Cereal company Cheerios and Lucky Charms joins General Motors Co and Audi, among others, to pull out of the platform
General Mills is the latest to sign up for a developing organization of corporations that have stopped advertising on Twitter after billionaire Elon Musk acquired the social media platform for $44 billion.
The company, known for its Cheerios and Lucky Charms cereals, showed Thursday that it would stop advertising on the platform. “We will continue to monitor this new direction and our marketing spend,” spokeswoman Kelsey Roemhildt said.
Last week, the top U. S. automaker was a major U. S. automaker. U. S. Motors Co. , General Motors Co, suspended paid advertising on Twitter amid chaos at the company. Volkswagen AG’s Audi also said Thursday it would suspend classified ads and “continue to assess the situation,” spokesman Whaewon Choi-Wiles said.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Pfizer also suspended ad spend on Twitter. The pharmaceutical company did not respond to a request for comment.
The growing exodus of advertisers comes amid considerations that Musk will fix information and security protections on the platform. As civil rights teams consult on potential moderation issues, companies are wondering if staying on Twitter could tarnish their brands.
Shortly before taking over the San Francisco company last week, Musk promised advertisers that he would not allow Twitter to have a “free hell,” an indication that there would still be consequences for violators of its rules against harassment, violence or elections and Covid-19. Related disinformation.
But since then, some users posted racial slurs and recirculated long-debunked conspiracy theories in an obvious attempt to see if the site’s policies still applied. The NAACP said this week that it had expressed to Musk its considerations about the “dangerous and potentially fatal hatred and conspiracies that have proliferated on Twitter” under his watch. Other civil liberties teams like Glaad and Color of Change are calling on all major advertisers to suspend ad purchases, arguing that mass layoffs at the company can undermine content moderation standards.
Other top Twitter advertisers, including Warner Discovery, Coca-Cola and Nestle, responded to requests for comment on their advertising plans.
Some compare their plans after Twitter’s new “content moderation board” meeting. Musk said he would not reinstate any accounts or make major decisions about content before being summoned. No date has been announced for this meeting.
On Friday, Musk said Twitter had noticed a “drop in revenue” as activists pressure advertisers to leave the platform “even though nothing has replaced content moderation. “
Twitter has noticed a big drop in revenue, as teams of activists pressure advertisers, though nothing has replaced content moderation and done its best to appease activists. Extremely messy! They are seeking to destroy free speech in America.