“Under your understanding of anti-racketeering law, could the three advertisers be compelled to continue placing ads?”
You seriously missed the point on the X lawsuit, and I mean by a mile. In your example, three people decided for themselves not to advertise. It would be a crime for those three to then tell other companies they will not do business with them if they advertise on X.
Imagine if all the employers and businesses of the world had a blacklist and your name was on it so that you could not work or shop anywhere.
Would you bitch or accept that it is their business to exclude you from all commerce?
“It would be a crime for those three to then tell other companies they will not do business with them if they advertise on X.”
You are pleading a case that X itself is not making. (For one thing, X is not charging a crime, which it as a corporation cannot. It is filing a civil case.)
But more pertinent to your post, NOWHERE does X claim that the defendants threatened to not do business with companies that chose to continue advertising.
Where is this imaginary blacklist from?
If Mercedes and Borden choose not to advertise on X but Clorox continues to do so, how would the former punish the latter?
This is an absurd embellishment of X’s case.