The IT Nerd

Elon Musk might think that “activists” are bad and causing advertisers to bolt from the platform. But those “activists” are about to really crank up the pressure on him and Twitter. Reuters has the details:

The groups in the Stop Toxic Twitter coalition complained that Musk had vowed to advertisers that Twitter would take a considered approach to reinstating banned accounts and convene a new content moderation council. No such council has been created as of Monday.

“It was a real breach,” Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, a left-leaning media watchdog that is part of the coalition, said on Monday. He said Musk “was lying from the beginning.”

“In less than three weeks Musk has gone back on every promise he made to civil-rights leaders and advertisers,” said Jessica Gonzalez, co-chief executive of media and democracy group Free Press, which is also part of the Twitter coalition, in a press release.

It doesn’t surprise me that Musk might have lied as he doesn’t seem like someone who can be trusted. And from what I have observed over the years, most of the time he doesn’t seem to care about his ability to keep his word. But here’s why that might come back to bite him this time around:

Of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers by total spending this year, 51 have paused ads according to private conversations with the coalition, public statements or spending data provided by ad measurement firm Pathmatics, Carusone said.

The coalition is asking brands that have not publicized their Twitter pause to issue public statements and help generate pressure on the other 49 advertisers that have taken no action, he said.

“You need to take a stand and draw the line,” Carusone said. “It’s important for big spenders to say they have stopped.”

The coalition will consider naming the companies later this week if they have not issued a public statement about pausing ads, he added.

Being named and shamed is likely going to be a great motivator for the 49 companies in question to not be on the wrong side of this issue. And it seems to be having an effect:

The names atop the list of Twitter’s top advertisers have shifted from the week before Musk closed his deal to acquire the company. Major brands HBO and Mondelez were Twitter’s top two advertisers in the week before the acquisition, according to data from Pathmatics. But between Nov. 10 and Nov. 16, after Musk laid off half of Twitter’s staff, the top two largest advertisers were FinanceBuzz.io, a personal finance website and Trendytowns, an ecommerce site based in Singapore.

Pathmatics data showed that the top 100 advertisers between Nov. 10 to Nov. 16 spent an estimated $23.6 million on Twitter, down from $24. 2 million spent between Oct. 16 to Oct. 22 before Musk became Twitter’s owner.

Keep in mind that the majority of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising. And if you have “A” tier advertisers, you can charge more for advertising. But it looks like he hasn’t got “A” tier advertisers at the moment based on the above. So Twitter isn’t making as much money. Which means that this play by these groups has a very high chance of success. Which means that Elon should be paying attention to this. Or if he is smart, which he’s proven not to be smart given his recent track record, he would find a way to make nice with these people. But I don’t see that happening. And he’s going to have a major problem as a result.

I guess that Elon Musk isn’t afraid of what his mass layoffs and resignations are doing to his ability to run Twitter. I say that because there is news of more layoffs at Twitter:

Looking around briefly, I saw this about the layoffs:

Some of those who were fired started to receive notice on Sunday, according to two people familiar with the matter, though it’s unclear how many will be impacted in the current round. Platformer earlier reported the news.

Twitter’s sales organization held an all-hands meeting on Sunday with Musk and the new head of sales, Chris Riedy, two people said. Many employees showed up expecting some announcement about cuts, after Bloomberg reported Saturday that more were coming. Instead, Musk used the time to talk about ongoing updates, including his decision to reinstate the account of former US President Donald Trump, one of the people said. He also explained that the company needed to make ads more targeted to particular users, according to another person familiar with the remarks. There was no mention of layoffs during the meeting. 

Employees who were cut received notice via emails entitled: “Your Role at Twitter.”

“After further review of our workforce, we have identified roles within our organizational structure that are no longer necessary,” the note reads, according to a copy seen by Bloomberg. “Today is your last working day at the company.” The note, which goes on to explain that details on severance and returning company property is coming later, is signed, “Twitter.”

I have two theories about this:

• Tesla is known for having NO marketing budget. Thus Elon is reorienting Twitter around the model of his other companies. Though if the majority of your revenue is based around advertising as is the case with Twitter, I am not certain this move will work.
• This may imply that perhaps there’s isn’t a need for sales types at Twitter as advertisers flee the platform. It’s hard to see how Musk would view that as a good thing as that’s a direct hit to Twitter’s income. But Elon has his own “unique” view of the universe.

I also looked for evidence of engineers being offered their jobs back, but I couldn’t find any. But it would not shock me as someone has to run Twitter and Elon clearly can’t do it alone.

Speaking of Elon, he’s put out two Tweets that are truly in WTF country with one bordering on not safe for work country. I’ll start with that one as it involves Donald Trump’s reinstatement on the platform:

I have no words for this. Neither do I have words for this one related to CBS News suspending posts on Twitter:

I really don’t get it. You’d think with everything that is surrounding Twitter at the moment, you would think he’d have better things to do than to post some extremely questionable memes that make people wonder about where his head is at. But clearly not. And that may come back to bite him sooner than he thinks.

UPDATE: Musk is clearly trolling CBS News as they have restarted posting to Twitter after saying that they were putting a pause on using the platform.

A former Twitter has now taken to Twitter to troll Elon Musk in a song about “working nine to nine.”

Lindsay Crider, who worked at the social-media giant for four years according to her LinkedIn profile, shared what she billed an “Elon version” of Dolly Parton’s 1980 hit “9 to 5” on Twitter on Friday.

I’ve posted it below:

At this point it illustrates just how badly Elon has played himself when it comes to wanting only “hardcore” employees working for Twitter. When they start to publicly mock you, and mock you on the platform that you own, it’s safe to say that you’re a joke and any respect that you might have had is gone. Assuming that the respect was there in the first place.

Great job Elon.

Elon Musk is in serious trouble now. I say that because Derrick Johnson the head of the NAACP has put out a series of Tweets aimed directly at Elon and his Donald Trump stunt from last night. And if Elon is smart, which given his track record since taking over Twitter is questionable at best, he should pay attention. More on that in a second. But first, here’s what Johnson said:

Now the NAACP are pretty powerful in this case because the African American demographic is one that as of late, advertisers actively target. So, What Derrick Johnson has done is given them a choice. Back Elon Musk and Twitter and lose access to that demographic. Or They stand with that demographic against everything that Elon Musk appears to stand for. Thus do not be surprised if a lot of ads disappear from Twitter this week as companies announce that they’ve pausing ads on Twitter. Because I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of this if I were an advertiser.

As for Elon Musk, at this point he really should start finding ways to back-pedal from this latest crisis that he’s created. Because this as it stands right now isn’t going to end well for Musk. Nor is it going to end well for Twitter. He can try and joke and meme his way out of this, but honestly he’s got nowhere to go on this and so many other issues that are causing him sleepless nights at the moment.

Hate speech has been on the rise since Elon Musk took over Twitter. And a story by The Guardian is underlining that Musk and his lackeys are doing nothing to stop hate speech on the platform:

Tweets hurling racist abuse at footballers, including the N-word, monkey emojis and calls for them to be deported, are not being removed by Twitter.

New research shows the platform failed to act on 99 out of 100 racist tweets reported to it in the week before the World Cup.

Only one was removed after being flagged on Wednesday, a tweet that repeated a racial slur 16 times. All the others remained live this weekend.

The abuse was aimed at 43 players including England stars Raheem Sterling and Bukayo Saka, who were among several players targeted after the Euro 2020 final.

The analysis, conducted by researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and seen by the Observer, included 100 tweets reported to Twitter. Of those, 11 used the N-word to describe footballers, 25 used monkey or banana emojis directed at players, 13 called for players to be deported, and 25 attacked players by telling them to “go back to” other countries. Thirteen tweets targeted footballers over their English skills.

The findings come at a turbulent time for Twitter and will fuel concerns about players possibly being targeted during the World Cup.

Now it would be simple to say that Elon has fired all the people who would be responsible for going after this sort of stuff, which means there’s not enough people left to police racism on the platform. But I think that would be simplistic. Going after this sort of thing has to be a top down approach. And clearly there’s nobody at the top who’s making this a priority. Now I’m not saying that Elon is a racist. But it kind of looks that way in the absence of any hard evidence to the contrary. And I’m likely not the only one thinking this. Users are likely thinking this, and likely so are advertisers. And they’re going to make decisions about where they spend their time in the case of the former, or money in the case of the latter accordingly.