SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter will roll out new controls as soon as next week to let companies prevent their ads from appearing above or below tweets containing certain keywords, the social media platform told advertisers in an e-mail on Thursday.
The new controls are part of Twitter’s effort to reassure and lure back advertisers that have pulled ads off the platform since it was purchased in October by billionaire Elon Musk, amid reports from civil rights groups that hate speech has risen since the acquisition and after several banned or suspended accounts were reinstated.
Twitter earns nearly 90 per cent of its revenue from selling digital ads. Mr Musk recently attributed a “massive drop in revenue” to civil rights organisations that have pressured brands to pause their Twitter ads.
In a call on Thursday with an advertising industry group, a Twitter representative said the platform is considering bringing its content moderators, many of whom are contracted through third-party vendors, in-house, according to a source familiar with the remarks.
The Twitter representative said bringing content moderators in-house would allow the platform to invest more in moderation for non-English languages, according to the source.
The comments come after Twitter’s new head of trust and safety, Ms Ella Irwin, told Reuters that the platform would lean more heavily on automated content moderation.
Ms Irwin also said Twitter’s recent layoffs, which cut half its staff, did not significantly hurt its moderation team and those working on critical areas like child safety.
The e-mail to advertisers on Thursday, which was reviewed by Reuters, said a revamped version of Twitter’s subscription service called Twitter Blue would begin rolling out on Friday.
The subscription will allow accounts to receive a verified check mark. Accounts for individuals will get a blue check, while gold and grey check marks will denote business and government accounts, according to the e-mail.
The subscription price will be US$7 (S$9.45) per month on the web and US$11 per month on Apple devices.
Twitter also told advertisers it removed ads from profiles mentioned in a Washington Post article on Tuesday, which reported that ads have appeared on the Twitter accounts of white nationalists.
The accounts were not part of “amnesty reinstatements”, the e-mail said, referring to Mr Musk’s tweet in November that Twitter would reinstate suspended accounts that have not broken the law.
“We will not be reinstating bad actors, spam accounts and users that engaged in criminal/illegal activity,” Twitter’s note to advertisers said. REUTERS
