By Zilber
Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, was criticized for making multiple edits to a post condemning antisemitism as the social media company fights back against suggestions that owner Elon Musk is encouraging incendiary content against Jews.
Bill Grueskin, an X user, took a screenshot of at least four different versions of Yaccarino’s Friday night post that linked to a company blog post detailing the steps it was taking to “combat antisemitism on X.”
The first one read: “X is committed to combating antisemitism. And here’s what we’re doing about it.”
In a subsequent post, Yaccarino added: “As you already know X is completely committed to combating antisemitism in all forms. And here’s what we’re doing about it.”
Yaccarino then published a third version in which she added a comma after “know.” “As you already know, X is completely committed to combating antisemitism in all forms. Here’s what we’re doing about it.”
Finally, Yaccarino settled on a version that read: “X opposes antisemitism in all its forms. Antisemitism is evil and X will always work to fight it on our platform. And X is also always open to proactively working together in that fight with all groups.”
Critics on X speculated that Musk’s handpicked CEO was not feeling confident enough in the message, which is why it may have necessitated multiple edits.
X has declined to comment.
“That’s a whole lot of edits. She probably couldn’t stop laughing and shaking her head with each attempt,” wrote one X user who wasn’t convinced of Yaccarino’s sincerity.
Another X user commented: “She might need to try again.”
“Yaccarino isn’t antisemitic, Musk is. Her message fails,” another X user wrote.
The timing of Yaccarino’s post – which was authored around sundown on Friday, the start of the Sabbath, or Jewish day of rest – also irked X users.
Yaccarino on Friday pointed to a blog post in which X vowed to step up its crackdown on antisemitic hate speech.
“On an ongoing basis, we add new slurs, harmful terms and phrases to our operational handbook and proactive heuristics to ensure we’re capturing the evolving landscape and use of language to target members of protected categories, including members of the Jewish community,” according to the company.
X, the company formerly known as Twitter, has been on the defensive since Musk threatened to file a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League last week.
Musk took issue with the ADL, accusing the group of falsely labeling his company as antisemitic and then leaning on advertisers to shun the platform, resulting in a steep loss in profit.
The threat of litigation from Musk prompted outrage from critics who alleged that the mogul was recycling age-old antisemitic tropes about supposed Jewish control of media and finance.
X has been at loggerheads with the ADL and the London-based nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, which tracks hate speech online.
X sued the CCDH earlier this summer alleging that the nonprofit had unauthorized access to X data which it then used in its research to chronicle “hate and disinformation” on the platform.
“We are deeply committed to combating antisemitism on X and working with all groups, but strongly believe that groups like the ADL and CCDH have consistently misrepresented our progress in this area, and those two things should not be conflated,” according to X.
