Worldwide: Online travel agencies [OTAs] Airbnb and Expedia have suspended their advertising on X [formerly Twitter] with immediate effect.
The companies recently paused their marketing activities with the world’s third-biggest social media network following a report from non-profit group Media Matters alleging that their adverts were appearing alongside pro-Nazi content and hate speech.
The platform and its CEO, Elon Musk, who bought Twitter last October before rebranding it to X in April, have also been accused of antisemitism after Musk put out a critical tweet about Jewish communities and pushed the notion of “hatred against whites”. The CEO swiftly denied the accusations of antisemitism and took legal action against Media Matters, a left-leaning media watchdog group, for alleged defamation.
As a result, other major global corporations including Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Comcast have also pulled their advertising from X in recent days, at least for the time being.
It came as The New York Times revealed that it had seen leaked documents highlighting that 200 advertising units had been pulled from the social network platform, and hundreds of companies have paused all marketing activities on X for the foreseeable future. That same report suggests that X could lose $75 million in revenue from lost advertising by the end of 2023 as a result, which would contradict the platform’s estimates of $11 million in lost revenue.
As previously reported by Reuters, X has already seen its revenue drop by at least 55 per cent year-over-year since Musk bought the company previously known as Twitter and immediately laid off staff 14 months ago.
