General Motors Co announced on Friday that it is temporarily suspending paid advertising on Twitter
Its new owner Twitter, Elon Musk, retracted a post he had made yesterday Sunday in which he reproduced a baseless theory about the attack on the husband of the speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi at their home in San Francisco.
The retracted post was in response to a post by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who attributed the attack to the Republican Party’s hate speech. In her post, Clinton had added a link to an article in the LA Times according to which the perpetrator of the attack promoted conspiracy theories on the Internet.
“There is a small possibility that there is more to this story than meets the eye,” Musk responded to Clinton by posting a link to The Santa Monica Observer website, which people investigating the facts described as a website spreading fake news and conspiracy theories, including the news that Clinton herself has died and been replaced by a lookalike.
Neither Musk nor Twitter immediately responded to a request for comment.
With fears growing about escalating political violence as the Nov. 8 midterm elections approach, Musk’s post raised new concerns about how he will handle hate speech and misinformation on Twitter.
Advertisers will be watching closely. General Motors Co said on Friday, before the retracted post, that it was temporarily suspending paid advertising on Twitter following the completion of the acquisition by Musk and that it was working with the company “to understand its direction under the new its leadership”.
Paid ad sales made up more than 90% of Twitter’s revenue in the second quarter. In a post last week, Musk addressed the advertisers directly, pointing out that under his management the medium “obviously cannot become a free-for-all, say anything without consequence!”
In a separate development, Elon Musk denied a report by the “New York Times” about the dismissal of workers at Twitter. In response to a related question from a user about the possibility of layoffs, he said: “That’s not the case.”
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