‘Musk’s Own Behavior’ Is the Real Reason Advertisers Say They Are Ditching Twitter, Not ‘Activist Group’ Pressure: Axios Media Reporter
Axios media reporter Sara Fischer joined CNN’s The Lead on Friday to discuss Elon Musk’s recent tweet blaming “activist groups pressuring advertisers” for a “massive drop in revenue” for Twitter.
Fischer spoke with anchor John Berman, who began the segment by noting Musk’s comments.
“Twitter’s hot mess is our tech lead. Major layoffs today, but new owner Elon Musk didn’t mention that in a tweet. Instead, he complained about money. Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, he writes, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, something he calls extremely messed up. Let’s bring in CNN media analyst Sarah Fisher. Sara, what is Musk talking about here and what are advertisers say?” Berman asked.
“Yeah. Well, advertisers are expressing a lot of frustration. Those activist groups that you mentioned, groups like Color of Change, the NAACP, are arguing that Twitter has become more filled with hate speech in the past few days,” Fischer began, adding:
But really, what advertisers are frustrated about, John and I’ve been on the phone with them for the past few days, is Elon Musk’s own behavior, tweeting out that article that had misinformation about the attack on Paul Pelosi.
Some of the other things that he’s done has made people think that he doesn’t take brand safety, hate speech, violence seriously on the platform.
“So as to the layoffs. Our friend Donie O’Sullivan obtained the email sent to Twitter employees, telling them to stay home, stay home and wait for an email today, informing them of their fate. Part of it says, quote, If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email,” Berman then explained.
“If your employment is impacted, you’ll receive a notification with next steps via your personal email. So what are you hearing about the process and just how many employees have been let go?” he asked Fischer.
“Oh, it’s been complete chaos. So out of the 7500 Twitter employees, around half of them, around 3700 have been let go. And John, some of the teams that have been impacted are the ones that advertisers really care about. Teams that work on things like trust and safety. But Donie’s reporting is right,” she replied, adding:
A lot of the communication about layoffs has been so chaotic. One of the things we saw last night was that Twitter users were slacking each other messages saying, it’s been great working with you for the past five years or ten years. And they thought if they don’t get Slack access after midnight, that’s when they knew that there would be cut.
“Wow. What a day it must have been for all of those people. Hundreds, thousands of employees. Sarah Fischer, thank you so much,” Berman said concluding the interview.
Watch the full clip above via CNN
