U.S. stock futures point to strong Wall Street open Tuesday as another government report points to slowing inflation.
Tag: tesla inc
-
Studies find automatic braking can cut crashes over 40%
DETROIT — Two new U.S. studies show that automatic emergency braking can cut the number of rear-end automobile crashes in half, and reduce pickup truck crashes by more than 40%.
The studies released Tuesday, one by a government-auto industry partnership and the other by the insurance industry, each used crash data to make the calculations. Automatic emergency braking can stop vehicles if a crash is imminent, or slow them to reduce the severity.
Some automakers are moving toward a voluntary commitment by 20 companies to make the braking technology standard equipment on 95% of their light-duty models during the current model year that ends next August.
A study by The Partnership for Analytics Research in Traffic Safety compared data on auto equipment with 12 million police-reported crashes from 13 states that was collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the partnership said in a statement Tuesday. The group studied forward collision warning as well as emergency braking.
The group found front-to-rear crashes were cut 49% when the striking vehicle had forward collision alert plus automatic braking, when compared with vehicles that didn’t have either system. Rear crashes with injuries were cut by 53%, the study found.
Vehicles with forward collision warning systems only reduced rear-end crashes by 16%, and cut rear crashes with injuries by 19%.
Automatic emergency braking works well in all conditions, even when roadway, weather or lighting conditions were not ideal, the study showed.
The group also looked at lane departure warning systems, and lane-keeping systems, which keep vehicles in their lanes. They reduced crashes from autos leaving the roadway by 8% and road-departure crashes that cause injuries by 7%.
“These emerging technologies can substantially reduce the number of crashes and improve safety outcomes,” said Tim Czapp, senior manager for safety at European automaker Stellantis, the industry co-chair of the partnership’s board.
In the other study, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that automatic emergency braking reduces rear crash rates for pickups by 43% and rear-end injury crashes by 42%. Yet pickups are less likely to have automatic braking than cars or SUVs despite posing more danger to other road users, the IIHS found.
“Pickups account for 1 out of 5 passenger vehicles on U.S. roads, and their large size can make them dangerous to people in smaller vehicles or on foot,” the institute’s Vice President of Research Jessica Cicchino said in a statement.
Mitsubishi, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler), Volkswagen and Honda have filed documents with the government this year saying they’ve made emergency braking standard on at least 90% of their models.
General Motors reported that only 73% of its models had the technology at the end of the 2022 model year, but a spokesman said GM would hit the 90% target by the end of the current model year.
In addition, BMW, Hyundai, Mazda, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, and Volvo passed 90% last year, according to the IIHS.
-
Studies find automatic braking can cut crashes over 40%
DETROIT — Two new U.S. studies show that automatic emergency braking can cut the number of rear-end automobile crashes in half, and reduce pickup truck crashes by more than 40%.
The studies released Tuesday, one by a government-auto industry partnership and the other by the insurance industry, each used crash data to make the calculations. Automatic emergency braking can stop vehicles if a crash is imminent, or slow them to reduce the severity.
Some automakers are moving toward a voluntary commitment by 20 companies to make the braking technology standard equipment on 95% of their light-duty models during the current model year that ends next August.
A study by The Partnership for Analytics Research in Traffic Safety compared data on auto equipment with 12 million police-reported crashes from 13 states that was collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the partnership said in a statement Tuesday. The group studied forward collision warning as well as emergency braking.
The group found front-to-rear crashes were cut 49% when the striking vehicle had forward collision alert plus automatic braking, when compared with vehicles that didn’t have either system. Rear crashes with injuries were cut by 53%, the study found.
Vehicles with forward collision warning systems only reduced rear-end crashes by 16%, and cut rear crashes with injuries by 19%.
Automatic emergency braking works well in all conditions, even when roadway, weather or lighting conditions were not ideal, the study showed.
The group also looked at lane departure warning systems, and lane-keeping systems, which keep vehicles in their lanes. They reduced crashes from autos leaving the roadway by 8% and road-departure crashes that cause injuries by 7%.
“These emerging technologies can substantially reduce the number of crashes and improve safety outcomes,” said Tim Czapp, senior manager for safety at European automaker Stellantis, the industry co-chair of the partnership’s board.
In the other study, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that automatic emergency braking reduces rear crash rates for pickups by 43% and rear-end injury crashes by 42%. Yet pickups are less likely to have automatic braking than cars or SUVs despite posing more danger to other road users, the IIHS found.
“Pickups account for 1 out of 5 passenger vehicles on U.S. roads, and their large size can make them dangerous to people in smaller vehicles or on foot,” the institute’s Vice President of Research Jessica Cicchino said in a statement.
Mitsubishi, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler), Volkswagen and Honda have filed documents with the government this year saying they’ve made emergency braking standard on at least 90% of their models.
General Motors reported that only 73% of its models had the technology at the end of the 2022 model year, but a spokesman said GM would hit the 90% target by the end of the current model year.
In addition, BMW, Hyundai, Mazda, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, and Volvo passed 90% last year, according to the IIHS.
-
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is buying an ad package on Elon Musk’s Twitter | CNN Business
CNN
—
While a number of major brands have announced advertising pauses on Twitter in the wake of Elon Musk’s acquisition, the platform has scored a new ad buy from one notable billion-dollar business: Musk’s SpaceX.
Musk confirmed on Twitter Monday that his aerospace company, SpaceX, bought a package to advertise its Starlink internet service on Twitter, though he downplayed the size of the ad buy.
The ad buy would be the first for any of Musk’s companies, including Tesla, which does not engage in traditional advertising.
“SpaceX Starlink bought a tiny – not large – ad package to test effectiveness of Twitter advertising in Australia & Spain,” Musk wrote in a reply to one Twitter user, adding that he did the same on competitors such as Facebook, Instagram and Google.
His remarks came after CNBC reported Sunday that Musk had ordered “one of the larger advertising packages available from Twitter” for SpaceX, citing unnamed sources who had viewed internal documents related to the matter. SpaceX did not respond to CNN Business request for comment.
In the weeks since Musk completed the Twitter takeover, some civil rights groups have called for an advertiser boycott of the platform, citing concerns about the direction under its new owner and reports that incidents of hate speech have ticked up on the platform.
A number of major brands including General Mills, the North Face and several car companies (which compete with Musk’s Tesla) have announced they are pausing ads on the social network. Earlier this month, Musk said the growing pullback in advertiser spending has led to a “massive drop in revenue.” He blasted the situation as “extremely messed up!”
Musk has spent his first weeks running Twitter pleading with advertisers to remain on the platform and also working make the platform less reliant on ad dollars by adding more subscription options, including a controversial option to pay for verification. The latter feature led to a wave of accounts impersonating prominent brands on the platform.
-
Musk touches on Twitter criticism, workload at G-20 forum
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — It’s not easy being Elon Musk.
That was the message the new Twitter owner and billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX had for younger people who might seek to emulate his entrepreneurial success.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Musk told a business forum in Bali on Monday when asked what an up-and-coming “Elon Musk of the East” should focus on.
“I’m not sure how many people would actually like to be me. They would like to be what they imagine being me, which is not the same,” he continued. “I mean, the amount that I torture myself, is the next level, frankly.”
Musk was speaking at the B-20 business forum ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies taking place on the Indonesian resort island. He joined the conference by video link weeks after completing his heavily scrutinized takeover of Twitter.
He had been expected to attend the event in person, but Indonesian government minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, who’s responsible for coordinating preparations for the summit, said Musk could not attend because he’s preparing for a court case later in the week.
He’s got plenty else to keep himself busy.
“My workload has recently increased quite a lot,” he said with a chuckle in an apparent reference to the Twitter deal. “I mean, oh, man. I have too much work on my plate, that is for sure.”
The businessman appeared in a darkened room, saying there had been a power cut just before he connected.
His face, projected on a large screen over the summit hall, appeared to glow red as it was reflected in what he said was candlelight – a visage he noted was “so bizarre.”
While Musk was among the most anticipated speakers at the business forum, his remarks broke little new ground. Only the moderator was able to ask questions.
The Tesla chief executive said the electric carmaker would consider making a much cheaper model when asked about lower-cost options for developing countries like India and G-20 host Indonesia.
“We do think that making a much more affordable vehicle would make a lot of sense and we should do something,” he said.
Musk also reiterated a desire to significantly boost the amount and length of Twitter’s video offerings, and share revenue with people producing the content, though he didn’t provide specifics.
He bought Twitter for $44 billion last month and quickly dismissed the company’s board of directors and top executives.
He laid off much of the rest of the company’s full-time workforce by email on Nov. 4 and is now eliminating the jobs of outsourced contractors who are tasked with fighting misinformation and other harmful content.
Musk has vowed to ease restrictions on what users can say on the platform.
He’s reaped a heap of complaints — much on Twitter itself — and has tried to reassure companies that advertise on the platform and others that it won’t damage their brands by associating them with harmful content.
In his appearance Monday, Musk acknowledged the criticism.
“There’s no way to make everyone happy, that’s for sure,” he said.
-
Musk touches on Twitter criticism, workload at G-20 forum
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — It’s not easy being Elon Musk.
That was the message the new Twitter owner and billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX had for younger people who might seek to emulate his entrepreneurial success.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Musk told a business forum in Bali on Monday when asked what an up-and-coming “Elon Musk of the East” should focus on.
“I’m not sure how many people would actually like to be me. They would like to be what they imagine being me, which is not the same,” he continued. “I mean, the amount that I torture myself, is the next level, frankly.”
Musk was speaking at the B-20 business forum ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies taking place on the Indonesian resort island. He joined the conference by video link weeks after completing his heavily scrutinized takeover of Twitter.
He had been expected to attend the event in person, but Indonesian government minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, who’s responsible for coordinating preparations for the summit, said Musk could not attend because he’s preparing for a court case later in the week.
He’s got plenty else to keep himself busy.
“My workload has recently increased quite a lot,” he said with a chuckle in an apparent reference to the Twitter deal. “I mean, oh, man. I have too much work on my plate, that is for sure.”
The businessman appeared in a darkened room, saying there had been a power cut just before he connected.
His face, projected on a large screen over the summit hall, appeared to glow red as it was reflected in what he said was candlelight – a visage he noted was “so bizarre.”
While Musk was among the most anticipated speakers at the business forum, his remarks broke little new ground. Only the moderator was able to ask questions.
The Tesla chief executive said the electric carmaker would consider making a much cheaper model when asked about lower-cost options for developing countries like India and G-20 host Indonesia.
“We do think that making a much more affordable vehicle would make a lot of sense and we should do something,” he said.
Musk also reiterated a desire to significantly boost the amount and length of Twitter’s video offerings, and share revenue with people producing the content, though he didn’t provide specifics.
He bought Twitter for $44 billion last month and quickly dismissed the company’s board of directors and top executives.
He laid off much of the rest of the company’s full-time workforce by email on Nov. 4 and is now eliminating the jobs of outsourced contractors who are tasked with fighting misinformation and other harmful content.
Musk has vowed to ease restrictions on what users can say on the platform.
He’s reaped a heap of complaints — much on Twitter itself — and has tried to reassure companies that advertise on the platform and others that it won’t damage their brands by associating them with harmful content.
In his appearance Monday, Musk acknowledged the criticism.
“There’s no way to make everyone happy, that’s for sure,” he said.
-
Musk’s latest Twitter cuts: Outsourced content moderators
Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk is further gutting the teams that battle misinformation on the social media platform as outsourced moderators learned over the weekend they were out of a job.
Twitter and other big social media firms have relied heavily on contractors to track hate and enforce rules against harmful content.
But many of those content watchdogs have now headed out the door, first when Twitter fired much of its full-time workforce by email on Nov. 4 and now as it moves to eliminate an untold number of contract jobs.
Melissa Ingle, who worked at Twitter as a contractor for more than a year, was one of a number of contractors who said they were terminated Saturday. She said she’s concerned that there’s going to be an increase in abuse on Twitter with the number of workers leaving.
“I love the platform and I really enjoyed working at the company and trying to make it better. And I’m just really fearful of what’s going to slip through the cracks,” she said Sunday.
Ingle, a data scientist, said she worked on the data and monitoring arm of Twitter’s civic integrity team. Her job involved writing algorithms to find political misinformation on the platform in countries such as the U.S., Brazil, Japan, Argentina and elsewhere.
Ingle said she was “pretty sure I was done for” when she couldn’t access her work email Saturday. The notification from the contracting company she’d been hired by came two hours later.
“I’ll just be putting my resumes out there and talking to people,” she said. “I have two children. And I’m worried about being able to give them a nice Christmas, you know, and just mundane things like that, that are important. I just think it’s particularly heartless to do this at this time.”
Content-moderation expert Sarah Roberts, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who worked as a staff researcher at Twitter earlier this year, said she believes at least 3,000 contract workers were fired Saturday night.
Twitter hasn’t said how many contract workers it cut. The company hasn’t responded to media requests for information since Musk took over.
At Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters and other offices, contract workers wore green badges while full-time workers wore blue badges. Contractors did a number of jobs to help keep Twitter running, including engineering and marketing, Roberts said. But it was the huge force of contracted moderators that was “mission critical” to the platform, said Roberts.
Cutting them will have a “tangible impact on the experience of the platform,” she said.
Musk promised to loosen speech restrictions when he took over Twitter. But in the early days after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October and dismissed its board of directors and top executives, the billionaire Tesla CEO sought to assure civil rights groups and advertisers that the platform could continue tamping down hate and hate-fueled violence.
That message was reiterated by Twitter’s then-head of content moderation, Yoel Roth, who tweeted that the Nov. 4 layoffs only affected “15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.”
Roth has since resigned from the company, joining an exodus of high-level leaders who were tasked with privacy protection, cybersecurity and complying with regulations.
-
Musk’s latest Twitter cuts: Outsourced content moderators
Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk is further gutting the teams that battle misinformation on the social media platform as outsourced moderators learned over the weekend they were out of a job.
Twitter and other big social media firms have relied heavily on contractors to track hate and other harmful content.
But many of those content watchdogs have now headed out the door, first when Twitter fired much of its full-time workforce by email on Nov. 4 and now as it moves to eliminate an untold number of contract jobs.
Melissa Ingle, who worked at Twitter as a contractor for more than a year, was one of a number of contractors who said they were terminated without notification on Saturday. She said she’s concerned that there’s going to be an increase in abuse on Twitter with the number of workers leaving.
“I love the platform and I really enjoyed working at the company and trying to make it better. And I’m just really fearful of what’s going to slip through the cracks,” she said Sunday.
Ingle, a data scientist, said she worked on the data and monitoring arm of Twitter’s civic integrity team. Her job involved writing algorithms to find political misinformation on the platform in countries such as the U.S., Brazil, Japan, Argentina and elsewhere.
Ingle said she was “pretty sure I was done for” when she couldn’t access her work email Saturday. The notification from the contracting company she’d been hired by came two hours later.
“I’ll just be putting my resumes out there and talking to people,” she said. “I have two children. And I’m worried about being able to give them a nice Christmas, you know, and just mundane things like that, that are important. I just think it’s particularly heartless to do this at this time.”
Content-moderation expert Sarah Roberts, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, tweeted Sunday that around “3,000+ contractor employees of Twitter were canned last night.”
Twitter hasn’t said how many contract workers it cut. The company gutted its communications department and hasn’t responded to media requests for information since Musk took over.
Contractors also do other jobs to help keep Twitter running,
“All contractors are not content moderation agents,” Roberts said. “Contractors fulfill many key roles inside the company. But almost all moderation agents are contractors.”
In the early days after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October and dismissed its board of directors and top executives, the billionaire Tesla CEO sought to assure civil rights groups and advertisers that the platform could continue tamping down hate.
That message was reiterated by Twitter’s then-head of content moderation, Yoel Roth, who tweeted that the Nov. 4 layoffs only affected “15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.”
Roth has since resigned from the company, joining an exodus of high-level leaders who were tasked with privacy protection, cybersecurity and complying with regulations.
-
Twitter cuts a large number of contract workers without giving internal teams a heads up
In this photo illustration a Twitter logo seen displayed on a smartphone screen with Elon Musk Twitter in the background in Athens, Greece on October 30, 2022. Elon Musk begins his Twitter ownership with firings.
Nikolas Kokovlis | Nurphoto | Getty Images
A large number of Twitter’s contract workers discovered they were suddenly terminated this weekend after they lost access to Slack and other work systems, according to internal communications shared with CNBC by full-time Twitter employees.
An estimated 4,400 of its 5,500 contract workers were cut, according to Platformer, which first reported on the cuts. CNBC has not confirmed the total number.
Some of Twitter’s contract workers were based overseas in India, among other locations. Full-time employees, who asked to remain un-named since they were not authorized to speak on behalf of Twitter, said that they had no internal notice before contractors they were collaborating with were let go.
Twitter has dismissed all of its internal communications team, according to these employees. They also cracked bitter jokes that media outlets covering the company are now filling the role of internal communications.
The cancellation of contractors’ work would mark the latest reduction at the social media platform, which already laid off approximately half of its employees following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company on Oct. 28.
Musk and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey apologized last week for growing the company “too quickly,” a day after the social media company carried out the layoffs. Dorsey personally endeavored for Musk to take over his company in a contentious leveraged buyout and has rolled his own shares into the new holding company.
As of June 30, 2013, shortly before Twitter went public, it had approximately 2,000 employees, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. By the end of last year, the company reported that it had grown to around 7,500 full-time employees.
Musk addressed the layoffs in a tweet on Nov. 4, writing: “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”
Since he has taken over, Musk has informed remaining Twitter employees that he sold billions of dollars worth of shares in Tesla, his electric vehicle business, to “save” Twitter. It’s not clear if Musk will continue to sell Tesla shares to pay down Twitter’s debt.
He also told Twitter employees that bankruptcy is not out of the question for the social media business amid an economic downturn, and as advertisers have fled or paused spending on the platform during his rocky takeover.
-
Sen. Ed Markey hits back at Elon Musk after his response to questions about impersonation
Elon Musk’s Twitter profile is seen on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos in this picture illustration taken April 28, 2022.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Sen. Ed Markey chastised Twitter’s owner Elon Musk Sunday for his response to Markey’s request for answers about the platform’s new verification and impersonation policies.
After a Washington Post reporter successfully set up a fake verified account pretending to be the Massachusetts Democrat, Markey shared a letter to Musk on Twitter Friday asking him to “explain how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again.”
In response, Musk wrote back to Markey in a tweet Sunday and said, “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody?”
Markey did not appear to appreciate Musk’s response.
“One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will,” Markey wrote in a tweet Sunday.
Twitter appeared to have paused the $7.99 a month Twitter Blue verification program shortly after the Post ran its test as impersonations of celebrities and brands proliferated across the platform.
But prior to the pause, the Post was able to set up a Twitter handle called “@realEdMarkey” using “a spare iPhone, a credit card and a little creativity.” The account received a blue verified checkmark, even though Markey already has two legitimate verified accounts.
The blue check is supposed to be a feature of the paid Twitter Blue, but the Post reporter found that Twitter said the fake Markey account was verified “because it’s notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category.”
Twitter has recently lost key privacy and content moderation executives.
“Safeguards such as Twitter’s blue checkmark once allowed users to be smart, critical consumers of news and information in Twitter’s global town square,” Markey wrote in his letter to Musk. “But your Twitter takeover, rapid and haphazard imposition of platform changes, removal of safeguards against disinformation, and firing of large numbers of Twitter employees have accelerated Twitter’s descent into the Wild West of social media.”
Markey asked Musk to respond to his questions in writing by Nov. 25.
The exchange between Musk and Markey on Twitter is not the first time the pair has gone head-to-head.
Musk is also the CEO of the automaker Tesla, and Tesla’s driver assistance systems are branded Autopilot and Full Self Driving in the U.S. During a series of Tesla crashes in August 2021, Markey and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) expressed “serious concerns” about the way the company advertises these technologies. They asked the Federal Trade Commission to launch an investigation.
The senators also called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in June to take “aggressive investigative and enforcement action on vehicles with automated driving systems (ADS) and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS)” after the administration released data showing more than 500 crashes in vehicles with these technologies.
— CNBC’s Lauren Feiner and Laura Kolodny contributed to this report.
-
Layoffs could weaken Twitter in its biggest global growth markets | CNN Business
New Delhi
CNN Business
—
It’s less than two weeks since Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter and already there are concerns that the company is choosing to ignore key risks in its biggest international growth markets.
Twitter laid off thousands of employees across the company on Friday, including staff in India and Africa. The California-based company already had a turbulent relationship with governments in these regions, and tech experts fear that a diminished workforce will leave the platform more vulnerable than ever to misinformation and political pressure.
Musk’s Twitter laid off nearly all the employees in its only African office just four days after it opened in the Ghanaian capital Accra, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation told CNN.
Twitter announced that it would open its first African office in Ghana in April 2021, but its employees had been working remotely until last week. The sources told CNN that only one employee appears to have been retained in the Ghana office after the global job cuts.
“It’s very insulting,” one former employee said on condition of anonymity. “They didn’t even have the courtesy to address me by name. The email just said ‘see attached’ and yet they used my name when they gave me an offer.”
The company has reportedly also made sweeping reductions in India, one of its biggest markets. It laid off more than 90% of its staff in Asia’s third-largest economy over the weekend, according to a Bloomberg report this week, which cited unnamed sources. Twitter did not respond to multiple requests for comment by CNN.
The Bloomberg report came two days after the Economic Times newspaper reported that Twitter had let go of 180 of about 230 employees in the country, citing unnamed sources.
Free speech advocates say that slashing the workforce is bad news for both employees and users in Twitter’s international markets.
Raman Jit Singh Chima, senior international counsel and Asia Pacific policy director at digital rights group Access Now, said that Twitter had just begun “protecting vulnerable communities” on its platform in India, and now it has sent a “clear signal” that it won’t be investing in public policy and online safety teams anymore.
Even before the layoffs, Twitter was going through a tough time in both India and Africa.
India’s ruling party has intensified a crackdown on social media and messaging apps since last year. American tech firms have repeatedly expressed fears that the country’s rules may erode privacy and usher in mass surveillance in the world’s fastest growing digital market. India says it is trying to maintain national security.
As a result, Twitter had spent months locked in a high-stakes standoff with the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over orders to take down content. This year, it even launched a legal challenge over orders to block content.
Chima fears that Twitter’s depleted workforce may not have the ability to “challenge” the government and its problematic orders anymore. Musk’s other business interests — including a plan to sell Tesla vehicles in India — may further complicate the picture.
“Musk’s simplistic understanding of free speech coupled with his desire to bring his other businesses to India and secure licensing for those,” make it hard for Twitter to push back, he explained.
India’s tech ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The company also went through a challenging period in Nigeria last year.
Last June, the Nigerian government suspended Twitter’s operations in the country, accusing the social media firm of allowing its platform to be used “for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”
The ban was announced just two days after Twitter deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari that was widely perceived as offensive. In the tweet, Buhari threatened citizens in the southeast region following attacks on public property.
Nigeria decided to lift the ban only in January this year.
Tech experts now fear that the company will find it even harder to navigate new laws in emerging markets.
“Given India’s adversarial stance against big tech, companies like Twitter have always needed an army of public policy experts in the country to deal with whatever is thrown at them,” said Nikhil Pahwa, Delhi-based founder of tech website MediaNama, adding that he fears Twitter will “struggle to keep pace” with policy changes in India.
Twitter does not share user numbers, but according to India, the platform has 17.5 million users in the country. Last year, India released new technology rules, which were aimed at regulating online content and require companies to hire people who can respond swiftly to legal requests to delete posts, among other things.
Pahwa said that while certain “statutory positions” Twitter was forced to fill in order to comply with these rules will stay, he is unsure about the fate of other departments, including public policy, business and content moderation — all of which are key to thriving in growth markets.
Analysts are also concerned globally about the impact these layoffs will have on misinformation.
In the United States, there are worries that the growing tumult inside Twitter could weaken its safeguards for the midterm elections.
Yoel Roth, the company’s head of safety and integrity, said on Friday about 15% of workers in the trust and safety team were let go.
There are similar concerns in India, where social media activity is expected to ramp up as the country prepares for major state elections in the coming months.
Content moderation is particularly tricky in India, where over 22 languages and hundreds more dialects are spoken. Digital rights groups had been demanding an increase in investment in the activity for years.
“Content moderation has to be specific to geography,” said Vivan Sharan, partner at Delhi-based tech policy consulting firm Koan Advisory Group.
“Are they interested in treating all users equally?” he wondered.
— Larry Madowo contributed to this report.
-
From Elon Musk to Sam Bankman-Fried, a bad week for market geniuses, but was it their fault?
From the FTX bankruptcy and downfall of crypto “rock star” Sam Bankman-Fried to the chaos at Twitter, it has not been a good week for the geniuses of capitalism. Elon Musk’s abrupt and in some cases already reversed decisions since taking over the social media company back up his contention that so far his tenure “isn’t boring,” but also expose the type of corporate governance issues that are too often repeated to the detriment of shareholders.
“Without a doubt, Sam Bankman-Fried is a genius,” said Yale School of Management leadership guru Jeffrey Sonnenfeld in an interview with CNBC’s “Taking Stock” on Thursday. “But what’s hard is that somebody has to be able to put on the brakes on them and ask them questions. But when they develop one of these emperor-for-life models … then you really don’t have accountability,” Sonnenfeld said.
Few would doubt the genius of Elon Musk, or Mark Zuckerberg, for that matter, but few would put them in the same class with many companies that have failed spectacularly, though Sonnenfeld says they share the link of being allowed to operate without enough corporate oversight.
“It’s not crazy to talk about Theranos, or WeWork, Groupon, MySpace, WebMD, or Naptster – so many companies that fall off the cliff because they didn’t have proper governance, they didn’t figure out, how do you get the best of a genius?” Sonnenfeld said.
In the case of Bankman-Fried, who stepped down from his CEO role at FTX as the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday, Sonnenfeld pointed to the lack of a board that should have been asking tough questions.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
But boards are often unable to manage genius, Sonnenfeld said. Zuckerberg is another example. When Meta, formerly Facebook, announced it would be shifting its focus to the metaverse last year, Sonnenfeld said his board members were essentially powerless. Meta laid off 11,000 of its employees this week and announced a hiring freeze as it has faced declining revenue and increased spending on a metaverse bet that Zuckerberg has said may not pay off for a decade.
Tesla shares have not been immune from Musk’s Twitter takeover, with the stock plummeting this week after Musk told Twitter employees on Thursday he sold Tesla stock to “save” the social network. One Wall Street analyst decided that Twitter is now a business risk to Tesla and yanked the stock from a best picks list.
Musk (though not Tesla’s founder) and Zuckerberg oversaw the creation of two trillion-dollar companies, though both have now lost that market-cap status in stock declines caused by a variety of factors — from macroeconomic conditions to sector-specific risks, a market valuation reset for high growth companies, and also leadership decisions.
Market research shows that founders can be a financial risk to company value over time. Founder-led companies have been found to outperform those with non-founder leaders in early year, according to a study from the Harvard Business Review that examined the financial performance of more than 2,000 public businesses, but virtually no difference appears three years after the company’s IPO. After this time, the study found that founder-CEOs “actually start detracting from firm value.”
Major players in Elon Musk’s Twitter deal, including Fidelity Investments, Brookfield Asset Management and former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey, did not take a seat on the company’s board or have a voice throughout the transaction, Sonnenfeld said, which gave the deal no oversight. Musk is now splitting his time between six separate companies: Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity/Tesla Energy, Twitter, Neuralink and The Boring Company.
Companies led by lone geniuses need strong governance first and foremost. Sonnenfeld says having built-in checks and balances and a board that has field expertise as well as the ability to watch out for mission creep is critical to allowing these businesses to function with less risk of costly blunders.
Tesla and Meta governance scores within ESG rankings have long reflected this risk.
That doesn’t mean the market doesn’t need geniuses.
“Sure, we’re better off with Elon Musk in this world as we are better off with Mark Zuckerberg,” Sonnenfeld said. “But they can’t be alone.”
Through the recent issues, these under-fire leaders have been critical of themselves.
FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted Thursday morning that he is “sorry,” admitting that he “f—ed up” and “should have done better.”
Zuckerberg said of the mass layoffs at Meta in a statement equal parts apology and unintended restatement of the governance problem, “I take full responsibility for this decision. I’m the founder and CEO, I’m responsible for the health of our company, for our direction, and for deciding how we execute that, including things like this, and this was ultimately my call.”
Musk tweeted, “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.”
But whether an apology or an admission from genius that it too can be dumb on occasion, Sonnenfeld says these leaders would be better off letting others do the criticizing — much sooner, and much more often.
“They have to be managed, they have to be guided and they have to have a board that can help get the best out of themselves and not let them develop this imperial sense of invincibility,” he said.
-
Twitter pauses paid verifications after users abuse service to impersonate brands and people
In this photo illustration, the image of Elon Musk is displayed on a computer screen and the logo of twitter on a mobile phone in Ankara, Turkiye on October 06, 2022.
Muhammed Selim Korkutata | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Twitter appears to have paused its $7.99/month Blue subscription service, which allowed people to pay for a verification check mark, after users were abusing it to impersonate brands and famous people.
Twitter launched the service earlier this week in its iPhone app, allowing users to buy a checkmark that had previously been used to show that an account was verified or official. As of Friday, the iPhone app no longer shows an option to sign up for Twitter Blue.
The quick suspension of the service suggests that, at least currently, CEO Elon Musk’s big plan to generate new revenue from users isn’t working as expected.
The paid subscription service led to a plethora of pranksters creating imposter accounts on Twitter. It left the platform even more ripe for misinformation, and many cheaply acquired checkmarks were used to impersonate brands, politicians and celebrities with unflattering messages.
One current sales employee at Twitter said the company decided to pull back on Twitter Blue verification in response to the spate of impersonators.
The employee, who asked to remain unnamed since they were not authorized to speak on behalf of Twitter, said one account resembling pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly caused a serious problem when it tweeted out, “we are excited to announce insulin is free now.”
The tweet remained on the social media platform for hours before it was taken down. The real Eli Lilly account later tweeted: “We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account.”
Eli Lilly’s stock price dropped sharply after the false message was posted, and so did other pharmaceutical companies including AbbVie, which was also impersonated on Twitter. At that time, major stock indices were positive, amidst a market rally.
An impersonator also pilloried Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric car maker using the paid subscriber blue checkmark. An account with the handle that appeared as “@TeslaReal” wrote a flurry of disparaging tweets, one of which said, “honestly the 53% drop in stock price doesn’t phase[sic] us. if there’s anyone who knows about Crashing it’s us.”
The effect of so many changes on the Twitter platform presents a big problem for advertisers, some of which have already paused spending there.
Additionally, some users who already paid for the service said their recently acquired blue checkmarks have disappeared from their accounts.
A Twitter spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. Musk was not immediately available for comment.
The rollback of Twitter Blue verified comes at a time when Musk and Alex Spiro, who is acting as Twitters top lawyer now, are working to reassure employees, advertisers and regulators that they will comply with all laws and terms of a prior FTC consent decree.
Elon Musk wrote in a companywide email obtained by CNBC on Thursday night, “I cannot emphasize enough that Twitter will do whatever it takes to adhere to both the letter and spirit of the FTC consent decree. Anything you read to the contrary is absolutely false. The same goes for any other government regulatory matters where Twitter operates.”
Spiro said in another e-mail that followed that his team had spoken with FTC regulators on Thursday and that Twitter has its “first upcoming compliance check” with the agency soon. He emphasized that Twitter itself, not “individuals who work at Twitter” would be held liable for any violations.
As NBC News previously reported, an exodus of Twitter executives since Musk took over has included the departure of the company’s head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, and chief of information security, Lea Kessner among many others involved in infrastructure, trust and safety.
-
Elon Musk is now working out of Twitter headquarters, thanks employees for long hours
Elon Musk’s photo is seen through a Twitter logo in this illustration taken October 28, 2022.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
On Friday, Twitter‘s new owner Elon Musk sent a companywide email to employees of the social media giant thanking them for working long hours since he took over on Oct. 28.
Musk said he had personally stayed at Twitter’s headquarters office in San Francisco late on Thursday night as well. He then invited employees who have returned to the San Francisco office, and who survived last week’s 50% reduction in workforce, to come visit with him.
related investing news
Overnight, Twitter appeared to pause its $7.99/month Twitter Blue subscription service, which allowed users of the social network to pay to attain a blue verified-subscriber check mark. Many users abused the new subscriber badge to impersonate brands and famous people who acquired a blue check mark via the company’s original verification system.
Among the brands that were impersonated were Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant, video game multinational Nintendo, and Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla.
Two current Twitter employees told CNBC that they were fielding calls from colleagues and clients about all the changes to the platform.
One said Twitter used to make product changes more slowly and carefully and that was because they had to balance user behavior, safety and revenue impact. The new more experimental approach that Musk is taking has troubled many including advertisers, and even the FTC.
Employees also said they wanted more clarity about the company’s new time off and return to office policies and that Elon Musk’s e-mail left them with questions. Friday is a national holiday in the U.S., Veterans Day, and some workers did not expect they would have to come in, while others are wondering if they still have approved exceptions that will allow them to continue to work from home. Two employees told CNBC that they have not gotten formal guidance from the company’s human resources department on remote work.
This week, Musk told Twitter employees that he was reversing the company’s previous “work from home forever” policy which had been enacted by his personal friend and collaborator, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Here’s the e-mail from Elon Musk to Twitter employees on Friday, transcribed by CNBC:
From: Elon Musk
Date: Nov. 11, 2022 [time stamp removed]
To: Team at Twitter
Subj. Being There (great movie)
I was at Twitter HQ again until late into the night yesterday and would like to extend a note of appreciation to those who were there with me, as well as those working remotely, some of whom had been up even longer.
To reaffirm, working remotely is fine if you cannot reasonably make it to the office and you are performing at an exceptional level. That said, I am a big believer in the esprit de corps and effectiveness of being physically in the same location.
I will be in the office again today. Stop by the 10th floor if you’d like to talk about taking Twitter to the next level. The priority is near-term actions.
Thanks,
Elon
-
Twitter survival at stake, Musk warns as remote work ends
Elon Musk is warning Twitter employees to brace for “difficult times ahead” that might end with the collapse of the social media platform if they can’t find new ways of making money.
Workers who survived last week’s mass layoffs are facing harsher work conditions and growing uncertainty about their ability to keep Twitter running safely as it continues to lose high-level leaders responsible for data privacy, cybersecurity and complying with regulations.
Musk’s first companywide message to employees came by email late Wednesday night and ordered them to stop working from home and show up in the office Thursday morning. He followed that with his first “all-hands” meeting Thursday answering workers’ concerns. Before that, many were relying on the billionaire Tesla CEO’s public tweets for clues about Twitter’s future.
“Sorry that this is my first email to the whole company, but there is no way to sugarcoat the message,” wrote Musk, before he described a dire economic climate for businesses like Twitter that rely almost entirely on advertising to make money.
“Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn,” Musk said. “We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.”
At the staff meeting Thursday afternoon, Musk said some “exceptional” employees could seek an exemption from his return-to-work order but that others who didn’t like it could quit, according to an employee at the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity out of a concern for job security.
The employee also said Musk appeared to downplay employee concerns about how a pared-back Twitter workforce was handling its obligations to maintain privacy and data security standards, saying as CEO of Tesla he knew how that worked.
Musk’s memo and staff meeting echoed a livestreamed conversation trying to assuage major advertisers Wednesday, his most expansive public comments about Twitter’s direction since he closed a $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform late last month and dismissed its top executives. A number of well-known brands have paused advertising on Twitter as they wait to see how Musk’s proposals to relax content rules against hate and misinformation affect the tenor of the platform.
Musk told employees the “priority over the past 10 days” was to develop and launch Twitter’s new subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check mark next to the name of paid members — the mark was previously only for verified accounts. Musk’s project has had a rocky rollout with an onslaught of newly bought fake accounts this week impersonating high-profile figures such as basketball star LeBron James, former U.S. President George W. Bush and the drug company Eli Lilly to post false information or offensive jokes.
In a second email to employees, Musk said the “absolute top priority” over the coming days is to suspend “bots/trolls/spam” exploiting the verified accounts. But Twitter now employs far fewer people to help him do that.
An executive last week said Twitter was cutting roughly 50% of its workforce, which numbered 7,500 earlier this year.
Musk had previously expressed distaste for Twitter’s pandemic-era remote work policies that enabled team leaders to decide if employees had to show up in the office.
Musk told employees in the email that “remote work is no longer allowed” and the road ahead is “arduous and will require intense work to succeed” and they will need to be in the office at least 40 hours per week. He said he would personally review any request for an exception.
Twitter hasn’t disclosed the total number of layoffs across its global workforce but told local and state officials in the U.S. that it was cutting 784 workers at its San Francisco headquarters, about 200 elsewhere in California, more than 400 in New York City, more than 200 in Seattle and about 80 in Atlanta.
The exodus at Twitter is ongoing, including the company’s chief privacy officer, Damien Kieran, and chief information security officer Lea Kissner, who tweeted Thursday that “I’ve made the hard decision to leave Twitter.”
Cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos, a former Facebook security chief, tweeted Thursday that there is a “serious risk of a breach with drastically reduced staff” that could also put Twitter at odds with a 2011 order from the Federal Trade Commission that required it to address serious data security lapses.
“Twitter made huge strides towards a more rational internal security model and backsliding will put them in trouble with the FTC” and other regulators in the U.S. and Europe, Stamos said.
The FTC said in a statement Thursday that it is “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”
“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” said the agency’s statement. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”
The FTC would not say whether it was investigating Twitter for potential violations. If it were, it is empowered to demand documents and depose employees.
Twitter paid a $150 million penalty in May for violating the 2011 consent order and its updated version established new procedures requiring the company to implement an enhanced privacy protection program as well as beefing up info security.
Those new procedures include an exhaustive list of disclosures Twitter must make to the FTC when introducing new products and services — particularly when they affect personal data collected on users.
Musk is, of course, fundamentally overhauling platform offerings, and it’s not known if he is telling the FTC about it. Twitter, which gutted its communications department, didn’t respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Musk has a history of tangling with regulators. “I do not respect the SEC,” Musk declared in a 2018 tweet.
The Securities and Exchange Commission recently examined for possible tardiness his disclosures to the agency of his purchases of Twitter stock to amass a major stake. In 2018, Musk and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million in fines over Musk’s allegedly misleading tweets saying he’d secured the funding to take the electric car maker private for $420 a share. Musk has fought the SEC in court over compliance with the agreement.
The consequences for not meeting FTC’s requirements can be severe — such as when Facebook had to pay $5 billion for privacy violations.
“If Twitter so much as sneezes, it has to do a privacy review beforehand,” tweeted Riana Pfefferkorn, a Stanford University researcher who said she previously provided Twitter outside legal counsel. “There are periodic outside audits, and the FTC can monitor compliance.”
Twitter was fined in May for the alleged commercial exploit of customers data — phone numbers and email addresses — that it had claimed it needed for security purposes, such as enabling multi-factor authentication.
—-
AP reporters Frank Bajak and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.
-
What Cramer is watching Thursday — cooler inflation, FTX crypto fallout, TJX upgrade
U.S. stock futures shot up more than 800 points and the 10-year Treasury yield sank below 4% after CPI release.
-
What Cramer is watching Wednesday — Disney CEO must go, no Red wave, Meta job cuts
U.S. stocks lower the day after the midterm election. Investors await results from too-close-to-call races.
-
Twitter exec says there will soon be three types of accounts: official, paid and unlabeled
Twitter product executive Esther Crawford revealed details about the way the social network’s new verification scheme will work on Tuesday, following the company’s acquisition by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in late October.
Some originally verified accounts will soon sport an “official” label, she said, while any user who pays $7.99 per month for Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription product, will sport a blue check mark. She did not specify what it will take to gain “official” status.
Musk, who is currently serving as Twitter’s CEO and sole director, has criticized Twitter’s original verification system, which gives a blue check mark, or verification, to notable users likely to be impersonated by bad actors.
Blue checks originally went to verify the identity of government officials, politicians, celebrities, some journalists, executives, medical professionals and organizations whose identity the company had verified. Musk himself has benefited from having the Twitter verification check mark. So have myriad journalists, including at CNBC.
Historically, the blue check mark let other Twitter users know that an account on the social network, and its contents, were coming from the individual or organization shown on that Twitter profile. At least some users whose accounts sported the verification mark had to provide the platform with personal info such as employer information, a phone number, or a copy of their driver’s license for identity verification.
Other social networks, like Meta‘s Facebook and Instagram, have similar verification systems.
Under Musk’s direction, the new Twitter Blue check mark will instead work as a paying subscriber badge that the company nonetheless plans to call “verification.” The subscription service has become a major focus for Musk, who wants the platform to become less reliant on advertisers and generate more revenue from subscriptions.
Crawford specified on Tuesday that subscribing to Twitter Blue and gaining the check mark from the company will no longer require identity verification, writing:
“A lot of folks have asked about how you’ll be able to distinguish between @TwitterBlue subscribers with blue checkmarks and accounts that are verified as official, which is why we’re introducing the ‘Official’ label to select accounts when we launch.”
“The new Twitter Blue does not include ID verification — it’s an opt-in, paid subscription that offers a blue checkmark and access to select features. We’ll continue to experiment with ways to differentiate between account types.”
“Not all previously verified accounts will get the ‘Official’ label and the label is not available for purchase. Accounts that will receive it include government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some public figures,” she wrote.
Crawford, director of product management at Twitter, joined the social media company when it acquired her startup, Squad, in December 2020. Since Musk took over, she has become the product leader for Twitter Blue. The team experienced a significant workforce reduction last week, which has affected its ability to ship a redesigned verification system by the Nov. 7 date Musk originally set as a sprint goal. Crawford’s team is now trying to hire back some of the employees who received termination notices.
Musk’s plans for the new “verification” system have drawn widespread criticism.
Comedians, influencers and actors including Valerie Bertinelli, Kathy Griffin, Ethan Klein, Sarah Silverman and Rich Sommer all appeared to change their Twitter display names on their verified profiles to “Elon Musk” without indicating that they were parodying his account.
A technologist and USC Annenberg Civic Media Fellow, Sydette Harry, told CNBC ahead of the new Twitter Blue launch that the company had problems thwarting harassment, hate speech, misinformation and impersonation long before the Tesla CEO took over. For example, the company has never managed to protect Black and other minority users effectively, especially those who were not celebrities or public figures with a blue check.
She added, of the new verification system, “This new method is going to be theatrically bad, because once people pay for verification it takes the issue from a community moderation problem, which can be expected on a free or ad-supported service, to a customer-service problem.”
She also said that she’s concerned Musk seems focused on U.S. users, despite the service’s large international customer base.
-
Want a blue check mark on Twitter? It may soon cost you $19.99 a month | CNN Business
New York
CNN Business
—
Twitter is considering offering verified accounts to users who are willing to pay $19.99 a month for a subscription service, and it may take away the coveted blue check marks of existing users if they don’t start paying for the product within 90 days, according to internal Twitter documents viewed by CNN.
It’s possible the plan and pricing could change, as Twitter’s new billionaire owner Elon Musk works to put his stamp on one of the world’s most important social media platforms. It’s also unclear if some verified users may be exempt from paying the fee; many international organizations and charities, for example are verified on Twitter.
The changes would update an existing paid Twitter feature known as “Twitter Blue, which currently costs $4.99 a month and is available in four countries including the United States, to include the verification feature. According to internal Twitter planning documents viewed by CNN, it appears the pay-for-verification feature would only be rolled out in those four countries to start and would be priced at $19.99 a month.
The Verge first reported the proposed pricing plan on Sunday. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted on Sunday. Later that day, Musk engaged with a poll tweeted out by Jason Calcanis, a member of the billionaire’s inner circle, asking how much they would pay to be verified on the platform. A large majority of responders selected the “wouldn’t pay” option.
“Interesting,” Musk tweeted in response to the poll.
Musk has moved quickly to shake up Twitter, including by firing its top execs. In tweets over the weekend, Musk polled his followers about whether to bring back Vine, Twitter’s defunct short-form video service, and said “absolutely” in response to a user’s suggestion to rethink the platform’s character limits. It’s unclear how committed Musk is to pursuing any or all of these changes.
Even before the deal was completed, Musk suggested the possibility of tying verification to a paid subscription service. In April, Musk said Twitter’s paid subscribers “should get an authentication checkmark.” In another tweet, he said: “Price should probably be ~$2/month, but paid 12 months up front & account doesn’t get checkmark for 60 days (watch for CC chargebacks) & suspended with no refund if used for scam/spam.”
While the blue check mark has emerged as a status symbol for users, it’s also designed to ensure users can determine which accounts are authentic and which are not, particularly for celebrities, brands and other influential accounts. If Musk were to create a paid barrier for verification, it could make it harder to distinguish whether a notable name is a bot or not.
Musk, who previously said he wants to “defeat the spam bots,” made the prevalence of spam and fake accounts on Twitter central to his effort to get out of the deal, before reversing course earlier this month and moving forward with the acquisition.
-
Elon Musk says Twitter has had ‘massive’ revenue drop as advertisers pause spending
Twitter has suffered a “massive drop in revenue” because of advertisers pausing spending on the social media platform, Elon Musk, the new owner of the company, said Friday without providing numbers.
In a tweet, the Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX CEO cast blame on “activist groups pressuring advertisers.” He said Twitter hasn’t changed its content moderation strategy, and added the company has done “everything we could to appease the activists.”
Musk didn’t specify how much revenue the company has lost from the pullback, or how he was able to attribute that loss to pressure from activist groups.
Musk reiterated his views Friday in an interview at the Baron Investment Conference.
“We’ve made no change in our operations at all,” Musk said at the event. “And we’ve done our absolute best to appease them and nothing is working. So this is a major concern. And I think this is frankly an attack on the First Amendment.”
Twitter has fired or laid off approximately 50% of its employees since he took over on Oct. 28.
In recent days, a number of companies said they would temporarily pause their advertising spending on Twitter to see how things would change there under Musk’s ownership. Tesla competitors General Motors and Audi, and food titan General Mills are among the companies that have paused Twitter spending.
United Airlines suspended its advertising on Twitter earlier this week, a spokesperson for the carrier said on Friday. The airline is still posting on the platform. It appeared to be the first U.S. passenger airline to say it suspended advertising on Twitter. Airlines separately provide customer service on Twitter, which United is also not suspending, the spokesperson said, declining to provide further detail on the decision.
Ad giant IPG advised clients to temporarily pause their Twitter media plans, though it’s unclear how many clients are taking IPG agencies’ advice.
Twitter informed employees Thursday evening that it would begin laying off staff members, according to communications obtained by CNBC. Twitter’s content moderation team is expected to be among those job cuts, Reuters reported, citing tweets by employees.
Musk in a tweet Friday, addressed the layoffs, saying: “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”
CNBC has not confirmed this with former Twitter employees.
CNBC has also learned that deep cuts were made to Twitter’s global marketing team which handles, among other things, reporting and metrics around ad performance, sales performance and spam.
Earlier this week Musk, who now calls himself “Chief Twit,” met with a group of leaders of civil society organizations to address concerns about hate speech and election-related misinformation on the platform.
Since Musk took the helm, online trolls and bigots raided Twitter, and hate speech has surged on the platform. Musk also tweeted out, then deleted, an unfounded and anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about a home invasion and assault on Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Some of the organizations represented in the hourlong Zoom call on Tuesday have now co-signed an open letter to top Twitter advertisers urging them to suspend their ad spending if Musk fails to enforce the company’s safety standards and community guidelines.
Despite Musk’s claims of a recent revenue slump, Twitter’s ad spending had been on the decline before his takeover of the company was complete, and before civil society organizations began pressuring brands, according to ad analytics platform MediaRadar.
Advertisers on Twitter increased between April and May, around the time that Musk’s plan to take Twitter private was announced, before it began to decline, according to data from MediaRadar. But the average number of advertisers on the platform fell from 3,900 in May to 2,300 in August. It had 2,900 advertisers in September.
