The Dawn Project, led by software developer Dan O’Dowd, said its Twitter ad criticizing Tesla Full Self-Driving was rejected for violating a ban on “political” content.
Dan O’Dowd claims that attempts to promote a tweet with an ad placed in The New York Times criticizing Tesla’s fully autonomous driving (FSD) were unsuccessful. In a screenshot of an email provided by the group, Twitter stated that the post was against its “political” advertising guidelines.
The rejected ad is the latest in a series of developments in a strange, long-running feud between Elon Musk and O’Dowd. In August, Tesla demanded that the Dawn Project remove a YouTube video of the manufacturer’s cars running over child dummies . (The video no longer appears on the YouTube group page.)
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The Dawn Project tweet with the ad in the Times still exists.
Our @NYTimes full-page ad today shows @ElonMusk ‘s Full Self-Driving will still run over children, 3 months after we reported it. 93% agree it should be banned. Eventually this becomes manslaughter. @Tesla staff & directors could be liable @NHTSAgov @CA_DMV https://t.co/DvtSt9MwG3 pic.twitter.com/mOH0mteiN3
— Dan O’Dowd (@RealDanODowd) November 6, 2022
The group’s statements also raise questions about Twitter’s future advertising policy. Several major auto companies, including GM, Jeep and Volkswagen, have suspended all paid advertising posts on social media, waiting to see what the platform will look like under new management. Musk, meanwhile, wrote that Twitter has experienced a “significant” drop in ad revenue, even as user growth is “top notch.”
In a statement, O’Dowd said the ad ban was a worrying sign.
“The move to ban advertising for content that criticizes Musk’s Full Self-Driving software raises serious questions about his commitment to free speech,” O’Dowd said in a statement.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Musk fired 50% of the company’s employees, including most of the public relations department.)
The support page says:
“Twitter globally bans the promotion of political content. We made this decision based on our belief that political coverage should be earned, not bought.”
Earlier this year, O’Dowd launched a Senate campaign based on one issue: Tesla. He has been highly critical of the FSD’s driver-assistance feature, conducting his own tests, which he claims revealed critical flaws in the technology. (O’Dowd received only 74,916 votes in the previous June election, finishing 10th overall.)
The Santa Barbara billionaire clearly enjoys teasing Musk. He previously ran a full-page ad in The New York Times denouncing Tesla’s FSD, offering $10,000 to the first to “name another commercial product from a Fortune 500 company that crashes every 8 minutes.”
Tesla fans point out that O’Dowd runs Green Hills Software, which does business with some of Tesla’s competitors, including General Motors, BMW and Ford. Therefore, he supposedly has a financial interest in publicly discrediting the company. Musk, meanwhile, reacted to the Dawn project in his own way, noting that “nobody died using FSD” and called Green Hills Software “a bunch of garbage.”
Green Hills software is a pile of trash. Linux ftw.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2022
Before buying Twitter , Elon Musk advocated “freedom of speech on the social network” and even considered unblocking the accounts of some users, including former US President Donald Trump. But so far, his actions demonstrate only the opposite.
So the other day, Musk wrote that Twitter will permanently block impersonators of accounts , unless they are clearly labeled as parodic. This came after several verified blue check users made changes to their accounts, making them look like the account of Musk himself.
New messages spread by social network users indicate that the billionaire unblocked himself from some people.
Elon Musk has been unblocking himself from thousands of random people’s accounts LMFAOOOOO
— Xavier’s Online (@xaviersonline) November 7, 2022
Elon Musk UNBLOCKED HIMSELF for my account?????? The FUCK??? pic.twitter.com/ckH9KIe2OK
— Deep Space Fine (@thisismewhatevs) November 7, 2022
According to data compiled by bot trackers, the social networking site may have lost about a million real users since Musk took over on October 27. More than 800,000 accounts have been deactivated since that day, and another 500,000 have been suspended, according to Christopher Busi, head of tracker Bot Sentinel.
“Based on our internal data, we estimate that 877,000 Twitter accounts were deactivated and another 497,000 were suspended between October 27 and November 1,” Busi wrote on Twitter.
Interestingly, on the day Musk acquired Twitter , the account of actress Amber Heard disappeared from the social network . It is not yet clear whether the actress deleted her account herself, or Elon himself, with whom Hurd was in a close relationship, was behind the deactivation.
Other surprises Musk has in store to mark the acquisition include the launch of the controversial Twitter Blue subscription, massive layoffs, and the potential for most or all users of the social network to be charged a subscription fee.
Source: The Verge , Metro
