November 11, 2022: -When Elon Musk said that Twitter has experienced a “huge drop in revenue” under his latest tutelage, he blamed the decline on “activist groups pressuring advertisers.”

There was little merit to his claim. A bunch of civil rights leaders had sent a letter to the CEOs of major companies, which include Anheuser-Busch, Apple, Coca-Cola, and Disney, that urged them to relay their concerns regarding brand safety on the site to Musk. Later, the group would call for those businesses to halt ads spent on Twitter after what its leaders experienced as an increase in racist posts and hate speech.

While Musk may be suitable to attribute some revenue drop to activist pressure, nearly part of the responsibility falls on him. He has made a series of crude and sophomoric jokes, a few of which he’s quickly deleted. Twitter’s new owner, the richest person in the world, recently tweeted a conspiracy theory related to the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Businesses do not need to link their brands with that behavior and content, Rachel Tipograph says, CEO of advertising technology company MikMak.

“There are concerns with advertisers almost all the brand safety, and that’s really what this is all about,” Tipograph added. “Advertisers are not looking to be associated with the events currently happening at Twitter,” Tipograph further said.

Companies such as General Motors and Volkswagen have paused their spending on Twitter after Musk’s arrival, while advertising titan Interpublic Group recommends that its clients do the same. The boycott poses a huge problem for the social media service, deriving 90% of sales from ads.

Compared with larger rivals, Facebook and Google, Twitter never managed to improve an online ad business that matches the scale of its influence in popular civilization and society. Twitter has lost money in six of the eight years since its IPO. Its earnings in 2021 reached $5 billion, while Facebook is generating sales of $118 billion, and Google parent Alphabet is recording $257 billion in revenue.

Twitter’s revenue in the two quarters declined from a year earlier.

“In my humble opinion, to be using a very technical term, their business is sucking, and they require a radical transformation,” said Len Sherman, an adjunct business professor at Columbia Business School.

It is a business that Musk shelled out $44 billion to buy. As part of the deal, he is taking $13 billion, which he must pay back.