Widespread disbelief as Musk sues advertisers he claims boycotted X

John McCarthy, Opinion Editor for the industry publication The Drum, says a “bewildered” advertising community has “responded with incredulity that a brand safety discussion would be blown up into a freedom of speech debate”. 

The Drum polled more than 100 marketers to get their initial reaction to the statement from X chief executive Linda Yaccarino claiming the groups systematically – and illegally – sought to boycott the platform as part of a broader effort to force X’s hand into suppressing right-leaning voices on the platform. 

‘A wall of ridicule’ from the industry 

“The industry’s response was a wall of ridicule, a consensus that the platform owned by a man who only last year told advertisers to ‘go *** yourself” had made its bed and now had to sleep in it,” McCarthy writes. 

“X’s growing irrelevance in the eyes of the world’s top marketers owed more to its own actions than a shadowy cabal of media execs, many argued.” 

Nils Pratley, Financial Editor of the London-based The Guardian newspaper, says “Elon Musk is being ridiculous. Companies are free to choose where to advertise”. 

Pratley states: “It is less than a year since Elon Musk told advertisers who were shunning his social media site, X, that they could take their business elsewhere permanently. In fact, he encouraged them to do so. 

“Come on, you’re running a profit-seeking business, like most of the rest of the media world. If you can’t make the revenues stack up, that’s your problem. If anyone is guilty of showing monopolistic tendencies here, it is X in believing it deserves to be protected from everyday commercial pressures.”