Following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter on Thursday, many experts wondered if companies would begin suspending their advertising accounts to protest the eccentric billionaire.
Well, General Motors chose to do exactly that on Friday, according to CNBC and Reuters.
GM, an automaker in Detroit, has seen business falter in recent years as Elon Musk’s company Tesla has surged to the front of the automobile industry on the back of its fleet of electric vehicles.
GM used the word “pausing” to explain its suspension of twitter advertising, hinting that its advertisements may return to the platform at a later date.
GM has not deleted its account, nor has it indicated that it will in the future as it plans to continue using the platform to engage with customers directly.
“We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership. As in normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue,” the company announced in a statement.
Musk, for his part, released a statement this week outlining his plan for the overall direction in which he would lead Twitter.
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“Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise,” Musk said in a release meant to show his commitment to the growth of Twitter.
General Motors became one of the first major automakers to announce a plan to compete with Tesla by making a push to design more electric vehicles.
In 2017, GM declared that it believes the automobile market is quickly moving toward an “all-electric future.”
With GM pulling paid advertising from the platform, experts are saying that this could be a warning sign for what is to come for Twitter in the next few months.
Dan Ives, a tech analyst at Wedbush Securities, had this to say about the ordeal.
“It sends an ominous signal. GM is the first, but it’s not going to be the only one. We have to wait and see if there’s a wave. On the day that Musk closes the deal, it’s not the news he wanted to hear.”
As advertising made up 92% of the total revenue for Twitter’s second quarter, this news will undoubtedly be a wake-up call to Musk, who must work diligently to keep the advertisers that he inherited when he took command of Twitter on Thursday.
Companies will have an opportunity to define where they stand on the matter of free speech.
As Musk continues to move the social media platform toward becoming a bastion of free speech, many are saying that this will give too much of a voice to rhetoric that is not the norm in social and political discourse.
In the coming months, we will see which companies are willing to stand for free speech, and which will cower to the cancel culture and silencing of opponents that has become so prevalent in today’s media space.
By: Goose