The lawsuit came several weeks after Musk wrote that X “has no choice but to file suit against the perpetrators and collaborators in the advertising boycott racket,” and called for “criminal prosecution.” Musk’s complaints were buoyed by a House Judiciary Committee report claiming that "the extent to which GARM has organized its trade association and coordinates actions that rob consumers of choice.
As Tesla’s core business starts to falter, CEO Elon Musk has robot fever.
“We are an AI, robotics company; if you value us otherwise, the right answer is impossible to the questions being asked,” Musk told investors and journalists in April.
The company’s profit and loss sheets back that up—Tesla was spending heavily on GPUs from Nvidia rather than on new car lines, although that was followed by news that Musk has had many of those GPUs redirected to his social media company X. And over the past few years, we’ve seen more demonstrations of humanoid robots—with varying degrees of verisimilitude—than new cars.
That lack of attention to the company’s core business is starting to become evident. Tesla’s product lineup is small and increasingly elderly, with the exception of a niche pickup truck that is only road-legal in North America. Price cuts haven’t stopped sales from declining, and the company’s profits are shrinking quarter by quarter.
The World Federation of Advertisers, or WFA, confirmed Thursday that it would halt its nonprofit initiative Global Alliance for Responsible Media. GARM was started in 2019 in part to help advertisers avoid having their promotions show up alongside content they deem harmful…
X, formerly Twitter, filed a federal lawsuit earlier this week against WFA and member companies, including Unilever, Mars and CVS Health. The suit alleged that the WFA engaged in anticompetitive behavior and organized an advertising boycott that ultimately damaged X’s financial health.
The reality is that the WFA had no coercive power over its members, they could advise but not police, but that Musk has endless dollars to push costly lawsuits and they do not. So they have elected to disband the organization rather than fight. I doubt this will convince a single advertiser to rejoin Twitter (X or whatever you call it) or to up their expenditures.
But for your listening and dancing pleasure here’s a brutal takedown of X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s odd manner of defending the suit. (Starts at 5:24 into the video, but the first 5:24 is a fun watch too.)
Once disbanded, that leaves the companies themselves who are parties to the suit. Perhaps that leaves the claim without nearly as much life? Of course, Elon did bring the suit in a TX district court so an appeal will go the unhinged 5th Circuit (described by some commentators as the meth lab of judicial opinions). The 5th might well rule in Elon’s favor, given its addled nature. Remember one of its members, James Ho, was actually sworn in at Harlan Crow’s house. That tells you something about Ho, who is an exemplar of the 5th.
It appears that Musk is setting himself up to WIN!
No, I’m not endorsing Musk. Merely noting … this.
ralph
remembers the jumping the meme from a couple decades ago.
Vox… a font of confidence inspiring reporting. (sarc).
Center for American Progress (didn’t look em up…) but I’m sure they too do not have an axe in the woodshed. (More sarc).
The suit names specific companies (I remember CVS, but there are several other biggies) as well as the ad group which has now folded. It would seem to me that extracting monetary damages is a faint hope, at least unless there is some kind of documentary evidence of collusion (CVS email to Walgreen’s saying ‘I’ll stop advertising if you do”, for instance.)
Could happen I suppose, but it seems unlikely. More likely, I would think, would be emails talking about the danger of having an ad show up next to a p0rn post or a Natzi guy or something like that, and how bad that would be.
But in truth I’ve learned not to try to predict the vagaries of the legal system. And it’s possible that this could be a case of winning the battle and losing the war. Maybe the court finds that the ad group did a naughty and there are some damages, but then what other advertisers want to go anywhere near an outfit that sues its own supporters if they don’t like something later on? There is no advertising medium on the planet that can’t be bought around and still achieve the advertisers’ objectives.
meme from a couple decades ago.