The Twitter profile page belonging to Elon Musk is seen on an Apple iPhone mobile phone.Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesWhen Elon Musk said last week that Twitter has experienced a “massive drop in revenue” under his recent tutelage, he blamed the decline on “activist groups pressuring advertisers.”There was some merit to his claim. A group of civil rights leaders had sent a letter to the CEOs of major companies, including Anheuser-Busch, Apple, Coca-Cola and Disney, urging them to relay their concerns about brand safety on the site to Musk. Later, the group would call for those businesses to halt ad spending on Twitter following what its leaders saw as a rise of racist posts and hate speech.While Musk may be right to attribute some of the revenue drop to activist pressure, at least part of the responsibility falls on him. Twitter’s new owner, the world’s richest person, recently tweeted a conspiracy theory related to the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nandy Pelosi, and has made a series of crude and sophomoric jokes, some of which he’s quickly deleted.Businesses don’t want to link their brands with that sort of behavior and content, said Rachel Tipograph, CEO of advertising technology firm MikMak.”There’s concerns with advertisers around brand safety, and that’s really what this is all about,” Tipograph said. “Advertise …
