Every social media service is unhappy in its own way. That’s something Bill Ackman should remember. The hedge fund manager came out swinging in support of Elon Musk in a lengthy tweet late Thursday night, claiming that recent advertiser defections from X were a result of Musk being “targeted” because other media organizations view X as a competitor. (Walmart on Friday became the latest big marketer to drop X.) Ackman noted that rival social media services TikTok, Instagram and Facebook have “enormous amounts of problematic content, antisemitic and otherwise, but the advertisers don’t boycott those platforms.” That may be true, but the problematic content on those platforms causes them plenty of other problems.
Take TikTok, which has reportedly been inundated with pro-Hamas content in recent weeks. That has led to renewed calls to ban the service—which is surely much worse than a boycott by advertisers. Politicians and others have been talking about banning the Chinese-owned platform for several years, creating uncertainty that isn’t good for TikTok’s business, even if many advertisers have flocked to the service. So if any social media service should feel singled out for unfair treatment, it is TikTok. If we’re going to ban a social media service because of offensive content—whether it’s antisemitic or harmful to kids—let’s ban all of them.
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