Social networking site X (formerly Twitter) has experienced a dramatic drop in advertising revenue on the platform since the Elon Musk acquisition.
Walmart, one of the world’s largest and most recognizable retailers, has pulled all of its ads from social networking platform X, formally known as Twitter. The news comes after Elon Musk, who bought the platform in 2022, was accused of having anti-Semitic beliefs after making them known in several posts. On Friday, Walmart said it had “found other, better platforms to reach its customers” and made no reference to the Musk scandal.
CBS News has reported that Walmart had been planning to “scale back” its ads on X and that happens to coincide with last week’s events. The company also told CBS that they would continue to interact with the community they have gathered on the platform, but that their monetary investment would decrease in the coming weeks.
The exchange took place between Musk and a user with the handle @breakingbaht, who made a post that said “Jewish communities have been pushing exactly the kind of dialectical hatred against white people that they claim they want people to stop using against them,” adding that he was “deeply uninterested in giving a shit now that Western Jewish populations come to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities who support the flooding of their country don’t like them very much.”
Musk responded, “You spoke the truth,” agreeing with the deeply anti-Semitic message that Jewish activism for social and racial justice is an attack on “whites.”
Before backtracking, Musk gave an interview in which he claimed that companies were responsible for killing the X platform by pulling their ads from it. He also claimed that they would not coerce him with money. Musk’s comments indicate that he has a fundamental misunderstanding of the problems companies face with X advertising. They see it as a reputational risk should their ad appear alongside comments such as those made by Musk on November 15.
Elon Musk’s comments were widely condemned and last week he apologized, acknowledging that it was “one of the dumbest posts” he had made on the platform. Many people see this incident as an example of the billionaire’s anti-Semitism and believe that Musk’s apology and his retrospective retraction were made to appease investors and companies that advertise on the site.