Who’s boycotting Twitter/X and Tesla?

 It’s hard to know whether to support X/Twitter's downfall or rail against it. 

How Musk changed Twitter

While Twitter has a long history of criticism for misinformation and toxicity, it seems to have grown significantly since Elon Musk's takeover.

Key changes Musk implemented that campaigners say have caused an increase in hate speech and misinformation include:

• Cutting staff by 80%, including many moderator roles.
• Removing the ability of users to report ‘misleading information’.
• Reinstating over 1,100 previously banned accounts, including Donald Trump and Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon).
• Making the ‘blue tick’ feature, which used to only be available to ‘notable people’ such as politicians, celebrities, experts or journalists, a pay-for feature meaning that far more people can be ‘verified’, making it harder to distinguish which accounts are publishing credible information. 
• Declaring the words ‘cis’ and ‘cisgender’ as slurs which result in a user’s removal from the platform.

These changes have allegedly helped contribute to the following impacts:

• Use of the n-word tripling.
• Slurs against gay men rising by 58%.
• Slurs against trans people rising by 62%.
• Anti-Semitic tweets doubling.
• Accounts that consistently publish popular tweets containing links to misinformation receive 44% more interactions.

(Figures above are from the reports linked to, published at various times since Musk's takeover.)

The advertising boycott of Twitter

Twitter has lost half its advertising revenue since Musk’s takeover, with over 500 advertisers stopping spending on the platform. In 2022 the coalition Stop Toxic Twitter, comprised of around 60 organisations, wrote an open letter asking Twitter’s top 20 advertisers to "cease all advertising on Twitter globally" while Musk failed to uphold community standards and content moderation.

Organisations reporting on the rise in hate-speech claim Musk is trying to bully them into silence, including through legal threats. In July 2023 Musk and X filed a lawsuit against one of the coalition’s members, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), blaming the non-profit for ‘tens of millions of dollars’ in lost advertising revenue. It lost this lawsuit in March 2024, but X continues to sue other organisations, for example Media Matters which published a report showing advertisements positioned next to hateful content. Musk has also tried to sue a group of advertisers and major companies, accusing them of unlawfully agreeing to "boycott" the site, including Unilever and Mars.

No organisation appears to be calling for individuals to close their Twitter accounts, but there have been reports of Labour MPs leaving the platform alongside celebrities including Elton John, Jim Carey and Whoopi Goldberg. In addition, several organisations have paused their accounts, such as the National Library of Scotland and the Chartered Institute of Library of Information Professionals Scotland.
 

Twitter is a huge source of unaccountable political power

While it limps on, Musk is making use of the huge source of unaccountable political power the platform provides.

Critics are concerned over the influence he could hold over the November 2024 US election. Musk has posted 50 false US election claims reaching 1.2bn views, according to CCDH, and has shared endorsements of Trump on the platform, while sharing faked videos of Kamala Harris calling herself the “ultimate diversity hire” who doesn’t “know the first thing about running a country”. 
 

The value of Twitter to campaigners

Many commentators, including the podcaster ‘Blindboy’, have pointed to the central role Twitter played in the rise of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, with hashtag usage spiking as activists and regular people shared stories of sexual harassment and drew attention to black people being killed by police officers, and racism more broadly. These movements resulted in some powerful people, usually quite protected from public scrutiny, facing consequences.

Blindboy also said that the “list of entities who funded Elon Musk’s takeover” would benefit from the weakening of this platform on which “people collectively spoke truth to power” throughout the 2010s. He argues, "The return on investment isn’t money, it’s the removal of a platform that allowed something like Me Too or Black Lives Matter to flourish."

Several investors helped fund Musk's $44bn buyout of Twitter, including:

• The Qatar government
• Alwaleed bin Talal, a Saudi prince
• Larry Elison, a Trump-supporter and 5th richest person in the world
• Sean Combes, a rapper accused of sex trafficking and rape.

Twitter also used to be a key source of real-time news for journalists, both for sourcing and sharing stories, but Reuters now calls X “a shell of what the platform formerly known as Twitter meant for journalism”.

Indeed, the renaming of Twitter and its blue bird logo to a plain ‘X’ – symbolic of death, the end, crossing something out and cancel culture – could seem fitting considering the platform's decrease in revenue and usage.

A global problem of misinformation

In 2023 the EU halted advertisements on Twitter citing an “alarming increase” in hate speech and misinformation, and in July 2024 shared a “preliminary view” that Twitter is breaching the Digital Services Act, Europe’s online safety rulebook, which could result in a fine worth 6% of the platform’s annual turnover and orders for it to change its activities. The Australian government has taken the company to court for failing to properly disclose how it polices child abuse content. The Brazilian supreme court banned the platform entirely for about six weeks, one reason being its refusal to suspend accounts that a judge claimed spread disinformation. 

But these steps seem unlikely to result in major changes to the platform, or Musk’s approach to moderation. Musk’s response to an open letter from an EU commissioner reminding him of EU laws against amplifying harmful content was to post a meme that said "TAKE A BIG STEP BACK AND LITERALLY, F*CK YOUR OWN FACE!"

Calls for governments to regulate social media

While governments scramble over what to do with Twitter now, throughout society more broadly big questions are being contemplated. For example, how did we allow a platform with proven potential for mobilising people for progressive change to become bought out and eroded, largely due the actions of one man?

In an eerily prescient manner, just a few months before Musk announced his bid for takeover, Paul Mason wrote an article titled “It is time to regulate Twitter and other social media platforms as publishers”.

He expressed concern at a former Twitter CEO and his employees being allowed to shape their own content moderation criteria, and said that moderation “done right” would “make Twitter a more tolerable place for users, and presumably a more attractive space for advertisers.”

An emerging boycott of Tesla?

The recent riots in England have also led to renewed focus on X/Twitter and its re-invention as a platform for promoting predominantly far-right views and misinformation since Elon Musk's takeover.

Climate campaigners who had felt that Tesla's role in decarbonising the car industry had marked Musk out as one of the good guys are having to rethink their position given Donald Trump's continued climate change denial and Musk's support for him.

Although there has not been a formal boycott campaign established, this has led to much public discussion about how a Tesla boycott would make sense. At Ethical Consumer we have long known that what we call 'spontaneous boycotts' can be quite effective.

One survey reported in August 2024 found that 33% of people in the UK were less likely to buy a Tesla and 45% said they were considering selling their Tesla's because of Elon Musk's recent political activities. And whether triggered by his comments or not, Tesla UK sales volumes fell by 25% in August 2024.

In the USA, it's been noted that Democratic voters are much more likely to buy electric cars but are more likely to object to Musk. You can even buy a bumper sticker for a Tesla which reads 'I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy'.

And in Germany, the pharmacy chain Rossmann announced that it would not add to the 34 Teslas in its company fleet because of Musk's endorsement of Trump.