Apple will pause all its advertising on X, formerly Twitter, two days after owner Elon Musk tweeted his enthusiastic agreement with an antisemitic post.

A cascade of other major technology and media companies, from IBM to Disney, made similar announcements on Friday.

Apple’s ads had run beside tweets praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, according to a report released earlier in the week. Film studio Lionsgate said it would also pause ads on X, as did Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony Pictures, and Comcast/NBCUniversal, according to media reports. IBM made a similar move the night prior. The New York Times reported Disney would be pausing spending on the social media platform as well.

The billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX wrote Wednesday that a tweet accusing Jews of hating white people was “the actual truth”. The White House condemned Musk’s statements Friday morning, lambasting them as “abhorrent”. A coalition of more than 150 rabbis had called for Apple, Disney, Amazon, Oracle and others to stop advertising on the social network in response to Musk’s tweets.

  • yip-bonk@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    IBM, also one of X’s biggest advertisers, announced it would stop advertising on X Thursday. The company made the decision in response to a report by liberal watchdog Media Matters that found both IBM and Apple’s ads running alongside hate speech. Musk called Media Matters an “evil organization” in response.

    Whoever’s job it is to keep a dart gun trained on him, you might want to make sure it’s loaded. Dude’s crackin’.