Barbara Ortutay (AP Technology Writer)
Walmart publicly joins growing swarm of big advertisers to extract spending from Company X, Elon Musk’s embattled social media company amid hate speech concerns It is the newest company to do so and can also reach a sizeable audience on the platform.
“We do not advertise on X because we believe it is easier to reach our customers on other platforms,” Walmart said in a statement.
Walmart announced its withdrawal on Friday, but Joe Benarroch, head of operations at X, said the company hasn’t advertised on the platform since October. He added that the company is “just beginning to connect organically with a community of over 1 million people on X.”
Walmart did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment Friday afternoon.
The announcement came during Musk’s onstage interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, in which he said companies are responding to anti-Semitism and other hateful content on X (formerly known as Twitter). This comes two days after he went on an expletive-filled rant about suspending spending on Musk said the advertisers who are leaving were making “blackmail” and using profanity to effectively tell them to leave.
“Please don’t advertise,” Musk said.
In addition to Walmart, Walt Disney Co., IBM, NBCUniversal, and its parent company Comcast have also decided to stop spending on X. Earlier this month, a number of companies withdrew after the liberal advocacy group Media Matters released a report showing that their ads were running with praise. Nazi. X accused the organization of “fabricating” the report in order to “drive advertisers off the platform and destroy Company X.”
X CEO Linda Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal executive hired by Musk to rebuild relationships with advertisers who fled after Musk took office, disliked Musk’s loosening of content restrictions. They were concerned that this would allow harmful speech to flourish and damage the brand. However, the relationship between Company X and advertisers does not seem to be improving.
“Walmart has an amazing community of over 1 million people on X, 500 million people on “More than % are doing most or all of the things they do: They shop online,” Benarroch said in a statement.