Musk’s social media platform has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity (Comcast) next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.
IBM released a statement to the Financial Times saying it has “suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.”
Biggish Blue has only just gotten out of a long history of problems due to its German arm making adding machines for Hitler’s death camps. It is not something it wants to be associated with ever again.
X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed that brands are “protected from the risk of being next to” toxic posts on the platform and has been trying to bring advertisers back to the platform by claiming it’s safe for business.
She’s also claimed that X (formerly Twitter) has been “demonstrating its absolute commitment to combating antisemitism on the platform” and that “antisemitism is evil, and X will always work to fight it on our platform.”
However, that was before her boss endorsed the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews were supporting “hordes of minorities” who were “flooding” into the country to replace white people. That conspiracy theory was the same one that motivated the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting.
Meanwhile, things are heating up for Musk at Tesla, where some of his big investors are calling for him to be fired.
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, also chief executive officer of project-management software maker Asana, called on the billionaire to resign.
“The impact of erratic, racist, and antisemitic speech from a CEO directly affects Tesla’s brand and bottom line in significant ways,” Hull said in an email Thursday. “This behaviour has the power to tarnish the brand long-term.”
Meanwhile, it looks like Musk has been kicked off the list of speakers at the Pacific Economic Coalition CEO summit due to his Twitter antics. While nothing official has been said about the reasons, the cancellation happened soon after the Twitter news broke.
It is worth pointing out that while Musk could have raised some general support by linking his comments to the Israeli Gaza crisis, he instead went for old-fashioned neo-nazi anti-semetism and conspiracy theories.