© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A Walmart store in Encinitas, California, April 13, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo//File Photo
By Siddharth Cavale and Sheila Dang
(Reuters) -Walmart said on Friday it will not advertise on social media platform X, one of the latest brands to say it has abandoned the Elon Musk-owned site.
“We are not advertising on X because we have found other platforms to better reach our customers,” said a Walmart (NYSE:) spokesperson.
X, formerly known as Twitter, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The platform has struggled to retain advertisers since Musk acquired the company in October 2022 and faced a new exodus in recent weeks due to growing concerns about anti-Semitic content.
Earlier this month, Musk agreed with an X user who falsely claimed that members of the Jewish community were stoking hate against white people, saying the user was telling “the real truth.”
The user also referenced the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which purports that Jews and leftists are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with non-white immigrants that will lead to a “white genocide.”
Musk apologized for his post during an interview at a New York Times DealBook event on Wednesday, but cursed advertisers who suspended his ads, accusing them of “blackmail.”
An executive at a major ad-buying agency, who asked not to be identified, said X's ad sales representatives seemed frustrated following Musk's outburst against brands and didn't have much to say in conversations.
Major brands like Apple (NASDAQ , Walt disney (NYSE and Warner Bros Discovery (NASDAQ ) also suspended their ads on
