Since Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion last October, he has initiated dramatic changes to the social media platform. He fired half of the staff as he warned repeatedly about the risk of bankruptcy. Just last week, he said he was working so hard to stave this off that it was harming his physical and mental health. But why is it so close to insolvency? Much of the answer lies in how he’s repeatedly alienated advertisers with his cuts to content moderation—such that revenue plunged more than 40% in just November and December.
Just a month after taking over as CEO, Musk asked in a Twitter poll about whether he should provide “general amnesty” to suspended accounts, and 72% of the respondents voted in favor. Soon enough, he lifted former president Donald Trump’s Twitter ban. As “Chief Twit,” Musk has continued to amend long standing content policies at the social media platform used to weed out inappropriate, violent and sexual content. Just this week, he got directly involved in an account suspension and changed a policy on the fly. The account in question belonged to another conservative politician.
On Tuesday afternoon, Musk reinstated the Twitter account of Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana. His platform had recently suspended Daines’ account because he had shared a picture containing “graphic violence”—a dead antelope that he had apparently hunted and killed himself.
Sen. Daines was notified of the suspension on Monday night, he said in a statement posted to his official website. He thanked Musk for his “reinstatement” from “Twitter jail” and then claimed that Musk had personally reached out to him over the suspension.
“The initial ban over the profile photo of my wife and me after a successful Montana antelope hunt was disappointing given the fact that it is no different than photos Montanans share on social media every day,” Daines wrote on Tuesday about what he claimed was a “Montana hunting picture,” adding, “It’s our Montana way of life and we are proud of it.”
The picture shared by Daines and his wife holding the head of an antelope that they hunted, violating the social media platform’s policies against sharing “excessively gory” or violent content in profile images.
Other Republican senators including Ted Cruz tweeted about the affair, calling for Daines’ account to be “freed.” Cruz used a picture of Daines in a seemingly jail-like setting.
Musk weighed in on the matter and said he will be changing more visual content policies. In response to a tweet that called Daines’ ban “insane,” he wrote: “This is being fixed. Policy against showing blood in profile pic is being amended to ‘clearly showing blood without clicking on the profile pic’”
“The Senator will absolutely continue to share pictures of him and his family hunting—he is a lifelong sportsman and proud of his Montana values,” a representative at Daines’ office told Fortune.
Representatives at Twitter did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Musk has described himself as a free speech absolutist, and has been vocal about how he wants to change the way things are done at Twitter, while he has also grown closer to the Republican Party and has moved from the ultra-blue state of California to the deep red state of Texas. In November, he tweeted that the new content policy at Twitter would be “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” suggesting that negative or hateful content would be “demonetized” but not removed.
Musk’s takeover has come with a marked increase in hate speech and banned accounts, as measured by online data analysis groups including the Center for Countering Digital Hate. These include posts that explicitly identify with terrorist groups. In the absence of a dedicated content moderating team, racist and other discriminatory content has spiked.
Musk has maintained that the daily user numbers on the platform remain strong. But that’s not the case with advertisers. And as long as Musk keeps changing those rules whenever he sees fit, he’ll probably have to keep pushing himself to the limit to find an alternative to the advertising revenue that will stay on the sidelines.
Update, February 8, 2023: This article has been updated with a comment from Daines’ office.
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