Twitter’s pitch deck for RT?
21st Century Wire says…
In what appears to be a coordinated attack on RT and Sputnik, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (@jack) has declared all advertising purchased by the two media outlets unfit for the online news and social networking service.
Off-boarding advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik.
We’re donating all projected earnings ($1.9mm) to support external research into the use of Twitter in elections, including use of malicious automation and misinformation. https://t.co/zIxfqqXCZr
— jack (@jack) October 26, 2017
The move comes just days before Twitter and other Silicon Valley companies go to Washington to testify on Capitol Hill regarding alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. Election.
In the company’s official announcement, it states the decision is based on “the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government.”
To be fair, there was no conclusion. The DNI report was only an assessment of “high confidence” by a group of hand-picked analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA.
What’s both ironic and embarrassing about the Twitter bird’s ad blockade of the Russian-owned media outlets is their recent ad pitch to RT, specifically, during the election cycle:
Hope @jack won’t forget to tell @congressdotgov how @Twitter pitched @RT_com to spend big $$s on US elex ad campaign. pic.twitter.com/7GqoEoSaY8
— Маргарита Симоньян (@M_Simonyan) October 26, 2017
That’s a tweet on Thursday by RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.
It’s quite clear that Twitter, along with other Silicon Valley properties like Google and Facebook, saw the 2016 U.S. Election as a lucrative ad sales pipeline and decided to cash-in – like any other media outlet would do.
Now, ahead of their upcoming testimony on ‘election meddling’, Twitter just put itself squarely in the crosshairs of the government – to curry favor to, and to be push even further as Russiamania pushes forward.
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