{"id":27214,"date":"2022-11-10T06:57:12","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T06:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=27214"},"modified":"2022-11-10T06:57:13","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T06:57:13","slug":"elon-musk-scrambles-to-reassure-advertisers-amid-blue-check-verification-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2022\/11\/10\/elon-musk-scrambles-to-reassure-advertisers-amid-blue-check-verification-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk scrambles to reassure advertisers amid \u2018blue check\u2019 verification chaos\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Elon Musk sought to reassure big companies that advertise on Twitter on Wednesday that his chaotic takeover<\/strong> of the social media platform won\u2019t harm their brands, acknowledging that some \u201cdumb things\u201d might happen on his way to creating what he says will be a better, safer user experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest erratic move on the minds of major advertisers \u2014 that the company depends on for revenue \u2014 was Musk\u2019s decision to abolish a new \u201cofficial\u201d label on high-profile Twitter accounts just hours after introducing it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter began adding gray labels to prominent accounts Wednesday, including brands like Coca-Cola, Nike and Apple, to indicate that they are authentic. A few hours later, the labels started disappearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cApart from being an aesthetic nightmare when looking at the Twitter feed, it was simply another way of creating a two-class system,\u201d the billionaire Tesla CEO told advertisers in an hour-long conversation broadcast live on Twitter. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t addressing the core problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk\u2019s comments were his most expansive about Twitter\u2019s future since he closed a $44 billion deal to buy the company late last month, dismissed its top executives almost immediately and, on Friday,\u00a0fired roughly half of its workforce<\/strong>. Major brands including General Motors, United Airlines, General Mills and others have\u00a0temporarily halted buying ads on the platform<\/strong>\u00a0as they watch whether Musk\u2019s plans to loosen its guardrails against hate speech will lead to a rise in online toxicity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scores of companies big and small made their presence known among the more than 100,000 Twitter Space listeners by signing in with their brand Twitter accounts. The brand accounts for companies including banks Deutsche Bank, TD Ameritrade, gas company Chevron, automaker Nissan, airline Air Canada and many others appeared. Car brand Audi, which has paused Twitter ads, was there, as was retailer R.E.I., which said after the call its ads were still paused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk said he\u2019s still planning a \u201ccontent moderation council\u201d representing diverse viewpoints that will tackle inappropriate content and reassure advertisers, but it would take \u201ca few months\u201d to put together. He said it will be advisory and \u201cnot a command council.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lou Paskalis, longtime marketing and media executive and former Bank of America head of global media, said the briefing raised questions that will likely leave Fortune 500 advertisers uneasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest concern for big advertisers is brand safety and risk avoidance, he said. And Musk seems uninterested in reining in his Twitter persona that can be divisive \u2014 such as his tweet ahead of the election<\/strong> advising Americans to vote Republican.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo come out like Elon did … and say \u2018vote Republican since there\u2019s a Democrat in the White House\u2019 \u2014 I don\u2019t know what marketer wants to go near that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One solution could be to hire a CEO to run the company and create stability while Musk continues to be his \u201cChief Twit\u201d persona, Paskalis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk had earlier threatened by tweet<\/strong> a \u201cthermonuclear name & shame\u201d on advertisers that quit Twitter. But he took a more measured approach Wednesday, asking them to \u201cgive it a minute and kind of see how things are evolving.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe best way to understand what\u2019s going on with Twitter is use Twitter,\u201d he told the group, which was represented mostly by the head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the confusion on Twitter continued Wednesday. The rollout hours earlier of the \u201cofficial\u201d labels appeared arbitrary, with some politicians, news outlets and well-known personalities getting the label and others not. In some cases, whether users could see an account\u2019s \u201cofficial\u201d label appeared to depend on what country they were in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the labels started disappearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YouTube personality and author John Green got the label but his younger brother and \u201cvlogging\u201d partner Hank Green didn\u2019t make the cut. Then John Green\u2019s label was gone. Another popular YouTuber, Marques Brownlee, who posts videos on technology, tweeted he got the label, then tweeted again that it disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just killed it,\u201d Musk responded, though at first it wasn\u2019t clear if he was referring specifically to Brownlee\u2019s label or the entire project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The site\u2019s current system of using \u201cblue checks\u201d to confirm an account\u2019s authenticity will soon go away for those who don\u2019t pay a monthly fee. The checkmarks will be available for anyone willing to pay a $7.99-a-month subscription,<\/strong> which will also include some bonus features, such as fewer ads and the ability to have tweets given greater visibility than those coming from non-subscribers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The platform\u2019s current verification system has been in place since 2009 and was created to ensure high-profile and public-facing accounts are who they say they are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experts have expressed concern that making the checkmark available to anyone for a fee could lead to impersonations and the spreading of misinformation and scams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gray label \u2014 a color that tends to blend into the background whether you use light or dark mode to scroll Twitter \u2014 was an apparent compromise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Esther Crawford, a Twitter employee who has been working on the verification overhaul, had said Tuesday on Twitter<\/strong> that the \u201cofficial\u201d label would be added to \u201cselect accounts\u201d when the new system launches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot all previously verified accounts will get the \u2018Official\u2019 label and the label is not available for purchase,\u201d said Crawford. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after the labels started disappearing Wednesday, she again took to Twitter to say \u201cthere are no sacred cows in product at Twitter anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cElon is willing to try lots of things \u2014 many will fail, some will succeed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are about 423,000 verified accounts under the outgoing system.<\/strong> Many of those belong to celebrities, businesses and politicians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a large chunk of verified accounts belong to individual journalists, some with tiny followings at local newspapers and news sites around the world. The idea was to verify reporters so their identities couldn\u2019t be used to push false information on Twitter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk, who often bristles at critical news coverage, pushed back against that use of the tool Wednesday, saying he wanted to elevate \u201ccitizen journalism\u201d and the \u201cvoice of the people\u201d over publications he suggested had too much influence in defining the \u201cWestern narrative.\u201d Journalism professionals generally consider Musk\u2019s concept of elevating \u201ccitizen journalists\u201d dangerous because it ignores the need for standards, including fact-checking, that responsible news organizations enforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk sought to reassure big companies that advertise on Twitter on Wednesday that his chaotic takeover of the social media platform won\u2019t harm their brands, acknowledging that some \u201cdumb things\u201d might happen on his way to creating what he says will be a better, safer user experience. The latest erratic move on the minds of major […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":27215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[10494,11353,3504,7358,9330,5717,1953,13175,11961,6369,11254,7462,8590,5262,5799,5875,911,4119,6655,3577,5491,5861,9515,3874,8487,7259,5390,5519,11973,6332,8386,11698,11625,6944,8383,5807,5349,5470,10041,6675,5351,10329,5350,11052,8385,10943,6571,2982,3954,36,594,9550,10674],"class_list":["post-27214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-airline","tag-airlines","tag-apple","tag-bank","tag-banks","tag-billionaire","tag-canada","tag-car","tag-celebrities","tag-chaos","tag-citizen","tag-cola","tag-conversation","tag-cut","tag-democrat","tag-deutsche-bank","tag-election","tag-elon-musk","tag-erratic","tag-future","tag-gas","tag-general-motors","tag-killed","tag-lead","tag-melon-musk","tag-musk","tag-nike","tag-nissan","tag-one","tag-online","tag-platform","tag-politicians","tag-professionals","tag-republican","tag-revenue","tag-risk","tag-social-media","tag-space","tag-speech","tag-technology","tag-tesla","tag-trade","tag-twitter","tag-united-airlines","tag-verified","tag-watch","tag-white","tag-white-house","tag-will","tag-world","tag-who","tag-youtube","tag-youtuber"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}