X owner Elon Musk was forced to delete his own tweets after guiding users toward accounts reporting on Hamas’ attack on Israel that have spread hate speech and misinformation.
Musk — who last week stripped headlines from trusted news organizations from appearing on the site formerly known as Twitter in a a bizarre attempt to rein in misinformation — ended up touting two sites that have spread fake news.
“For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors & @sentdefender are good,” Musk posted on Sunday morning to his more than 150 million followers. “It is also worth following direct sources on the ground. Please add interesting options in replies below.”
Both sites had spread a bogus report in May that there had been an explosion near the White House, rattling the stock markets before it was debunked, according to the Washington Post.
Musk’s post was viewed 11 million times in three hours before he finally deleted it after the 52-year-old billionaire was bashed for endorsing accounts that have a history of being “antisemitic” and “biased.”
“@WarMonitors is a known antisemetic Twitter [account]. They have openly expressed hatred towards jews. Please @elonmusk reconsider sharing this,” one user wrote.
“@WarMonitors is a rancid hate account that puts the word ‘Israel’ in quotes and refers to Hamas terrorists as ‘resistance’ fighters. I suppose you could follow it to see pro-terrorist propaganda. Not a reliable source,” another chimed in.
Musk, who has also been feuding with the Ant-Defamation League for allowing hate speech to proliferate on his site, appealed for calm after taking down his post.
“As always, please try to stay as close to the truth as possible, even for stuff you don’t like. This platform aspires to maximize signal/noise of the human collective,” Musk later wrote on Sunday afternoon.
He called out @WarMonitors for saying “twenty martyrs (numerous families) murdered in an airstrike on their home in Beit Hanoun, Gaza,” on Sunday night in a post that listed the names of the people who were killed.
“‘Martyrs is not an objective or accurate word, nor is ‘murdered,’” Musk wrote.
“The former implies dying for a cause in battle and the latter implies a deliberate attempt to kill those specific people. While reporting both sides is fair, please use maximally accurate words or I must withdraw my recommendation to follow your account,” he added.
However, some users aren’t letting him get away with the slip-up.
“This site is a cesspool of disinformation. You have made it exponentially worse, and just this morning you recommended an account known to spread lies and antisemitism. Other than that, great job,” one angered user said.
Some commenters said they were unfollowing Musk after his controversial endorsement, despite deleting it.
Another user noted the @WarMonitors was profiting off of others’ misery by only sharing graphic content of the Israel-Gaza conflict with subscribers who pay to view their content.
“One of the two account’s Elon is promoting is now starting an Only Fans-style account where users can pay to see graphic images/videos. It doesn’t get much lower than this,” the user tweeted.
“Should we even be surprised that you recommend accounts that spread fake news?” another replied with a screenshot of a previous @sentdefender post that falsely claimed there was an explosion near the Pentagon Complex in Washington, DC, in May.
@setdefender, meanwhile, has nearly 750,000 followers. Both accounts in question also identify themselves on X, formerly Twitter, as media and news companies, though they don’t appear to have websites beyond social media.
Since Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel over the weekend — killing and kidnapping hundreds and injuring thousands more — the accounts have been frequently tweeting updates and disturbing videos of the war, including videos of bloodied civilians caught in rubble following an airstrike.
Musk’s endorsement came off as hypocritical, especially given how outspoken he’s been about mainstream media, which he’s shredded as “a relentless hatestream.”
Musk has had a contentious relationship with media outlets in recent years, at times personally criticizing outlets over their coverage of Tesla and failing to respond to organizations’ request for comment.
Until recently, X’s press line responded to journalists with a poop emoji. Now, an auto-response reads: “Busy now, please check back later,” which is what The Post received when it reached out for comment.
In response, Musk has said that he refuses to read what he calls “legacy media propaganda” and instead prefers to get his daily dose of current events from X itself.
In his latest move to get people to spend more time on his platform, Musk last week made good on a bizarre threat to strip headlines from news organizations’ posts on X.
Until this week, when news organizations shared a link to an article on X, the post automatically populated with the story’s lead image and headline below it.
As of late Wednesday, however, X began displaying only the main photo associated with an article. To see the story’s headline, users are now required to click on the lead image.
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