> It's amusing how people like you prefer to resort to puerile convoluted conspiracy theories to explain why ad companies stopped paying for ads on Twitter when the people who made that decision already stated in no uncertain terms how Elon Musk's actions turned Twitter into a liability.
Dude. I am agreeing with this. They do not want to be seen with content from a different pillar.
> The very public reasons he initially tried to take over Twitter were disagreement with some of the political censorship decisions they made.
You're disingenuously glancing over the fact that Elon Musk repeatedly said and did different things. As the Twitter thread I linked early clearly shows, Elon Musk was repeatedly giving assurances to marketing execs behind closed doors that he would continue moderating hate speech and extremist content on Twitter just as before.
The marketing industry is not manned by fools, and once Elon Musk fired basically all content moderators then the industry called Elon Musk out on his bullshit and promptly yanked ad spending on Twitter, explaining quite clearly that cutting moderation was a major liability.
It's amusing how people like you prefer to resort to puerile convoluted conspiracy theories to explain why ad companies stopped paying for ads on Twitter when the people who made that decision already stated in no uncertain terms how Elon Musk's actions turned Twitter into a liability.
>Interesting how everyone was calling musk a madman for paid twitter accounts and suddenly its a trend.
I think you are taking a very interesting spin on the situation and leaving out many factors; notable blowing up advertising revenue to the tune of several hundred million dollars per year in exchange for a program that is now pulling ~30M/year.
Bad user experience, ads and conflict of interest with regards to monetization (the user wants to use the product to see content they want to see, but the platform wants to show the user content - or ads, or as we used to call it: spam - it wants the user to see).
> As far as I can tell, the majority of them were perfectly contented with Twitter as-is until Elon bought it
The majority of them are actually content even after Elon bought it. The only thing that really spilled outside of "tech Twitter" was the banning of journalists. Everything else is just tech people making up a storm in a teacup.
> But I guess you have some bizarre political agenda
You got all that from "If you remove politics, and focus on twitter."? :)
I agree that Musk's behavior is a serious detriment to the future of twitter.
Not sure what else you want me to say, I'm interested in twitter (the business) and what a drastic change in their business model might look like more than I am in Musk.
>is citing says they project Twitter Ad Revenue to be 2020 levels
Yeah, and the CyberTruck shipped in 2020. You clearly aren't on Twitter despite your white-knighting. The ads are hilariously bad from scams to Alibaba level products.
>I will always hope Free Speech wins over censorship.
Which free speech? The one where Elon Bans you because you called him on something heinous?
>I bet rightwing sites had this issue under former management.
If Twitter's previous administration had been doing intentionally bad things as your baseless assertion implies, Musk would be posting the code or database tables and showing it everywhere to prove to the world how bad they were.
The fact that Musk is quiet here demonstrates your assertion is not simply baseless, it's provably false.
>Can we say the same thing about social media companies ?
Good god no. One of the benefits of the Twitter-Musk saga is that it proved that the feds really were meddling quite a bit with social media companies requesting censorship. You want to give them the keys entirely?
> In the fall of 2022, I started using Twitter more. I don’t know why; probably a curious desire to see how bad Elon Musk would screw it up.
I stopped reading there. I'm not interested in using a product made by someone who regurgitates ESG nonsense without thinking. I want these people and these ideologies out of my life. They need to do some soul-searching. What is bad about Elon that you want him to fail?
Anyone who thinks that free speech is dangerous or harmful in any way obviously knows nothing about history and has fallen prey to propaganda.
“Media Matters created an alternate X account and deliberately followed sensitive accounts to curate posts and get advertising to appear on the account’s timeline to then misinform advertisers about the placement of their posts. These contrived experiences could be created on any social media platform.”
“A spokesperson for X, Joe Benarroch”
I’m inclined to believe this. How the hell else would nazi content show up in someone’s feed without they first engaging with that sort of content?
I once used Twitter to look at profiles of criminal factions in Rio, naturally, my feed instantly began showing branded content alongside crime. Certainly the engineers at Twitter could look into the matter to mitigate the issue, preventing ads to show up when the feed has unlawful posts alongside it. But how would they do that without surveillance upon users? Seems unfair to attack Musk and the company in that context. It’s a problem inherent to the user-side of the equation, trying to control it would only ensue more problems.
I was totally indifferent towards this Media Matters thing, now I think they’re full of shit. Guess that will backfire for them.
> Are you seriously claiming that a person with 90 million followers with hundreds of thousands of retweets and countless replies didn't produce a lot of advertising revenue for Twitter?
I didn't claim anything. I asked for your sources. You are the one who made a claim. And now you're acting astounded that someone would dare question your claim.
Truth Social can't seem to become profitable [1]. So Trump's ability to produce (or drive away) advertising revenue is certainly open to being questioned.
> For exact figures you might ask Elon himself.
Elon didn't make the claim. You did.
> If so, I resign
If you can't back up your claims with a source, then yes, it's right of you to resign.
I am an independent libertarian that strongly believes in free expression, beyond the idea that only governments can censor people.
>>speech boosted above the free variety to make up for the lost ad spend
I think the reduced ad spend is temporary and in some ways unrelated to Musk whom they have used as an excuse to virtue signal for something they were already going to do in the first place
Also I think the plans are to expand twitters revenue model beyond Blue and ads so it will be more interesting what Elon plans to expand twitter into
> It sure appears that Elons is just balking, but what is far more likely is that he has uncovered some deep Twitter bullshit and he plans to unveil it in court. Forced to air the dirty laundry by the court, he avoids defamation suits.
I have no idea how you can claim that that is far more likely. You think it is more likely that Elon is going to expose the numbers Twitter reports to the SEC as off by an order of magnitude than Elon just not wanting to follow through with this deal?
EVEN IF the numbers reported were off by a factor of 10, this would also have to cause advertisers to pull out! The revelations you claim Elon might make have to have material effect on the value of Twitter for them to make a difference in this impending court case. Yeah, it’s possible, I guess? But it’s definitely not more likely!
Think about it this way: what could Elon possibly reveal that would make advertisers pull out? They advertise on Twitter and make money already! Why stop now??
> tweeting nonsense that could damage the company/brand
Oh, I think Twitter has done enough to itself to damage the company/brand as it is. Most people in the real world think the site is an absolute joke.
Musk can only bring good things to Twitter, and as a result, the world. The era of corporate censorship (in favor of their favorite side, of course) may finally be coming to an end!
> he (Musk) doesn’t even know who the customer is! (It’s, um, the ad buyer, stupid.)
Up until now, but ... who wants that really? Ads SUCK. If Ads are the customers, users are the product. I like the idea of turning Twitter into the product.
Why should I listen to a chirp from this guy? He doesn't understand what is happening.
> They are probably going to desperately try to find a white knight, and fail because Twitter lost the mass market years ago and at this point is a platform for rich people to post incredibly vapid, narcissistic takes about politics and society that say nothing.
Ironically, this suggests that people like Elon Musk are exactly the problem with Twitter.
Dude. I am agreeing with this. They do not want to be seen with content from a different pillar.
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