为了挽救Twitter的命运，这家仍然是埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)最糟糕的自发收购的公司已经起诉了一个广告联盟——世界广告商联合会(World Federation of Advertisers) ，以及玛氏(Mars)和联合利华(Unilever)等特定公司 ，指控其阴谋冷落该平台。
此前，全球负责任媒体联盟就涉嫌串通举行了听证会 。WFA发起的一项倡议 ，成员包括EA 、Twitch和Tiktok等公司上个月在美国众议院 。
In a video posted on Twitter, the company's CEO Linda Yaccarino said she was "shocked by the evidence uncovered by the House Judiciary Committee that a group of companies organised a systematic illegal boycott against X". The video has an eerily uncanny quality, full of exaggerated hand gestures and slow, deliberate speech that calls to mind someone trying to talk to a group of unruly children. "It is just wrong," Yaccarino said while dramatically pointing her finger at the screen.
Yaccarino used the video to announce the lawsuit against the WFA, GARM and four "key members" (CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever). The rest of the video paints the lawsuit as defending Twitter's users, including the audacious claim that this alleged conspiracy "puts your global town square, the one place you can express yourself freely and openly, at long term risk".
After Musk took over Twitter, he opened the floodgates and destroyed its moderation teams, turning the platform into a safe space for bigots and conspiracy theorists. In 2023, a Media Matters report revealed that Twitter had been running ads for the likes of Apple next to "pro-Nazi content". Following this, a long list of companies temporarily halted advertising on Twitter, including Sony, Warner Bros and Ubisoft. Twitter then filed a lawsuit against Media Matters, 将于2025年4月进行审判。
“Media Matters将其账户设置为仅关注30个用户(远远低于典型活跃用户关注的平均账户数 ，219个)，严重限制了其订阅内容的数量和类型 ， ”诉讼称 。它还指控Media Matters改变其“滚动和刷新活动 ，试图操纵广告和内容的无机组合 ” 。
Advertisers, meanwhile, contend that they have the right to protect their brands by only advertising on platforms that don't harm them. "No platform has a right to our advertising dollar," Unilever president Herrish Patel said in a statement following last month's hearing.
The GARM initiative (a full list of its members can be found on its website) describes its role as "the forum for the creation of solutions that will improve online safety for both consumers and advertisers" and says that its goal is to create an ecosystem that will "lead to the removal of harmful content from advertiser-supported social media".
Twitter, however, claims that it meets or exceeds the safety standards specified by GARM. "We have proven our platform provides advertisers a way to showcase their brands and reach their target audiences safely, efficiently and effectively," Yaccarino said in an open letter to advertisers.
Musk's comment on the lawsuit was a bit briefer, presumably because he's busy with the task of creating superhuman gamers. "We tried peace for 2 years," he said, "now it is war".
