Apple and Disney join advertiser exodus from Elon Musk’s X

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Every week, Roula Khalaf, the editor of the Financial Times, highlights her preferred articles in her newsletter.

On Friday, it was reported that several big companies such as Apple, Walt Disney, Comcast, Paramount, and Warner Bros have decided to temporarily stop advertising on Elon Musk’s X due to worries over hateful content towards the Jewish community. This trend of advertisers leaving the platform seems to be gaining momentum.

Last year, Musk purchased X for a whopping $44 billion. However, he recently received backlash for supporting an offensive post promoting anti-Semitic beliefs on the site. In addition, a left-leaning non-profit organization called Media Matters released a report on Thursday that discovered various ads promoting well-known brands like Apple, IBM, and Comcast's telecoms division, Xfinity as well as the TV network Bravo alongside posts that promoted and supported Nazi-related views.

The companies made choices similar to IBM, who said they are removing their worldwide ads from X last Thursday. According to Sensor Tower, Apple was ranked fourth as the biggest advertiser on the platform this year.

On Friday, Media Matters presented a new report indicating that commercials for certain businesses such as Amazon, NBA Mexico, and NBCUniversal's brand agency were displayed alongside material labeled as white nationalist.

Musk declared on Saturday that he intended to take legal action against the group for their alleged deceitful assault on X.

There has been no prompt response from Amazon and NBA in regards to comment requests.

Big companies cutting their expenses will make it harder for Linda Yaccarino, who became the CEO of X in June, to convince advertisers to come back to the platform. Many of them stopped advertising on the platform after Musk's takeover.

The corporations became more worried about their advertisements showing up alongside harmful material. This happened after Musk loosened up the website's guidelines and removed a lot of people who were responsible for ensuring the platform's safety. As a consequence, the billionaire mentioned that revenue from advertising decreased by about 50% in July.

Ever since that time, Yaccarino has been putting in effort to win people over, meeting up with advertisers and agencies to give them confidence that the company is devoting more attention to safety. Nonetheless, opponents say that she doesn't have much influence over Musk's tendency to post contentious tweets, which is also causing advertisers to stay away.

It's a big hit for X as Yaccarino previously held a prominent position as the advertising chief for NBCUniversal, which is a subsidiary of Comcast. Losing Comcast as a partner is especially tough.

Musk, who claims to believe in "absolute freedom of speech," shared a hateful conspiracy theory on X last Wednesday, which was met with widespread criticism. On Friday, a spokesperson for the White House publicly denounced his comments, stating that they were promoting unacceptable anti-Semitic and racist views.

Apple's choice to remove their advertisements from the site could have consequences for their business connections with X. This move from Apple happened as Musk's website has been reducing expenses to better its finances. In November of last year, Musk said that Apple was withdrawing from advertising and may even remove the platform from their App Store. He asked his supporters: "Do they detest freedom of speech in the U.S.?" Later on, Cook, the CEO of Apple, met with the controversial billionaire and resolved the disagreement.

The media outlet Axios broke the news about Apple's choice, while the New York Times was the first to disclose Disney's decision.

X chose not to provide a statement.

Last Thursday, after the FT reported that IBM had reduced its expenses on the platform, Yaccarino took to Twitter and wrote: "X has been crystal clear that any form of discrimination needs to be put to an end. Whether it's about the platform or not, X has always been dedicated to fighting against antisemitism and all types of discrimination."