Elon Musk’s high-risk gamble to back Donald Trump continues to pay handsome dividends, with the latest beneficiary now being his popular but financially troubled social media platform X.
Musk put the social media site formerly known as Twitter in a precarious position in November 2023 when he told companies that pulled their ads objecting to the platform’s management to ” Go by yourself”.
Now several of those brands, including Disney, are reported to be making a gradual comeback, possibly as a result of Tesla’s close relationship with the CEO and President-elect Trump.
“We’re very appreciative of major brands resuming advertising on our platform,” Musk posted late last week, thanking X CEO Linda Yaccarino for helping advertisers ensure brand safety. Restore confidence.
The list reportedly includes big names including Disney as well as IBM, Comcast, Warner Bros. Including Discovery, whose chief executive was singled out for particular derision by Musk a year ago. good luck All four groups were contacted for comment, but have not yet received a statement.
Politics can be a driving factor. There seems to be a photo of Trump that doesn’t feature Musk at all, whether it’s on a plane, at a sporting event or at Mar-a-Lago.
Musk has already been tasked by Trump with cutting down on government waste, and last Saturday moved to threaten prosecutorial outcomes for Trump’s opponents.
Trump has a long history of helping friends and punishing enemies.
The latter may no longer be an idle threat, given the potential appointment of Trump loyalist Matt Gaetz as attorney general, putting him in charge of the US Department of Justice. Musk has threatened thermonuclear lawsuits against those who attack his company, and has already sued a nonprofit organization responsible for advising brands on where to safely advertise. Be invested — a lawsuit that led to the group’s closure.
“X’s owner now has the ear of the president-elect, a man with a long history of helping his friends and punishing his enemies,” Max Willens, senior analyst at Emarketer, told the industry publication. Advertising week. “Sending at least one trickle of advertising spend to X may be considered good for business, albeit indirectly.”
Musk has already seen Tesla’s valuation increase thanks to the new administration facilitating its autonomous driving plans, and he can certainly expect more business with the federal government for SpaceX — which Already a major NASA contractor under Biden.
He shouldn’t be celebrating just yet, however; An increasing number of social media users are migrating to rival platforms. According to data from Sensor Tower, the most downloaded free app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play in the US market is currently Bluesky, with Meta’s Threads trailing close behind. By comparison, X currently does not make the list.
This has been partly fueled by a number of high-profile departures. UK left of center daily The Guardian announced last week that he was leaving to avoid helping Musk’s cause to discredit the media. Horror novelist Stephen King told fans that he would now be found posting on the threads.
Blusky faces a barrage of users reporting on each other.
However, “X-odus” remains a relative trickle — BlueSky reported that its subscriber base grew by about a fifth to 19 million, a drop in the bucket compared to X’s half a billion subscribers. It’s unclear how many of Blue Sky’s new users are fake users, spammers or sockpuppet accounts run by bot farms, a problem that has plagued X/Twitter for years.
Moreover, it is unclear whether users will prefer Blue Sky given the difficulties of a small platform that can attract many new users at once. The Blue Sky Safety account reported Friday that it had received more than 42,000 reports of harmful content in just 24 hours, more than a tenth of last year’s total of 360,000.
“We’re triaging the big queue,” he admitted, which starts with the most offensive material, such as child sexual exploitation material.
X users celebrated it as the latest example of the political left’s unbridled thirst for cancellation culture.
“It’s like a high school full of hall monitors,” cried one X user.
