When I posted Friday’s QOTD, I was wondering if perhaps I was overthinking things. I wondered how Tesla boss Elon Musk owning Twitter — a social-media platform used by Tesla’s competitors — would affect the automotive industry and the automotive press.
Apparently, I am not the only one with concerns.
Later Friday, CNBC and other outlets reported General Motors has suspended Twitter advertising temporarily in the wake of Musk’s purchase of the platform.
“We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership. As is 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,” GM said in a statement.
GM has invested a lot of money to compete with Tesla — and, of course, the gang of EV startups and the rest of the legacy automakers — when it comes to EVs.
Now the company can, for the time being, avoid the awkwardness of advertising on a platform owned by a competitor’s boss.
CNBC asked Ford about its plans, and the Blue Oval said it hadn’t been paying for ads on Twitter even before Musk took over. Ford also said this to CNBC: “We will continue to evaluate the direction of the platform under the new ownership.”
Funny enough, CNBC showed Ford a promoted tweet that came from CEO Jim Farley — I think I’ve seen that same tweet on my own feed — and Ford said it wasn’t sure when it, or any agency it works with, had last paid to advertise on Twitter.
Like GM, Ford said it will continue to interact with its customers on the platform.
Other automakers contacted by the outlet either refused to comment, or like EV startup Nikola, said they had no plans to change their current approach to Twitter.
Part of the uproar about Musk’s takeover of Twitter has centered around his past rhetoric about “free-speech absolutism”. Observers have suggested an unmoderated or lightly moderated Twitter could become overrun with trolls, bullies, and those who use bigoted speech to harass, and advertisers would not want to promote their companies alongside such speech.
Furthermore, if Twitter discourse degenerates too much, users could flee the platform, leaving it less lucrative for advertisers.
That, of course, is just speculation at this point, and Musk has promised that Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” under his watch.
He has also talked about having an internal council for major content-moderation decisions, something Twitter apparently had even before Musk took over.
Each company will obviously have to make its own decision deciding whether to have an advertising presence on Twitter or not. GM, for one, has decided to be cautious and wait and see what happens.
[Image: GM]
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