The latest installment of Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition and all the drama surrounding it is a poll the new CEO has apparently launched, for Twitter advertisers.
So far, despite rumbling displeasure from some Twitter diehards — and to be fair, Twitter diehards are known to be snarky about almost everything — there’s been little reaction from advertisers to the change. owner of Twitter. Despite significant personnel changes and potentially significant changes in policy, Twitter advertisers have, on the whole, accepted the events as an understandable turmoil to be expected when a major medium changes hands.
Advertisers should support:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022
In this context, advertisers might not like the new survey, which seems to put them in the spotlight and ask them to choose a side — which also seems to contradict the open letter he wrote to advertisers in late October. It’s hard not to interpret this poll as a test of whether corporate advertisers watching Twitter’s transformation will tune into Musk’s political views in their Twitter activity going forward.
Before we begin, let’s be clear: Twitter belongs to Elon Musk. He is both the owner and the CEO. He can wake up tomorrow, fire everyone (unless there is a prior legal constraint) and tear down the headquarters. It is his legal right, and it is not disputed.
What is disputed is the value of a public presence on an open platform. Everyone thinks they’re in favor of free speech, but everyone also has a line they shouldn’t cross, whether it’s Donald Trump’s old tweets or all the racist trolls that followed the takeover. control of Twitter by Elon Musk.
As Elon Musk sinks deeper into the culture war quagmire, more and more companies are going to start asking serious questions about the value of their presence on Twitter. Putting advertisers on the spot in this way is a dead-end scenario.