U.S. agribusiness giant General Mills has halted ad spending on Twitter, another sign of advertiser concern over the platform’s new owner Elon Musk’s ambivalent stance on social media content moderation.
“We have stopped advertising on Twitter”Kelsey Remhild, a spokeswoman for General Mills, which includes the Cheerios and Häagen-Dazs brands, confirmed to AFP. “We will continue to monitor developments and evaluate our marketing spend.”, he added. As of Friday, the day after Tesla’s chief executive bought Twitter, automaker General Motors said it had temporarily stopped paying for ads on Twitter. thursday Wall Street Journal claimed that Mondelez international (maker of Oreo cookies), Pfizer and Audi (Volkswagen) had made similar decisions.
Advertisers, who account for 90% of the platform’s revenue, fear that liberalizing content moderation regulations championed by Elon Musk will make the platform inhospitable. Most brands prefer to avoid association with non-consensual content. Since Thursday, the libertarian entrepreneur has been trying to calm them down. He wrote them a letter, promising that Twitter would not become a “hell” platform “where anything can be said without consequence.” He also promised to form a content moderation board and take several weeks before potentially reinstating some banned people, such as Donald Trump, to return to the social network.
An open letter
But neither advertisers nor many public organizations seem convinced at the moment. About 50 anti-democracy and anti-disinformation groups have sent an open letter to Twitter’s 20 biggest advertisers, including Coca-Cola, Google and Disney, urging them to threaten Elon Musk with stopping all ads on the platform if he posts : his project “aims to undermine brand safety and community standards, including content moderation”.
On Wednesday, Elon Musk asked his 113 million subscribers whether advertisers should: “support free speech” or “political correctness”;.
Source: Le Figaro
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.