Elon Musk Blames Activist Groups Pressurising Advertisers for “Massive” Drop in Twitter’s Revenue

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk said on Friday that the social media company had seen a “massive” drop in revenue and blamed activist groups pressuring advertisers.

Musk, who took control of the firm last week, said the revenue decline came “even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.”

“Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” he said in a tweet.

Twitter recorded a fall in revenue in its last reported quarterly results in July, blaming Musk’s $44 billion (nearly Rs. 3,61,600 crore) proposal and weakening digital advertising market.

Last month, Musk said he wants Twitter to be “the most respected advertising platform”, in a bid to gain the trust of ad buyers ahead of the close of his deal.

Several companies including General Mills Inc and luxury automaker Audi of America already have paused advertising on Twitter, while General Motors said it had temporarily halted paid advertising.

In another move, Twitter has fired the majority of its over 200 employees in India as part of mass layoffs across the globe ordered by its new owner Elon Musk who is looking to make his $44 billion acquisition work.

Sources said the layoffs are across engineering, sales and marketing, and communications teams.

However, there is no clarity yet on the severance package to be paid to employees laid off in India.

The entire marketing and communications department in India has been sacked, the sources said.

World’s richest businessman Musk began his innings at Twitter last week by firing the CEO Parag Agrawal as well as the CFO and some other top executives.

This was followed by an exodus of top management. Musk has now started a massive exercise to downsize the company’s global workforce.