Elon Musk’s antisemitism is scaring away huge advertisers from X

It started last week with a widely shared tweet.

Billionaire X owner Elon Musk agreed with a poster on his diminishing platform that Jewish communities have been pushing “hatred against whites” and are now reaping an invasion by “hordes of minorities” — both allude to the conspiratorial “Great Replacement Theory” that suspects a world-controlling Jewish cabal’s plan to replace white people with darker-skinned folks.

Related:

Mike Johnson says his pals would use trans laws to spy on naked girls

He argued that trans people shouldn’t have rights because his friends were peeping Toms.

“You have said the actual truth,” Musk wrote in response to the post.

Stay connected to your community

Connect with the issues and events that impact your community at home and beyond by subscribing to our newsletter.

Daily

Weekly

Good News

The very next day, Media Matters, the respected media watchdog group, released a report revealing just how prevalent hate speech like Musk’s is on X.

“As X owner Elon Musk continues his descent into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” the nonprofit wrote last Thursday, “his social media platform has been placing ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity (Comcast) next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. The company’s placements come after CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed that brands are ‘protected from the risk of being next to’ toxic posts on the platform.”

Before the day was out, IBM released a statement saying that it had “suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.”

“IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination,” the tech giant added.

Apple followed shortly after. By Friday, the advertiser revolt included Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Comcast, Lionsgate, Warner Bros. Discovery, and the Max streaming platform.

With hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue out the door and a continually decreasing user base — which has already shrunk by 13% since Musk’s takeover in October 2022 —Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s vow earlier this year that the disintegrating platform would become profitable again by 2024 has become just another post that didn’t age well.

On Sunday, Musk tried to deflect attention away from his antisemitic comment by writing, “This past week, there were hundreds of bogus media stories claiming that I am antisemitic. Nothing could be further from the truth. I wish only the best for humanity and a prosperous and exciting future for all.”

This past week, there were hundreds of bogus media stories claiming that I am antisemitic.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I wish only the best for humanity and a prosperous and exciting future for all.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2023

But by the following Monday, with his business strategy crumbling around him at his own hands, Musk laid blame for fleeing advertisers on the messenger, suing Media Matters for reporting the facts of X’s hateful, unmoderated content.

“Media Matters knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and then portrayed these manufactured images as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform,” according to Musk’s complaint filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. “Media Matters designed both these images and its resulting media strategy to drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.”

“Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate,” Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said in the statement. Musk has “admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified.”

By Tuesday, Musk was attempting to buy sympathy for his antisemitism with a pledge to throw money at the Israel/Gaza conflict.

“X Corp will be donating all revenue from advertising and subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza,” Musk posted.

Exactly what “advertising and subscriptions associated with” a war even means is another question raised by Musk’s flailing. One user wrote of the scheme, “This comes off as ‘desperate’ desperate.”

Along with his unbound antisemitism, Musk has also brought increased transphobia and LGBTQ+ abuse to his social media platform since he purchased the site just over a year ago. A February poll by GLAAD found that 60% of respondents had experienced an increase in abusive and hateful speech on Twitter/X since Musk took over.

In April, the site quietly removed a line in its “Hateful Conduct” policy that protected transgender people from online abuse. Another study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that posts linking LGBTQ+ people to “grooming” and pedophilia have increased by 119% under Musk. Musk threatened to sue CCDH over that study as well.

The same CCDH report revealed that five high-profile anti-LGBTQ+ accounts, including Libs of TikTok and Gays Against Groomers, generate an estimated $6.4 million in ad revenue per year for X. That paltry amount doesn’t exactly make up for the $100 million of ad revenue that Apple has since withdrawn from the platform.

Longtime Twitter/X user Molly Jong-Fast commented on Musk’s latest meltdown, writing, “Watching this place turn into an abandoned mall in New Jersey is beyond depressing.”