Tons Of Big Advertisers Are Bailing On Twitter As Hate Runs Rampant
from the turning-twitter-into-420chan dept
A new report claims that more than a third of Twitter’s biggest advertisers have now pulled their ads from the platform, as the unstable and unpredictable nature of the new owner, combined with his implicit encouragement for hate, has made the site less and less welcoming to the brands with money to spend.
Dozens of top Twitter advertisers, including 14 of the top 50, have stopped advertising in the few weeks since Musk’s chaotic acquisition of the social media company, according to The Post’s analysis of data from Pathmatics, which offers brand analysis on digital marketing trends.
Ads for blue-chip brands including Jeep and Mars candy, whose corporate parents were among the top 100 U.S. advertisers on the site in the six months before Musk’s purchase, haven’t appeared there since at least Nov. 7, the analysis found. Musk assumed ownership of the site Oct. 27.
[….]
Pharmaceutical company Merck, cereal maker Kellogg, Verizon and Samuel Adams brewer Boston Beer also have stopped their advertising in recent weeks, the Pathmatics data shows. The companies didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Post.
The article notes that the timing of all this isn’t great, especially as the World Cup is happening, which historically has driven tons of traffic to Twitter.
And if you want to know why advertisers are running away, perhaps it’s because hate speech is now super viral on the site, as compared to under the previous regime. Another study, from Tufts, which has access to the Twitter firehose, has found that hatred and harassment is now found a lot more often in tweets that are going viral.
For the months prior to Musk’s takeover, the researchers deemed just one tweet out of the three top 20 lists to be actually hateful, in this case against Jewish people. The others were either quoting another person’s hateful remarks or using the relevant key words in a non-hateful way.
In the weeks after Musk took over Twitter, the same analysis found that hateful tweets became much more prominent among the most popular tweets with potentially toxic language. For tweets using words associated with anti-LGBTQ+ or antisemitic posts, seven of the top 20 posts in each category were now hateful. For popular tweets using potentially racist language, one of the top 20 was judged to be hate speech.
“The toxicity of Twitter has severely increased post-Musk’s walking into that building,” says Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at the Fletcher Business School at Tufts University and chair of Digital Planet, which carried out the analysis.
And, that’s not surprising considering that Musk continually gives both tacit and explicit approval to those who are spewing hatred. He mocked the head of the ADL earlier this week, which resulted in tons of tweets that I saw from people gleefully talking about how Musk clearly supported their anti-semitic views. He regularly interacts with folks who have pushed similar hatred and harassment campaigns, pretty explicitly suggesting that they are trustworthy accounts, rather than culture war grifters.
The whole situation is bizarre, frankly. At the same moment that he’s complaining about advertisers bailing, and refusing to take responsibility for them doing so, he’s egging on the hate and harassment. It’s unclear if he just doesn’t understand any of this, doesn’t care, or just assumes that the hate and harassment will lead to more usage, and that will magically make the advertisers come back?
In the meantime, I’ve noticed that each time I check in at Twitter, the ad quality gets worse and worse. It used to be big brands with fairly ignorable ads. Now I keep seeing random religious ads, including one that literally was just a tweet praising God, and another… for Scientology.
I somehow doubt those are going to make up the difference in a way that allows Musk to pay his creditors.
Filed Under: advertisers, business models, elon musk, hate
Companies: twitter
Comments on “Tons Of Big Advertisers Are Bailing On Twitter As Hate Runs Rampant”
“I somehow doubt those are going to make up the difference in a way that allows Musk to pay his creditors.”
At least he’ll know where to go to pray to God that he doesn’t completely destroy Twitter.
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As Twitter’s debt load has increased tenfold, there is almost nothing that will allow him to pay his creditors, particularly in the short term.
And that’s not counting the lawsuits that are coming over failure to pay on obligations like “operating expenses” and “reimbursement for previous employee expenses”.
If we observe through the lens of someone TRYING to bankrupt the company so he can dump his debt…
Hes doing an amazing job.
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Bankrupt it and sell it to Trump. He can rename it Twitter Truth.
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Bankrupted and sold to the Saudis outright, or Peter Thiel where all that data or information on journalists and dissidents can be harvested at their leisure.
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Not even that. His failings with Twitter are causing massive losses in his other companies, especially Tesla where he leveraged a lot of his ability to buy Twitter. So, even if we buy the idea that he’s doing it on purpose, the fallout goes way beyond Twitter itself.
There is the idea that it’s all about killing off a bastion of free speech that’s been used to affect political change in the Arab world, especially in the face of Saudi investment. But, in reality I don’t see how that would prove anything, it would just drive people to less centrally controlled platforms and prove that the idea that Twitter was artificially “left-leaning” and a “monopoly” were both lies that most of us could explain without burning $44 billion.
The smart money seems to be on what we see at face value – obnoxious rich boy finally encounters something he can’t throw money at and pretend to have invented.
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God Himself could manifest in His Beardy Glory and say in a voice like brass that Twitter is not and was never left-leaning and nobody who believes that it is would change their minds.
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Wait till you tell them about what Jesus said about obscenely rich people like Elon Musk…
Re: Fired
I look at this whole debacle through the lens that Trump fired Elon and ever since he has been spiralling downward, trying to regain the acceptance he lost.
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For my own feed I’ve not seen any material change in hateful tweets. It has become less toxic though as some people who had an endless list of pre- and post-Musk grievances and a bottomless well of negativity have left presumably for Mastadon.
I hope they have a happier time there than they did on Twitter.
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HI ELON!
Re: Bad Tweets...
I am still avoiding twitter advertising by the simple expedient of not logging in and avoiding the areas of scrolling where it nags for a login.
I have noticed an uptick in crypto spam in people’s replies, and for the one account I follow that tends to attract harassment, I think it’s getting a little more of it.
Finally, bulk advertisers spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month want a human point of contact to deal with the inevitable issues that come up, like finding your ads next to something that is a problem for the brand … like almost nobody wants to be advertising on Donald Trump’s twitter feed; that upsets way too many people.
I would not take the complaints going quiet as a good sign, incidentally — it means people have given up and are voting with their feet and leaving.
Wait… people see ads on Twitter?
At least I know my ad blocker is properly working.
When will Twitter bleed enough users that Gab overtakes it in size?
Maybe Elon is trying to whittle down the user base so that those idiotic moderate/don’t moderate laws trying to be passed at various level of gov’t won’t apply to Twitter.
Re: User Base
Is he that smart? Me thinks not…
Long-term strategy
Well, you have to break a few eggheads when making omelette. This is part of making Twitter more welcoming. To the greatest again twit, the one that could make Twitter a must-read. Because, well, not much else will by now.
I find it quite hilarious that the guy who was trying to get to Mars lost Mars.
Well...
Easily explained by the tried-and-true: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” — Robert Hanlon (maybe)
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Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
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What if he’s both stupid and malicious?
I mean…
He did lie about his degree and being smart…
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Lol
I chuckle when I see poorly written opinion pieces like this that claim Twitter is now full of hate speech. It’s like whomever wrote it entirely disregards pretty much everything written on Twitter during the Trump years. No surprise though, I stopped reading Techdirt because it became another TDS victim
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No you didn’t
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That was a long-winded way of saying “I can’t read”.
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… said nobody not on hallucinogens,ever.
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And yet, here you are, polluting this space.
You disingenious fuck.
He could play the free speech angle, if he follows a proper process, and can keep the toxic tweets contained. Proper communication would go a long way.
It feels as if Twitter has been taken over by a guy with impulse control issues. He never manages to, just, shut his mouth. No one needs to see his random hot takes.
This would be a good argument for Twitter to allow anonymous accounts. He could create an alt to post his sh@tposts on without negatively affecting other people
The only reasonable explanation is that he wants to make Republicans happy.
At this point it.ll be easier for elon to let twitter go bankrupt than to try to make a profit on the large debt he took on to buy twitter
This was easily predicted. Most advertisers dont want to close to extreme or racist content
Theres plenty of other websites or tv outlets to advertise on
It would be a shame if twitter is shutdown as it provides a global service for people to talk to each other its used by media journalists
Governments and non profits and its avaidable in most countrys around the world theres no other service like it
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Elon is immersed in White Privilege
I grew up in Pretoria and knew people who went to Pretoria Boys High with Elon. PBH is the very epitome of White Privilege. He is so blind to his privilege he will never understand!
Scientology advertisements?
Mike, seriously?
Religious ads and ads praising G-d aren’t examples of “hate running rampant”. There have been plenty of full page ads in the New York Times praising religion or making a call to action. Alleging that Twitter accepts ads for Scientology, a known pernicious cult, requires some evidence, maybe a screen shot. Is this a change in Twitter policy from the former ownership? The rest of your article is well-sourced. This should be too.
For what it’s worth, see here for time-series level of hate speech on Twitter. Without knowing underlying assumptions (e.g. what constitutes hate speech under Musk?) it’s of limited use.
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We do know what makes Elon mad.
And it’s not fomenting an insurrection, vaccine disinformation, antisemitism, and (white) terrorist promotion.
The first one is very criminal unless you’re DJT, the next 2 are technically legal under 1A, the latter is a very criminal thing that doesn’t get 1A protections.
But hey, it’s not like Elon cares about the law. I mean, his Trust and Safety Team left knowing that Elon is a fuck.
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He didn’t say they were; he merely said they were low-quality.
It’s a lot closer to 8chan from what I’ve seen
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$8 chan
Looks to me like he succeeded completely.
Twitter; a pain in the backside of many a back-biter, is no more. It will never survive this absolute and complete degradation of facts, information and communications, by those most adept at spewing such degradation.
Gotta wonder how much…. or what, he is being paid for this though. 🙂
Do tell
So what was Scientology selling? I might be in the market for a new cult.