Boycott Twitter? That Is What Some Want If Elon Musk Does THIS
Twitter Inc.'s top advertisers are being urged by dozens of advocacy groups to boycott the platform if its new billionaire owner Elon Musk lowers safety standards for content.
The groups pressed companies including Apple Inc., Best Buy Co., Coca-Cola Co. and Verizon Communications Inc. in a letter to their chief executive officers Tuesday to commit to stop advertising on Twitter if Musk allows hate speech, misinformation and conspiracy theories to flourish on the platform.
“Elon Musk is an erratic billionaire who has promised to roll back critical safeguards Twitter has put in place and replatform extremists who have repeatedly spewed hate, incited violence, and undermined our democracy,” said Nicole Gill, co-founder and executive director of digital rights group Accountable Tech, which helped organize the initiative.
“Advertisers have both the power and the responsibility to hold him to account and they must -- not only for their own brand safety, but for the integrity of our now crumbling information ecosystem,” Gill added.
The plea from more than 40 activist organizations that signed the letter comes days after Musk took control of Twitter following a prolonged legal battle.
Twitter representatives did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Tuesday afternoon.
He bought the platform for $44 billion on Oct. 28 and started overhauling its operations over the weekend. Twitter froze some employee access to internal tools used for content moderation and other policy enforcement, Bloomberg News reported.
Musk has pledged to restore the accounts of controversial figures who have been suspended from Twitter -- including former President Donald Trump, who was kicked off the platform in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault
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