Jimmy Fallon made sure to participate in Giving Tuesday this year — by giving Twitter’s financial problems a solid roast. During Tuesday’s show, the “Tonight Show” host joked that Elon Musk’s social platform was probably a perfect candidate for the charitable holiday.
Since spending $44 billion to buy out the social media company — which was already losing money when he took it over — Musk has seen revenue drop even further. On Friday, it was revealed that since Musk took the reins, the company has lost at least half of its top 100 advertisers.
Musk hoped to make Twitter profitable by almost immediately rolling out plans for people to get a blue verification checkmark by paying $8 per month, but, as many predicted, the feature was largely used to impersonate major celebrity figures and brands, and Musk disabled it after just a few days.
As Twitter has continued hemorrhaging money, and causing many advertisers to do the same, Fallon joked that it falls squarely into the latter category of companies that people might donate to on Giving Tuesday.
“It’s a day of generosity when millions of people give to their favorite charities or struggling organizations,” Fallon explained. “Which explains why Twitter was trending all day.”
Fallon then went on to joke that there’s a few things that he himself will never give — and fully rickrolled the audience. You can watch Fallon’s full monologue in the video above.
Meanwhile, Musk has largely blamed activists for Twitter’s “massive drop” in revenue, scolding them for pressuring advertisers to drop the platform.
“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” Musk tweeted.
Of course, much has in fact changed with content moderation on the site. In the immediate days following Musk’s takeover, there was a surge in the use of the n-word on the platform, and Musk reinstated several accounts that had been permanently suspended on Twitter, including twice-impeached former president Donald Trump, who regularly used the platform to spread misinformation.
Before Musk’s deal to buy Twitter was even finalized earlier this year, he indicated that he’d lift the permanent ban on Trump, calling it a “mistake”, “morally wrong” and “flat-out stupid.” Once the deal closed, the CEO said he’d hold off on any major account reinstatements until a special committee to discuss and oversee it was formed. It appears no such committee was created.
