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 Mr. 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, Ms. 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.
In a statement, IBM said it “has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination, and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.”
X did not respond to a request for comment. The Financial Times earlier reported on IBM’s pause in advertising on X.
Mr. Musk, who bought Twitter last year and renamed it X, has faced increasing criticism that he has tolerated and even encouraged antisemitic abuse on his social media platform. He has attacked George Soros, the financier who is a frequent target of antisemitic abuse, and threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, a rights group that has highlighted the rise in antisemitism on X.
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