[philwelch]

The loss of ad revenue isn’t a consequence of downtime or losing staff, and I wouldn’t agree they’ve had “a lot” of downtime. Most of the drop in ad revenue is a consequence of content management decisions that seem to be a matter of principle for the company’s new owner.

It’s strange to see hiring as an indication that a company is doing poorly; regardless, obviously Twitter is in a position where they’ve needed to eliminate much of their headcount and replace much of the rest.

[_jal]

> The loss of ad revenue isn’t a consequence of downtime or losing staff

Firing the Trust and Safety team had a huge impact on advertising - that's why big brands find Xitter so toxic.

It is certainly also true that Musk's... emanations haven't helped relations with advertisers, but it is the lack of moderation that freaks them out, and also by-the-by chased off a noticeable fraction of the user base.

And now there's the bots:

https://www.threads.net/search?q=Twitter&serp_type=tags&tag_...

[philwelch]

> Firing the Trust and Safety team

Yes, technically, adopting a principled stance favoring freedom of expression implies laying off people whose job is to infringe upon freedom of expression, but it’s disingenuous to cast that as a staffing issue rather than a change in policy.

And I’m sure advertisers also really hate the fact that even the ads on the timeline can get community notes. But, well, I’ve seen what other platforms turn into under the foul influence of advertisers and I’m frankly not interested. If that means it has to be subsidized by an eccentric billionaire out of principle, so what? Other billionaires subsidize much more toxic outlets, the Washington Post for instance.

[pests]

I'm not seeing his principled stance. In fact, it seems business as usual. He still bans content he doesn't agree with and doesn't follow through with anything he says.

[rpmisms]

I actually love the community notes on ads. Really good stuff.