Less than 24 hours after Elon Musk endorsed an anti-Semitic post on Linda Yaccarino and others in the company scrambled over this. Thursday to get a handle on the consequences.
According to internal messages seen by , Why were they visible next to each other? , The messages said IBM had cut advertising spending on the platform by about $1 million for the last three months of the year.
In a note to employees Thursday morning, Ms. Yaccarino said that “X is a platform for all” and “discrimination by all must stop.” He said the company had been clear about its work to fight anti-Semitism and discrimination, and later shared uniform message On X.
In a statement, IBM said it “has no tolerance for hate speech and discrimination, and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this completely unacceptable situation.”
X did not respond to a request for comment. The Financial Times previously reported IBM stopping advertising on X.
Mr Musk, who bought Twitter last year and changed its name to X, has faced growing criticism over allegations he has tolerated and even encouraged anti-Semitic abuse on his social media platform. Have also done it. He has attacked financier George Soros, who is a frequent target of anti-Semitic abuse, and threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, a rights group that has highlighted the rise in anti-Semitism at X.
On Wednesday, Mr Musk went further when he agreed with a post from an People should stop using hatred against them. The account further states that Jewish people are now coming to the disturbing realization that the minority crowd that supports the flood into their country does not like them at all.
“You are absolutely right,” Mr. Musk replied For post.
Jewish groups have likened the statement Mr Musk made to support the “Great Replacement theory”, the far-right idea that minorities are replacing the white European population.
“This is the most lethal anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in modern American history,” said the American Jewish Committee, a US-based Israel advocacy group. wrote Thursday at X. “Raising it at @X is incredibly dangerous.”
Social media platforms in general have faced increasing scrutiny after Hamas attacked Israel last month and Israel retaliated. According to the Anti-Defamation League and researchers, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate speech has increased across all sites and has been particularly prominent on X. On Wednesday night, more than a dozen Jewish creators and celebrities confronted TikTok executives in a private meeting, urging them to do more to address the rise in anti-Semitism and harassment on the video service.
In September, Mr Musk met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a Tesla factory in the San Francisco Bay Area after facing allegations of anti-Semitism.
“It’s not an easy thing to be disgraced – I know you’ve never seen anything like it, right?” Mr Netanyahu asked Mr Musk at one point.
“Me, defamed?” Mr. Musk said, laughing. “Never.”
At X, Ms. Yaccarino has previously intervened in situations involving anti-Semitic content on the platform. This month, a sales employee flagged blatantly anti-Semitic posts that the site had not removed, leading Ms. Yaccarino to ask to review the posts, two people with knowledge of the situation said. The employee who flagged the post is no longer with the company, the people said. The Information previously reported Ms. Yaccarino’s actions on those posts.
On Thursday morning, X Sales employees asked about Mr. Musk’s post and what they could tell their customers, according to messages seen by The Times. He also cited an article by Media Matters for America, a left-wing advocacy group, which showed that ads from major brands were appearing on the X next to posts promoting white nationalist and Nazi viewpoints.
“Several major advertisers have been called out in this article,” one staffer wrote.
Another employee wrote that she was concerned because she worked with Apple, a major advertiser mentioned in the Media Matters article, and asked whether some of the posts had been “manipulated.” An employee responded that the company’s trust and safety team, which has experienced layoffs and resignations, is “actively looking into this.”
Mike Isaac and Kate Conger contributed reporting.
Source: www.nytimes.com
