Dozens of justice and watchdog groups are urging top Twitter advertisers to use their influence over the website to urge new CEO Elon Musk to embrace content moderation or threaten to pull their funding if he doesn’t.
In a letter to 20 top advertisers, 40 groups warn that, while Musk has promised advertisers he won’t turn the website into a “free-for-all hellscape,” his actions have indicated otherwise.
The letter was signed by groups like Media Matters for America, Public Citizen, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Center for Transgender Equality, and others. They say that Musk’s promises to advertisers “in no way accurately portray his plans for Twitter,” and that if he carries out even a fraction of what he has pledged for supposed “free speech” on the platform, “then Twitter will not and can not be a safe platform for brands.”
“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,” the letter reads. “This includes clear threats of violence against people with whom they disagree.”
Indeed, hateful tweets flooded the platform just hours after Musk’s takeover, as right-wing users feel they can freely tweet slurs, attack LGBTQ people and glorify Nazism with Musk in charge. Meanwhile, in one of his first posts on Twitter after obtaining the company, Musk tweeted a false right-wing conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi, amplifying it to an even wider audience.
“Without deliberate efforts by Twitter to address this type of abuse and hate, your brands will be actively supporting accelerating extremism,” the groups wrote.
Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” has already taken steps to overhaul content moderation on the platform — which, while flawed, has worked in removing abusive and misleading content in the past. Since obtaining the company, Musk has fired Twitter’s top content moderation chief, and the team that oversees content has reportedly been blocked from accessing their moderation tools, rendering them unable to penalize accounts that violate Twitter’s hate speech policies.
As social media websites have learned over and over again throughout the years, content moderation is key to attracting advertisers; typically, advertisers don’t like seeing their promoted content sandwiched between hateful posts and racist slurs.
At the same time, advertising makes up a vast majority of Twitter’s revenue — so advertisers can have massive influence over how the website is run, if they so choose. The groups urge the advertisers to use this power to “notify Musk and publicly commit that you will cease all advertising on Twitter globally if he follows through on his plans to undermine brand safety and community standards including gutting content moderation.”
“Elon Musk has consistently failed to comprehend that freedom of speech does not mean freedom to abuse and that online spaces should be safe for women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalized groups,” Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, one of the letter signatories, said in a statement.
In recent days, Musk has proposed making users pay for verification on the platform, floating plans to charge $20 a month for the blue checkmark and then later $8 after the initial idea was met with widespread backlash. He has postured as though the idea is a tool to equalize the platform; in reality, however, it’s likely aimed at creating an alternative profit stream, though it’s questionable as to how much money this would actually bring in.
Ironically, he has also promised that paid users would get search and reply priority, which means that their posts would be shown more than those of unpaid users — a move that would only further solidify the disparities between users who can afford to pay about $100 a year for the service and users who cannot.
The plan was widely mocked by Twitter users. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) expressed scorn for the idea, laughing “at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that ‘free speech’ is actually a $8/mo subscription plan,” she wrote on the website on Tuesday.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.