It looks like Elon Musk may soon be the (proud??) owner of Twitter for the whopping sum of $44B.
In the past, Musk has said he disagrees with the lifetime ban from Twitter of former POTUS Donald Trump.
If/when he takes over, he may choose to rescind Trump’s ban and allow him back on the platform.
But it could cause several headaches and lead to an advertiser rebellion on the already ailing social media platform.
Content moderation is a hot-button topic, and Trump is perhaps the fieriest social media user. Advertisers may shy away from having their content appear alongside the content Trump posts, which would mean Twitter would need to develop a verifiable and reliable way to allow them to keep their content away from his posts.
After all, if something happens like January 6 again, advertisers will want their brands far away from the chaos.
Rohit Kulkarni, the senior analyst at MKM Partners, told Yahoo Finance that content moderation is “… a much bigger problem to solve. Even Facebook and even larger companies have not been able to solve it in a convincing manner.”
To help advertisers feel confident that their brands aren’t pulled into Trump’s drama, Kulkarni explains, “There would need to be a mechanism for advertisers to be able to choose where their ads are being shown and in a way, the [advertisers] feel to be next to content they view as brand-safe.”
Musk may enjoy his time as a Twitter user who can champion free speech for the platform’s most controversial former member but will probably find it a lot harder to enjoy being in charge – and losing money if Trump returns.
Whether you like him or not, he should have never been kicked off to begin with just like many others. It’s called freedom of speech for a reason.
If Ayatollah Khomeini can be on Twitter, openly denying holocaust and calling on murder of Jews, gays and restriction of women, and Vladimir Putin can be on Twitter – I am not sure what the rationale was to ban Donald Trump – other than “orange man very bad and very orange” Libs are just afraid that Elon will take their safe space away from them and subject them to reality of normal thought…
Because he is Orange.