusion, monopolies, etc. When market players collude to hurt another commercial entity, that's kinda textbook antitrust.
 
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In the US you can pretty much bring a lawsuit against anybody for any reason. Trick is to actaully get a ruling in your favor.
I've not a opinion on whether Musk will prevail, but if businesses are going to collude to hurt another market player don't be so open about it.
 
It's rich complaining about Market Power being directed against the single-richest being on the planet.
It's amazing that with all his money, Musk is still a baby complaining to mommy, because other kids still have toys and not only hom
 
Public support for Musk is tanking. The February 4th Yougov poll showed:
51% of Americans believe that Elon Musk has a lot of influence within Trump's administration, while only 13% say they want him to have a lot of influence. Nearly half — 46% — say they'd prefer for Musk to have no influence in the administration while only 4% say he has none. Yougov poll link

Only 6% of self-identified Democrats said they wanted Musk to have a lot of influence. Worse, only 26% of self-identified Republicans wanted Musk to have a lot of influence. Personally, I don't want Musk to have any influence or any role in our government. His major (only?) qualification seems to be he donated something like $300 million to trump's campaign.

It stinks.
 
Public support for Musk is tanking.
The gaming fiasco was the tipping point for me, trivial as it seems. I keep wanting to call it Gamergate, but that already refers to something else.

What that experience demonstrates to me is that Musk is profoundly narcissistic. When this deep narcissism is coupled with fundamentally unlimited resources, he can quite effectively create a bubble that provides a compelling illusion of empirical evidence supporting his self-image. This drifts into dangerous territory when he acts in ways to preserve his ego that end up causing significant injury to others, or denies to others their rights (e.g., the defamation suit over his accusations of pedophilia). He is almost completely insulated from the consequences of his ineptitude and malice. I believe this advertising lawsuit is just another way for him to shift blame onto others for his own poor decisions. And he probably has the resources to make it happen. He can force people to pretend to like him.

No, he absolutely should not be given unfettered government power. He will simply continue to manufacture a world in which he is a god, and others will suffer needlessly. It didn't matter as much when it was only his personal or business interests at stake, and when those affected by his childish, thin-skinned antics were those who volunteered to associate with him. Even in those cases it was prudent for those around him to attempt to insulate their own interests and the business interests from his meddling. Now that we are all involuntarily affected by his capricious behavior, and now that there is no functional check on it, we are in hazardous waters.
 
FWIW, I hope you all realise that elonia has filed this lawsuit with his favourite judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk. I'll be highly surprised if the initial ruling isn't in elonia's favour, before it's inevitable overturn on appeal.
 

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