Elon Musk, the new Twit chief, is irked because of the leading companies pausing ads on Twitter as a protest for various reasons that cannot be ‘reasoned with’. The companies like Audi, General Mills and the Volkswagen Group declared that they have ‘temporarily’ paused ads on Twitter as many of the civil society organisations and as Musk calls them, the ‘activists’ have urged Twitter advertisers to suspend their ads because of the ambiguity over the authority of Elon Musk. The Volkswagen Group, which owns Audi, Porsche and Bentley also directed its brands to pause their paid activities on the platform until further notice.
Elon Musk claims that the activists have taken away freedom of speech
Elon Musk has been laying off many of the workforce, including several top executives like Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal policy, trust, and safety. There is much more to it than meets the eye. As per the activists’ belief, Musk’s promises in no way accurately portray his plans for Twitter, nor are they a reflection of the evolving reality of the platform as it transforms by the minute under Musk.
Musk claims that the activists have pressurised the companies to bycott and pause the ads on Twitter. This, according to Musk, is simply snatching away the freedom of speech. He blames this act to be the cause for the massive drop in revenue. He breaks silence on Twitter firings saying that due to the activists ruining the reputation since he became the boss, he had “no choice” but to lay many of his employees off. The reason for this being the daily drop of almost $4M of the revenue. The Tweet by the new boss shows it all:
Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.
Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022
Elon Musk recieves hate from many world wide civil society organisations
Within 24 hours of Musk taking ownership, the platform was inundated with hate and disinformation. Not only are extremists celebrating Musk’s takeover of Twitter, they are seeing it as a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing, and racist language and imagery. This includes clear threats of violence against people with whom they disagree. Without deliberate efforts by Twitter to address this type of abuse and hate, your brands will be actively supporting accelerating extremism.
Additionally, he has threatened to drastically reduce employee headcount, putting those responsible for maintaining community standards and protecting user safety first on the chopping block. Musk has also publicly supported the idea of restoring the accounts of prominent individuals Twitter had suspended for inciting and glorifying political violence,spreading election- and COVID-related disinformation and abusing people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, or disability.
All this has been observed by a whopping number of the activists and they called on the leading companies, reminding them of the moral and civil obligations against the degradation of one of the world’s largest communication platforms.
Source: Twitter
