X, the company formerly known as Twitter, has been caught running unlabeled ads in users’ Following feeds, TechCrunch has learned and was able to confirm firsthand. While scrolling the Following feed on a Mac using the Chrome web browser, we encountered a handful of unlabeled ads amid other posts from people we follow, as well as other ads that did properly display the “Ad” label at the top right of the post.
Because many of X’s ads are still labeled, this makes the unlabeled ones even harder to spot.
It’s unclear if the issue is a glitch with X’s advertising platform or a deliberate change intended to deceive consumers into believing some ads are regular posts from accounts they follow.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
X, the company formerly known as Twitter, has been caught running unlabeled ads in users’ Following feeds, TechCrunch has learned and was able to confirm firsthand.
It’s unclear if the issue is a glitch with X’s advertising platform or a deliberate change intended to deceive consumers into believing some ads are regular posts from accounts they follow.
In addition to potentially attracting the attention of the FTC or another regulatory investigation beyond the U.S., the flub with ad labeling is also a prominent stain on the resume of X’s newly hired CEO Linda Yaccarino, who joined the company in June from NBCUniversal where she had been chairman of its advertising and partnerships group.
Her hiring was meant to signal to advertisers that a responsible adult who understood the business had been put in charge of the revenue-generating side of the Elon Musk-owned company.
More recently, though, Elon Musk began blaming the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) accusations of antisemitism for X’s declining U.S. advertising revenues and threatened a lawsuit against the organization.
Nevertheless, we reached out to X for comment and received an automated email response that read: “Busy now, please check back later.” Previously, the company would respond to inquiries using the poop emoji.
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