The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, has fired back at X owner and chief technology officer Elon Musk, saying that it is “simply not” instructing advertisers to stop spending on the platform.
Musk had accused the ADL of coordinating an attack on X by convincing advertisers to stop spending on the platform due to a rise in anti-semitic hate speech on the platform following Musk’s acquisition of the platform.
“The truth is there is a problem on the platform,” Greenblatt told MSNBC.
“It is not unique to Twitter but Twitter has uniquely in the last six to nine months brought on all these different extremists and anti-semites.”
In the weeks and months following Musk’s acquisition of the platform and reframing of its rules around content moderation, there was a significant jump in the level of hate speech according to independent research.
Over the past week, Musk told his followers that the 60 per cent drop in advertising revenue that the platform has seen since his takeover was not his fault at all. Instead, it was the ADL carrying out a callous attack on him and the platform.
Jonathan at ADL kicked off a massive Twitter boycott campaign less than a week after the acquisition closed.
Literally nothing had changed about the site.
Our US revenue is still 60% down from that campaign, but slowly improving. pic.twitter.com/7vh5dtdDqi
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 6, 2023
However, Musk’s assertion that “literally nothing has changed about the site” is patently false.
Disgraced rapper and noted Adolf Hitler fan Kanye West was brought back to Twitter following Musk’s takeover — though the South African businessman has said that he had no part in bringing West back to Twitter.
What’s more, in a bid to convince advertisers that their spots would be placed in brand-safe contexts on Twitter, the company recently announced a new tool with Integral Ad Science.
“X has made tremendous progress in building brand safety tools that empower advertisers to leverage the power of their platform while curating the context in which the ads appear. Adding pre-bid meets a critical commitment made by their leadership and we are eager to implement this new feature going forward,” said Jon Halvorson, SVP, consumer experience at Mondelez International at the launch of the new tools.
Clearly, the absence of the new tool before Musk’s takeover would indicate that it was not necessary.
“It looks like the website has tanked and he needs a scapegoat and here comes the ADL,” said MSNBC host Joseph Scarborough.
“There’s no doubt that Twitter has never been good,” added Greenblatt, “under the previous management, we had lots of problems as well. But what we’ve seen is that a lot of these extremists have been re-platformed. You just have to open up your phone and put in the hashtag #BanTheADL, which started to trend over the weekend after I met with the CEO Linda Yaccarino who I met with because we want to be helpful.”
Yaccarino, of course, is a former NBCUniversal advertising exec and was seemingly brought into Twitter but Musk in order to stem the flow of ad dollars.
Musk, however, has since gone on to say that noted right-wing Jewish commentator Ben Shapiro’s characterisation of the ADL as a “progressive interest group” was “accurate.”
“They are interested in removing advertising revenue from sources where they cannot control the speech,” added Shapiro.
. @elonmusk is now at war with the Anti-Defamation League, a progressive interest group that proclaims it is speaking in the name of Jewish causes. And like a lot of these progressive interest groups, they are interested in removing advertising revenue from sources where they… pic.twitter.com/ZdLdfvJEdf
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 6, 2023
Musk has said that he would be suing the ADL and Greenblatt for accusing himself and the platform of being anti-semitic. Greenblatt denies both claims.
