General Motors suspends ads on Twitter following Musk takeover

Auto company General Motors (GM) on Friday said it is suspending its advertising on Twitter following Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media company.

GM, a competitor of Tesla, told CNBC that it is “pausing” advertising on the site as it seeks to determine the new direction of the tech giant.

“We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership. As is normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising,” GM wrote in a statement.

The company will continue using Twitter primarily for customer interactions despite its pause on advertisements, it said.

Musk officially acquired Twitter on Thursday after months of back and forth on whether the multibillionaire would go through with his high-profile agreement to buy the company.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is a self-branded “free speech absolutist” who has signaled he intends to loosen content moderation on Twitter. Critics have sounded the alarm that under his leadership misinformation and hate speech may be permitted to spread more widely on the platform.

Musk has sought to assuage those concerns, saying in a message to advertisers this week that Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” and tweeting that the company would form a content moderation council with “widely diverse viewpoints” that would convene before any major content decisions were made.

On Friday evening, he stressed that “we have not yet made any changes to Twitter’s content moderation policies.”

GM was one of the first companies to chose to invest in electric vehicle manufacturing to challenge Tesla in that market.

Other companies such as Ford Motor and Fisker have also worked to produce electric vehicles.

A Ford Motor spokesperson told CNBC that it has not recently been advertising on Twitter, including before Musk’s purchase of the company.

“We will continue to evaluate the direction of the platform under the new ownership,” said the spokesperson.

Henrik Fisker, CEO of electric auto company Fisker, reacted quickly to Musk’s initial $44 billion deal to buy Twitter earlier this year, deleting his account on the social media site shortly after its board accepted Musk’s bid.

The company continues to use Twitter, though not for advertising purposes.

The Hill has reached out to GM, Ford Motor and Fisker for comment.