Twitter Joins New Control Features For Ads To Not Show Up On Certain Keywords

JAKARTA - Twitter Inc will roll out new controls no later than next week to allow companies to prevent their ads from appearing above or under tweets containing certain passwords. This statement came from Twitter to advertisers via email on Thursday, December 8.

The new control is part of Twitter's efforts to reassure and lure back advertisers who have withdrawn ads from the platform since it was bought by billionaire Elon Musk last October. Especially in the midst of reports from civil rights groups that hate speech has increased since the acquisition and after being banned several times or suspended accounts, it has been restored again.

Twitter earned nearly 90% of its revenue from digital advertising sales. Musk recently linked "a massive drop in revenue" to civil rights organizations pressuring brands to stop their Twitter ads.

Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022

In a phone call last Thursday with an advertising industry group, a Twitter representative said the platform was considering bringing its own content moderator, many of which were contracted through third-party vendors.

Twitter representatives said bringing in content moderators themselves would allow platforms to invest more in moderation for non-English languages.

The comments came after new Twitter's head of trust and security, Ella Irwin, told Reuters the platform would rely more on automated content moderation.

Irwin also said that Twitter's recent layoffs, which cut 50% of staff, did not significantly harm its moderation team and those working in critical areas such as child safety.

The email to advertisers last Thursday, reviewed by Reuters, said a new version of Twitter's subscription service called Twitter Blue would begin rolling out on Friday.

According to the email, the subscription will allow the account to receive a verified check mark. Accounts for individuals will get a blue tick, while gold and gray ticks will show business and government accounts.

The subscription price will be $8 per month on the web and 11 US dollars per month on Apple devices.

Twitter also told advertisers it removed ads from the profiles mentioned in the Washington Post article on Tuesday, which reported that ads had appeared on white nationalist Twitter accounts.

Snap Inc, which has a Snapchat photo messaging app, has stopped its ads on Twitter from investigating the matter, a spokesperson told Reuters.

The accounts were not part of the "return of amnesty," a Twitter email said, referring to Musk's tweet last month that Twitter would restore a suspended account that did not violate the law.

"We will not restore malicious actors, spam accounts, and users involved in criminal/illegal activities," Twitter records for advertisers. Twitter, which lost many of its communication team members, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.