Twitter informed advertisers in an email on Thursday that it would be introducing new controls as early as next week to allow businesses to prohibit their adverts from appearing above or below tweets containing specific keywords.
The new controls are a part of Twitter's effort to reassure and win back advertisers who have withdrawn their ads from the platform since it was acquired by billionaire Elon Musk in October. This is in response to reports from civil rights organisations that hate speech has increased since the acquisition, as well as the reinstatement of several banned or suspended accounts.
Nearly 90% of Twitter's income comes from selling online advertisements. Musk reportedly blamed a "massive drop in revenue" on civil rights groups that persuaded businesses to suspend their Twitter advertisements.
According to a source familiar with the conversation, a Twitter representative recently stated during a discussion with a group of people in the advertising business that the platform was thinking about hiring more of its content moderators directly instead of using third-party contractors.
According to the source, a Twitter representative claimed that hiring in-house content moderators will enable the social media site to devote more resources to non-English language moderating, NDTV reported.
An updated version of Twitter's subscription service called Twitter Blue would start rolling out on Friday, according to an email sent to advertisers on Thursday and seen by Reuters.
With the subscription, accounts will be able to display a verified checkmark. According to the email, accounts for businesses and government entities will display gold and grey check marks, while accounts for people would display a blue check.
According to the email, the monthly subscription fee will be $7 (about Rs. 500) for the web and $11 (about Rs. 800) for Apple devices.
Twitter did not immediately reply to a request for comment after losing many members of its communications team.