This article makes no sense; it sounds like leftist propaganda.
Advertisers only care about 'brand safety' to the extent that it impacts their ability to sell stuff.
So long as users keep using the platform, advertisers will keep coming back - They're not going to vacate the platform and let their competitors get all the eyeballs... If they did, those competitors would gain market share and make incumbents irrelevant.
Users have made it clear that they want free speech on social media platforms so I don't see how giving users what they want would cause them to leave.
The problem with Twitter so far is that they sold out to big governments and big corporations and completely neglected their users in the process. Having front-row access to users, Twitter is actually in a position to dictate the rules; it should not be taking orders from politicians and corporate executives when those orders are harmful to its users.
It does sound a bit like someone panicking that the Twitter might stop censoring stuff they don't agree with.
And the whole "content moderation" argument is really weak, sites worked entirey fine without the heavy content moderation (including Youtube, porn and copyright violation was removed but for good part of site's existence pretty much anything went). It only got more heavy because Google wanted to appease the ad market
Sure you can argue you have to take account laws and such and that will take effort but social sites don't exactly stop there.
> Having front-row access to users, Twitter is actually in a position to dictate the rules; it should not be taking orders from politicians and corporate executives when those orders are harmful to its users.
It's a corporation so priority will always be money one way or another. Now putting themselves as "open" might work, but so might doing what Twitter (and google, and facebook, and pretty much any big tech with social media) does and nudge the visibility of content to stuff they want to happen. "Censorship" isn't even needed, it isn't removed, it just won't show up in search results or recommendations. Pretend people don't click it and of course nobody can verify that and you're all good.
> sites worked entirely fine without the heavy content moderation
Everyone keeps referencing the internet of yesteryear. I would love to go back to the internet of yesteryear with the limited audience it had but Youtube's revenue is 2022 is seven times what it was in 2015! Twitter grew four x since 2011. The Content Moderation story has completely changed.
If that initial statement about not caring about the ad's context were true the advertising companies wouldn't have torched Youtube's as revenue 5 years ago because explicitly their ads were played on unsavory content. It turns out they do care, probably not for moral reasons but presumably because some bean counter actively calculated that they'd lose more than they gained from such perception of being associated with Fringe viewpoints.
The problem seems to be that large companies don't want to be associated with certain 'deplorable' content but at the same time, they don't want to vacate those spaces and thereby allow other companies (I.e. competitors) to target and acquire those 'deplorable' customers... They'd prefer it if those 'deplorable' spaces simply did not exist on these platforms.
If this is the case, it is anti-competitive. Companies should not prevent new markets from forming around growing new ideologies and communities (regardless of how deplorable they find them). Companies have to choose; stay true to their current ideology and miss out on new market opportunities or embrace changing ideologies and risk losing some of their existing user base.
This makes no sense because people on Twitter choose who they follow. If some 'deplorables' want to follow some other deplorables, then let them; I'm sure some companies will still want to advertise to them.
The people who only want to consume government and corporate propaganda will only see content from like-minded people anyway; they will get the safe experience that they want. No problem! Companies can target them and sell them cricket flour, dried maggots, lab-grown meat and COVID booster vaccine number 27... These people won't even realize that the deplorables also use Twitter because they will be in a different filter bubble.
Well you can unsubscribe from those people who tend to retweet stuff you don't agree with. You are free to seal yourself into your filter bubble as much as you want... Just don't try to seal other people into filter bubbles that they never agreed with. You should only have a say about your own filter bubble.
If someone wants to be brainwashed in a particular way by limiting their exposure to alternative ideas, they are free to do that to themselves! But if someone wants to expose themselves to as many diverse ideas as possible and open up their minds as much as possible, then they should also be free to do that!
If this ends up posing a threat to a small number of elites... Maybe it means that these people have too much exposure and power anyway. Maybe society should be reorganized so that power is more spread out; giving up some power is a good way to reduce the number of one's problems and enemies. That's what the British Royal family did; and that's why they still have their heads on their shoulders.
Advertisers only care about 'brand safety' to the extent that it impacts their ability to sell stuff.
So long as users keep using the platform, advertisers will keep coming back - They're not going to vacate the platform and let their competitors get all the eyeballs... If they did, those competitors would gain market share and make incumbents irrelevant.
Users have made it clear that they want free speech on social media platforms so I don't see how giving users what they want would cause them to leave.
The problem with Twitter so far is that they sold out to big governments and big corporations and completely neglected their users in the process. Having front-row access to users, Twitter is actually in a position to dictate the rules; it should not be taking orders from politicians and corporate executives when those orders are harmful to its users.