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It’s not enough to be outraged. We must fight back.
Our journalism is committed to cataloging Trump’s outrages and connecting the dots to show people how everything fits together and what they can do to fight back.
Unless Linda Yaccarino has the authority to reverse Musk’s many harmful policy decisions and reinvest in content moderation and enforcement, the social-media platform is headed for insolvency.
Twitter’s new boss has inherited a company in a tailspin—and unless Linda Yaccarino takes up advice Elon Musk has ignored, the social-media platform is destined to crash and burn.
According to
reporting Monday by TheNew York Times, Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue is down 59% from a year ago.
These are just the latest sinking business numbers for Twitter since Musk assumed control of the company in October 2022. And they came on the day Yaccarino is reportedly due to start work as the new CEO of the besieged social-media company.
Musk has decided to ignore an elemental truth: To grow healthy and profitable online communities, you need effective content moderation.
Twitter’s latest round of bad news
recalls a meeting that Free Press and other racial-justice and digital-rights groups held during the first week of Elon Musk’s disastrous run as CEO.
We sat down with the new-media boss to gauge his commitment to community standards, election integrity, and content moderation. We urged Musk to retain and actually enforce existing content-moderation rules if he wanted advertisers to continue to spend money on Twitter.
He initially
seemedtoagree with us, but quickly reversed course, laying off many of those on the company’s trust and safety team in charge of this important work.
Musk then granted a “general amnesty” to legions of neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, and anti-vaccine trolls, reinstating thousands of previously banned accounts. He also gutted long-standing content-moderation rules and stopped enforcing Twitter’s ban on Covid-19 disinformation.
By then advertisers were
leaving the platform in droves. Musk’s Twitter purchase saddled the company with $13 billion in loans, and his refusal to seriously consider content moderation and brand safety ensured that Musk wouldn’t have the revenue needed to pay off these debts.
Those who loaned him the money were banking on a “small chance that Elon is some sort of genius and can turn around an operational and financial situation that looks increasingly doomed,”
William Cohan of Puck wrote at the time. But Musk’s erratic behavior has dashed those hopes.
Content moderation is essential
A mistake-riddled attempt to recoup this lost revenue by selling Twitter Blue subscriptions hasn’t won over even 1% of the platform’s users, according to Bloomberg. The company is now worth only a fraction of the $44-billion sum Musk paid for it.
Recent research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) underscores the point we were making to Musk during our early November meeting: Allowing Twitter to become a hate-trolling hellscape has imperiled the company’s remaining business prospects.
According to a CCDH sampling, Twitter has failed to remove 99% of hate speech posted by Twitter Blue users. Instead Musk has enabled algorithms that amplify these and other paid accounts over those that don’t pay.
Twitter feels increasingly “unpredictable and chaotic,” Jason Kint of Digital Content Next told the
Times. “Advertisers want to run in an environment where they are comfortable and can send a signal about their brand,” he said.
To make matters worse, Musk’s own politics have become increasingly reactionary and strident, so much so that he has started to sound like many of the most vitriolic hate trolls featured in CCDH's latest research.
“A stroll through Musk’s replies on the site reveals the extent to which one of the richest men in the world spends his time replying to far-right influencers and nodding in approval to their racist memes,” Charlie Warzel wrote in The Atlantic.
Musk rushed online to defend racist comic-strip author Scott Adams after he characterized Black people in the United States as a “hate group.” And Musk routinely boosts “anti-woke” influencers, adopting much of their anti-trans and homophobic rhetoric. He’s been binging on right-wing memes to fuel MAGA fears about alleged censorship of conservative voices and to bolster antisemitic claims about a global cabal that controls the media.
A new CEO, regardless of her marketing savvy, will likely do little to save Twitter from the extremist bent of her boss. As my colleague Jessica J. González
told CNN: “Musk is setting Yaccarino up to fail—as long as he continues to make the platform toxic, it will be impossible to lure back advertisers and users.”
A CEO reshuffle won’t be enough—unless Yaccarino has the authority to reverse Musk’s many harmful policy decisions and reinvest in content moderation and enforcement. So far, Musk hasn’t given any indication that he’ll allow someone else to fix his long string of business screw-ups.
Musk has decided to ignore an elemental truth: To grow healthy and profitable online communities, you need effective content moderation. If Twitter becomes insolvent—which seems more likely by the day—it’ll be because he lacks this basic business sense about social media.
His decision to dismiss this advice offered by a small group of advocates during his first week on the job set Twitter on a path to ruin that today seems inevitable.
"Mr. Musk's behavior reveals an apparent indifference towards Twitter's longstanding legal obligations, which did not disappear when Mr. Musk took over the company," says a new letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and three of her Democratic colleagues.
Four Democratic U.S. senators have asked Twitter CEO Elon Musk and CEO-Designate Linda Yaccarino to provide information about the social media corporation's "continued disregard for consumer safety" by June 18, the lawmakers announced Monday.
In a letter dated Friday, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Ed Markey (Mass.), and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) expressed their concerns that since Musk purchased and assumed control of Twitter in October 2022, the company may have "violated its consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and put consumer privacy and data security at risk."
The letter follows last week's back-to-back resignations of Twitter's former head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, and its former head of brand safety and advertising quality, A.J. Brown.
"Regardless of his personal wealth, Mr. Musk is not exempt from the law, and neither is the company he purchased."
"These departures, following a string of high-profile resignations from Twitter's lead privacy, information security, and compliance officers, raise concerns about Twitter's ability to comply with its legal obligations," the lawmakers wrote. "Twitter had a poor track record of protecting consumer privacy even before Mr. Musk's takeover."
As FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar explained earlier this year, Twitter in 2011 "agreed to a 20-year consent order over its data security practices and how it uses your private information."
In May 2022, several months before Musk's acquisition of the company was finalized, "the FTC charged Twitter with violating the 2011 order for misusing personal information," Farrar noted. Twitter then "paid a $150 million penalty and entered a new consent order," which "added further provisions to protect consumers' sensitive data."
But as the four Senate Democrats pointed out in their new letter, Musk has "made numerous hasty personnel and product decisions" since he took over Twitter last October, heightening concerns about the company's adherence to the updated FTC agreement.
The resignations and terminations began well before the exits of Irwin and Brown last week, as the quartet observed:
In November 2022, Mr. Musk fired multiple top executives; top security executives resigned; and Mr. Musk fired employees who had criticized him, let go of contractors, and laid off half of the workforce. On November 9, the day before the deadline to submit a report to the FTC, the chief privacy officer, chief information security officer, and chief compliance officer all resigned. Internal messages obtained by The New York Times show that an employee suggested internal privacy reviews of Twitter's products were not occurring as they should under the order. Reports also indicated that the launch of the updated Twitter Blue subscription service "disregarded the company's normal privacy and security review." In April of this year, Mr. Musk also confirmed that over 80% of the workforce had left Twitter since he became CEO.
"These personnel changes, firsthand accounts from employees, and hasty launch of new products raise questions about whether Twitter is able to comply with its obligations under the FTC consent decree," the lawmakers wrote. "In apparent dismissal of concerns regarding reducing his workforce, Mr. Musk's team has said he is 'used to going to court and paying penalties, and was not worried about the risks.'"
"Mr. Musk's behavior reveals an apparent indifference towards Twitter's longstanding legal obligations, which did not disappear when Mr. Musk took over the company," they continued. "One employee highlighted his problematic behavior, stating, 'Elon has shown that his only priority with Twitter users is how to monetize them,' and his personal lawyer Alex Spiro reportedly said, 'Elon puts rockets into space—he's not afraid of the FTC.'"
As a matter of fact, Musk's Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket exploded before reaching space in April, coating a Texas community in ash and provoking fears of negative public health and environmental impacts.
The senators stressed that "regardless of his personal wealth, Mr. Musk is not exempt from the law, and neither is the company he purchased."
"Twitter must meet the requirements it agreed to under the 2011 and 2022 FTC agreements," they added. "If reports about Mr. Musk's actions are correct, it appears that the company may not be doing so."
Citing their concerns, the lawmakers asked Musk and Yaccarino to answer a series of questions about Twitter's privacy practices no later than June 18.
"In particular, the letter asks whether Twitter conducted a privacy and security assessment of Twitter Blue, its paid subscription service, before rolling it out earlier this year," CNNreported Monday. "Under its 2022 consent agreement, Twitter is required to perform such assessments 'prior to implementing any new or modified product.'"
"The letter also asks whether Twitter has maintained a comprehensive cybersecurity program to protect user data since Musk's takeover and whether Twitter has met various reporting requirements, including obligations to report any significant data breaches to the authorities," CNN noted. According to the outlet, the inquiry "could highlight vast legal risks for Twitter and potentially for Musk himself."