X, formerly Twitter, has an advertising crisis on its hands after a post from Elon Musk supporting an antisemitic conspiracy theory led major companies to pull their spending on the platform.
Musk’s tweet, plus a report from Media Matters that found that major companies were seeing their ads appear next to pro-Nazi content, causes an ad-spend exodus from Apple, Disney and others.
That has CEO Linda Yaccarino in damage control mode. On Monday, she sent a memo titled “Our Work is Meaningful.”
“Across every corner of this company, we’re working to create a platform for everyone. And there is no other platform that’s working as hard to protect free speech like X,” Yaccarino wrote.
“While some advertisers may have temporarily paused investments because of a misleading and manipulated article, the data will tell the real story. Because for all of us who work at X, we’ve been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination, as there’s no place for it anywhere in the world.”
Yaccarino stepped into the CEO as Musk’s successor in June, in no small part due to burned bridges between Musk and major advertisers. Now, Musk has reignited concerns that advertisements are showing up next to antisemitic or other bigoted content.
In fact, Yaccarino is already facing pressure to resign, according to reporting from Forbes. She also has reportedly brought in her son, Matt Madrazo, to revamp the social network's political advertising business, in a bid to make up for the lost revenue.
For his part, Musk threatened to Media Matters with a “thermonuclear” lawsuit and filed one on Monday, accusing the company of "manipulating" data to harm X, alleging that the group created misleading images.
In response, Media Matters’ president Angelo Carusone said, “Elon Musk has spent the last few days making meritless legal threats, elevating bizarre conspiracy theories, and lobbing vicious personal attacks against his ‘enemies’ online. Even if he does not follow through with his threat to sue, the volatility of actions reinforce why major brands are rightly skittish of partnering with X.”
Contact Andrew Kessel at andrew.kessel@proactiveinvestors.com
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