Oreo maker Mondelez pulls ads from Twitter, citing jump in hate speech

Mondelez International's CEO told Reuters that the food giant has stopped advertising on Twitter because of a spike in hate speech on the social media platform following Elon Musk's takeover.

"What we've seen recently since the change on Twitter has been announced, is the amount of hate speech increase significantly," CEO Dirk Van de Put told the wire service. "We felt there is a risk our advertising would appear next to the wrong messages," he said. 

"As a consequence, we have decided to take a pause and a break until that risk is as low as possible," he added.

Based in Chicago, the global food conglomerate, formerly known as Kraft Foods, makes Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers, Philadelphia cream cheese, Trident gum and Toblerone chocolate. The company generated about $29 billion in revenue last year.  

Mondelez did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Other companies including Allianz, Audi, General Mills, GM, United Airlines and Pfizer have also paused their ads on Twitter, and more large advertisers are expected to follow suit. 

Ford Motor told CNBC the automaker is not currently advertising on Twitter and was not doing so ahead of Musk's acquisition. 

Musk last week blamed civil rights and other advocacy groups for scaring off advertisers. 

"Nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists," Musk tweeted. "They're trying to destroy free speech in America." 

Twitter last week moved to lay off roughly half of its 7,500 workers, including employees responsible for enforcing standards and safety measures.

A coalition of activist groups said Twitter was "inundated with hate and disinformation" within 24 hours of Musk taking ownership, warning 20 of the largest advertisers on the platform against "supporting accelerating extremism."

Ad spending accounts for the bulk of Twitter's revenue, giving advertisers leverage to demand that Musk protect the safety and viability of the social media platform, the groups argued.