By Yelena Mandenberg (MSN)- Luxury fashion house Balenciaga, Best Buy, and British news site The Guardian all have something in common—they’re all on the list of companies leaving X, formerly Twitter, in a fresh protest against Elon Musk.
The most recent X-odus includes plenty of celebrities, like Don Lemon and Jamie Lee Curtis, but also a few businesses. Other companies, like Disney, Android, Comcast, and a few others, have been listed as going ‘off Twitter’ but are still posting regularly.
Companies list their reasons for this most recent name, including the site’s ‘hate-promoting’ policies and President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of Elon Musk to lead the newly created ‘government efficiency department.’
Others pointed to X’s new terms of service, which go into effect on Friday and direct all legal disputes to be “brought exclusively in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas or state courts located in Tarrant County, Texas.”
Musk’s plan to protect himself from legal action is to send cases to a particular area of Texas where 10 out of 11 judges were appointed by Republican presidents. It’s known as a conservative court system where Musk will likely triumph in any legal scenario.
The Guardian recently decided to leave X, citing “long-standing concerns” about the proliferation of far-right conspiracy theories and racist content. The Guardian stated that the platform’s approach to handling coverage of the US presidential election was “the final straw” in its decision.
Several Minnesota-based businesses have ‘quiet quit’ X throughout the year, including Best Buy, Target, Medtronic, 3M, UnitedHealth Group, Magers & Quinn Booksellers, and more.
In April last year, NPR exited X after its main account received the label “state-affiliated media,” which was later changed to “government-funded media.” They contested this label, claiming it falsely suggested a lack of editorial independence. The next day, following similar issues, PBS also departed from the platform.
A significant number of corporations have halted their advertising on X, formerly Twitter, amid concerns over brand safety and antisemitic content in a scandal last year.
This list includes heavyweights such as Apple, Disney, Paramount, Comcast, Warner Bros, IBM, Fox Sports, Axios, TechCrunch, Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media, Lionsgate, and NBCUniversal.
These companies paused their advertising campaigns after discovering their ads were being displayed alongside extremist content, including pro-Nazi posts, last year.
Consequently, X’s advertising revenue took a nosedive last year, with at least 50 of the top 100 US advertisers halting their ad spending on the platform since Musk’s takeover in 2022. The sudden loss of ad revenue in November 2023 sparked outrage from Musk, who didn’t hesitate to voice his opinion on his own platform.
A fortnight after his controversial comment, he told boycotting businesses to “go f*** yourself,” adding in a post that “No advertiser should be deciding what you are allowed to say … I am prepared to go down with the ship. Long live free speech.”
Musk hasn’t just been all talk and no action on this issue, either. He has filed a lawsuit in Texas against Unilever, Mars, Ørsted, CVS, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (Garm), alleging that these companies violated US antitrust law and withheld “billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from X.
Musk, who also owns SpaceX and Tesla, purchased the social media site then known as Twitter in 2022 for a reported $44 billion.
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