Guess we really do live in a simulation.
On Tuesday, as an airplane sponsored by a coalition of civil rights group circled above the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach trailing the message “Musk is bad for business #StopToxicTwitter,” Elon Musk appeared at the inaugural Possible conference to (sort of) woo an audience of advertisers, ad tech companies and publishers.
In conversation with Linda Yaccarino, NBCU’s chair of global advertising and partnerships, Musk nonchalantly defended his stance on “free speech,” the rise of citizen journalism (concurrent with the demise of traditional publishers) and Twitter’s supposed dedication to trust and transparency.
Yaccarino kicked off the conversation by asking Musk how it’s been going since the acquisition last year, to which Musk replied, “It’s going well. … It’s entertaining. … It’s a trainwreck sometimes.”
That’s actually a rather fair assessment. The rest was a strange mélange of jokes, offhanded commentary and a selection of very particular, facetious and in some cases arguably spurious POVs.
Musk on Twitter’s new “freedom of speech, not reach” content enforcement policy:
“If somebody has something hateful to say, that doesn’t mean you should give them a megaphone. They should still be able to say it, but it shouldn’t be pushed on people. … We’re not going to promote that to people or recommend it. We’ll put it behind a warning label.
“This is something we have to be very careful with as we roll it out … but if people are saying things that make you sad or they’re encouraging negativity, then we’re not going to amplify that, which Twitter had done in the past.”
On whether he’s been able to derisk Twitter for advertisers:
“We have adjacency controls in place that are really quite effective. Ads will not appear next to anything remotely negative. … But you must put controls in place because there is an excess of inventory that is negative.”
On his disdain for traditional media:
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“I recently had an interview with a little organization called the BBC. That was entertaining. The reporter was claiming he’d seen all of this hate speech on Twitter, so I asked, ‘Can you give me a single example?’ And he couldn’t – not even one.
“It’s important to bear in mind that traditional media is a competitor to Twitter. They compete against Twitter for your ad dollars. … You shouldn’t take your competitor’s word for it.”
[Author’s note: You can, quite literally, search for racial and ethnic slurs and hateful phrases on Twitter, such as “Hitler was right,” if you are so inclined, and the results are there.]
On whether he’s open to feedback from advertisers:
“Legitimate concerns advertisers have – that I want to hear. Things should be discussed in an open forum.”
On advertising in general:
“When advertising is relevant to users and, especially, the message is entertaining and interesting, it’s content. But if an ad isn’t relevant to users, that’s spam. Advertising can go all the way from spam to quality content, and we want to focus on content.”
Still, though …
— Marktech (@Marktech) February 19, 2023
