Elon Musk Gets Shredded by Twitterers After Complaining About Declining Ad Revenue

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks before unveiling the Model Y at Tesla’s design studio in Hawthorne, Calif., March 14, 2019.When billionaire industrialist Elon Musk moved to buy Twitter, he promised sweeping changes to the platform, including cutting down on content controls designed to limit the spread of speech that encourages violence and bigotry, as well as disinformation and misinformation. It’s been a tumultuous week since Musk took over control of Twitter on October 28 and pronounced himself “Chief Twit.” He’s fired huge numbers of staff, announced a new fee system for account verification, and seems likely to abolish permanent bans against figures like former US President Donald Trump.All the changes have riled up one of Twitter’s primary revenue streams – corporate advertisers – who have begun putting their paid advertisements on the platform on pause. Among the brands halting their ads are Audi, Volkswagen, General Mills, and Pfizer, and major advertising companies like Publicis Groupe and WPP have scheduled special meetings with the new “Chief Twit” to sort out their concerns.“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” Musk tweeted on Friday.“Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”