X CEO Linda Yaccarino asked staffers to be “as fiscally responsible as possible” in order to offset revenue losses caused by major advertisers leaving the platform.
According to US media citing unnamed X employees, the comment came during an all-hands meeting about the loss in advertising revenue. Yaccarino reportedly said it in response to a question from an employee, asking what they could do to help.
“If you deal with contracts, if you're negotiating with anyone, just know that the pauses cause a more specific discipline and diligence as it relates to any type of spending at the company,” Yaccarino reportedly replied.
“And by all means, put your heads together to bring new revenue into the company,” the CEO added.
Over the course of the past week, multiple major advertisers including IBM, Apple, NBCUniversal and Comcast among others announced that they were pausing or outright ending advertising on the platform formerly known as Twitter. The recent exodus was brought on by a report from Media Matters that ads were running next to pro-Nazi and white supremacy content.
Yaccarino previously worked as NBCUniversal's chairman of global advertising and partnerships.
21 November 2023, 19:22 GMT
X has filed a lawsuit against Media Matters for defamation and fraud, claiming that it gamed their algorithm in order to make the ads appear next to those posts. According to X, Media Matters created sock puppet accounts and used them to follow both major brands and accounts that posted pro-Nazi content. That, the company says, resulted in those accounts receiving 13 to 15 times the amount of ads a typical account experiences, refreshing the page until they saw ads next to hateful content.
“Not a single authentic user of the X platform saw IBM’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to that content, which Media Matters achieved only through its manipulation of X’s algorithms as described above” the lawsuit reads. “And in Apple’s case, only two out of more than 500 million active users saw its ad appear alongside the fringe content cited in the article—at least one of which was Media Matters.”
Media Matters is also being investigated by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for alleged fraud.
The accusations of antisemitism grew louder when Musk replied that a user had “said the actual truth” when he accused Jewish communities of pushing “dialectical hatred against whites.”
Musk then followed up that post by saying that the Anti-Defamation League attacks “the majority of the West” because it cannot criticize “minority groups who are their primary threat.”
X has struggled with advertisers since Musk took over the platform last year. In July, Musk confirmed that the company was still in the red, noting that it saw a 50% drop in advertising revenue.