In Musk’s distorted world view, his critics are to blame for Twitter’s sinking fortunes.
Let that sink in. When he took charge of the platform,
Musk called Twitter the internet’s “de facto town square.” Under his
leadership, Musk insisted, the online forum would become “important to the
future of civilization.” Very few people believed him at the time. Far fewer do
now.
What most people still call Twitter on Oct. 27, 2023, is a lot worse than it
was on Oct. 27, 2022, when Musk carried a porcelain sink into the company’s San
Francisco headquarters. (Get it? Me neither.)
As it turns out, the joke’s on
Musk, and on the banks that helped him finance this disastrous
deal, and on anyone else who still believes he cares about protecting free
speech and facilitating civil discourse online.
That, of course, couldn’t be farther from the truth. And
Musk’s biggest failings over a year of catastrophic decisions occurred during
the very first days of his tenure, when he abandoned an early commitment to the
sort of content moderation that makes civil discourse possible … and
social-media enterprises successful.
Musk’s biggest mistake
Within a week of taking over, Musk met with civil-rights leaders, including Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González. He pledged to “combat hate and harassment” on the network and “enforce [Twitter’s] election integrity policies.”
But soon after this
meeting, Musk announced sweeping layoffs, firing a large percentage of Twitter
employees, including many of those responsible for upholding the company’s
critical brand-safety, election-integrity and content-moderation standards.
Things quickly went downhill from there. Free Press and our allies launched the #StopToxicTwitter coalition soon after Musk reneged on his pledge to combat the spread of hate and disinformation. We urged the platform’s top advertisers to pause all placements on Twitter until they received assurances that Musk would safeguard their brands.
Advertisers left
Twitter in droves: Within three months of the launch of #StopToxicTwitter,
more than 500 advertisers stopped their Twitter spending, sending a powerful
message to Musk that they would not bankroll the unchecked spread of hate and
disinformation. The advertiser exodus, which continued through the year, is a
major contributor to the precipitous drop in revenue at Twitter.
Earlier this month, the marketing firm Ebiquity reported that only two of its
clients (which include 70 of the top-100 advertising brands in the United
States) are now spending on Twitter — down from 31 the month before Musk took
control. This aligns with Musk’s own assessment, made last month, that U.S. advertising
revenue has sunk 60 percent since he acquired the company.
Instead of meeting advertiser and advocate demands for a safer and more civil public forum, Musk has responded by suing a research organization and #StopToxicTwitter partner — the Center for Countering Digital Hate — that has documented the increased spread of vitriol and lies across his network.
He threatened to sue another organization that had led
criticism about the dramatic rise in antisemitic content on Twitter over the
last year.
Musk’s decision to grant a “general amnesty” to thousands of previously banned accounts,
including those belonging to the most vile neo-Nazis, white supremacists and
conspiracy theorists, has further kept advertisers at bay.
More recently, he's
used his blue-check, pay-for-engagement scheme to give a soapbox (and even revenues) to all sorts of grifters and propagandists,
including many people seeking to drown legitimate public discourse
about the Israel/Gaza crisis in lies.
The person who’s most to blame
In Musk’s distorted world view, his critics are to blame
for Twitter’s sinking fortunes. On top of that, this self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist” has used his considerable resources to
silence anyone who disagrees with him.
“That the wealthiest man on the planet is using his money, influence and even legal action to threaten and silence critics, including our coalition partners, is reprehensible,” Jessica J. González said.
“Musk bought an advertising platform
and advertisers have made themselves clear: They want no part of the toxic stew
of hate and lies that Musk has enabled. The only one Musk has to blame for X’s
declining fortunes is himself.”
Through it all Musk has chosen to ignore a fundamental
truth for social-media ventures: Effective content moderation is essential to
growing healthy online communities and company revenues. As Musk’s Twitter
circles the drain toward insolvency, he has repeatedly demonstrated this lack of
basic business smarts about online platforms.
“It’s kind of a rite of passage for any new social media
network,” Mike Masnick wrote about the content-moderation learning
curve. “They show up, insist that they’re the ‘platform for free speech’
without quite understanding what that actually means, and then they quickly
discover a whole bunch of fairly fundamental ideas, institute a bunch of rapid
(often sloppy) changes … and in the end, they basically all end up in the same
general vicinity.”
Musk has yet to arrive there and after a year of failures
he likely never will. The proof for Twitter is in its bottom line. The
advertisers that have left Twitter have put their money where their values are.
And they aren’t likely to return in any significant way unless and until
Twitter can make assurances that their brands aren’t underwriting the
amplification of hate and lies.
We hoped Musk would have learned this lesson at the
beginning: Twitter’s business will live or die on the decisions he makes or
doesn’t make about content moderation.
But one year after Musk carried a sink through Twitter’s
front door, all of his decisions have been wrong, with consequences that
continue to undermine public discourse, imperil democracy, and harm people both
at home and abroad.
TIM KARR is the Senior Director of Strategy and
Communications for Free Press and Save the Internet. Karr oversees campaigns on
public broadcasting and noncommercial media, fake news and propaganda,
journalism in crisis, and the future of the Internet. Before joining Free
Press, Tim served as executive director of MediaChannel.org and vice president
of Globalvision New Media and the Globalvision News Network.