The IT Nerd

Honestly, at this point it’s a given that Twitter under Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino is a cesspool of hate speech. And the latest example of this is this Reuters story that illustrates how bad this can be for companies who are wanting to advertise on Twitter for whatever reason:

IBM on Thursday said it had immediately suspended all advertising on Elon Musk-owned X after a report found its ads were placed next to content promoting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

The report comes a day after Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on X that falsely claimed members of the Jewish community were stoking hatred against white people.

Media watchdog Media Matters said it found that corporate advertisements by IBM, Apple, Oracle and Comcast’s Xfinity were being placed alongside antisemitic content.

“IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation,” IBM said in a statement.

Apple, Oracle and Xfinity did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

I’ll come back to Elon and his behaviour in a bit. But this is bad. In fact, it’s as bad as it can get. This makes Twitter a non-viable platform for advertising. Period. Now Twitter said that it doesn’t intentionally place ads next to this kind of content. But clearly that can’t control where ads go. Which is another reason why Twitter is a non-viable platform for advertising. And the fact that the guy who runs the place endorses antisemitic content is the final nail in the coffin because he clearly is fine with this sort of content. Which tells you all you need to know about Elon.

Oh yeah. Linda Yaccarino put this statement out to try and deflect this latest problem for Twitter:

“When it comes to this platform – X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world – it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop,” said Yaccarino.

The thing is that the above statement isn’t true. Twitter is doing nothing to stop antisemitism and discrimination. Report, after report, after report has proven that. And the only time Twitter seems to do anything about content like this is when they get caught out by one of these reports. In other words, that makes the above statement from Yaccarino totally meaningless the words don’t match what Twitter is actually doing. The fact is that she’s got to know that everything that her buddy Elon is doing is killing Twitter. And she’s letting it happen. Maybe she hasn’t got the will to speak truth to power? Maybe she’s outright complicit in everything that Elon is doing? I don’t know. But I do know this. None of this is a good look for her.

I close this story with this. If you’re still on Twitter actively using the platform. You need to stop using it. This is just the latest example as to why Twitter is no longer a safe place for you. And if you’re an advertiser, I would say that you need to pull your ads off Twitter as I am sure that you don’t want your brand associated with a platform that spreads Nazi and antisemitic content.

Right?

This entry was posted on November 17, 2023 at 9:04 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.