Elon Musk pushed back on advertisers boycotting X over antisemitism and other hate speech on the platform formerly known as Twitter during the 2023 DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday.
What he’s saying: “If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f**k yourself.” Musk said. “Don’t advertise.”
He knows they will be back. They’re only pausing buys.
Big companies all claimed they wouldn’t donate to J6 insurrectionists… that lasted about three months before the bribes started again.
It’s actually been more than just pausing ads. There was a news story yesterday that a number of the big names have stopped using Twitter entirely since pausing too.
Twitter needs ad money, but it also needs these companies. If they stop using it to contact customers and make announcements, the appeal of Twitter falls heavily.
We’ll see how long it lasts.
I believed the corporations when they said they’d cut off Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. Nope, all bullshit.
Does it need those companies? I don’t think anyone ever used Twitter because it’s where they could receive little ads from Apple and Disney. The interesting people on Twitter are just people, not faceless PR flacks for massive brands.
Above all else, Twitter (and all social media, including Lemmy) needs engagement. By extension, it needs users and posts/comments. Without these, any social network withers and dies. Twitter also needs to sell ads to make a profit, but those only work when there’s engagement.
Corporate Twitter accounts have their place, but it’s usually only a small piece of the puzzle.
The reports of their shrinking user base and posts are far more indicative of their downfall. While they don’t paint a rosy picture, they also don’t show quite the same level of implosion.