XPost: alt.politics.media, alt.politics.trump, sac.politics   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns   
   From: leroysoetoro@americans-first.com   
      
   https://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2025/08/04/has-pressure-   
   on-advertisers-to-leave-x-hurt-the-rights-only-major-free-speech-platform-   
   n2661350   
      
   Twitter was failing when Elon Musk purchased the social media platform in   
   October 2022. He radically changed it — deliberately renaming it X to   
   distinguish the platform as something far broader. He sought to make X   
   fair by helping independent journalists and creators make money from the   
   platform by sharing advertising revenues. But pressure from progressives   
   made advertisers flee, so Musk filed a lawsuit to bring them back.   
      
   Progressives had convinced advertisers that Musk’s elimination of   
   Twitter’s biased censorship of conservatives — including allowing figures   
   like President Donald Trump back on the platform — would allow   
   disinformation, hate speech, and offensive content. The boycott resulted   
   in a reported 55-60% drop in U.S. ad revenue from 2022 to 2023.   
      
   However, hypocritically, Musk’s alignment with Trump after the 2024   
   election boosted investor confidence and encouraged some advertisers to   
   reconsider X, with a projected 25% increase in ad spending from agencies   
   in February. Since Musk took the company private, figures are mostly   
   estimates or what he reveals.   
      
   X cultivated new advertisers, with 46 of the top 100 U.S. advertisers in   
   January new to the platform since 2022, including brands like Temu, NFL,   
   DraftKings, Amazon, and Dell.   
      
   Musk sharply denounced the advertiser exodus, famously telling advertisers   
   to “go f**k yourself” at a 2023 New York Times DealBook Summit and   
   accusing them of blackmail. His rhetoric escalated when he filed a   
   lawsuit, declaring “now it is war” against advertisers.   
      
   X’s revenue is recovering  — 16.5% ad growth in 2025 — but is roughly half   
   of Twitter’s 2021 peak. X is estimated to have as many as 611 million   
   monthly active users globally, according to sources like DemandSage, up   
   from 368 million in 2022. Subscriptions, such as X Premium, are expected   
   to contribute 10-15% of revenue this year.   
      
   Twitter’s revenue in 2021 was approximately $5.08 billion, primarily from   
   advertising (89%), with the rest from data licensing and other sources.   
   Twitter carried a significant debt load of about $5.5 billion as of mid-   
   2022. In 2021, it reported a net loss of $221 million. Growth was stagnant   
   during the last few years of Twitter.   
      
   Musk took out $13 billion in loans when he acquired the platform, which   
   likely increased the debt. Its net loss in 2025 may be comparable to 2021,   
   with estimates as low as $220 million.   
      
   The U.S. House Judiciary Committee suspected illegal collusion to boycott   
   X coordinated by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), which   
   was formed by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and conducted an   
   investigation in July 2024 titled “Collusion in the Global Alliance for   
   Responsible Media.” The committee released an interim staff report titled   
   “GARM’s Harm: How the World’s Biggest Brands Seek to Control Online   
   Speech” on July 10, 2024.   
      
   GARM was formed by WFA in 2019 as a flagship project of the World Economic   
   Forum (WEF). Its stated goal was to create a “common understanding” in the   
   advertising industry of “what harmful and sensitive content is” as well as   
   “where ads should not appear.” The WEF is an unelected, elitist group of   
   wealthy corporate and political leaders attempting to shape global   
   policies without governmental accountability.   
      
   The congressional report stated, “GARM’s internal documents show that GARM   
   was asked by a member to ‘arrange a meeting and hear more about [GARM’s]   
   perspectives about the Twitter situation and a possible boycott from many   
   companies.” After its effort, GARM “bragged about” the fact that Twitter   
   was “80% below revenue forecasts.” GARM’s leader and co-founder, Rob   
   Rakowitz, once complained in an email that the Constitution was written   
   “by white men exclusively.”   
      
   The report alleged that GARM likely violated federal antitrust laws by   
   limiting consumer choice through coordinated demonetization, describing   
   collusion as “the supreme evil of antitrust.” The report also found that   
   GARM pressured Spotify over Joe Rogan’s podcast, due to his position that   
   healthy people don’t need the COVID-19 vaccine.   
      
   A month later, X filed an antitrust lawsuit in Texas against WFA and GARM,   
   along with companies including Unilever, Mars, CVS Health, and Ørsted. The   
   lawsuit claimed these entities engaged in a “systematic illegal boycott,”   
   conspiring to withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue from X   
   after Musk’s takeover, violating U.S. antitrust laws by coordinating a   
   boycott due to concerns over loosened content moderation and brand safety.   
   Internal GARM documents revealed discussions about enforcing brand safety   
   standards — a broad, vague phrase used to justify suppressing conservative   
   speech — which X said were used to justify the boycott.   
      
   The lawsuit and congressional investigation led to the dissolution of GARM   
   in August 2024, with the group citing resource strain from the litigation   
   as the reason for shutting down. Then-X CEO Linda Yaccarino said this was   
   evidence of GARM’s wrongdoing.   
      
   In February 2025, X broadened the lawsuit to include additional major   
   brands such as Lego, Nestlé, Tyson Foods, Abbott Laboratories, Colgate-   
   Palmolive, Pinterest, and Shell International, alleging they participated   
   in the boycott orchestrated by GARM.   
      
   The defendant companies filed a motion to dismiss in May, claiming they   
   didn’t coordinate to halt the advertising.   
      
   Some companies, like Unilever, were dropped from the lawsuit after signing   
   new ad deals, and others, such as Verizon, committed to significant ad   
   spending ($10 million) after receiving litigation warnings.   
      
   Despite MSM hype that users fled X since Musk took over to find refuge   
   with far-left Bluesky, Bluesky is failing. Bluesky officially launched in   
   2023, and by early 2025 had only a miserly 30 million users by the most   
   favorable estimates. Only 2.7 million reportedly left X after Musk took   
   over, and Bluesky gained about 2.5 million in that time.   
      
   Unlike X, which Musk has cultivated to treat both the right and left   
   fairly, something no other major social media platform does — the rest all   
   cater to the left exclusively and censor the right — Bluesky is a bastion   
   of leftist hate. Even leftist billionaire Mark Cuban said the platform is   
   full of “agree with me or you are a nazi fascist” and users have "grown   
   ruder and more hateful.”   
      
      
   --   
   November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look   
   forward to America being great again.   
      
   We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that   
   stupid people won't be offended.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)