Elon Musk's X app ran ads on #whitepower and other hateful hashtags
Elon Musk’s social media app X has been placing advertisements in the search results for at least 20 hashtags used to promote racist and antisemitic extremism, including #whitepower, according to a review of the platform.
NBC News found the advertisements by searching various hashtags used to promote racism and antisemitism, and by browsing X accounts that often post racial or religious hatred. The hashtags vary from obvious slogans such as #whitepride and #unitethewhite to more fringe and coded words such as #groyper (a movement of online white nationalists) and #kalergi (a debunked theory alleging a conspiracy to eliminate white people from Europe).
While the hashtags make up a small percentage of what is posted daily on X, they add to previous examples showing how the platform has struggled to maintain control of its ad network and how it intersects with hate speech — an issue that has plagued the platform for years. The placements allow X to monetize extremist content more than 18 months after Musk said that he would demonetize hate posts on the platform he owns.
It’s not clear to what extent people at X were aware that the company was monetizing the extremist hashtags prior to NBC News’ reporting. Twitter, as the platform was then known, began placing ads amid search results around 2010. Last year, some users posted on X that they saw ads amid the search results for #heilhitler. Some of those users tweeted about the issue to X management, meaning the company could have known for months, at least, that it was monetizing certain problematic hashtag searches.
