OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been battling leftist critics since he first made his $44 billion offer to buy Twitter earlier this year, and he continues to do so after taking control of the platform last month.
One of the issues he has had to deal with: A left-wing campaign to strip the platform of advertisers and rob him of the income needed to turn Twitter around.
After weeks of seeing dozens of advertisers pause their campaigns, however, Musk provided a bit of an update on the situation in a Saturday tweet.
“Just a note to thank advertisers for returning to Twitter,” he wrote.
Just a note to thank advertisers for returning to Twitter
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 4, 2022
Also Saturday, Musk poked some fun at major media outlets who predicted that the platform would simply die after he took it over.
“Twitter servers are running at Warp 9!!” he noted.
Twitter servers are running at Warp 9!! pic.twitter.com/vtZZeKupC7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 3, 2022
Late last month, twice-failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s name came up in the left’s ongoing effort to strip Twitter of advertisers after Musk’s takeover and amid his ongoing efforts to restore previously banned conservative users while loosening speech restrictions.
According to the Fox Business Network, Clinton is linked to a group called Accountable Tech, which “spearheaded a letter to top Twitter advertisers as part of a larger pressure campaign demanding ‘non-negotiable’ requirements for their business, saying that Musk’s takeover will further ‘toxify’ the social media giant and directly threaten public safety.”
The letter states: “Twitter has outsized influence in shaping both public discourse and industry-wide platform governance standards. While the company is hardly a poster child for healthy social media, it has taken welcome steps in recent years to mitigate systemic risks, ratcheting up pressure on the likes of Facebook and YouTube to follow suit.”
“Musk intends to steamroll those safeguards and provide a megaphone to extremists who traffic in disinformation, hate, and harassment,” the letter continues. “Under the guise of ‘free speech,’ his vision will silence and endanger marginalized communities, and tear at the fraying fabric of democracy.”
Fox Business Network added:
The group demands that advertisers commit to keeping accounts of politicians and public figures removed for “egregious violations” off the platform, ensuring “algorithmic accountability” and continuing their “commitment to research transparency and researcher access” – or drop their business.
It’s unclear what companies received Accountable Tech’s letter, which is also signed by 25 other liberal groups, including Media Matters and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation.
The outlet noted that Accountable Tech is not on its own. Rather, the org is financially sponsored by the North Fund, a nonprofit “incubator” that is part of a billion-dollar “dark money network” that is managed by Arabella Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, according to business records.
The leftist group is very closely tied to Hillary Clinton’s Onward Together group, a nonprofit she created after she lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump as a means of providing her a platform of resistance.
Fox Business noted that Accountable Tech joined Onward Together in December 2020 as an official partner, a press release stated.
“It’s a tremendous honor to join the Onward Together family, and to have the opportunity to work alongside such a dynamic coalition of leaders in the fight for a more just future,” Accountable Tech co-founder Jesse Lehrich said in a statement then.
“Our broken information ecosystem poses urgent and intersectional threats,” Lehrich added. “Women and communities of color are disproportionately harmed by those threats, from online harassment and voter suppression, to disinformation and extremism. Working closely with a diverse network of progressive partners is not just important to Accountable Tech – it is essential to guiding our mission.”
Last week, Musk took to his platform to say that tech behemoth Apple had pulled its advertising, but then, a few days later, he noted that after a meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, the issue had been cleared up.
“Thanks @tim_cook for taking me around Apple’s beautiful HQ,” he said in a tweet showing scenery from the tech giant’s headquarters.
“Good conversation. Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store. Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so,” he said.
Thanks @tim_cook for taking me around Apple’s beautiful HQ pic.twitter.com/xjo4g306gR
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 30, 2022
