It's not secret that Elon Musk has been bleeding advertisers at X, formerly known as Twitter, since his purchase of the platform in late 2022.
Since he brought a sink into Twitter headquarter to let the world know that he was in charge of place after paying an estimated $44 billion for the social media company, Musk has made wholesale changes from everything to the company's name to the way it policies and regulates content on the platform.
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A bevy of advertisers like Disney (DIS) -), Apple (AAPL) -) and IBM (IBM) -) have paused their advertising on the site following a report from Media Matters showing that advertisements were being shown next to popular neo-nazi accounts on the platform.
The message was clear: no one wants their advertisements next to proto-nazis tweeting nonsense from their mother's basements.
Elon Musk also had a clear message for the advertisers that left (and that he still needs to make Twitter work): "go fuck yourself."
Despite the bluster from that interview, Musk also tipped his hand about the future of the platform, declaring during that same interview that "this advertising boycott is going to kill the company."
But, at least for the time being, Musk and X are getting a bit of a reprieve from an unexpected source: Democrat political candidates.
2024 is a major election year, and politicians have money to spend on advertising. And despite their disparate political ideologies, Democrats are throwing a lot of money Musk's way these days.
Democrats have spent over a million dollars to run thousands of political ads on X, according to an analysis of the company's ad disclosure data by the Washington Post.
Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) and 24 of their colleagues signed a letter in November saying that X is guilty of the "promotion of misinformation and hateful, violent, and terroristic propaganda videos, which shockingly have been used by the company for profit."
While that message certainly resonates with voters on the left who have seen Musk go further to the right side of the political spectrum in recent years — though he has said that the left wing of the Democratic party has moved further left while he has stayed the same — in reality, Schiff, Goldman and more than 50 other Democratic political candidates are keeping X alive with their political ads.
Schiff in particular spent over $90,000 on X advertisements the month before publishing the letter.
The Post report points out that Republicans are also heavy advertisers on X, but at least there is ideological consistency there. Musk and X opened former Fox News host Tucker Carlson with open arms after he was unceremoniously fired from his top-rated TV news program.
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