They say sunlight is the best disinfectant, and Elon Musk just pointed it directly at a shadow.
Musk has announced that he is going to sue the Anti-Defamation League over their attempts to scare advertisers from spending funds with X (formerly Twitter).
To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2023
Based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss.
Giving them maximum benefit of the doubt, I don’t see any scenario where they’re responsible for less than 10% of the value destruction, so ~$4 billion.
Document discovery of…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2023
Advertisers avoid controversy, so all that is needed for ADL to crush our US & European ad revenue is to make unfounded accusations. They have much less power in Asia, so our ad revenue there is still strong.
This “controversy” causes advertisers to “pause”, but that pause is…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2023
Musk also shared a link to a Politico article published in July 2020, showing that Zuckerberg was being squeezed in a similar manner. You may remember the advertiser boycott that took place in 2020.
From Politico:
The advertising boycott battering Facebook is unlike anything the social-media giant has faced in its 16-year history: Three days in, 800 companies worldwide have pulled millions of dollars in advertising from the social network, with brands from Coca-Cola to Ford to global conglomerate Unilever demanding that Facebook monitor hate speech more aggressively.
With pullouts mounting and the company’s name constantly tied to racism and hate in the news coverage, CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded by livestreaming part of an employee meeting — one of the few times he’s done that in the company’s history. Then, on Wednesday, Facebook’s powerhouse policy and communications chief, former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, issued an open letter, titled “Facebook does not benefit from hate,” touting its efforts to police its content.
We all know what happened, Zuckerberg caved and now Meta is a tightly censored platform.
Musk has now threatened to sue the ADL which would force them to go though a discovery process if the group doesn’t back down.
