linda yaccarino

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X’s globe-trotting defense of ads on Nazi posts violates TOS, Media Matters says

“X conceded that depending on what content a user follows and how long they’ve had their account, they might see advertisements placed next to extremist content,” MMFA alleged.

As MMFA sees it, Musk is trying to blame the organization for ad losses spurred by his own decisions after taking over the platform—like cutting content moderation teams, de-amplifying hateful content instead of removing it, and bringing back banned users. Through the lawsuits, Musk allegedly wants to make MMFA pay “hundreds of millions of dollars in lost advertising revenue” simply because its report didn’t outline “what accounts Media Matters followed or how frequently it refreshed its screen,” MMFA argued, previously likening this to suing MMFA for scrolling on X.

MMFA has already spent millions to defend against X’s multiple lawsuits, their filing said, while consistently contesting X’s chosen venues. If X loses the fight in California, the platform would potentially owe damages from improperly filing litigation outside the venue agreed upon in its TOS.

“This proliferation of claims over a single course of conduct, in multiple jurisdictions, is abusive,” MMFA’s complaint said, noting that the organization has a hearing in Singapore next month and another in Dublin in May. And it “does more than simply drive up costs: It means that Media Matters cannot focus its time and resources to mounting the best possible defense in one forum and must instead fight back piecemeal,” which allegedly prejudices MMFA’s “ability to most effectively defend itself.”

“Media Matters should not have to defend against attempts by X to hale Media Matters into court in foreign jurisdictions when the parties already agreed on the appropriate forum for any dispute related to X’s services,” MMFA’s complaint said. “That is—this Court.”

X still recovering from ad boycott

Although X CEO Linda Yaccarino started 2025 by signaling the X ad boycott was over, Ars found that external data did not support that conclusion. More recently, Business Insider cited independent data sources last month who similarly concluded that while X’s advertiser pool seemed to be increasing, its ad revenue was still “far” from where Twitter was prior to Musk’s takeover.

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X CEO signals ad boycott is over. External data paints a different picture.

When X CEO Linda Yaccarino took the stage as a keynote speaker at CES 2025, she revealed that “90 percent of the advertisers” who boycotted X over brand safety concerns since Elon Musk’s 2022 Twitter acquisition “are back on X.”

Yaccarino did not go into any further detail to back up the data point, and X did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

But Yaccarino’s statistic seemed to bolster claims that X had made since Donald Trump’s re-election that advertisers were flocking back to the platform, with some outlets reporting that brands hoped to win Musk’s favor in light of his perceived influence over Trump by increasing spending on X.

However, it remains hard to gauge how impactful this seemingly significant number of advertisers returning will be in terms of spiking X’s value, which fell by as much as 72 percent after Musk’s Twitter takeover. And X’s internal data doesn’t seem to completely sync up with data from marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower, suggesting that more context may be needed to understand if X’s financial woes may potentially be easing up in 2025.

Before the presidential election, Sensor Tower previously told Ars that “72 out of the top 100 spending US advertisers” on Twitter/X from October 2022 had “ceased spending on the platform as of September 2024.” This was up from 50 advertisers who had stopped spending on Twitter/X in October 2023, about a year after Musk’s acquisition, suggesting that the boycott had seemingly only gotten worse.

Shortly after the election, AdWeek reported that big brands, including Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Lionsgate Entertainment, had resumed advertising on X. But by the end of 2024, Sensor Tower told Ars that X still had seemingly not succeeded in wooing back many of pre-acquisition Twitter’s top spenders, making Yaccarino’s claim that “90 percent of advertisers are back on X” somewhat harder to understand.

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