Advocacy Group lobbies Brands to force content policies on Musk’s Twitter
American civil society groups have formed an advocacy group to lobby America’s biggest brands including Coca-Cola, Disney and Kraft to boycott Twitter should the new owner, Elon Musk roll back content moderation policies limiting hate speech and election misinformation.
According to news monitored on CNN, the group in a letter sent to brands ahead of the 2022 NewFronts digital advertising conference, more than two dozen civil society groups suggested that marketers should secure commitments from Twitter to retain its most critical policies, including on civic integrity and hateful conduct, and threaten to withdraw funding if Twitter does not comply.
“As top advertisers on Twitter, your brand risks association with a platform amplifying hate, extremism, health misinformation, and conspiracy theorists,” the letter said, adding: “Your ad dollars can either fund Musk’s vanity project or hold him to account.”
Led by Accountable Tech, the technology advocacy organisation and the feminist group UltraViolet, and supported by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the digital rights group Free Press, the Group in their letter, made the brands to realise that they face the risk of reputational damage if their ads appear next to white supremacist content or other harmful material.
The move is in apparent reaction to Musk’s tweet, on free speech and taking Twitter private.
Though Twitter has declared, advertisers “we have no planned changes to our commitment to brand safety” but that the company “cannot speculate on changes Elon Musk may make post-closing”, the future of the micro-logging company however rests in the palms of Elon Musk who has declared his restore “free speech” to the platform by, among other things, easing up on content removals and account bans. He also wants to “authenticate all real humans”.
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