UK revenues at Elon Musk\u2019s X fell by almost 60% in a year as advertisers pulled their spending over concerns about the social media platform\u2019s content.<\/p>\n
News of the plummeting financial performance comes after X switched off<\/a> the image creation function on its AI tool Grok for the vast majority of users after a widespread outcry about its use to create sexually explicit and violent imagery.<\/p>\n In the UK, the social media site recorded a 58.3% fall in revenues from \u00a369.1m in 2023 to \u00a328.9m last year, according to the latest financial figures published at Companies House covering the year to 31 December 2024.<\/p>\n Pre-tax profits plunged from \u00a32.2m to \u00a3767,000 year-on-year. That contrasts with \u00a38.5m in pre-tax profits in 2022, the year Musk took control of the site then known as Twitter.<\/p>\n \u201cThe significant decrease in the performance of the company is a result of the decline of advertising revenue primarily driven by a reduction in spend from large brand advertisers due to concerns about brand safety, reputation and\/or content moderation,\u201d X<\/a> said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe business continues to take proactive measures to build brand safety tools, invest in platform safety and content moderation and then educate advertisers about these initiatives.\u201d<\/p>\n Since Musk completed his $44bn takeover<\/a> of the platform at the end of 2022, the social media company\u2019s commercial performance has plummeted and 80% of UK staff have been cut.<\/p>\n Total staff numbers in the UK fell by a third last year, from 114 to 76 \u2013 compared with a workforce of 399 when Musk took over. X said that from the point of acquisition until the end of last year, it had recognised more than \u00a322m in redundancy costs.<\/p>\n In an onstage interview at an event in New York in 2023, Musk told advertisers who had pulled money from X over his endorsement of an antisemitic tweet to \u201cgo fuck yourself\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n