Elon Musk’s X faces advertiser backlash
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Elon-Musk owned social media platform, X, confidently claims that it harnesses industry-leading brand safety tools to ensure a positive experience for advertisers on the platform but a quick glance at where advertisements for prominent brands actually appear tells an entirely different story.

In the last 24 hours, Reliable Sources discovered advertisements for a group of major companies and organizations appeared directly on the verified profile account of VDARE, an openly racist, white supremacist website that publishes some of the most vile content on the web.

Those companies and organizations include Amazon, Samsung, the Denver Broncos, Cox Communications, STARZ, The Wall Street Journal, The Michael J. Fox Foundation, the University of Missouri, New York Waterway, Axios, Puck, Ad Age, Morning Brew, and the Asian Development Bank.

X permits a publication like VDARE to operate a verified account, giving it access to monetization and increasing its visibility to users, which is serious concern (Facebook and YouTube have banned the outlet from their platforms, for example). However, the company’s apparent belief that it is appropriate to monetize the outlet’s vicious hate speech speaks volumes about its ethics, as well as its commitment to brand safety.

Since the NFL made noise last week about this very issue, X must be aware that it is pairing advertisements with racist content. As a result of a report from the progressive watchdog Media Matters, the league expressed concern that its ads were appearing on accounts with racist content, including VDARE’s.

The problem persists despite little if any effort being made by X to solve it. Instead, it continues to advertise for some of the world’s most recognizable companies directly on the website of one of the most notorious white supremacist sites.

Brand safety is still a work in progress for X, according to a statement issued Thursday night.