The IT Nerd

It seems that Elon Musk is hit two new lows when it comes to his behaviour. Let’s start with the fact that advertisers are running from advertising on Twitter in huge numbers. And according to this article, this has really ticked Elon off;

Elon Musk called up the chief executives of companies that pulled advertising spending from Twitter to complain, the Financial Times reported. 

A number of leading media buyers and advertising agencies say that almost all the major brands they act for have stopped ad spending on Twitter, the report said. 

Musk took it upon himself to personally call CEOs to chastise them, one industry figure told the FT, but his actions have backfired, the newspaper reported. 

Of course his actions have backfired. Calling up CEO’s to whine about them pulling adds is not an effective business development strategy. And this is another reason why you’re seeing less ads on Twitter:

Four industry figures told the Financial Times that in recent weeks agencies have not little communication with Twitter’s ads business team because so few staff were left following mass layoffs. 

Twitter’s ad systems have become bug-ridden, according to some media buyers, making it nearly impossible to launch campaigns. 

“It is quite unique. The turmoil, the damage, nothing of this magnitude has happened before. Never,” a big four advertising agency executive told the FT.

I have been using this phrase since the Twitter gong shows with Elon Musk being the ringmaster began. He’s turned Twitter into a train wreck next to a dumpster fire via his actions and his behaviour. Speaking of his behaviour, a reader pointed me towards an article in The Jerusalem Post that shows that Elon is playing the anti-semitic card when confronted with criticism. You be the judge:

Elon Musk called Jewish American retired US Army officer Lt.-Col. Alexander Vindman both a “puppet & puppeteer” on Monday in response to Vindman sharing a copypasta (copied and pasted text shared on the Internet) suggesting that Musk is “erratic” and too powerful now that he owns Twitter.

“Vindman is both puppet & puppeteer. Question is who pulls his strings … ?” Musk tweeted.

Musk’s tweet was in response to another one by Tablet magazine Chief Technology Officer Noah Blum mocking the copypasta, which said that it’s “Kinda weird that @elonmusk gets to decide how like a half-billion people communicate. Way too much power for one erratic individual to wield, don’t you think?”

Here’s the problem with that Tweet by Elon:

Musk’s tweet – deliberately or not – evoked an antisemitic trope that Jews are puppeteers who secretly wield power over various institutions or that they are puppets of the Israeli government.

An anti-semitic Tweet like this is massively problematic for Elon. It reinforces that he’s a racist, which is something that I said in this article from a week ago when he mocked Black Twitter. And I am pretty sure this will put Elon on a collision course with Apple and Google as it is becoming clear that Elon not only can’t or won’t moderate hate speech on Twitter, but his own behaviour is amplifying said hate speech. Which means that Apple and Google will have to make a choice as to if the Twitter app should be on their respective app stores. That’s on top of the fact that this is likely to send more advertisers to the exits because nobody wants to do business with a racist.

By the way, I checked his Twitter feed and the Tweets are still there. Read into that what you will.

Elon really needs to rethink how he acts and behaves as his current behaviour isn’t helping him in the slightest.

This entry was posted on November 28, 2022 at 8:25 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.