On Friday, US president Joe Biden said that Tesla SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had bought a social media platform that spreads lies and fake information across the world. Following Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, a string of rapid changes have taken place. One of them being mass layoffs of the Twitter workforce in order to cut down costs and manage interest on a huge debt pile.
As per the updates on Friday, Twitter has already fired half of its employees but said that the cuts were minimal in the team responsible for preventing the spread of false information, as advertisers became wary of content moderation.
At a fund raising event, president Joe Biden said, “And now what we all worried about: Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that sends- that spews lies all across the world… There’s no editors anymore in America. There’s no editors. How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?”
Karine Jean-Pierre, Press Secretary of the White House told the media that President Biden has always been clear about the necessity to reduce hate speech and false information.
she said, “That belief extends to Twitter, it extends to Facebook and any other social media platforms where users can spread misinformation.”
So far, the new Chief’s Promise to restore free speech for all has not been very well received by the advertisers. He promised them that he would prevent Twitter from becoming a “free for all hellscape”. This week onwards, advertisers began demanding details of the plan he upholds to commit.
A media buyer from a major advertisement agency said that the agency would meet the Tesla chief this week to know the details of his plans to clamp down on misinformation on Twitter. The buyer would also like to know how Musk’s order went against with his own actions, including a tweet over the weekend, which Had spread a conspiracy about the attack against US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s husband Paul.
apart from this, other topics of discussion would include Musk’s plan to increase the cost of Twitter’s subscription service and show “half as many ads”, and also enquire about who will serve the advertisers point of contact after all the senior ad executives, including Twitter‘s ad chief Sarah Personette resigned.
Many major advertisers have expressed concerns about his acquisition of Twitter for months. Some of these companies include Ford motor Co., General Motors Co., Havas Media group and L’Oreal SA to name a few.
