Elon Musk May Have Just Signed X’s Death Warrant
This recent wave of anti-Semitic content on “Even with these tools, if you’re an advertiser right now, you’re thinking, there’s literally nothing I can do on this platform to improve my experience,” Carusone says.
“The problem with , senior social media analyst at Insider Intelligence, a market researcher. farm.
“Advertisers’ concern for brand safety is not just about content, but also about platform and leadership. Enberg says Musk treated the company as something he could remake in his own image, without understanding that “what he wants and what he seems to believe is not necessarily aligned with what people want and believe.” believe the platform’s users and advertisers.”
Under Musk’s leadership, X is expected to experience unprecedented evolution. 54 percent declining advertising revenue, which previously accounted for more than 90 percent of the company’s total.
Even before Musk owned Twitter, experts are worried its particular brand of free speech absolutism would lead to a flood of trolls and hate speech on the platform. In his first weeks as owner, Musk licensed almost everyone works on trust and safety, the teams responsible for ensuring that hate speech, violence and inappropriate content stay off the platform (and hate speech did, in fact , increase under the leadership of Musk). Musk’s lax approach to content moderation also nearly won the platform banned during the second round of the 2022 presidential election in Brazil, the platform’s third largest market.
In response, advertisers began to flee, worried about the brand safety risks of their products appearing alongside hateful or inflammatory messages. Since joining X as CEO earlier this year, Yaccarino, former global head of advertising at NBCUniversal, has apparently been embarrassed in its ability to attract advertisers thanks to Musk’s decisions. And while X claimed it was winning back advertisers, one October study of Media Matters found that X’s top 100 advertisers were spending 90% less than before Musk’s takeover.
