Civil Rights leaders are airing their frustrations over Elon Musk’s decision to lift the ban on the Twitter account of former President Donald Trump while doubling down on advertisers, calling on them to pause spending on Musk’s platform.
“In Elon Musk’s Twittersphere, you can incite an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which led to the deaths of multiple people, and still be allowed to spew hate speech and violent conspiracies on his platform,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “Any advertiser still funding Twitter should immediately pause all advertising. If Elon Musk continues to run Twitter like this, using garbage polls that do not represent the American people and the needs of our democracy, God help us all.”
“Unless and until Musk can be trusted to enforce Twitter’s prior community standards, the platform is not safe for users or advertisers,” the #StopToxicTwitter coalition led by Accountable Tech, Free Press and Media Matters for America said in a statement. “For those still advertising on Twitter right now: know that you are contributing directly to an erratic billionaire’s decimation of Twitter and its rapid devolution into utter chaos.”
“In less than three weeks Musk has gone back on every promise he made to civil-rights leaders and advertisers,” Free Press co-CEO Jessica J. González said in a statement. “Musk either changed his mind or lied to civil-rights leaders and advertisers. Either way, Musk has proven himself not to be a man of his word.”
