The social media platform’s owner puts ADL’s future on Twitter up for referendum.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire owner of social media platform Twitter, which he recently renamed “X,” asked his 155 million followers Saturday if he should run a poll on whether to bar an antisemitism watchdog from his site.
Musk touts himself as a free-speech absolutist, and has reinstated thousands of accounts of those who had been kicked off the platform by its previous owners for their hate speech.
He had “liked” a tweet a few days earlier posted by a self-described “raging antisemite,” Keith Woods, where he started a hashtag to remove the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) from X.
Woods had claimed that the veteran Jewish organization was “financially blackmailing social media companies into removing free speech on their platforms,” and asked, “Why should they have a platform on X to hold @elonmusk to ransom? It’s time to #BanTheADL.
Over the course of Thursday and Friday, over 89,000 posts were uploaded that contained the negative tag, as extremists urged “the masses” to “wake up” to how “evil” the ADL is.
The impetus for the campaign was a posting by ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, following a meeting about hate speech with X CEO Linda Yaccarino.
“I had a very frank + productive conversation with @LindayaX yesterday about @X, what works and what doesn’t, and where it needs to go to address hate effectively on the platform,” Greenblatt had tweeted on Wednesday. “I appreciated her reaching out and I’m hopeful the service will improve. @ADL will be vigilant and give her and @ElonMusk credit if the service gets better… and reserve the right to call them out until it does.”
In what could be construed as mixed messaging from the company, Musk wrote on Saturday night, “ADL has tried very hard to strangle X/Twitter.” In one of the replies to his post, he also criticized the organization has having been “hijacked by the woke mind virus.”
The ADL has tracked a huge jump in antisemitic posts on X since Musk took over, and has called the platform out numerous times, as well as Musk himself when he has written posts that seem to support white supremacist theories.
Over the last few years, a new record of antisemitic speech, predominantly online, as well as violent assaults, keeps being set in the U.S., worrying the Jewish community as never before.
When asked for comment on the banning campaign, the civil rights group stated that it was “unsurprised yet undeterred that antisemites, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and other trolls have launched a coordinated attack on our organization. This type of thing is nothing new.”
“Such insidious efforts don’t daunt us,” the ADL spokesperson added. “Instead, they drive us to be unflinching in our commitment to fight hate in all its forms and ensure the safety of Jewish communities and other marginalized groups.”
Source: World Israel News