Twitter didn’t, can X survive Elon Musk?

livemint.com:

Apple, IBM, Disney, Warner Brothers, Comcast/NBCU, Paramount, Discovery - that's only some of the major advertisers who have abandoned X (formerly Twitter) en masse in the past few days. Most of these companies say they have “paused" advertising on X, but this is the busy season and there's no timeline to suggest how long these pauses might last. It is estimated that ad revenues this year on X will drop at least 50% compared with 2022.

The social media platform is heavily dependent on ad revenues which contributed around $4 billion of its total revenues of $4.4 billion in 2022. While advertisers had already turned cautious about X due to its unsatisfactory moderation processes, the trigger for the pullout was Elon Musk’s recent endorsement of a weird conspiracy theory associated with racist antisemitic groups. We aren’t keen to amplify what he said and aren’t, therefore, repeating it here but for those interested, the details can be accessed across the mainstream media.

IBM pulled out after explicitly citing the statement, calling it “unacceptable". Even the White House issued a condemnation, “It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie". Instead of retracting the statement, Musk has threatened to sue media watchdogs and organizations that have pointed out issues with moderation.

It's not surprising that X has problems flagging hate speech since Musk has sacked 80% of the workforce, including most of the erstwhile moderation team. This has resulted in plenty of hate speech remaining on the platform for long periods. Musk has threatened to sue the Anti Defamation League, a Jewish NGO that combats antisemitic sentiments for pointing out the rising trend of hate speech on X.