As of Friday, the day after the acquisition of Twitter by the boss of Tesla, the automaker General Motors had indicated that it had temporarily stopped paying for advertisements on Twitter. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal claimed that Mondelez International (the maker of Oreo cookies), Pfizer and Audi had made similar decisions.
Open letter to the biggest advertisers
Advertisers, who account for 90% of the platform’s revenue, fear that the liberalization of content moderation regulations advocated by Elon Musk will make the platform inhospitable. Most brands prefer to avoid association with non-consensual content. Since Thursday, the libertarian entrepreneur has been trying to reassure them. He wrote them a letter promising that Twitter would not become a “hellish” platform, “where anything can be said without consequence”.
He also promised to form a content moderation council, and to take a few weeks before potentially re-authorizing certain banned people – like Donald Trump – to return to the social network. But neither advertisers nor many NGOs seem convinced for the moment.