Twitter informed advertisers in an email on Thursday that it would be introducing new controls as early as next week to allow businesses to prevent their ads from appearing above or below tweets containing specific keywords.
The new controls are a part of Twitter’s effort to reassure and win back advertisers who have withdrawn their ads from the platform since it was acquired by billionaire Elon Musk in October.
This is in response to reports from civil rights organisations that hate speech has increased since the acquisition, as well as the reinstatement of several banned or suspended accounts.
Nearly 90% of Twitter’s income comes from the sale of online advertisements. Musk recently blamed a “massive drop in revenue” on civil rights groups that persuaded businesses to pause their Twitter advertisements.
According to a source familiar with the conversation, a Twitter representative said the platform was thinking about hiring its content moderators, many of whom are employed by third-party vendors, in-house during a call with an advertising industry group on Thursday.
According to the source, the Twitter representative claimed that hiring in-house content moderators would enable the platform to devote more resources to non-English language moderation.
The remarks follow Ella Irwin, Twitter’s new head of trust and safety, telling Reuters that the social media site would rely more on automated content moderation.
Irwin added that the recent layoffs, which resulted in a 50% reduction in staff, had little impact on the moderators and those focusing on important issues like children’s safety.
An updated version of subscription service called Twitter Blue would start rolling out on Friday, according to an email sent to advertisers on Thursday and examined by Reuters.
With the subscription, accounts will be able to display a verified checkmark. According to the email, accounts for businesses and government entities will display gold and grey check marks, while accounts for individuals will display a blue check.
According to the email, the monthly subscription fee will be $7 for the web and $11 for Apple devices.
Twitter also informed advertisers that it had taken down the ads from the profiles mentioned in a Washington Post article published on Tuesday that claimed ads had appeared on white nationalists’ Twitter accounts.
According to a spokesperson for Snap Inc, which owns the photo messaging app Snapchat, the company has suspended its advertising while it looks into the matter.
In response to Musk’s tweet from last month that Twitter would reinstate suspended accounts that had not broken the law, Twitter said in an email that the accounts were not a part of “amnesty reinstatements.”
“We will not be reinstating bad actors, spam accounts and users that engaged in criminal/illegal activity,” Twitter’s note to advertisers said.
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