Elon Musk seems to be a bit worried about the exodus from Twitter of advertisers since his takeover, as he threatened them publicly on Friday night. It began Friday morning when he tweeted in a Trump-like manner that advertisers were fleeing “activist organizations.” He said it was “Extremely mismanaged!” and an attempt to “destroy free speech in America.” Federalist Society Fellow Mike Davis was one of the many who replied to the tweet. He is best known for his involvement in the confirmation process of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Davis offered some rather dubious legal advice to Musk: “Name and shame those advertisers who have fallen for the advertiser boycotts. We can counter-boycott them. Get your $8 monthly subscription started as soon as possible. He said that we could start to make up for the revenue lost now.”
Musk’s reply: “Thank you. If this goes on, a thermonuclear name and shame will be the result.
Sure. We know that threatening advertisers with a retaliatory boycott, or any form of doxxing, is a surefire way to get them to pay you money.As is his habit lately, Musk was widely mocked for the platform he runs. While we won’t get too involved on this, we want to share some of the more compelling responses.
Dear @elonmusk:
You have nearly 114,000,000 Twitter followers.
Name and shame the advertisers who are succumbing to the advertiser boycotts.
So we can counter-boycott them.
And get your $8 monthly subscription going asap.
So we can start to makeup for lost revenue now. https://t.co/0IAKTnXTes
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) November 4, 2022
Advertisers have been concerned about Twitter’s content moderation since Musk took over.
Advertisers don’t want their ads appearing next to disinformation or racist/sexist/harassing/etc tweets, something experts have repeatedly tried to explain to Elon Musk — including one Musk blocked who had participated in a phone meeting Musk held with advertisers on the topic the night before.
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While he may have used hyperbolic language in his tweet, many things have actually changed since he took control. He repeatedly stated that he would reduce the amount of content moderated on Twitter before he bought it. After he took over, there was an immediate and visible increase in hateful and other bigoted speech. Musk shared a homophobic conspiracy theory regarding Nancy Pelosi’s husband, ending his first weekend as Twitter’s owner.
He also announced plans to replace the site’s current verification system by a subscription service that anyone can afford which experts and users have both explained is completely against the purpose of verification. This is not including sudden mass layoffs which appear to have killed the company’s human rights team as well as sharply decreased the content moderation staff.