Apple,one of the biggest advertisers on X,said it was pausing ads on the site. The two companies already had a precarious relationship. After Musk took over the social network last year – unleashing a torrent of job cuts and policy changes – Apple also suspended advertising for a while. Musk escalated tensions by implying that he might break Apple’s App Store rules to stop paying fees.
But he and Apple CEO Tim Cook met at the iPhone maker’s headquarters late last year and patched up the relationship. Musk said in December that Apple had “fully resumed” advertising on what was then called Twitter.
Cook has previously called X an “important property” but said he disagrees with the antisemitic discourse that has allegedly increased since Musk took over. He has said that the Cupertino,California-based company “constantly” asks itself if it should continue advertising.
Axios earlier reported that Apple was pausing ads on X.
“X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination,” CEO Linda Yaccarino said on the platform on Thursday. “There’s no place for it anywhere in the world — it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.”
Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The latest remarks from the world’s richest person come at a time of rising antisemitism and Islamophobia around the world amid the Israel-Hamas war. The Anti-Defamation League found antisemitism on X increased by more than 900 per cent in the week following the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel compared to the previous week.
Last year,the American Jewish Committee,an advocacy organisation,called on Musk to apologise after he deleted a controversial tweet that made a satirical comparison between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Adolf Hitler.
“I’ve just never had this with any company I’ve ever invested in,ever in my life,where the CEO of the company himself does so many detrimental things,” Ross Gerber,co-founder and chief executive officer of wealth-management firm Gerber Kawasaki,said on CNBC. “It’s destroying the brand.”
Musk has accused the ADL,a Jewish civil rights group,of undermining X’s advertising revenue by highlighting a rise in extremist content that has caused advertisers to flee. Ad sales on X was down 60 per cent “primarily due to pressure on advertisers” mounted by the ADL,Musk said in September,after the organisation said reports of harassment and extremist content spiked since he took over the company.
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In September,Musk met with Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu at Tesla’s offices in Fremont,California,for a broadcast discussion and said,“obviously I’m against antisemitism. I’m against anti-anything that promotes hate and conflict”.
At the end of the long and wide-ranging conversation,Musk shared that he had attended a Jewish school while growing up in South Africa and could even sing “a great ‘Hava Nagila’,” a Jewish folk song.
The European Commission advised staff to stop advertising on X due to “an alarming increase in disinformation and hate speech,” it said in a statement on Friday,which didn’t specifically cite Musk’s posts. The move was initially reported byPolitico.
“The European Commission has only advertised about $US5,000 so far this year,but is still organically posting across all its X handles,” Joe Benarroch,head of business operations for X,said in a message to Bloomberg.
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Comcast is looking into the matter,a spokesperson said. Apple and Oracle didn’t respond to requests for comment. IBM’s decision was reported earlier by the Financial Times.
X did a sweep on the accounts that Media Matters found associated with the offensive content and they would no longer be monetisable,Benarroch,said. The specific posts would be labelled “Sensitive Media.”
The X system is not intentionally placing a brand actively next to this type of content,nor is a brand actively trying to support this type of content with an ad placement,Benarroch said.
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz,also head of project-management software maker Asana,said Yaccarino should ask Musk,who owns X and serves as the company’s chief technology officer,to resign.
“Yaccarino faces her biggest test yet as she decides whether to terminate her antisemitic CTO or risk losing even more advertisers,” he wrote on Threads,another social media site. “How will she handle this tricky,yet morally unambiguous situation?”
Bloomberg
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