Walmart is the most recent major advertiser to abandon Elon Musk’s troubled social media company, X, due to worries about hate speech, despite Walmart reaching a sizable audience on the platform.
Walmart is the most recent big advertiser to abandon Elon Musk’s troubled social media company, X, due to worries about hate speech, despite the company still having a sizable audience on the platform.
Walmart released a statement saying, “We aren’t advertising on X as we’ve found some other platforms better reach our customers.”
The statement was made two days after Musk launched into an expletives-filled tirade during an on-stage interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin regarding businesses cutting back on their spending on X, the former name of Twitter, in reaction to hateful and antisemitic content. Using a foul language, Musk claimed that advertisers who are leaving are practicing “blackmail” and effectively told them to leave.
Don’t promote, Musk advised.
Walmart is going to stop investing in X, along with the Walt Disney Co., IBM, NBCUniversal, and Comcast, the company’s parent.
Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, was recruited by Elon Musk to mend fences with advertisers who had left after his takeover, fearing that his relaxation of content regulations was giving rise to divisive and poisonous discourse that would damage their brands. Yaccarino was a former executive at NBCUniversal. However, X’s standing with sponsors doesn’t seem to be getting any better.
“Walmart boasts an amazing community of over a million members on X, and with over 500 million users, the platform receives 15 billion impressions about the holidays alone each year from over 50% of X users.”