It’s been a tumultuous week since Musk took over control of Twitter on October 28 and pronounced himself “Chief Twit.” He’s fired huge numbers of staff, announced a new fee system for account verification, and seems likely to abolish permanent bans against figures like former US President Donald Trump.
All the changes have riled up one of Twitter’s primary revenue streams - corporate advertisers - who have begun putting their paid advertisements on the platform on pause. Among the brands halting their ads are Audi, Volkswagen, General Mills, and Pfizer, and major advertising companies like Publicis Groupe and WPP have scheduled special meetings with the new “Chief Twit” to sort out their concerns.
“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” Musk tweeted on Friday.
“Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”
However, Twitter users were having none of it, and they seized on the exasperation of the world’s richest man to carry out some expert-level dunking.
“‘Due to activist groups pressuring advertisers’ is an interesting way to say companies don’t want to be associated with a platform that is quickly devolving into 4chan,” quipped fiction author Frederick Joseph.
Palestine solidarity activist Max Berger recalled that just days ago, Musk had tweeted a story by a conspiracy theory website that spread unfounded rumors that the assault on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), had been part of a homosexual love affair.
“Maybe advertisers just don’t want to be associated with a business run by a guy like that,” Berger noted.
Others took the opportunity to jab at the billionaire for crying about his $44 billion triumph going down in flames.
Musk's disdain for advertisers is already well-known, so it's unlikely the policy will change anytime soon.