On Wednesday (Oct. 26), billionaire Elon Musk made a visit to Twitter headquarters in San Francisco as his deal to purchase the social media giant, which was initially announced back in April, draws closer to its conclusion. As Musk entered the lobby of the building, he indicated that the reality of the purchase was beginning to sink in—by literally carrying a bathroom sink with him.
While Musk toured the headquarters and mingled with Twitter employees, 75% of which were at one point rumored to be scheduled for termination by Musk, executives of the company continue to grapple with troubling trends on the social media platform, which include decreased engagement and the reticence of some companies to place ads on Twitter in light of the increasing proportion of adult content on the platform, some of which is even alleged to be sexually exploitative.
According to an internal report seen by Reuters, “not safe for work” (NSFW) content, which includes nudity and pornography, is among one of two fastest growing topics of interest on the platform among regular users. (The other fastest growing topic is cryptocurrency.)
Pornographic material comprises 13% of all content on Twitter.
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This trend is leading some organizations to stop placing ads on Twitter, which is the only one of the major social media platforms to allow nudity, over concerns that their ads could appear next to pornographic material, or even material from accounts soliciting child pornography.
Among the brands rethinking how they will spend their advertising budget are Disney, NBCUniversal, Coca-Cola Co., Dyson, Mazda, Forbes, DIRECTV, and PBS Kids.
Reuters even reported finding that an ad for a children’s hospital appeared alongside accounts posting links to exploitative material. They also discovered that tweets including key words like “rape” and “teens” appeared alongside corporate ads.
“We’re horrified,” David Maddocks, brand president at Cole Haan, told Reuters. “Either Twitter is going to fix this, or we’ll fix it by any means we can, which includes not buying Twitter ads.”
Twitter said that the company “has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation” and is investing in the prevention of such material appearing on the platform, which includes hiring new position to focus on creating and implementing solutions.
While Twitter has a policy against child pornography and reports that it suspended more than 1 million accounts last year for sexual content involving minors, a significant amount of exploitative content is still appearing on the site.
