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When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he declared that it would be a "free speech" zone. As it turns out, what he actually meant by that was that it would be a free speech zone for people on the far right. And so, the last year or so has seen the return of a flood of white supremacists, antisemites, fascists, and the like.
It turns out—and who could have guessed?—that many businesses do not particularly want their ads to appear next to a tweet from, say, a Nazi. And so, a whole bunch of major advertisers fled the platform. Some of them made clear that they could be wooed back, if some changes were made. But nobody puts [the] baby into a corner. And so, rather than trying to work with the advertisers (i.e., his customers), Musk told them to—and this is a direct quote—"Go fu** yourself. Go. Fu**. Yourself."
In another complete and total surprise... the advertisers took Musk's suggestion to heart, and made their withdrawal from eX-Twitter permanent. That means that the hemorrhaging of money, which was already bad, has gotten worse. It also means that alleged CEO Linda Yaccarino is getting desperate. And so, she posted a video to eX-Twitter and to YouTube warning eX-Twitter users that their freedoms are at risk:
She appears to have had lessons in public speaking from Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL). If you don't care to watch it—and we don't blame you—Yaccarino announced that eX-Twitter is filing an antitrust lawsuit against the industry group Global Alliance for Responsible Media and against several individual advertisers for engaging in "an illegal boycott." She asks users to support the lawsuit, since the users' free speech rights are being jeopardized by all those meanie advertisers who decided to heed Musk and to "fu** off."
We are not lawyers, but we're not sure there is such a thing as an illegal boycott. Illegal discrimination, yes, but an illegal boycott? If such a thing does exist, this certainly isn't it. Advertisers are free to spend their advertising money with any outlet they wish. This is part of that whole First Amendment thingy that Yaccarino claims to be so gung-ho about.
We recognize that Musk still has his fans, but even if one admires his work with Tesla and SpaceX, he's still an ass as a person. And that was before he went off the deep end with the conspiracy theories and the alt-right trolling. In any event, he arrogantly thought that he could re-invent Twitter, and that he didn't need to pander to his biggest customers while doing so. Now, he and his lackey (his laccarino?) have learned otherwise. There's definitely some schadenfreude in that. (Z)