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Image: Bloomberg/Contributor via Getty Images
Elon Musk lashed out in a series of tweets over the weekend — a fairly standard occurrence for Twitter’s billionaire owner — blaming the Anti-Defamation League for a 60 percent drop in Twitter’s advertising revenue and threatening to sue the organization .
The ADL, a civil rights group that combats anti-Semitism, has called on Twitter to enforce its policies against hate speech, along with other groups. Reporting an increase in anti-Semitic posts Shortly after Musk’s acquisition last year.
“Our US advertising revenue is still down 60%, largely due to pressure from advertisers ADLs (that’s what the advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in eliminating X/Twitter!” Musk said in a tweet on Monday, the federal Labor Day holiday in the US. They said thatAt the very least, he believes ADLs to be responsible for “10% of the value destruction,” or about $4 billion. Since Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter last year, it is estimated to have lost two-thirds of its value. From Musk’s tweet, it appears that the platform has now lost almost all of its value.
“If this continues, we will ironically have no choice but to file a defamation suit against the “Anti-Defamation” league,” he said in another tweet.
Musk’s anger came after ADL CEO Jonah Greenblatt sparked a wave of anti-Semitism on Twitter. tweeted on Thursday About to have a “frank + meaningful conversation” with Twitter CEO Linda Yacarino on how the site can address hate speech. #BantheADL became a trending topic on Twitter, a campaign that sparked a flood of anti-Semitic posts, Rolling stone informed of. Musk also engaged with a YouTuber with ties to the far-right who claimed in a tweet that the ADL was “financially blackmailing” social media companies to suppress free speech. Musk tweeted a response on Friday, “The ADL has tried hard to strangle X/Twitter.”
on Saturday, Musk tweeted, “Maybe we should run a referendum on this?” Referring to the #BantheADL campaign.
Musk kept fueling the conspiracies with his tweets. For example, he lent credibility to a tweet by a right-wing influencer who asked how many anti-Semitic Twitter accounts were actually “financed/operated by” him. [Democratic National Committee],
“With unverified accounts it is impossible to tell whether you are dealing with a small or large number of real people, as sophisticated bots are virtually indistinguishable from humans. With unverified accounts, there is no way to tell whether to complain. organization was somehow complicit in creating the very thing they complain about!” Musk replied,
It’s unclear whether Musk will actually follow through on his threat of a lawsuit. He often says things and then does not do them. However, it’s worth noting that Twitter is currently suing the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate, which monitors hate speech on social media. Twitter claimed in its lawsuit that CCDH is funded by “unknown organizations, individuals, and potentially foreign governments with ties to legacy media companies,” but it could not name them.
Twitter’s downfall has been largely attributed to advertisers fleeing the platform due to Musk’s own actions, including raising conspiracy theories, restoring far-right accounts, threatening lawsuits, and more . In November of 2022, just weeks after Musk took office, Media Matters for America reported that Twitter had lost half of its top 100 advertisers, representing billions of dollars in revenue, mainly to Musk’s ” Brand Unsafe” due to actions.
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