2023-11-25 10:09:16
Billionaire Elon Musk to visit Israel amid criticism of anti-Semitic content on social network X
Billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla and X (formerly Twitter), plans to visit Israel next week, to meet the country’s President Yitzhak Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to reach the surrounding communities that were affected by the October 7 massacre. Musk’s visit comes due to the many criticisms voiced regarding the rampant anti-Semitism on the X social network he owns.
The existence of the visit is not final yet – Musk initially wanted to take advantage of the lull in the fighting currently taking place in Gaza – and visit Israel on Monday, the fourth and apparently last day of the lull. At the same time, the visit may be postponed until Tuesday when the fighting is supposed to resume, and there is a reasonable chance that it will even be canceled.
Musk’s visit comes due to the many criticisms voiced regarding the rampant anti-Semitism on the X social network he owns, and after many publishers such as Apple and IBM announced that they would no longer publish on the network after it became clear to them that their sponsored ads were placed next to anti-Semitic tweets.
Anti-Semitism in the X network is nothing new, and since Musk purchased it in 2022, many restrictions on internal regulation and monitoring of offensive content have been removed, so that anti-Jewish and Israeli content has grown on the network at a high rate even before the October 7 massacre. In order to minimize damage, Musk announced last week that he would donate all revenue from advertising and subscriptions related to content about Gaza – to hospitals in Israel and to “humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza” – without specifying which organizations are involved and without providing a solution on how to prevent the diversion of funds to Hamas.
Even before the outbreak of the war, Musk had a murky relationship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in the United States – a Jewish organization that fights anti-Semitism. Musk accused the organization of leading an advertiser boycott that resulted in a 60% drop in advertising revenue on X. However, it seems Because in the meantime the organization has returned to advertising online.
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