Elon Musk has been head of Twitter for ten days and the record so far has been devastating: in addition to mass layoffs, there have been sharp falls in sales. Advertisers are pausing their bookings in droves. They are watching closely in which direction Musk is steering the social network.
After the takeover of Twitter by Tesla boss Elon Musk, the Italian-French carmaker Stellantis is suspending its ads on the short message service. "We are pausing the paid advertising contributions until we have a clearer picture of the future of the platform under the new leadership," said the Opel parent company. Musk previously acknowledged that Twitter has suffered a "massive" drop in revenue since he took over ten days ago.
The move joins Stellantis among the list of major companies that have stopped advertising on Twitter, including Volkswagen, United Airlines, General Mills, luxury automaker Audi of America, and General Motors. The US pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences also said that the company and its unit Kite are in the process of pausing their ads on Twitter.
Governments around the world are also watching developments on Twitter with suspicion. After a wave of layoffs in the US company, the federal government announced that the new owner would also have to comply with the legal requirements in Germany and the EU. One reserves the right to consequences, but has not yet decided, said a government spokeswoman. "We're very aware of the change at Twitter," she said. The EU Commission had also warned Musk.
Musk himself announced that he wants to make Twitter "by far the most accurate source of information about the world". "'Exactly' in whose eyes?" asked Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. Musk had announced that he would set up a committee with "very different points of view" to moderate the content on Twitter. No decisions about content or reinstatement of suspended account holders would be made until this panel met.
