Elon Musk responds to Microsoft dropping Twitter from its Ad platform by threatening a lawsuit

Microsoft recently dropped support for Twitter as part of its Digital Marketing Center (DMC), specifically its “Smart Campaigns” that leverage multi-platform social network engagment within its Microsoft Advertising platform.

The move by Microsoft to drop support could be seen as a reaction to Twitter’s recent enterprise v2 and v1.1 API licensing price changes that would tag the company with over a $40,000 a month bill. In addition to Microsoft making the determination that Twitter’s dwindling audience base isn’t worth the API licesning increase, Twitter started off its API switch with a configuration break that affected both users and caused an outage within Twitter itself that would undoubtedly shake any business’ faith in the stability of a $40,000 a month service.

While Microsoft went about dropping support as subtly as possible by stashing the news in its Microsoft Advertising blog, Twitter CEO Elon Musk is seemingly responding to the company’s actions by accusing it of “illegally” training using Twitter data and threatening a lawsuit subsequently.

They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2023

Musk followed his initial accusatory tweet with a bit more of an explantory response to another curious Tweeter who asked about the platforms long term plan following an API move that could most likely “kill traffic to Twitter itself from outside sources.”

I’m open to ideas, but ripping off the Twitter database, demonetizing it (removing ads) and then selling our data to others isn’t a winning solution.

At this point, Musk has only threatened Microsoft with a lawsuit via Twitter, but it should also be noted that since the API licensing hike, other businesses have also dropped the use of Twitter’s expensive APIs licensing such as the National Weather Service and Intercom.

Going forward, customers using Microsoft Advertising platforms will still be able to leverage audiences from other social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram from within their dashboards.