Twitter seems to be running into a lot of trouble with advertisers. Brands have been pulling their ads from the platform due to concerns around moderation. And more recently, the world"s biggest ad company GroupM is reportedly telling its clients that buying ads on the platform is "high-risk."
The advice, according to a report by Digiday, was shared in a document that warns marketers of the risks of advertising on the social networking platform recently acquired by business magnate Elon Musk. The document says that the label was given due to the high volume of Twitter executives leaving or being fired, blue checkmark abuse on corporate accounts, and the potential inability for Twitter to comply with their federal consent decree.
If Twitter wants to lose the high-risk label, Twitter needs to meet the following requirements:
- A return to baseline levels of NSFW / toxic conversation on the platform
- Re-population of IT Security, Privacy, Trust & Safety senior staff
- Establishment of internal checks & balances
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Complete transparency on future development plans of community guidelines / content moderation / anything affecting user security or brand safety
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Demonstrated commitment of effective content moderation, enforcing current Twitter Rules (e.g. account impersonation, violative content removal timing, intolerance of hate speech and misinformation)
When Elon Musk acquired Twitter, one of the things he immediately did was revamp the Twitter Blue subscription model. According to Musk, Twitter "needs to pay the bills somehow," and they cannot rely entirely on advertisers, so he gave users the power to have a verified checkmark for $8 a month.
Later on, Twitter launched an "Official" tag to help distinguish accounts that have been verified via Twitter Blue and accounts that are verified as official. The tag was killed not even 24 hours since it launched, but was then reinstated after people exploited their verified checkmarks to pretend to be companies and politicians and post inappropriate content. Twitter then paused Twitter Blue to control the impersonations on the platform.
Source: Digiday