Elon Musk announced to limit the reach of tweets that do not conform to the platform’s guidelines.
San Francisco:
Twitter chief Elon Musk tried to reassure wary advertisers on Tuesday by extolling the site’s newly introduced content moderation policy against hateful content.
Speaking at a meeting in Florida, the controversial billionaire outlined new rules, first announced on Monday, to limit the reach of tweets that don’t conform to the platform’s guidelines.
“If someone has something hateful to say, that doesn’t mean they should have a microphone,” the self-described free-speech autocrat told reporters.
“They should still be able to say it, but they don’t need to impose it on people,” he added.
Under the new policy, unveiled in a blog post titled “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach,” Twitter will soon begin tagging posts whose visibility has been limited.
The blog post said the label would “bring a new level of transparency to enforcement actions”.
“Tweets with these labels will be less searchable on the platform. Additionally, we will not place ads next to content that we label.”
Since buying the so-called Bird app last year in a rollercoaster deal worth $44 billion, Musk has made rapid improvements to content moderation on the platform, allowing the return of many users who have been accused of tweeting hate or spreading misinformation. Posting was banned.
At the same time, he reduced the company’s workforce from more than 7,500 to less than 2,000 employees.
Last week, US public radio NPR said it was leaving Twitter after the site labeled the highly respected news outlet’s account as “state-affiliated media”, describing it in the same way as media in authoritarian countries like Russia or China. Doing branding.
The tag was later modified to read “Government funded media”, which was also applied to Britain’s BBC.
Following the row, Canada’s CBC/Radio-Canada and Swedish public radio Sveriges Radio (SR) also left the social network.
The drama came against the backdrop of the rollout of another controversial new policy, as Twitter has said that starting April 20, it will only award its famous blue checkmark to accounts that pay for its Twitter Blue service.
According to analyst Jasmine Enberg of market research firm Insider Intelligence, Twitter’s revenue is set to fall 28 percent this year because “advertisers don’t trust Musk.”
But for Musk, the ability to tinker with Twitter’s protocols may be worth the financial risk of scaring off advertisers.
“It’s perfectly fine to say you want your ad to appear in certain places on Twitter and not in other places,” Musk said Tuesday.
“But it’s no good trying to say what you can or can’t do. And if it means Twitter loses hundreds of thousands of dollars, we’ll lose it,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)