5 ms·

Advertisers Flee X as Outcry Grows Over Musk’s Endorsement of Antisemitic Post

42 points by jbegley 3y ago

smlacy 3y ago
Good.
mrlonglong 3y ago
He's thrown away $45 billion..
neonsunset 3y ago
[flagged]
- nkozyra 3y ago
  How is this relevant to the story?
  - neonsunset 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - nkozyra 3y ago
      So you don't have an answer? Got it.
    - pydry 3y ago
      You could try reading something more thoughtful than yellow journalism. E.g. this https://www.cbc.ca/news/editorsblog/editor-in-chief-note-use-of-words-terrorist-terrorism-1.6997281 https://www.cbc.ca/news/editorsblog/editor-in-chief-note-use...
    - schleck8 3y ago
      Has anyone recently told you how superior you are to everyone else, with your secret knowledge oh great wizard? I feel like that's what you bunch want to hear, since you are in on the world conspiracy.
cratermoon 3y ago
IBM, Apple, and now Disney and Lionsgate.
vbeeaz 3y ago
[flagged]
peter422 3y ago
I’ve given up most of my Twitter usage but every time I go there to view a tweet the ads are always some kind of knife self defense class or bizarre right wing causes. I’d imagine that even when IBM and Apple were still advertising, it was much less than before.
- nkozyra 3y ago
  90% of what I've seen for months is dropshipping companies called Flurghh or Zamblot but Apple, Disney and Amazon were the few recognizable names.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Mine are really really weird. They’ll be an ominous photo of Elon with some headline like “This changes everything” from some blue check person account with 500 followers and the URL is like, “vegans.site” or something else entirely unrelated. They’re not even running low-end ads at this point. They’re running generated clickbait. Oh and absolute blatant trademark violations. An ad with Elon’s face and the X logo for “X Coin official ICO” How can they possibly pivot to money handling services if they have no choice but to let their brand be completely eroded like that?
  - nkozyra 3y ago
    Yeah a lot of that. And OnlyFans models replying to everything as cheap marketing. And bluechecks spamming to drive engagement to make their $8 back. It's really been a race to the bottom.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    The other day I came across an ad in the form of a sponsored post (with an official Twitter link inviting me to follow the screenshotted accounts) for 'feetfinders.com', a foot fetish website. It was teasing $195 bounties for pics of good looking feet trampling apple pie.
manuelabeledo 3y ago
Good move. I wish CEOs and owners were more vocal about their beliefs. It would help weeding the garbage out.
mynameishere 3y ago
[flagged]
elzbardico 3y ago
[flagged]
leetgirl83 3y ago
This pretty much summarizes how the media LIES all the time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9l_2E4LPgY&t=1018s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9l_2E4LPgY&t=1018s
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
anigbrowl 3y ago
In the last hour he's gone to the opposite extreme, posting : As I said earlier this week, “decolonization”, “from the river to the sea” and similar euphemisms necessarily imply genocide. Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension. 'Decolonization' has been in the air a lot recently due to the ongoing war in Gaza but is mainly used to describe the gradual unwinding of European colonialism/imperialism; Wikipedia's article provides a good overview. The term is often associated with Frantz Fanon, who opposed the French colonialization of Algeria, and wrote several influential books on the subject, the most famous being The Wretched of the Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonization For Musk to engage in such an abrupt reversal of his stated free speech ideals (and barely-qualified endorsement of white nationalist conspiracy theories yesterday), Twitter's financials must be undergoing a severe erosion.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  As a thought experiment: these "opposites" aren't really that far apart if you think of Musk's political demographic as consisting, in part, of Christian eschatologists (i.e. people who are simultaneously anti-Semitic and pro-Israel). That doesn't mean that he himself is one, only that his grift currently lies with some of those people.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    Fair comment.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    > Christian eschatologists (i.e. people who are simultaneously anti-Semitic and pro-Israel). “Christian eschatologists” could apply to about 100 different touted beliefs with a 1000 nuance flavors of each. Let’s not paint all those folks with a pro-Israel yet anti-Semitic brush. There may be some of that, but it’s certainly not all and not even enough to consider it a defining characteristic of most.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
stainablesteel 3y ago
it's the most fickle thing musk explained his comment below in that thread and i thought it was done acceptably, he wasn't antisemitic, he just continued a conversation that implied [correctly] that throughout the last ~10 years there has been a tail-wagging-the-dog relationship between what is currently the demographic with a large outcry of support for israel and the demographic with a large outcry of support for hamas. that the demographic in support of israel is usually the manipulator in this situation, and that this has usually been used against a lot of the people who actually are in support of israel in the current day. he's not wrong, its not antisemitic, and taking this stance doesn't imply you're a nazi, and certainly doesn't imply who or what kind of solution you might suppport. yet complexity is not allowed. but what's interesting here is X's apparent rise in the status of its advertisement real estate[0]. I think this will turn out positive for twitter and elon no matter what, people seem to like twitter and want it to keep being what it is. I for one look forward to the day when we can have simple conversations in public without other people panicking in response. 0. https://twitter.com/xDaily/status/1724106350584648109 https://twitter.com/xDaily/status/1724106350584648109
- 7e 3y ago
  Richard Stallman, is that you? I didn’t think you posted on HN.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  As I said yesterday, if he expressed this opinion in the abstract it wouldn't be that controversial. It's the fact that he gave an uncritical endorsement to an explicitly anti-semitic white nationalist conspiracy theory first that caused people to recoil. The more anodyne follow-up (a few tweets of Musk beefing about the ADL were deliberately making him look bad) is imho just a rhetorical gambit; it wouldn't have attracted a fraction of the attention if posted in isolation. X's apparent rise in the status of its advertisement real estate that's an interesting way to describe running more and cheaper ads to make up for the loss of revenue.
  - nkozyra 3y ago
    This is the problem. He's engaging and agreeing with openly, overtly racist accounts. This colors even the most generous of interpretations.
adfm 3y ago
From the article: "They followed IBM, which cut its spending with X on Thursday." Let's *never forget* that the Holocaust wouldn't have been as effective if it weren't for *International Business Machines* punch cards and its ties to the Nazi party.[^1] I'm not surprised they split. Remember kids: a crypto-fascist is still a fascist. [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] All these threads talking about the same reports/same mix of companies Consolidate or something https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38297685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38297685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38306215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38306215

42 points by jbegley 3y ago

smlacy 3y ago

Good.

mrlonglong 3y ago

He's thrown away $45 billion..

neonsunset 3y ago

[flagged]

nkozyra 3y ago
How is this relevant to the story?
- neonsunset 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - nkozyra 3y ago
    So you don't have an answer? Got it.
  - pydry 3y ago
    You could try reading something more thoughtful than yellow journalism. E.g. this https://www.cbc.ca/news/editorsblog/editor-in-chief-note-use-of-words-terrorist-terrorism-1.6997281 https://www.cbc.ca/news/editorsblog/editor-in-chief-note-use...
  - schleck8 3y ago
    Has anyone recently told you how superior you are to everyone else, with your secret knowledge oh great wizard? I feel like that's what you bunch want to hear, since you are in on the world conspiracy.

cratermoon 3y ago

IBM, Apple, and now Disney and Lionsgate.

vbeeaz 3y ago

[flagged]

peter422 3y ago

I’ve given up most of my Twitter usage but every time I go there to view a tweet the ads are always some kind of knife self defense class or bizarre right wing causes. I’d imagine that even when IBM and Apple were still advertising, it was much less than before.

nkozyra 3y ago
90% of what I've seen for months is dropshipping companies called Flurghh or Zamblot but Apple, Disney and Amazon were the few recognizable names.
Waterluvian 3y ago
Mine are really really weird. They’ll be an ominous photo of Elon with some headline like “This changes everything” from some blue check person account with 500 followers and the URL is like, “vegans.site” or something else entirely unrelated. They’re not even running low-end ads at this point. They’re running generated clickbait. Oh and absolute blatant trademark violations. An ad with Elon’s face and the X logo for “X Coin official ICO” How can they possibly pivot to money handling services if they have no choice but to let their brand be completely eroded like that?
- nkozyra 3y ago
  Yeah a lot of that. And OnlyFans models replying to everything as cheap marketing. And bluechecks spamming to drive engagement to make their $8 back. It's really been a race to the bottom.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  The other day I came across an ad in the form of a sponsored post (with an official Twitter link inviting me to follow the screenshotted accounts) for 'feetfinders.com', a foot fetish website. It was teasing $195 bounties for pics of good looking feet trampling apple pie.

manuelabeledo 3y ago

Good move. I wish CEOs and owners were more vocal about their beliefs. It would help weeding the garbage out.

mynameishere 3y ago

[flagged]

elzbardico 3y ago

[flagged]

leetgirl83 3y ago

This pretty much summarizes how the media LIES all the time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9l_2E4LPgY&t=1018s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9l_2E4LPgY&t=1018s

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

anigbrowl 3y ago

In the last hour he's gone to the opposite extreme, posting : As I said earlier this week, “decolonization”, “from the river to the sea” and similar euphemisms necessarily imply genocide. Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension. 'Decolonization' has been in the air a lot recently due to the ongoing war in Gaza but is mainly used to describe the gradual unwinding of European colonialism/imperialism; Wikipedia's article provides a good overview. The term is often associated with Frantz Fanon, who opposed the French colonialization of Algeria, and wrote several influential books on the subject, the most famous being The Wretched of the Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonization For Musk to engage in such an abrupt reversal of his stated free speech ideals (and barely-qualified endorsement of white nationalist conspiracy theories yesterday), Twitter's financials must be undergoing a severe erosion.

woodruffw 3y ago
As a thought experiment: these "opposites" aren't really that far apart if you think of Musk's political demographic as consisting, in part, of Christian eschatologists (i.e. people who are simultaneously anti-Semitic and pro-Israel). That doesn't mean that he himself is one, only that his grift currently lies with some of those people.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Fair comment.
- kcplate 3y ago
  > Christian eschatologists (i.e. people who are simultaneously anti-Semitic and pro-Israel). “Christian eschatologists” could apply to about 100 different touted beliefs with a 1000 nuance flavors of each. Let’s not paint all those folks with a pro-Israel yet anti-Semitic brush. There may be some of that, but it’s certainly not all and not even enough to consider it a defining characteristic of most.
  - woodruffw 3y ago

stainablesteel 3y ago

it's the most fickle thing musk explained his comment below in that thread and i thought it was done acceptably, he wasn't antisemitic, he just continued a conversation that implied [correctly] that throughout the last ~10 years there has been a tail-wagging-the-dog relationship between what is currently the demographic with a large outcry of support for israel and the demographic with a large outcry of support for hamas. that the demographic in support of israel is usually the manipulator in this situation, and that this has usually been used against a lot of the people who actually are in support of israel in the current day. he's not wrong, its not antisemitic, and taking this stance doesn't imply you're a nazi, and certainly doesn't imply who or what kind of solution you might suppport. yet complexity is not allowed. but what's interesting here is X's apparent rise in the status of its advertisement real estate[0]. I think this will turn out positive for twitter and elon no matter what, people seem to like twitter and want it to keep being what it is. I for one look forward to the day when we can have simple conversations in public without other people panicking in response. 0. https://twitter.com/xDaily/status/1724106350584648109 https://twitter.com/xDaily/status/1724106350584648109

7e 3y ago
Richard Stallman, is that you? I didn’t think you posted on HN.
anigbrowl 3y ago
As I said yesterday, if he expressed this opinion in the abstract it wouldn't be that controversial. It's the fact that he gave an uncritical endorsement to an explicitly anti-semitic white nationalist conspiracy theory first that caused people to recoil. The more anodyne follow-up (a few tweets of Musk beefing about the ADL were deliberately making him look bad) is imho just a rhetorical gambit; it wouldn't have attracted a fraction of the attention if posted in isolation. X's apparent rise in the status of its advertisement real estate that's an interesting way to describe running more and cheaper ads to make up for the loss of revenue.
- nkozyra 3y ago
  This is the problem. He's engaging and agreeing with openly, overtly racist accounts. This colors even the most generous of interpretations.

adfm 3y ago

From the article: "They followed IBM, which cut its spending with X on Thursday." Let's *never forget* that the Holocaust wouldn't have been as effective if it weren't for *International Business Machines* punch cards and its ties to the Nazi party.[^1] I'm not surprised they split. Remember kids: a crypto-fascist is still a fascist. [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] All these threads talking about the same reports/same mix of companies Consolidate or something https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38297685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38297685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38306215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38306215