Days after he took control of the social media platform, the same fact-checking feature on Twitter that Elon Musk had recently praised fact-checked him for complaining about “activist groups” trying to decrease the company’s revenue.
Musk tweeted last Friday that Twitter had just experienced a “massive drop in revenue” attributed it to “activist groups pressuring advertisers” to leave the media giant.
Musk said the activists’ campaign to hurt Twitter is “extremely messed up” because content moderation has not changed since he bought and took over the platform and “we did everything we could to appease the activists,” adding “They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”
In the hours after Musk tweeted one of the platform’s fact-checking Birdwatch boxes popped up to notify users that advertisers were suspending or canceling ad buys because of concerns related to content moderation.
The Anti-Defamation League,GLAAD, Free Press, and Media Matters are all among the organizations that have called on advertisers to pull out of advertising on Twitter.
The organizations expressed doubt about Twitter’s future of content moderation, citing Musk laying off a large portion of Twitter’s staff, Musks’ sharing a conspiracy theory, a rise in hate speech, and welcoming back controversial hip hop mogul Kanye West.
Audi, General Mills, and Pfizer are among the major companies to pull ads from Twitter according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
Musk’s tweet was met with a lot of Twitter pushback:
Later in the day, the Birdwatch fact-check disappeared from Musk’s tweet. Because of course it did.
