So-called “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk apparently thinks that free speech means forcing advertisers to buy ads on his website by suing them, as his latest lawsuit has sued advertisers for pulling their ads from his platform.  

Admittedly, it’s tough to keep track of all of Elon Musk’s lawsuits. But the latest of these, just filed Tuesday in a Texas federal court, is especially bizarre and notable. The Associated Press reports that Musk and Twitter/X are now suing advertisers for leaving Twitter, despite that those advertisers likely pulled their ads from Twitter more because of their not wanting to appear alongside proliferating hate speech and misinformation, and on a platform that has fewer users under Musk to boot.

The lawsuit over the alleged advertiser boycott is particularly ironic, considering that Republicans called for a boycott on companies who pulled their ads from Twitter in 2022. So boycotts are okay sometimes, but only when they benefit the world’s wealthiest man?

Musk declared on Xitter shortly after the lawsuit was filed that “We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war.”

This is not the first time Musk has declared “war” on someone, despite being a C-suite executive born into an obscenely wealthy family and having absolutely no military background. He made the same "war" threat early in his Twitter ownership days against Apple for pulling their advertising from Twitter (in tweets that were clearly marked as being sent via “Twitter for iPhone”).

In her own Xitter video statement, CEO Linda Yaccarino alleged that a “group of companies organized a systematic, illegal boycott of X.” She added that advertisers leaving Twitter “puts your global town square, the one place that you can express yourself freely and openly, at long-term risk.” Her separate statement claims that “The illegal behavior of these organizations and their executives cost X billions of dollars.”

And as several people noted, Yaccarino is wearing necklaces that say “Mama” and “Free Speech” in that video.

The lawsuit is against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), an advertising industry outfit that aims to protect brands’ reputations. It also names four private companies: Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted. But suing advertisers may not be an effective method of getting advertisers to return to a platform.

“To the extent that Elon hadn’t already burned all bridges and ties with the entire advertising community, I don’t see how this will get any advertisers to come back to X,” chief strategy officer Ruben Schreurs at the marketing firm Ebiquity told the New York Times. “It’s a last-ditch effort to force brands who don’t want to be in the cross hairs of this kind of legal action to return to the platform.”

And Musk himself probably drove off advertisers went he declared to advertisers at a conference last November, "If somebody's gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. But go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is."

Well, apparently advertisers decided that was clear, and they walked away. And now Elon Musk is suing them for it.

Related: Elon Musk to Fleeing Advertisers: 'Go F**k Yourselves' [SFist]

Image: Top image:Top image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 29: Elon Musk wears a necklace in honor of Israeli hostages onstage during The New York Times Dealbook Summit 2023 at Jazz at Lincoln Center on November 29, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for The New York Times)