SAN FRANCISCO >> Walmart has joined a growing swarm of big advertisers to extract spending from Company X, Elon Musk’s embattled social media company, amid hate speech concerns. It is a modern company and at the same time reaches 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.
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.
Walmart joins companies that have decided to stop spending on X, including Walt Disney Co., IBM, NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast.
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,” Joe Benarroch, head of operations at Company X, said in a statement.