Elon Musk posts open letter to Twitter advertisers on the cusp of completing his acquisition

Elon Musk:

Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content! Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise.

This is bullshit. Ads are ads. They are always there to sell something. Becoming a 'respected advertising platform' is an admirable goal but are the advertisers themselves well respected? Not given the ads I see online everyday. On Twitter I am bombarded by gambling ads (and I mute accounts instantly as an opt out). Around the web I am shown items I have already bought and so much other nonsense that I basically don't notice what they really are only that they're in my way.

For ads to be specific enough, I need to be tracked and profiled. I am not OK with this. I certainly don't tweet about everything in my life and I don't follow the same brands across Twitter, Instagram and YouTube so ads are unlikely to be very useful on my Twitter profile alone. We don't need another Meta ad network in our lives.

As a 'respected advertising platform', hold advertisers to a higher standard. Don't take every dollar on offer. Make your platform respectable.

If not everyone can get a blue tick, why should everyone be able to place an ad?

John Gruber's commentary:

That's a good North Star. Ads as desirable content has been my mantra at Daring Fireball ever since I turned on the revenue spigot.

That might be true of a site like Daring Fireball, of which I am a great fan. Ads really don't get in the way over there, they're easy to skip and ignore. But I'd much rather pay for a place on Twitter than be a part cog in its ad network.