Variety: Elon Musk Says Far-Right Firebrand Alex Jones Will Be Reinstated on X/Twitter. “Elon Musk, continuing his campaign to make X a ‘free speech’ refuge even to the detriment of the company’s business interests, said he is reinstating the account of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.”
Fortune: FabFitFun, a $1 billion subscription box startup, frantically backpedals after a profane, pro–Elon Musk ad bombs. “FabFitFun turned into a dumpster fire just in time for the holiday season. The millennial-favorite subscription box company went viral this week when it posted a controversial ad on Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter)—but it blew up for all the wrong reasons. The meltdown over what appeared to be a badly misjudged attempt to piggyback off a viral Musk moment reads as a case study in how not to approach internet marketing.”
Defector: Elon Musk Is Grimly Determined To Let You Know He Is Funny. “Not to take the comedic semiotics of Elon Musk too-too seriously, but the most interesting facet of his dogged, ever-flopping quest to be thought of as a comedy genius as well as a success entrepreneur guy is the ways in which he is consistently five or more years behind the online comedy meta-game. For someone with a stupefying amount of resources and a bizarrely overcooked opinion of the importance of his dying app, he understands precious little about the modern forms of comedy.”
Business Insider: Elon Musk’s biggest fans on X love Community Notes — until it comes for them. “Some may argue that the fact that no X user, including Musk himself, is immune to a correction from Community Notes is a testament to the feature’s capability, but critics have repeatedly pointed out the flaws of the system behind the feature.”
Reuters: Elon Musk appeals dispute over SEC consent decree to US Supreme Court. “Billionaire businessman Elon Musk on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether the Securities and Exchange Commission overstepped its authority in enforcing a consent decree that he has called a ‘muzzle’ on his constitutional free speech rights, his lawyer said.”
Axios: Ex-Twitter exec claims X fired him for raising security concerns. “Twitter’s former global head of information security accused X in a lawsuit Wednesday of wrongly firing him for raising concerns about Musk’s budget cuts following the Elon Musk-led takeover.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Fulton panel considers $10M tax break to Elon Musk’s X . “A Fulton County agency is considering granting a more than $10 million property tax break to the social network belonging to the world’s richest man — Elon Musk — an incentive for computers in an existing Atlanta data center that would create no new jobs.”
Axios: Elon Musk’s X.ai aims to raise $1 billion. “X.ai, Elon Musk’s new artificial intelligence company, appears to have raised at least $134.7 million out of a $1 billion target, per a new SEC filing. Why it matters: Musk announced the endeavor earlier this year as a response to OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015 but whose board he left in 2018.”
NBC 15 (Wisconsin): Dane Co. Sheriff’s Office likely stop posting on Elon Musk’s X too. “The Dane Co. Sheriff’s Office will likely join other county agencies that will stop posting to X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter. A spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office said the Sheriff’s Office expects to follow Co. Executive Joe Parisi’s guidance to Dane Co. departments that directed them to stop posting to X before New Year’s Day.”
BBC: Could X go bankrupt under Elon Musk?. “For a company he bought for $44bn (£35bn) last year, bankruptcy might sound unthinkable. But it is possible. To understand why, you have to look at how reliant X is on advertising revenue – and why advertisers are not coming back.” Nice overview.
SF Gate: The end of Elon Musk. “So it’s over for you, Elon Musk. You are a public failure of a man. You’ll still be rich, but you no longer matter. That’s all you really wanted out of this, wasn’t it? You bought Twitter because you thought that owning it would make you the most special person in the whole wide world, only to reveal yourself as an unremarkable s—thead with no good ideas.”
Hollywood Reporter: Linda Yaccarino’s Very Unmerry X Mess. “By now, just a few months later, the former head of advertising at NBCUniversal has become a lightning rod for rage arising from Musk’s erratic, impulsive and, in many cases, repulsive behavior, even as he has made it all but impossible for her to fulfill the mission of making Twitter an alluring place for advertisers. Through it all, Yaccarino has generally presented herself as oblivious to Musk’s conduct and its impact on the company that she at least nominally leads — behavior so maddening that she has been dragged on the very platform she supposedly runs.”
The Guardian: X struggling to win advertisers back after Elon Musk’s profane outburst. “Major advertisers like Disney, IBM and Apple are still withholding ad dollars from Elon Musk’s X two weeks after its owner endorsed an antisemitic tweet and two days after he launched an expletive-laden tirade to describe his feelings about the pull back. Marketing agencies are pulling back from it as well. In response, X has said it plans to attract smaller and medium-sized businesses to prop up its income.”
Washington Post: News outlets turn to Reddit as Musk’s X descends into chaos. “As Twitter continues to decline as a place to post news, media companies have been seeking out alternative platforms to promote their work, and more are turning to Reddit. But by promoting the article in a prominent snark subreddit, Business Insider’s Reddit account has raised questions about how media companies should navigate a new social media landscape dominated by freewheeling, self-policed groups.”
Reuters: Walmart says it is not advertising on social platform X. “Walmart said on Friday it is not advertising on social media platform X, one of the latest brands to say it has dropped the Elon Musk-owned site. ‘We aren’t advertising on X as we’ve found other platforms to better reach our customers,’ a Walmart spokesperson said.”
