By Barbara Ortutay
Walmart is the latest company to publicly join the growing flock of major advertisers to pull spending from X, Elon Musk's beleaguered social media company, amid concerns about hate speech — as well as reaching a sizeable audience on the platform.
"We aren't advertising on X as we've found some other platforms better reach our customers," Walmart said in a statement.
While Walmart went public with the pullout on Friday, Joe Benarroch, head of operations at X, said the company has not advertised on the platform since October. The company, he added, "has just been organically connecting with its community of more than one million people on X."
Walmart did not immediately respond to a message for further comment on Friday afternoon.
The announcement comes two days after Musk went on an expletive-ridden rant in an on-stage interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin about companies halting spending on X, formerly known as Twitter, in response to antisemitic and other hateful material. Musk said advertisers pulling out are engaging in "blackmail" and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.
"Don't advertise," Musk said.
Besides Walmart, the Walt Disney Co., IBM, NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast have also decided to stop spending on X. Many pulled out earlier this month after the liberal advocacy group Media Matters issued a report showing their ads were appearing alongside material praising Nazis. X has sued the group, saying it "manufactured" the report in order to "drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp."
X's CEO, Linda Yaccarino, is a former NBCUniversal executive who was hired by Musk to rebuild ties with advertisers who fled after he took over, concerned that his easing of content restrictions was allowing hateful and toxic speech to flourish and that would harm their brands. But X's relations with advertisers don't appear to be improving.
"Walmart has a wonderful community of more than a million people on X, and with a half a billion people on X, every year the platform experiences 15 billion impressions about the holidays alone with more than 50% of X users doing most or all of their shopping online," Benarroch said in a statement.
Barbara Ortutay is an AP technology writer
SAG-AFTRA Calls For A Strike Against “League of Legends”
"League of Legends" is caught in the middle of a dispute between Hollywood's actors union and an audio company that provides voiceover services for the blockbuster online multiplayer game.
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists called a strike against "League of Legends" on Tuesday, arguing that Formosa Interactive attempted to get around the ongoing video game strike by hiring non-union actors to work on an unrelated title.
Formosa tried to "cancel" the unnamed video game, which was covered by the strike, shortly after the start of the work stoppage, SAG-AFTRA said. The union said when Formosa learned it could not cancel the game, the company "secretly transferred the game to a shell company and sent out casting notices for 'non-union' talent only." In response, the union's interactive negotiating committee voted unanimously to file an unfair labor practice charge against the company with the National Labor Relations Board and to call a strike against "League of Legends" as part of that charge.
"League of Legends" is one of Formosa's most well-known projects. The company provides voiceover services for the game, according to SAG-AFTRA.
SAG-AFTRA has accused Formosa of interfering with protections that allow performers to form or join a union and prevent those performers from being discriminated against — a move the union called "egregious violations of core tenets of labor law."
Formosa did not immediately respond to a request for comment. "League of Legends" developer Riot Games said that the company "has nothing to do" with the union's complaint.
"We want to be clear: Since becoming a union project five years ago, 'League of Legends' has only asked Formosa to engage with union... Read More