Fool Me Thrice: ExTwitter’s Empty Brand Safety Promises
from the go-fuck-yourselves dept
The famous line is “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” But what do you call it when Elon Musk fools advertisers over and over again into believing that ExTwitter will protect their brand safety, despite making it clear that he has no interest in doing so?
At this point, no advertiser can seriously believe that Elon Musk’s ExTwitter will protect the brand safety of its advertisers. I mean, this is literally the guy who told advertisers to “go fuck themselves” after some pulled their advertisements following one of Elon’s many ridiculous comments (as well as evidence of ads appearing next to neo-Nazi content).
But, at the recent Cannes Lion advertising festival, Elon and Linda Yaccarino tried to play nice with advertisers. They announced that ExTwitter was rejoining the World Federation of Advertisers’ (WFA) Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).
After drifting from the World Federation of Advertisers’ (WFA) Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) when Elon Musk took over Twitter, the social platform now known as X has decided to rejoin the coalition of online providers and brand partners, working to uphold the group’s brand-safety requirements and potentially win back advertisers.
“We’re excited to announce that X has reinstated our relationship with the @wfamarketers Global Alliance for Responsible Media,” the social media company posted on its platform Monday, adding that “X is committed to the safety of our global town square and proud to be part of the GARM community.”
The problem with this announcement, though, is that basically every time ExTwitter is desperate for advertisers to buy some ads, it touts GARM compliance, but then Elon goes on some antisemitic rant, or yet another study comes out showing what a terrible job ExTwitter does in protecting brand safety, and the promises of GARM compliance are forgotten.
Why is this time any different?
Some history: soon after Elon completed the purchase of Twitter, GARM had issued an open letter to Elon about making sure he was committed to brand safety.
At the time, Elon insisted the company’s “commitment to brand safety” was unchanged. He met with GARM folks, and promised to uphold the guidelines.
A few months later, the company announced a new brand safety effort, compliant with GARM.
But, largely due to Elon’s own nonsense (and misunderstanding of free speech), he keeps going back on those promises and personally driving advertisers away.
And each time the company gets desperate for new advertisers, it tries to claim it’s supportive of the GARM approach to “brand safety” for advertisers.
Indeed, at last year’s Cannes Lion, the company also talked about its GARM compliance. That was just months before Elon told advertisers to go fuck themselves, and multiple reports showed that big brand advertisers were showing up next to some pretty horrific content.
So it’s not even clear what is meant by ExTwitter “rejoining” GARM. The company keeps touting GARM as its standard anyway over the last few years, and then totally failing to live up to those promises, mostly due to their own owner’s behavior and desire to appease the worst people in society.
Any advertiser who thinks this newly constituted relationship with GARM means literally anything for brand safety is too gullible to be left alone with an advertisement. It’s all for show. Sooner or later (probably sooner) Elon will do something horrible and/or another study will come out showing how badly the company protects the brand safety of its advertisers.
It’s happened before. It’ll happen again. And rebuilding a relationship with GARM is just window dressing.
Filed Under: advertisers, brand safety, elon musk, garm, promises
Companies: garm, twitter, wfa, x
Comments on “Fool Me Thrice: ExTwitter’s Empty Brand Safety Promises”
I mean, would you want ads showing up next to Andrew Anglin’s Tweets?
jim jordan is an awfui person
Here. Read this with disbeief: https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/how-worlds-biggest-brands-seek-control-online-speech
So Elon thinks his case is made. Hard to tell if he’s impaired level credulous, or just grifting along, ad hoc.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/elon-musk-calls-for-criminal-prosecution-of-x-ad-boycott-perpetrators/
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How nice of Musk to openy state he plans to commit yet more fraud upon the courts.
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From the Ars Technica article:
I suggest that if Elmo succeeds in his apparent goal, then advertisers should flood X with requests for advertising space, and when some of them are inevitably turned down because X needs to leave some space for UGC, the ad companies should slap criminal charges on Elmo for refusing to platform them.
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Like we didn’t know that from the way he enabled the wrestlers under his care to get raped.
I guess Elon would say: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, f*ck you and prepare for a lawsuit.”
Elon's caught between two opposing forces
On the one hand, his massive inferiority complex demands constant adulation from the masses, which is why he cultivates a base of idiot fanboys who worship his every bowel movement. That base is composed of fascists, Nazis, racists, misogynists, incels, sociopaths, and thus Elon needs to make sure that ExTwitter accommodates them.
On the other hand, no sensible corporate brand wants to be associated with those people in any way, shape, or form, and they’re finding it increasingly difficult NOT to be on ExTwitter. Advertisers with any sense have already fled; those remaining are taking a chance that things will get better.
There is no chance that things will get better.
That they’re not fools, they know exactly what they’re signing up for, and should be judged accordingly.
It’s not gullibility, they’re just fine with fig leafs as long as there’s no consumer outcry.
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It’s hilarious that you’re still trying to smear and malign ex-Twitter, which is literally better than ever.
No degradation in the quality of the service even after massive reductions to cure overstaffing. Plus there’s a wider variety of political opinions available on X than ever survived censors like Joel Roth.
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Matt started drinking again.
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As if he ever stopped.
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am pretty sure it’s a matt impersonator
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It’s not surprising you like the racists and terrorists.
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Nazism, White supremacy, and AI deepfakes of Donald Trump humping physical copies of Project 2025 are not “political opinions”.
Sorry to go off-topic but this is important.
A woman named Jess Miers just talked about how bad tech bills become law and how the industry is moving towards a compliance model instead of fighting them. We’re on our own.
https://bsky.app/profile/jmiers230.bsky.social/post/3kwxuafxa7g2e
https://bsky.app/profile/jmiers230.bsky.social/post/3kwzpawzuaw2v
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ok ac
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There’s literally no other choice. A bunch of braindead fucks come up with nonsensical rules we have to attempt to follow at gunpoint. Once we’ve figured out how to work around their insanity, they take that as proof they didn’t fuck up.
Literally “I punched you, but you’re still standing, so I didn’t punch you. I’m going to try to not punch you again by punching you.” And they get paid for it.
You forgot, “Fool me three times and I’m a Republican.”
Trust a man carrying water for both Putin and Xi?
Shameful, these admen. Real shameful.
Anyone that believes really anything Elon says about Twitter at this point is a Trump voter and we already have a decade of proof of their malicious stupidity.
Er… Sooner happened. No study, but Elon now thinks that there should be criminal charges if the advertisers do what he told them to do and they mass-boycott X.