Jonathan Turley Busts Advertisers Leaving Twitter Who Were Cool With Censorship Before Musk
The left has been doing all it can to take down Twitter since Elon Musk took over, with Democrats trying to sic the FTC on Musk, floating the idea of pulling Twitter from the app store, and pressuring advertisers to stop advertising on the site.
According to NPR — which bases its report on Media Matters (so we do not have that as a question) — about 50 of the top 100 advertisers are no longer running ads on the site.
Half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers appear to no longer be advertising on the website. A report from Media Matters for America states that these 50 advertisers have spent almost $2 billion on Twitter ads since 2020 and more than $750 million just in 2022.
Seven additional advertisers have slowed their advertising to almost nothing, according to the report, which was published on Tuesday. These companies have paid Twitter more than $255 million since 2020.
Chevrolet, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., Ford, Jeep, Kyndryl, Merck & Co. and Novartis AG all issued statements about halting Twitter ads or were reported and confirmed as doing so. The others ceased advertising on the platform for a “significant period of time following direct outreach, controversies, and warnings from media buyers.”
Volkswagen has joined those companies, which is incredibly ironic, given they were founded originally by Nazis.
As George Washington law school professor Jonathan Turley observed, these companies were fine with how Twitter had censored speech in the past and shut down stories like the Hunter Biden laptop. They didn’t pull out because of the child exploitation on the site which Musk has now been working to purge. Yet now these advertisers have a problem with free speech?
Turley noted the moves from these companies came after efforts from those on the left including a group connected to Hillary Clinton.
Now, reports indicate that Clinton has unleashed her allies in the corporate world to coerce Musk to restore censorship policies or face bankruptcy. The effort of the Clinton-linked “Accountable Tech” reveals the level of panic in Democratic circles that free speech could be restored on one social media platform. The group was open about how losing control over Twitter could result in a loss of control over social media generally. For Clinton, it is an “all-hands on deck” call for censorship. She previously called upon foreign governments to crackdown on the free speech of Americans on Twitter.
We have been discussing how Clinton and others have called on foreign countries to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. It seems that, after years of using censorship by surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.
Accountable Tech led an effort to send a letter to top Twitter advertisers to force Musk to accept “non-negotiable” requirements for censorship.
25 other liberal groups including Media Matters and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation signed onto the letter to advertisers.
It’s shameful if any company caves to leftist pressure to then pressure Musk because he wants free speech. It says something about any of the companies that have gone along with this. Now, they may find themselves facing consequences when they lose consumers because of it. They’re perfectly free to pull their advertising, and we’re perfectly free not to buy from them. That’s why Musk was trying to sell Twitter Blue verification to be free of that pressure, so the platform could be self-supporting.
But my guess is that they’re cutting off their noses to spite their faces and they’re going to be back, just like CBS who fled Twitter and came back. The advertisers will be back when they think things have cooled down because it’s hard to quit a platform where there are millions of viewers.
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