A Letter to Advertisers from Musk on His Purchase of $TWTR

If Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk is going to antagonize U.S. senators, he might want to think twice about taunting Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who sits on numerous subcommittees with oversight into his companies.

After a Washington Post reporter was able to create a verified Twitter account impersonating Markey on Saturday, the senator wrote a letter to Musk demanding an explanation. “Selling the truth is dangerous and unacceptable. Twitter must explain how this happened and how it will prevent it from happening again,” Markey wrote, adding that Twitter has become the “Wild West of social media.”

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Among the first he interacted with upon assuming control of Twitter was an anonymous, anti-“woke” reactionary known as “Catturd,” who believes that the previous leadership had “shadowbanned, ghostbanned” and “searchbanned” them, effectively limiting their reach on the site. Musk responded to a post about these alleged issues, promising Catturd that he’d be “digging in more.” Meanwhile, Catturd went about their usual business: casting doubt on the legitimacy of American elections and the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines while denying the reality of climate change and calling liberals “triggered.”

Musk has also accepted counsel from Ian Miles Cheong, a right-wing culture warrior who continually weighs in on American politics from his home in Malaysia. He has criticized Covid-19 vaccine mandates (recently arguing that Americans who die of the disease “are typically fat as hell“) and thinks that trans rights advocates “force their beliefs” on others. In the past, he’s praised Adolf Hitler, and, like Catturd, he hates anything he considers “woke” — which is probably why he told Musk to “stop appeasing the activists,” i.e., anyone raising the alarm about hate speech on Twitter. Musk replied, “You’re right.”

Cheong also liked Musk’s post about Twitter becoming “the most accurate source of information about the world,” which to his mind means affording unsubstantiated rumor and misinformation the same platform as mainstream media.

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https://archive.ph/N6yZX

Another day, another sign that Elon Musk seems to be deliberately steering Twitter Inc. toward bankruptcy. The volatile billionaire has cut a large number of the company’s contract workers without warning, according to CNBC, or some 4,400 out of 5,500 contractors, the tech newsletter Platformer reported over the weekend. Many of those people were content moderators.

Worries about content moderation have been at the heart of why many of the site’s advertisers, such as General Motors Co. and Pfizer Inc., have suspended business with Twitter, adopting a wait-and-see approach. This latest development gives advertisers another reason to stay away for a longer period, draining Twitter of much-needed capital. Ads contribute about 90% of Twitter’s revenue.

Without an adequate number of content moderators, there is a greater chance that hate speech, harassment, misinformation and spam will grow on the site. That is a bigger problem for Twitter than for sites like Google or Facebook, where ads are based on search results or more specific targeting. On Twitter, advertisers want to create a positive awareness of their brands, and that is going to get much harder.

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https://archive.ph/N6yZX

Broadly speaking, AI systems aren’t reliable at moderating social media posts, according to a 2020 report from the Translatlantic Working Group, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Facebook’s own AI is estimated to remove just 2% of the viewed content that breaks hate-speech rules, according to an internal memo [published by the Wall Street Journal](https://archive.ph/o/N6yZX/https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ai-enforce-rules-engineers-doubtful-artificial-intelligence-11634338184) last year. Facebook said that the prevalence of such content was shrinking. Its parent Meta Platforms Inc. employs about 15,000 people as content moderators.

Firing the contractors won’t be covered by Musk’s plans to establish a “content moderator council,” which will deal with high-profile issues like whether to allow Donald Trump back onto the platform. Much more content on Twitter will now be left to machines, potentially undoing the platform’s good work in weeding out misinformation and foreign fake accounts over the last two years.

That is certain to further damage Twitter’s reputation in the eyes of advertisers, who have been warned that Twitter is now a “high risk” platform. GroupM, a large media agency that buys advertising on behalf of brands like Nestle SA and Ford Motor Co., published a “risk reassessment” of Twitter dated Nov. 11th, citing “increasing Twitter toxicity” and the turmoil of management resignations, according to a document reviewed by Bloomberg Opinion. The document was also reported by media news site Digiday.
The GroupM document says that to meet its concerns, Twitter needs to demonstrate its “commitment to effective content moderation” and bring down incidents of toxic content and hate speech. But Musk has done the opposite.

Twitter may be in big trouble when it comes to generating advertising revenue: GroupM, part of WPP, the world’s biggest ad company — and Twitter’s biggest spender — is reportedly telling its clients that buying ads on the platform is “high-risk,” according to Platformer and Digiday. That makes it the third advertising juggernaut telling massive corporations that they might want to take their money elsewhere, after IPG and Omnicom Media Group both recommended pausing advertisements on the platform.

GroupM works with companies like Google, L’Oréal, Bayer, Nestle, Unilever, Coke, and Mars. If you’ve ever seen that graphic about how a few brands make pretty much everything you buy at the grocery store, you’ll notice a lot of Venn diagram overlap with GroupM’s list of clients.

GroupM is reportedly concerned about several specific things following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter; in a document, it cites the large numbers of Twitter executives leaving or being fired (especially those in charge of safety, security, and compliance), the wave of high-profile impersonations by “verified” users, and also raises concerns about Twitter’s abilities to follow the Federal Trade Commission’s orders. If Twitter wants to lose its high-risk label, there’s several things GroupM reportedly wants to see, according to a document viewed by Digiday and a Slack message from Twitter’s agency partnerships lead seen by Platformer. The list includes:

  • A “return to baseline NSFW levels”
  • New IT Security, Privacy, Trust and Safety executives
  • “Establishment of internal checks & balances”
  • Transparency around plans that will affect user or brand safety, including changes to community guidelines and moderation policies
  • A commitment to content moderation, and ability to enforce the platform’s rules
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There is an “upfront” season for advertisers on television - it’s late spring/early summer as the networks roll out their new series for the Fall Season. (That is being eroded by streaming, of course, but the “upfront” ad gaggle still exists.)

What I did not know is that there is also an “upfront” season for online - and it’s going on now. I don’t know a lot about it, except I am told it mirrors the TV upfront (where 50-80% of future inventory is committed.)

Again, I have no idea what the percentages of budgets being committed are, but whatever they are, it’s not a good time for Twitter to be melting down. If Musk thinks “ah, this will go away as soon as we fix it”, well, no, because the contracts for a lot of next year are being let even as we speak.

There will be “scatter” advertising, of course, and maybe Twitter can put itself back together in time to capture some of that (I doubt it, given the firing of both content moderators and the sales executives who knew the national advertisers) so I’m gonna guess the road is more uphill and steeper than even the most pessimistic news stories are presenting, at least for the next 6-12 months.

Sometimes it’s good to move “not so fast” and “break fewer things.”

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Goofy, take us back to decades between say 1960-2000.

At these television “upfronts” did advertisers find out what shows still had open blocks of time to sell?

What was the average time of advertising on TV/Radio per programming hour and did it go up after consolidation of high debt conglomerates such as Clear Channel and Sinclair? (Clear Channel bought out the radio station I was working on here in the Keys. Our ads went from nine-minutes per hour to 24-minutes. When that happened, a sister station, which owned the Top-40 genre here in the Keys, suddenly began playing a hot rotation for the Top 23 with a few oldies (or recurrents) dropped into that mind-numbing same 'ol, same 'ol.)

Did advertisers of TV/Radio bid on these time blocks like as though it were an auction? Bidding chasing bids higher?

Did advertisers write checks at these meets, or, was all that handled later?

In those upfronts, did every TV show have like a Nielsen breakdown of demographics? And if a show was not well attended by advertisers, did the networks do anythng like a Dutch auction, or reverse auction, starting with a certain price and lowering that price say every 15 minutes until someone bought the blocks?

I don’t know the full history, but I presume the upfronts were an artifact of the early days, when a sponsor took an entire program, not just spots in it. So it was the “Camel Caravan with John Cameron Swayze” or “Kraft Music Hall” etc. The only commercials in the show were for the one sponsor - and there was less time devoted to them. (In fact for many the program was produced by the ad agency.)

Flash forward a decade, and sponsoring a single show blew the advertiser’s wad in a single half hour, so they started breaking up the spending, buying “minutes” in multiple shows. At this point the networks, which had retaken production control, started the upfronts, to introduce bigwig advertisers to new shows, and sign contracts for intents for the following season. Done in venues as large as Radio City (but often smaller) it was a schmoozefest, autograph session, big star spectacle - and the actual business was done over the next couple weeks as advertisers signed “almost secure” contracts for various shows and/or time blocks. [Almost secure: if a show drastically underperformed in the ratings the network would “make good” (free) spots in other venues.]

Anyway, the amount of advertising went up - from 8 minutes/hr at the very beginning to 12 then to 16 within a decade, where it more or less hovered for the next decades. (Not including the intrusion of the “bug” promos in the lower right corner of the screen)

With a single sponsor, how many times could you see the same commercial/sponsor in a single program? As that model broke up the “variety” of spots allowed for more commercial time, as well. For a while the NAB set the max at 14 (I think), then 16 minutes/hr.

I am unaware of any similar gargantuan events in radio, at least once network radio of the 40’s & 50’s collapsed in favor of DJ’s & music, although I’m sure there were meet and greets for the few truly national programs like Limbaugh, Larry King, Casey Kasem, etc. Never participated in anything like that, so I don’t really know.

But for your question about radio: yes, ad time increased with consolidation, partially because of the weakening of regulation and decimation of the FCC in the 80’s, partly because of financial pressures to perform. And one other factor: the micronization of message: in the beginning spots were :60 seconds. Then :30, although advertisers would pay 75%-80% as much as for a :60, they could reach many more listeners more often. Then came the :15 or the :20 or even :10 (Metro Traffic, for instance.)

I have seen research demonstrating that people hear “interruption” more than “length.” That is, 2-:30 spots sound longer to listeners than 1-:60. Now take a cluster, as TV is programmed (and some badly formatted radio), and pack it with 8 to 10 :30 second commercials and it seems interminable. Meanwhile the advertiser reaches a wider audience, the network makes more, and the thing thats lost is “less attention paid” to the 4th commercial in the chain.

Ah, back to the negotiation process for the upfronts: no, nothing like Dutch auction. Good old fashioned Mad Men, liquid lunches, good-ole-boy hondling and handling, Very used car salesman approach, and “sign here, press down there are carbons.” The process could go on for days, weeks.

And of course about 30% of inventory was reserved for the “scatter” market, opportunistic times that an advertiser hadn’t foreseen, or a sudden hit show a network can milk, or, as mentioned above, make goods for under-delivery. Sometimes the scatter inventory was just “inventory that didn’t sell upfront”. Sometimes it was purposefully reserved.

Research was rudimentary by today’s standards, but yes demographics, and even in some cases product consumption stats to help push the price higher.

Product placement? Hardly new. One of the early shows, “Leave it To Beaver” (or similar, not sure) was produced by Westinghouse’s and agency, which is why there were so many family discussions in the kitchen, all the better to see the Westinghouse appliances in the background throughout the show. Everything old is new again.

Meanwhile, back at Clusterfrack Corp, here’s today’s roundup of news, bits and pieces, tweets, etc.

I keep waiting for one irate Twitter employee of old to sabotage the app.

**And it looks like Professor Galloway was wrong on his bet that Twitter would be closed by end of this week, what with Elon saying 19 NOV 22 will be the new launch date for whatever new blue check monster which Elon will unveil.

s. Across Twitter, numerous complaints today about the two-step verification process for signing into twitter and it wasn’t working for those folks using mobile to post on Twitter. Seems that might be a bit of a problem as many of the people recounting their problems just wanted to give up entirely, but, Progressive fighters convinced them to stay and help beat back all the new loathsome trolls finding solace in Mr. November Surprise:

Twitter continues to seemingly circle the drain under Elon Musk’s stewardship, and with the trending term #RIPTwitter, users are very worried that the site may disappear.

The term began trending after hundreds of Twitter employees reportedly offered Musk their resignations by not signing the ultimatum he gave them. Musk had asked all his remaining employees to join him in making Twitter 2.0, which would have involved long hours, or they could leave with three months of severance pay.

According to internal messages seen by The Verge, hundreds chose to leave, and the scale of resignations suggests that the platform would start breaking soon.

I was just on Twitter, reading goodbyes from people I follow “just in case…” and sure enough Twitter just erased me from its feed and all my friends too.

I guess it didn’t help that Elon’s meeting with Twitter’s remaining employees went very badly and most of them were saying good-bye on Twitter explaining this one fact from yesterday: Elon came down hard on employees and said if you’re not willing to work from the office, you are fired.

But after so many quit while Musk was talking, he then either fired the person in charge of security badges OR she quit. Regardless, according to posts on Twitter, if you wanted to work at the office you could not get in. If your car was in the underground garage, you could not get out. If you were in some glass enclossed room (sounded like a break room with glass doors) the doors were locked and could not be opened with the badges.

In short, the badge fiasco pushed Musk and his fast evaporating team to issue a new decree: Twitter offices would be closed for the next 3 days beginning today.

Holy hell, did Twitter erupt on this news. Anyway, I lost that cut and paste, but, here is the video (embedded with article) from The Daily Beast.

These messages running on the building like a chyron are the ultimate indignity for the worst week in Twitter’s life:

LOL! This headline for Huffpost takes up the entire top half of its opening page:

> CNN’s Oliver Darcy reported that the company’s Slack server was full of employees posting the salute emoji, effectively signaling their departure. One former employee who left recently described the event as a “mass exodus.”

Imagine the uproar should Facebook, Instagram, Snap, tik tok, Signal, youtube, etc., all released a note that the HQ would be closed for the next 3 days and if you still wanted your job, you were supposed to be at work today. Hello. $44 Billion.

I wonder how Elon’s lenders for the Twitter deal feel this morning?

And I left my Twitter open. It just blipped on. I am temporarily back on Twitter, but, the Feed is all messed up.

I don’t think this will help sell Teslas to Liberals still on Twitter. And its not going to help in used Tesla prices either with many Liberals swearing they will sell their vehicles or cancel reservations for Teslas now that Musk has gone full Libertarian GQP:


https://archive.ph/EsBqq

Elon Musk said on Twitter on Saturday that he would reinstate former President Donald J. Trump to the platform as part of a shake-up of the social media service, with Mr. Trump’s account quickly showing up again on the site.

Mr. Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion last month, had asked users on the platform starting late Friday afternoon about whether to allow Mr. Trump back onto the service. Twitter had barred Mr. Trump after the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, saying his posts had the risk of inciting violence.

More than 15 million votes were logged in answer to Mr. Musk’s question about whether to reinstate Mr. Trump, according to the results that Mr. Musk included in his tweet, with nearly 52 percent in favor of the former president returning to Twitter. Mr. Trump’s Twitter account went live shortly after, though the former president’s last tweet was from Jan. 8, 2021.

Delusional as ever:

“And Truth Social is through the roof. It’s doing phenomenally well. … I think engagement is much better than it is with Twitter,” he continued.

About any plans to return to Twitter, he said, “I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it. They have a lot of problems at Twitter. You see what’s going on. It may make it, it may not make it, but the problems are incredible and the engagements are negative.”

“But Truth Social has taken the place for a lot of people and I don’t see them going back onto Twitter,” he said.