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Tribune News Service
Tribune News Service
Business
Aisha Counts and Eari Nakano

Twitter’s surge in harmful content a barrier to advertiser return

Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition, and the series of content policy changes that ensued, has led to a dramatic spike in hateful, violent and inaccurate posts on the platform, according to researchers. That's now the top challenge for Twitter's new Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino, who has to address advertisers’ concerns about the trend in order to boost revenue and pay back the company's debts.

Musk and Yaccarino have touted updates to the site’s policies, such as letting advertisers prevent their posts from showing up next to certain kinds of content. Still, advertising sales are down by half since Musk took control of the company in October, he said this week. That’s in part because businesses don’t believe there has been significant progress in resolving the problem.

“Musk is not keeping his promises to advertisers, and their ads are appearing next to really harmful content,” said Callum Hood, director of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

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