Top 20 US Twitter Advertisers Face Pressure From Interest Groups

Elon Musk’s first few days as “Chief Twit” have not gone over well with justice organizations and media watchdog groups. Nearly 50 of those organizations collaborated on an open letter to share their concerns with the social network’s top 20 advertisers in the U.S. Issues raised in the letter include: a deluge of hate speech and misinformation on the platform within 24 hours of Musk’s takeover; Musk tweeting a conspiracy theory related to the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); his purge of top executives, which included trust and safety lead Vijaya Gadde; his threats to drastically reduce headcount at the company; and murmurings that Musk planned to restore the accounts of individuals who were banned from the platform for reasons including glorifying political violence and spreading misinformation. The groups wrote, “Your companies are Twitter's 20 largest U.S. advertisers, spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Your posture and response to Musk’s plans during this moment matter for your brands. We, the undersigned organizations, call on you to notify Musk and publicly commit that you will cease all advertising on Twitter globally if he follows through on his plans to undermine brand safety and community standards, including gutting content moderation. This means that Musk must not roll back the basic moderation practices Twitter already has on the books now and must commit to actually enforcing those rules.” They continued, “We know that brand safety is of the utmost importance to you. As such, you also have a moral and civic obligation to take a stand against the degradation of one of the world’s most influential communications platforms, and to hold Musk to the pledge he made to you to ensure that Twitter is a welcoming and civil place for everyone.” The letter was sent to the CEOs of: AmazonAnheuser-BuschAppleBest BuyCapital OneCBSCenturyLinkCoca-ColaComcastDisneyGoogleHBOIBMMerckMetaMondelez InternationalPepsiCoProcter & GambleUnileverVerizon And the groups behind the initiative were: Access NowAccountable TechAI for the PeopleAsian Americans Advancing Justice CenterAzerbaijan Internet WatchBenton Institute for Broadband & SocietyThe Center for American ProgressCenter for Countering Digital HateCenter on Race and Digital JusticeChange the Terms CoalitionColor of ChangeCommon CauseDangerous Speech ProjectDemCast USADigital Africa Research LabDistributed Artificial Intelligence Research InstituteDoctors in PoliticsEquality LabsFair Vote UKFree PressFriends of the EarthGLAADGlobal Project Against Hate and ExtremismJewish Women InternationalMajal.orgMediaJusticeMedia Matters for AmericaMuslim AdvocatesNAACP National Center for Transgender EqualityNational Hispanic Media CoalitionNumun FundPFLAG NationalProgressNow NMPublic CitizenPublic KnowledgeRanking Digital RightsThe Real Facebook Oversight BoardRight to Be (formerly Hollaback!)The Sparrow ProjectSumOfUsThe Tech Oversight ProjectThe TransLatin@ CoalitionUltraVioletUnion of Concerned ScientistsUnited We DreamUnited Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry#VOTEPROCHOICEWhose Knowledge?