Twitter boss Elon Musk has threatened to file a lawsuit against Microsoft after the multinational IT company said that it will drop Twitter from its advertising platform. Musk accused Microsoft of using Twitter data ‘illegally’. “They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time,” he tweeted. A user asked if Musk had a long term plan regarding its advertising platform, and also said the move can “kill traffic to Twitter itself from outside sources”. To this, Elon Musk responded: “I’m open to ideas, but ripping off the Twitter database, demonetizing it (removing ads) and then selling our data to others isn’t a winning solution.”
Microsoft had earlier said that it will remove Twitter from its advertising platform next week, after the microblogging website announced that it will begin charging a minimum of $42,000 per month to users of its API. “Starting on April 25, 2023, Smart Campaigns with Multi-platform will no longer support Twitter,” Microsoft has said on its advertising web page. Microsoft users will not be able to access their Twitter accounts through Microsoft’s social management tool, create and manage drafts or tweets, view past tweets and engagement, schedule tweets, after the move. However, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn will continue to be available, it clarified.
Following his takeover of Twitter last year for $44 billion, Elon Musk eliminated more than 3,700 jobs, or half of the company’s workforce, at the microblogging website. Despite his promise to his employees after this layoff in November 2022 that there will be no further layoffs, Elon Musk has fired more employees from the firm. Dozens of Twitter employees across sales and engineering departments were affected due to the recent layoff at the firm, in February. The months of February saw another layoff announcement, wherein the social media platform laid off at least 200 of its workforce or about 10 percent of the roughly 2,000 employees.