Elon Musk found himself at the center of controversy over the weekend when he elevated an antisemitic campaign aimed at banning the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) from his social media platform.
Musk’s tweet, posted on Saturday, responded to a notorious extremist pundit who had noted that the hashtag #BanTheADL was trending on the platform, formerly known as Twitter. In his tweet, Musk suggested, “Perhaps we should run a poll on this?”
The Tesla CEO’s eyebrow-raising tweet came shortly after he liked a post from Keith Woods, a hard-right YouTube influencer, who accused the ADL of “financially blackmailing social media companies into removing free speech on their platform.” Musk responded to Woods’ tweet, stating that the ADL had made substantial efforts to exert control over X/Twitter.
However, by Monday, Musk attempted to mitigate the uproar surrounding his tweet, emphasizing, “To be super clear, I’m pro free speech, but against antisemitism of any kind.”
The campaign to ban the ADL emerged following a meeting last Wednesday between X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, and the ADL’s President, Jonathan Greeblatt. The meeting focused on X’s moderation of hate speech on its platform, with Greeblatt tweeting about the “very frank + productive conversation” regarding steps X should take to address hate effectively.
Greeblatt also mentioned that the ADL would closely monitor X’s actions and would acknowledge improvements if they occurred, while reserving the right to criticize the platform until such improvements took place.
