11/17/2023

X Races to Contain Damage After Elon Musk Endorses Antisemitic Post

Major advertisers are leaving in light of the endorsement

Less than 24 hours after Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on X as “the actual truth” of what Jewish people were doing, IBM paused its advertising on the social media platform as X’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, and others at the company scrambled on Thursday to contain the fallout.

X employees said on Thursday that they had gotten calls from advertisers wondering why Musk was making comments seen as antisemitic and why their ads were showing up next to white nationalist and Nazi content, according to internal messages that were viewed by The New York Times. IBM cut off about $1 million in advertising spending that it had committed to the platform for the last three months of the year, the messages said.

In a note to employees on Thursday morning, Yaccarino said that “X is a platform for everyone” and that “discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board.” She said the company had been clear about its work to fight antisemitism and discrimination, and later shared a similar message on X.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The New York Times.