I wouldn’t be too quick to believe that the majority of Americans will think the way you do about this. Most are much too lazy to make a change unless something about the platform changes that impacts them directly. Not to mention that the audience is not all American. And, not to mention that there are all too many Americans who cheer this sort of reference.
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Which is rather my point to the OP who seemed to be extrapolating one datum point to grand conclusions that may not even be the reason for which
that one company pulled their advertising.
tamhas that is the point the insults are flying. The bigots and misogynists are having a field day. It will all revert to Truth Social numbers for Twitter. An echo chamber.
This is going to be a very interesting collapse to watch. Possibly to be considered the biggest unofficial boycott in history.
Does GM pulling the advertisements also mean that they do not post on twitter to their followers and customers?
Mike
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Does Tesla advertise on Twitter? Or use it as a platform for customers? Or is just Musk using Twitter for his personal needs?
No (significant presence of) Tesla on Twitter = “interesting”.
Article in the NYT (soft paywall) that speculates Musk’s debt payments might be more than Twitter can generate by itself:
Putting more money into a leveraged, slow-growth company like Twitter is also not the same as investing in a rapidly growing venture-backed start-up like his rocket-making company, SpaceX. The risks are greater at Twitter because the banks doing the lending care only about getting paid their interest on the day it is owed. Unlike, say, a real estate company, Twitter does not have a large amount of assets to offer lenders as collateral to keep them at bay.
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That might not be the reason, but GM didn’t say they were ending ads on Twitter, they said they were pausing until they know what the moderation policy is, leaving the door open for a come back. I think It is instructive to look at why Twitter started moderating content in the first place. Jack Dorsey was a free speech absolutist, just like Musk. But with no moderation Twitter became a center for hate speech like Gamergate and things really ramped with the Ghostbuster reboot which featured a black woman which brought the crazies out of the woodwork. This caused major brands like Disney to break ties with Twitter. At that point Twitter started moderating content. It was free market forces and nothing else.
We’re only two full business days into the management change. But we have another data point:
IPG is one of the world’s largest marketing agencies and represents brands like Accenture, American Express, Coca-Cola, Mattel, GoPro, Johnson & Johnson, etc. Note like GM, IPG is also recommending pausing ads, not completely breaking ties, until they know what Twitter’s moderation policies are.
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I agree with your per perspective. And…it seems an entirely reasonable and prudent thing for both GM and IPG (and perhaps others in time) to do.
Pete
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I appreciate the broader thought process towards these actions. I am not on Twitter. Frankly TMF is the closest I get to regular social media.
IP
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I wonder what will happen when Musk finds out about negative tweets about him. He’ll be stuck between a rock and a hard place. If he upholds his promise of unlimited free speech, then those unflattering tweets about him must stay and may take on a life of their own. If he clamps down on his haters, then he’s breaking his promise of unlimited free speech. Worse yet, clamping down on his haters but not the conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, anti-vaccine kooks, etc. would be an expression of support for them.
Elon Musk is a train wreck. If he weren’t the billionaire genius behind Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and other great endeavors, he’d be just another Charlie Sheen or Kanye West.
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The concept of “freeedom” in Shiny-land today is you have perfect freedom, as long as you conform. There has probably been a bot installed that will automatically and instantly remove from view anything that mentions Musk, until it has been reviewed for conformity.
Steve
Musk seems to think so.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/tech/twitter-advertisers/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0hJ9qZNI7KNaNL2hyl4x-_0U9bKEWXYZ2H3c3i8MAiuQzFegnPIRNdP-Y
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But it doesn’t matter to Musk. My seat of the pants feeling is he regards Twitter as his personal megaphone, just as (someone else) has Truth Social. How can the company stand a 50% head count? Don’t need a lot of staff for a personal megaphone. Advertisers leaving? Don’t need advertisers for a personal megaphone. All Musk needs is for the members of his cult to pony up the $8/month.
Steve
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It is a two edged sword. The megaphone only works if lots of people are in range of the megaphone.
Currently about 300,000 people have the blue check. If a million people started paying $8/month, then that would be about $100,000,000/year. But Musk needs about ten times that amount. The plan of hoping that corporations will make up the difference by eagerly putting their corporate name, branding, and logo next to Kanye West’s tweets accusing his Jewish doctor of trying to kill him probably won’t make up the difference.
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Eating some humble pie, I am back five days later because Musk is changing the worthlessness of Twitter longer term.
Still put off buying a Tesla…but I am a Honda man not a GM or F man. Need to see what Honda comes up with…
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A couple updates: Elon decided letting noted racist and conspiracy theorist Kanye West out of the penalty box wasn’t such a good idea after all and re-banned him. So much for free speech absolutism.
Musk also dumped internal Twitter emails to Matt Talabi (who posted excepts on Twitter) documenting how Twitter removed Tweets with links to stolen dick pics and porno videos. Outrage among the pro-stolen dick pick crowd ensued.
Unfortunately, the names and emails of the employees in the email chains were not redacted, and have now been doxed by angry pro-stolen dick pick activists–including employees who had nothing to do with it. In a blow for 1st Amendment rights, Talabi also accidently published former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s personal email.
Sounds like a great place to work.
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I am still on it however many followers, last I saw 13.6k.
The reason it will be a Web3 plug and play platform. Content creators may benefit.
Ye put up a swastika. Google image search has them by the bucket full. I wont push the fool’s position on this by posting one. I’d be happier if Google took them down. Irony.
Last night, Elon Musk joined Dave Chappell on stage. A resounding chorus boos followed. A short video of the event was posted on Twitter and quickly went viral. The Tweet and the account were deleted. I guess free speech absolutism isn’t quite absolute.
This being the Internet however, the video was quickly mirrored.
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Anyone who thinks Musk is for free speech has been drinking too much Kool-Aid.
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Twitter bans journalists critical of Twitter. Free speech is absolute. Unless it is free speech you don’t like.
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