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Elon Musk, Who Now Claims Boycotts Are Illegal, Happily Joined The #DeleteFacebook Boycott Himself
from the it's-only-okay-when-we-do-it dept
Elon Musk’s recent claims that corporate boycotts of social media platforms are criminal reek of hypocrisy, given his own eagerness to join the #DeleteFacebook boycott just a few years ago.
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Musk publicly supported the #DeleteFacebook campaign, even going so far as to remove the official SpaceX and Tesla pages from the platform. Yet now, as the owner of ExTwitter, he’s singing a very different tune — suing advertisers who choose to boycott his platform over content moderation concerns.
The blatant double standard is notable, if not surprising. Musk was happy to wield the power of the boycott when it suited his interests and let him mock his rival, Mark Zuckerberg. But now he condemns the tactic as criminal when turned against him. This “rules for thee, but not for me” attitude deserves to be called out even if he and his supporters will happily ignore the rank hypocrisy.
Earlier this year, Elon sued GARM — the “Global Alliance for Responsible Media” — a tiny non-profit that sought to advise brands on how to advertise safely on social media in a manner that (1) wouldn’t tarnish their own brands, and (2) was generally better for the world. GARM had no power and didn’t demand or order any company to do anything. It just worked with advertisers to try to establish some basic standards and to advocate that social media companies try to live up to those basic standards in how they handled moderation.
As we noted, just weeks before Elon sued GARM, ExTwitter had “excitedly” rejoined GARM, knowing that many advertisers trusted its opinion on determining where they should focus their ad spend.
But it seems clear that Elon felt differently. After a very misleading report was put out by Jim Jordan, Elon declared war on GARM and sued a bunch of advertisers. In response, GARM was shut down.
Musk and his friends are now going around saying that participating in an organized boycott of social media is criminal. Right around the time he sued, Musk suggested such a boycott might just be “RICO”:
And, as we just discussed, here’s Musk-backer and friend, Marc Andreessen, claiming that such boycotts are criminal.
However, my cohost on Ctrl-Alt-Speech called out in last episode that Elon Musk himself was quite happy to support a similar boycott not all that long ago.
After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which Facebook data was used to try to influence voters to vote for Donald Trump (yes, this is ironic, given what Elon did with ExTwitter), some activists kicked off a boycott campaign called #DeleteFacebook.
Elon Musk showed some interest in the campaign by joking to someone “What’s Facebook?” in response to a (now deleted) tweet about the campaign. Some users then challenged him to join the #DeleteFacebook campaign by removing the SpaceX and Tesla accounts from Facebook, which he did.
As far as I can tell, to this day, there are no official, verified Tesla or SpaceX pages on Facebook.
Years later, after he had taken over Twitter, Elon even mocked Facebook for “caving” to the very boycott that he participated in himself.
Musk’s brazen hypocrisy on boycotts is just the latest example of his free speech double standard. He delights in wielding his immense power and influence to mock, criticize and yes, boycott those he disagrees with. But the moment anyone turns those same tactics against him, he cries foul and literally makes a federal case out of it.
This kind of self-serving double standard is corrosive to public discourse and the principles of free speech that Musk claims to hold so dear. While he and his supporters will almost certainly choose to ignore the stench of hypocrisy, the rest of us shouldn’t. Musk’s boycott hypocrisy deserves to be dragged out into the light again and again for everyone else to recognize.
Filed Under: boycotts, delete facebook, elon musk, hypocrisy
Companies: facebook, garm, meta, twitter, x
Comments on “Elon Musk, Who Now Claims Boycotts Are Illegal, Happily Joined The #DeleteFacebook Boycott Himself”
Most free speech CEO ever…
I’m surprised he hasn’t yet asked Trump to demand that companies be forced to advertise on Twitter.
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I would say “don’t give him ideas” but we know he only listens when he’s talking.
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Key words there: Yet.
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No need to. Advertisers are going back. Even disney
no I am not providing a cite
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Cool, Hitchen’s Razor to the rescue in that case.
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Only because Elmo’s favorite felon is returning to the White House. Your point?
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He’s already basically said that if you don’t advertise with us (or you stop advertising with us), we’re going to sue you for…something. I’m sure it’s not far from there to making it mandatory to advertise on his platform. Let’s not give him any more ideas.
Your Money, His Choice!
Ironic considering Elmoo can’t order his erectile dysfunction to stop boycotting?
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i see what you did there.
Accurate.
But i wanna throw up a little now.
Musk is not a company, so it doesn't apply ®.
That could be its own motto: “Musk is not a _____, so it doesn’t apply.”
(Feel free to fill the blank with anything that Musk has pretended to be one day before declaring it’s illegal the next day.)
'As with everything it's only okay when WE do it.'
Ah republican brand ‘free speech’.
Not only does in include a total shield from any and all consequences(but only for certain people/groups), but it also includes the right to hijack any private property you want to speak from(even if the owner doesn’t want you there) and the right to force people to give you money(again, even if they don’t want to have anything to do with you).
Advertisers fleeing Twitter aren’t even boycotting it. They’re just each making their own decisions for themselves. A boycott is a group action in the group’s longer-term interest, even if it is against the immediate self-interest of each participant individually.
Advertisers aren’t joining forces to put pressure on Twitter, they’re just each saying “it’s not in our individual interest to be here”. GARM didn’t organise a boycott, they just said “hey, consider whether it’s still in your individual interest to advertise there”.
Advertisers aren’t boycotting Twitter, any more than cinemagoers are “boycotting” Joker 2. Calling it a boycott is unnecessarily ceding to Musk’s spin.
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All of which is true, but the problem (for Elon and other republicans) with admitting that it’s not a boycott is that doing so would require admitting that maybe a bunch of major companies have very good and valid reasons to not want to have anything to with with the platform.
For everyone else though… yeah I think you’re on to something by saying that using the term ‘boycott’ is giving Elon’s position more weight than it deserves, so a better term/phrasing would probably be more fitting.
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Conspiracy Theory
The language in the Sherman Antitrust Act outlaws collusion and conspiracy which attempts to restrain trade or commerce. Clearly the GARM episode was collusion between advertisers, and they were attempting to restrain trade.
The Cambridge Analytica boycott was significantly different. First, there was no conspiracy. Noone has shown that Tesla or Space-X entered into talks with other companies to remove their pages. And the discussions were all out in the open. Second, and most importantly, there was no trade. Elon Musk’s companies were not paying money to FB to host a page.
Interestingly, if the creation or deletion of a social media page WAS considered to be a transaction, then that would open the social media company to a wide variety of new litigation. Contract lawsuits are very much outside the preview of section 230 moderation.
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Is it “attempting to restrain trade” if I don’t buy your bullshit?
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Evidence or shut up, please.
No one has shown that the member companies of GARM did, either.
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You might as well be a sovereign citizen with how effectively you interpret the law. Fortunately, we have caselaw and law firms that will point out (if you actually cared to research a topic rather than just spew your hot take and pretend you said something smart) that Section 1 isn’t interpreted literally by the courts. Otherwise, all contracts are illegal because they would all constrain trade. Section 1 is about unfair competition and collusion between competitors. But the advertisers in GARM weren’t competitors with ExTwitter. They were clients of advertising services and they weren’t forcing each other to not patronize ExTwitter. They were providing information that would make a reasonable advertiser think twice about doing so. As clients, they’re the people the Sherman Antitrust Act is meant to protect, not restrain. Otherwise, it would be illegal to post a review of a store telling other customers about your bad experience there. And that would be at its most basic level, a clear violation of the 1st Amendment, which would take precedent over the Sherman Antitrust Act.
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By that logic, anyone that’s ever given a negative product review is “colluding” with the general public to lower the company’s sales.
Did you make a YouTube video listing everything that broke on your Cybertruck? Watch out, Tesla’s gonna sue your ass!!
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Yes or no, Koby: Should the federal government force a collection of companies that stopped advertising on Twitter to start advertising on Twitter again, even (and especially) if those companies all made the decision to stop advertising independently of one another?
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They’ve censored your comment because it doesn’t fit their narrative.
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Sure, if I prefer my narrative to be “things that aren’t completely and demonstrably wrong.”
If a group of people or businesses decide they don’t want to buy a product because they disapprove of something the product’s vendor is doing, they can. It is not an anti-trust violation to do so. For example, if a group of home builders decide they don’t want to buy lumber from a mill that is found to be clearcutting rainforests, they can do that. If a group of fast food restaurants don’t want to buy chicken from a company found to be abusing the animals, they can do that. If a group of people don’t want to buy light beer from a particular brewery because they don’t like their marketing decisions, they can do that. And if a group of advertisers don’t want to buy ad space on a social media website because they don’t like the content their ads are appearing next to, they can do that too.
Such actions might only be illegal if these groups were somehow found to be exerting unlawful pressure on others – for example, if McDonalds was threatening Burger King that it would use its market power to get vendors to stop selling things to Burger King unless it joined the boycott. Or if the group of light beer boycotters threatened to vandalize my house if I didn’t stop buying that brand.
So yeah, when Koby comes along with his particular brand of idiocy, he gets flagged.
And lest you point out anything in that Federalist article linked elsewhere, 1) the article is essentially a rehash of a report from the House Judiciary Committee (which lately, under Jim Jordan, seems to be more of a “weaponize the government against anyone who doesn’t agree with us while claiming that it’s other people who are weaponizing the government” committee) and 2) said article points out that, “House Republicans, however, warned the ongoing “collusion” between GARM and the world’s largest advertisers inevitably results in unjust viewpoint censorship of popular dissidents over their First Amendment-protected speech,” which shows how clueless those House Republicans are about how the First Amendment actually works.
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The comment is still there. So how has it been censored, exactly?
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“I said that mollusks were actually an alien army sent to earth to poison our lip balm supply in order to overthrow the government of Mali via assassins with spina bifida. They censored my claims so I’m clearly on to something! It must be true!”
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By clearly, do you mean you just assumed your preferred conclusion is correct, take zero evidence to back it?
Journalists are very reluctant to tell their audiences anything that will be unpopular.
As a result we have more and more of these pseudo-unanimous synchronized media events which distribute the social and professional risk via a group strategy.
‘Everyone in unison now…’
When they have their inevitable falling out, I hope Florida Man deports him.
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Well, Trump likes white immigrants, telling by one his former spouses and current spouse…
I feel like Elon Musk needs to learn that being brilliant and rich doesn’t mean people are going to enjoy working with you in any capacity.
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Elon Musk is not what ya might call Brilliant.
And now maga is trying to save infowars – LOL
he still thinks the poop emoji is funny
Elon is a classic example of a schoolyard bully, who thanks to his billions of dollars, has nor the need nor the desire to actually grow up.
His SNL monologue says a lot
Diagnosed with Asperger’s, today that means being on the spectrum. If one looks into the common results they sort of (I am less than a layman in this topic) top out at teens emotionally. I’ve commented several times that he’s just a 13yo rich brat.
He hates to change his mind, because he always believes he’s the smartest person in the room; Even outdoors. He insta-fires any employee that contradicts him. See, Elon the Dork shutting down Twitter’s 2FA server ’cause the ‘can’t code his way out of a paper bag’ didn’t think it was doing anything. So He Shut It Off. The engineer that warned users not to log out because without the server they will not be able to get back on. Low On Karma Dork fired him immediately (over ExTwitter?)
If he wasn’t such a complete lying, hypocrite, and all around creepy AH I would suggest giving him some slack. Considering what he actually is; Nah, he’s a total creep. That overrules any slack he might have otherwise have earned.
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No, it doesn’t. Being an Aspie means being on the spectrum, but one can be diagnosed as autistic without being autistic. Just look at Adam Lanza, who himself got a diagnosis of Asperger’s even though he only began showing signs of autism in his early teens.
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This is a useless statement. Sure, anyone can be misdiagnosed with something. That doesn’t mean they are whenever you want to think they are. You’d need a correction of the diagnosis or a really good reason backed up with evidence to prove otherwise.
First, this is a really weird specific example you provided. Second, one example, if it were actually true, wouldn’t prove anything about a completely different individual’s condition or diagnosis. Two things can be true.
But did you actually look into Lanza’s history? I did.
“A neurological/developmental evaluation in early April 1997, just before AL’s fifth birthday, noted that AL was an extremely active young child—he never slept through the night, continued to make up his own language, and reportedly did not like to be held, kissed or hugged. He was observed and reported to have odd repetitive behaviors and severe temper tantrums. AL was reported, at times, to “sit and hit his head repeatedly.” He did not tolerate touch or textures and refused to dress. Teachers reported AL was “very quiet during groups.”
“The school district should have considered the information from the speech and language evaluation and the neurological evaluation conducted in 1997 together, as reported findings were strongly suggestive of autism.”
That’s from the Office of the Child Advocate report on the shooting.
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AC is right, actually. Adam Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome despite showing signs of having schizophrenia. Similarly, Elon Musk has a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome despite his behavior being more characteristic of narcissism. Also, as AC implied, the use of ‘diagnosis’ in place of ‘condition’ is problematic, such as when people say “X’s autism diagnosis makes them sensitive to certain sounds.” No, X’s autism does that; the autism diagnosis does nothing other than act as a signpost to X’s autism-related needs.
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No, AC is not correct. You didn’t read the source I provided. Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger’s because he showed signs of Asperger’s. It’s possible he was also schizophrenic. It is possible to have both. Again, two things can be true. There’s also a lot of discussion about the difficulties of diagnosing him as schizophrenic posthumously.
But you’re ignoring that AC claimed that “he only began showing signs of autism in his early teens.” This is patently untrue as proven by the source I provided. Lanza started showing symptoms as early as four years old.
No, not similarly. Musk is a different person and the people diagnosing him are different people and the symptoms of any conditions he has are different. I’m saying Adam Lanza can’t be used as an example of why someone’s random, unofficial speculation of Musk must be true. It’s a non sequitur.
Another non sequitur. I didn’t say anything about this. Why are you bringing it up in a response to me?
The reason for Musk’s hypocrisy…
Facebook is one of the social media platforms that a lot of people left Xitter for after Musk turned the latter into a Nazi bar.
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Lol, BestNetTech has just become another mouthpiece for the left bashing Republicans all day. Every now and then I see an interesting article on here although it’s starting to be rare thing. If Elon wasn’t on Trumps side, you’d never hear TD complain about him, but go ahead, tell us more about how hypocritical Elon is though.
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Aw, honey, is someone making fun of your personal hero?
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BestNetTech has been dunking on Elon Musk for years, long before his purchase of Twitter and his buddying up to Donald Trump. Remember the kids who got trapped in a cave in Thailand? That was six years ago and BestNetTech had some choice things to say about him then too.
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The author acts like GARM doesn’t have any power and doesn’t discriminate against Conservatives pretending they’re just an innocent little non-profit that’s trying to make the world a better place but that’s not the case at all, as reported by the Federalist https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/10/report-globes-largest-companies-colluded-in-likely-antitrust-violation-to-censor-conservatives/
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Yes or no: If the advertising firms involved with (the now-defunct) GARM all decided to pull advertising from Twitter independently of one another, should they now be compelled by the government into putting their advertising back on Twitter?
Yes or no: If those firms “colluded” to withdraw advertising from Twitter, should they now be compelled by the government into putting their advertising back on Twitter?
And for bonus points: Since advertising is speech and compelled advertising from those companies would be compelled speech, for what reason, if any, should the answers of those two questions be different?
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First, discrimination doesn’t mean illegal discrimination. Businesses are free to discriminate as long as the discrimination isn’t based on protected classes. Being a conservative doesn’t make you a member of a protected class, as much as privileged whiny bigots wish it did.
Wait, you’re telling me a mixed credibility right wing website reported that “Republican investigators said that GARM’s “collusive conduct to demonetize disfavored content is alarming”” and we’re supposed to believe that source as proof of anything other than conservative interest in attacking GARM? Does Alex Jones have an opinion on the matter that we should listen to? Come back with a successful prosecution on this matter and we’ll humor your assertions.
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What you clearly didn’t glean from that article is that GARM wasn’t going to advertisers and saying “y’all need to stop advertising on Twitter.” The article references the House report as stating that Unilever, GroupM, and Coca-Cola independently informed GARM of their platform concerns. Got that? GARM didn’t approach them, they approached GARM.
This is no different from you telling your conservative buddies at the last “let’s talk about how we’re being silenced” meeting that you stopped shopping at Starbucks because they had a Pride sticker on their window.
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It’s telling you don’t have a factual source to cite.