{"id":26856,"date":"2023-06-07T12:10:38","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T19:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=26856"},"modified":"2023-06-07T12:10:39","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T19:10:39","slug":"how-musk-is-setting-up-twitters-new-ceo-to-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/06\/07\/how-musk-is-setting-up-twitters-new-ceo-to-fail\/","title":{"rendered":"How Musk Is Setting up Twitter\u2019s New CEO to Fail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Linda<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Linda Yaccarino pictured at the Variety Entertainment Summit at CES, Aria Resort and Casino, Las Vegas on January 8, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0(Photo by Isaac Brekken\/Variety\/Penske Media via Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unless Linda Yaccarino has the authority to reverse Musk\u2019s many harmful policy decisions and reinvest in content moderation and enforcement, the social-media platform is headed for insolvency.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

TIM KARR<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jun 06, 2023 Common Dreams<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter\u2019s new boss has inherited a company in a tailspin\u2014and unless Linda Yaccarino takes up advice Elon Musk has ignored, the social-media platform is destined to crash and burn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to reporting Monday<\/a> by The<\/em>New York Times<\/em>, Twitter\u2019s U.S. advertising revenue is down 59% from a year ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are just the latest sinking business numbers for Twitter since Musk assumed control of the company in October 2022. And they came on the day Yaccarino is reportedly due to start work as the new CEO of the besieged social-media company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk has decided to ignore an elemental truth: To grow healthy and profitable online communities, you need effective content moderation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter\u2019s latest round of bad news recalls a meeting<\/a> that Free Press and other racial-justice and digital-rights groups held during the first week of Elon Musk\u2019s disastrous run as CEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We sat down with the new-media boss to gauge his commitment to community standards, election integrity, and content moderation. We urged Musk to retain and actually enforce existing content-moderation rules if he wanted advertisers to continue to spend money on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He initially seemed<\/a>to<\/a>agree<\/a> with us, but quickly reversed course, laying off many of those on the company\u2019s trust and safety team in charge of this important work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk then granted a \u201cgeneral amnesty<\/a>\u201d to legions of neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, and anti-vaccine trolls, reinstating thousands of previously banned accounts. He also gutted long-standing content-moderation rules and stopped enforcing Twitter\u2019s ban on Covid-19 disinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By then advertisers were leaving the platform in droves<\/a>. Musk\u2019s Twitter purchase saddled the company with $13 billion in loans, and his refusal to seriously consider content moderation and brand safety ensured that Musk wouldn\u2019t have the revenue needed to pay off these debts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who loaned him the money were banking on a \u201csmall chance that Elon is some sort of genius and can turn around an operational and financial situation that looks increasingly doomed,\u201d William Cohan<\/a> of Puck<\/em> wrote at the time. But Musk\u2019s erratic behavior has dashed those hopes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Content moderation is essential<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A mistake-riddled attempt to recoup this lost revenue by selling Twitter Blue subscriptions hasn\u2019t won over even 1% of the platform\u2019s users, according to Bloomberg<\/em><\/a>. The company is now worth only a fraction of the $44-billion sum Musk paid for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent research<\/a> by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) underscores the point we were making to Musk during our early November meeting: Allowing Twitter to become a hate-trolling hellscape has imperiled the company\u2019s remaining business prospects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a CCDH sampling, Twitter has failed to remove 99% of hate speech posted by Twitter Blue users. Instead Musk has enabled algorithms that amplify these and other paid accounts over those that don\u2019t pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter feels increasingly \u201cunpredictable and chaotic,\u201d Jason Kint of Digital Content Next told the Times<\/em>. \u201cAdvertisers want to run in an environment where they are comfortable and can send a signal about their brand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make matters worse, Musk\u2019s own politics have become increasingly reactionary and strident, so much so that he has started to sound like many of the most vitriolic hate trolls featured in CCDH’s latest research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA stroll through Musk\u2019s replies on the site reveals the extent to which one of the richest men in the world spends his time replying to far-right influencers and nodding in approval to their racist memes,\u201d Charlie Warzel<\/a> wrote in The Atlantic<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk rushed online to defend racist comic-strip author Scott Adams after he characterized Black people in the United States as a \u201chate group.\u201d And Musk routinely boosts \u201canti-woke\u201d influencers, adopting much of their anti-trans and homophobic rhetoric. He\u2019s been binging on right-wing memes to fuel MAGA fears about alleged censorship of conservative voices and to bolster antisemitic claims about a global cabal that controls the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new CEO, regardless of her marketing savvy, will likely do little to save Twitter from the extremist bent of her boss. As my colleague Jessica J. Gonz\u00e1lez told CNN<\/em><\/a>: \u201cMusk is setting Yaccarino up to fail\u2014as long as he continues to make the platform toxic, it will be impossible to lure back advertisers and users.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A CEO reshuffle won\u2019t be enough\u2014unless Yaccarino has the authority to reverse Musk\u2019s many harmful policy decisions and reinvest in content moderation and enforcement. So far, Musk hasn\u2019t given any indication that he\u2019ll allow someone else to fix his long string of business screw-ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk has decided to ignore an elemental truth: To grow healthy and profitable online communities, you need effective content moderation. If Twitter becomes insolvent\u2014which seems more likely by the day\u2014it\u2019ll be because he lacks this basic business sense about social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His decision to dismiss this advice offered by a small group of advocates during his first week on the job set Twitter on a path to ruin that today seems inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TIM KARR<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Karr is the Senior Director of Strategy and Communications for Free Press and Save the Internet. Karr oversees campaigns on public<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linda Yaccarino pictured at the Variety Entertainment Summit at CES, Aria Resort and Casino, Las Vegas on January 8, 2020. \u00a0(Photo by Isaac Brekken\/Variety\/Penske Media via Getty Images) Unless Linda Yaccarino has the authority to reverse Musk\u2019s many harmful policy decisions and reinvest in content moderation and enforcement, the social-media… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[529],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26857,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26856\/revisions\/26857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}