Elon Musk blames the ADL for X's problems, floats lawsuit

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has had a rough year since Elon Musk acquired the company last October. However, according to Musk, there is a reason for X's struggles.

He says the Jewish anti-extremism civil rights organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is "primarily" the reason behind the social media platform's revenue problems.

Musk made no mention of his own unpredictability or engagement with far-right users on the platform which many advertisers have explicitly cited as the reason they stopped running ads, or the mass layoffs that left advertisers without a company contact, or the unclear platform rules and content moderation changes, or the rebrand from a globally known household name to a generic letter.

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"Our US advertising revenue is still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!" claimed Musk in a X post on Monday.

This claim by Musk runs counter to what he has said about X's revenue over the past few months. In interviews, the company has claimed multiple times that the fleeing advertisers have returned.

“Almost all of the advertisers have said that they’ve either come back or they’ve said they will come back,” Musk said at the VivaTech 2023 conference in June.

In reference to what the ADL has done, Musk is referring to the organization's campaign to pressure advertisers until Musk and company take action against hate speech on the platform.

Musk has seemingly been engaged in a one-sided battle with the ADL for the entirety of the U.S. holiday weekend. What set Musk off? As Mashable first reported, ADL Director Jonathan Greenblatt shared on X last Thursday that he had a "productive" meeting with X CEO Linda Yaccarino. 

After the reported meeting and a post from Yaccarino confirming the news, right-wing users on the platform immediately swarmed the platform voicing their disapproval of the discussion between both parties. 

Musk seemingly made it quite clear how he felt about the meeting between his own hand picked CEO and the ADL. He immediately started liking posts from a white nationalist who began spreading the #BanTheADL hashtag. At one point on Saturday, Musk even shared a post from another far-right user and toyed with the idea of letting X users decide if the ADL's account should be banned.

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"Perhaps we should run a poll on this?" Musk said, referring to the #BanTheADL hashtag.

Musk proceeded to claim that the ADL was in fact responsible for anti-Semitism online because it's the response some have due to the organization's work fighting against hate speech. Musk called the organization the "biggest generators of anti-Semitism on this platform."

Musk's claim about the ADL itself is viewed as an anti-Semitic trope. As author and conspiracy theory expert Mike Rothschild pointed out, "'The Jews bring it on themselves' is one of the oldest antisemitic canards out there."

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Hours later, Musk would return to the platform to claim he was "pro free speech but against anti-semitism." However, he would then continue to rant about the ADL and accuse the organization for X's financial woes. 

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Musk then proposed a potential defamation lawsuit against the ADL. Musk also added that he decided that X would not ban the ADL's account unless the organization broke the law.