Elon Musk doesn’t bite his tongue and sometimes that costs him dearly. The billionaire owner of the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, posted an anti-Semitic message this week. This, coupled with the fact that some companies found their advertising appeared next to Nazi messages due to the platform’s poor content moderation, has led to a renewed leak of advertisers. Companies that have reduced their advertising on the platform include major brands such as IBM, Apple, Disney and Lionsgate, according to various American media outlets.
Activist group Media Matters was the first to raise the alarm: “As X owner Elon Musk continues his descent into white nationalist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, his social network has ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle and Xfinity (Comcast) as well as content promoting Adolf Hitler and his NSDAP. The company’s announcements came after CEO Linda Yaccarino said brands were “protected from the risk of standing next to toxic posts on the platform,” it said in a statement. The group showed screenshots that confirmed their claims.
IBM responded quickly: “IBM does not tolerate hate speech or discrimination and has immediately stopped all advertising on X while it investigates this completely unacceptable situation,” it said in a statement. Other brands weighed in on the situation, and Musk sparked outrage with his own tweets, responding to a user’s message accusing Jews of hating white people and expressing indifference to anti-Semitism. The embassy subscribed to the replacement conspiracy theory that Jews are supporting “hordes of minorities” who are “flooding” the country to replace whites. This conspiracy theory was the same one that motivated the deadly Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in 2018. “You told the honest truth,” Musk tweeted.
“We strongly condemn this vile promotion of anti-Semitic and racist hatred, which violates our core values as Americans,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Friday in response to Musk’s tweet in a statement reported by AP.
Musk describes himself as a free speech absolutist, although he admits to censorship by totalitarian governments. In the US, once the purchase of Twitter was completed, users tested the social network’s new boundaries with an increase in hate messages. The tycoon reneged on his original promise to create a content council and the guarantees he offered advertisers remained a dead letter. The company subsequently announced a policy of reducing the reach of toxic messages so that they would not appear alongside advertising, but did not implement it.
With the loss of its main source of income, the value of Twitter, which was later renamed X, fell. The tycoon decided to hire Linda Yaccarino, a commercial executive at NBCUniversal, as CEO of X to try to build bridges with the brands. However, hate speech remains present on Twitter and its control has increased since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
After the recent scandal, Yaccarino said X’s “position has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone in all areas must stop.” “I think we can and should all agree on that,” he tweeted on Thursday.
“With regard to this platform, too, X has made our efforts to combat anti-Semitism and discrimination very clear. There is no place for it anywhere in the world,” he stressed this Friday in response to a tweet from Musk, this time rejecting euphemisms that imply genocide.
According to a statement from Disclosure of content moderation policies so that they do not contaminate advertising, especially in the context of the war in Gaza. Still, their efforts clash with the stance of the social network operator, who says Media Matters is “an evil organization.”
According to the organization
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