Reuters reported on the 26th (local time) that Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk lost a lawsuit tied to the advertising boycott that followed his acquisition of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
Judge Jane Boyle of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Wichita Falls Division, dismissed an antitrust suit X filed against the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and major corporations, in which it claimed a collusive advertising boycott. The court said, "X failed to show that the boycott (consumer boycott) against X resulted in, or was intended to result in, domination of the advertising market by competing social media platforms."
The court said, "The only harm X alleges is that (advertising) clients collectively chose competitors instead of X," and, citing a Supreme Court precedent that "losses stemming from competition itself are not antitrust injury," ruled in favor of the defendants.
It also found that four non-U.S. corporations on the defendant list—Shell International, Lego, Nestlé, and Ørsted—are beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.
As subscriber numbers fell rapidly and ad sales plunged during the 2022 acquisition of Twitter and its rebranding to X, Musk filed suit against advertisers in 2024.
Market research firm eMarketer forecast X's global advertising revenue this year at $2.19 billion (about 3.3 trillion won). That is less than half of Twitter's $4.51 billion in ad revenue before Musk acquired it.
In addition, Musk's side on the day asked the court to reconsider a recent verdict by a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that found he intentionally depressed the stock price during the Twitter acquisition.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that X, ahead of an initial public offering of its parent SpaceX, is carrying out sweeping layoffs, dismissing more than 20 nontechnical employees including the chief marketing officer (CMO). The move is seen as an effort to streamline overlapping roles as X merges with artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI, and xAI in turn combines with SpaceX.