WSJ: Musk’s X To Brands: Advertise on X or We’ll Sue

A report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) claims X’s (formerly Twitter) owner, Elon Musk, and CEO Linda Yaccarino threatened brands with legal action if they didn’t continue to advertise on the social media site.

“Spend your ad dollars with us, or we’ll see you in court” – that was the unusual message the company sent to brands that were major advertisers on the platform before Musk’s takeover.

According to the WSJ, “The threat in at least some cases worked and allowed Elon Musk’s social media platform X to secure millions of dollars in ad spending.”

Verizon, for example, had returned to X after a two-year break. It pledged to spend $10 million on ads on the platform, a fraction of the $80 million spent in 2020, but still a win for Musk. The WSJ further reports that Ralph Lauren and at least six other brands made ad deals after Musk’s and Yaccarino’s alleged pressure campaign.

In 2024, Elon Musk’s X Corp initiated a lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and its members, including major brands like CVS, Orsted, Mars, and Unilever (later dropped from the suit after reaching an agreement to increase its ad spending on X).

The suit accuses them of coordinating a boycott that withheld billions in ad spending on X. It alleges that the listed advertisers either suspended or never resumed ads after Musk’s 2022 takeover of Twitter. In 2025, X added more major brands to the lawsuit, including Lego, Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive, Pinterest, and others.

As the world’s richest man, with limitless resources to pour into legal fights, over 221 million followers on X, extensive media coverage, and, until recently, a close friendship with President Donald Trump, the report claims Musk made brands feel pressured to resume advertising on X.

In an interview with The New York Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, Musk told advertisers – who, he claimed, were trying to “blackmail” him into toning down his outspoken personality and reinstating stricter content moderation on X – “Go f**k yourself.”

X, Elon Musk, and Linda Yaccarino didn’t respond to the WSJ’s requests for comment, while a spokesman for the company declined to comment on the report.

A Yahoo Finance reporter asked Yaccarino to address the WSJ report at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, to which she denied advertiser pressure, saying the platform is going through a “historic evolution,” seeing 96% of advertisers coming back.