No, Elon: It Isn’t Illegal To Boycott X
While news cycles in the first Donald Trump presidency were dominated by Trump’s erratic social media pretense, news cycles during Trump 2.0 seem so far to be dominated by the erratic social media titan Elon Musk. The X CEO and leader of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) made a splash last weekend after DOGE representatives were given access to the Treasury Department payment system. But there is another interesting—if less sensational—story involving Musk from this past weekend, and it’s notable for the way it illustrates the facade of Musk’s professed support for free speech and free markets.
On Saturday, Musk added seven new targets to a lawsuit accusing advertisers of violating U.S. antitrust law by choosing not to advertise on X.
Musk first filed this suit last August against the World Federation of Advertisers and the companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health, and Orsted. In an amended complaint filed Saturday, he added Nestle, Abbott Laboratories, Colgate-Palmolive Company, Lego, Pinterest, Tyson Foods, and Shell.
Basically, Musk thinks it should be illegal for these companies to have simultaneously pulled advertising dollars from his company.
Musk’s suit alleges that these companies colluded in a way that violates U.S. antitrust law. The companies were all part of the World Federation of Advertisers and were “concerned that X, formerly known as Twitter, would stray from [the federation’s] brand safety initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media,” reports NPR.
In response, the defendant companies and others either stopped or reduced their advertising spending on the platform. And as a result, X lost a lot of money, according to the suit.
This, in turn, made X “a less effective competitor to other social media platforms in the sale of digital advertising and in competing for user engagement on its platform,” it states. In this way, the boycott allegedly violated laws against anticompetitive actions.
But in this case, X became less “competitive” because of its own actions and the actions of its founder. You can judge for yourself whether opposing Musk’s new policies on Twitter/X was prudent or justified. But it is silly to suggest that companies shouldn’t be allowed to oppose them just because it would make X less competitive.
Antitrust law cannot require private companies to continue associating with a company they don’t wish to simply because ceasing business with that company will make it less competitive. That would be completely con
Article from Reason.com
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