An exodus of big-name advertisers appeared under way at X, formerly Twitter, on Friday in the wake of CEO Elon Musk endorsing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Nonprofit group Media Matters added that Apple, Disney, Comcast, Lionsgate Entertainment and Paramount Global to its list of companies pausing advertising on X.
“Lionsgate has suspended advertising on X because of Elon Musk’s recent anti-Semitic tweets,” a spokesperson for the motion picture production and distribution company said.
Photo: AFP
IBM on Thursday said it stopped advertising on X due to a report its ads were shown next to pro-Nazi posts at X.
Apple and Disney did not reply to requests for comment.
“Major blue-chip companies are announcing they will suspend all advertising,” the group said on a Web site featuring a running list.
The White House on Friday condemned Musk, the world’s richest person, for “abhorrent promotion” of anti-Semitism.
The White House was reacting to a post by Musk in which the controversial Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies tycoon replied to an anti-Semitic post on X with the words: “You have said the actual truth.”
The original post has been perceived by the White House and the US media as a reference to a longtime conspiracy theory among White supremacists that Jews have a secret plan to bring in illegal immigrants to weaken white majorities.
Most notoriously, the idea was promoted by the man who carried out a mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, killing 11 people.
Referring to Musk’s post, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said it was “unacceptable” to repeat such a “hideous lie.”
“We condemn this abhorrent promotion of anti-Semitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans,” Bates said.
Apps and Web sites that use artificial intelligence (AI) to undress women in photos are soaring in popularity, researchers said. In September alone, 24 million people visited undressing Web sites, the social network analysis company Graphika said. Many of these undressing, or “nudify,” services use popular social networks for marketing, Graphika said. For instance, since the beginning of this year, the number of links advertising undressing apps increased more than 2,400 percent on social media, including on X and Reddit, the researchers said. The services use AI to recreate an image so that the person is nude. Many of the services only
IN ABSOLUTE CONTROL: About 80 percent of Russians approve of Putin, a survey shows, but that might be misleading due to his intolerance to criticism Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday moved to prolong his repressive and unyielding grip on Russia for at least another six years, announcing his candidacy in the presidential election in March that he is all but certain to win. Putin still commands wide support after nearly a quarter-century in power, despite starting an immensely costly war in Ukraine that has taken thousands of his people’s lives, provoked repeated attacks inside Russia — including one on the Kremlin itself — and corroded its aura of invincibility. A short-lived rebellion in June by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin raised widespread speculation that Putin could be
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TAKING STOCK: It was not yet clear how damaging the espionage, dating to 1981, has been, as authorities are still assessing the situation, the State Department said A former US ambassador to Bolivia has been arrested and charged with spying for Cuba over a 40-year span, the US Department of Justice announced on Monday, detailing a shock betrayal by a suspect who called the US “the enemy.” US Attorney General Merrick Garland laid out the allegations against Victor Manuel Rocha, a onetime member of the White House’s National Security Council now accused of using his positions within the government to support Cuba’s “clandestine intelligence-gathering mission” against the US. The charges against Rocha, 73, expose “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign
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