Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Come on, man.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Friday Night Open Thread: The White House Stands Up Against Social Media Antisemitism

Friday Night Open Thread: The White House Stands Up Against Social Media Antisemitism

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Things that need to be said, even if it’s probably more important to Musk that Twitter’s been hemorrhaging advertisers. Per CNN Business:

A growing list of companies said they have suspended advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

On Friday, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN, confirmed that they both halted ad spending on the platform.

The decision by two of the world’s most prominent film and television companies suggests an intensifying advertiser backlash to X after the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk, embraced an antisemitic conspiracy theory popular among White supremacists.

Disney and Warner Bros.’ advertising pauses follow similar moves by Lionsgate and IBM…

IBM’s ads were found appearing alongside pro-Nazi content on the platform. In a statement, IBM explicitly called out what it described as an “entirely unacceptable situation.”

“IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation,” an IBM spokesperson said…

Amid the pullback, X reportedly lost one of its most visible advertisers: Apple. The iPhone maker also pulled its advertising from the social media platform, according to multiple news outlets, including Axios, which first reported Apple’s withdrawal…

“At risk of stating the obvious, anyone advocating the genocide of *any* group will be suspended from this platform,” Musk wrote on X Friday evening…

A spokesperson for X said the pro-Nazi accounts identified in Thursday’s Media Matters report would no longer be eligible for monetization, meaning ads would no longer be run on those pages…

Everyone is so judge-y these days! How was a smol bean who grew up in apartheid South Africa supposed to know that antisemitism is no longer considered a social positive?

Where it started:

Friday Night Open Thread: The White House Stands Up Against Social Media Antisemitism

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35Comments

  1. 1.

    Scout211

    I just read an interesting commentary on Slate

    Elon Musk Can’t Help Himself

    Elon Musk faces a lot of problems in his ownership of the social network once called Twitter. Most of them are straightforward business problems. He paid too much for the company. He saddled it in debt when he completed his purchase, because he didn’t want to sell more of his Tesla stock. He laid off many of the people who made Twitter a pleasant place to spend time and advertising dollars. The website breaks and doesn’t roll out cool features.
    . . .
    But Musk’s biggest problem is not that he made a bad deal, or that he owns a platform that doesn’t addict young minds like TikTok or Instagram, or that it’s now overrun by pornbots, or that he has to service all that ridiculous debt he stuck the company with. He’s the wealthiest man in the world. He could, if he were motivated, get over those things. The problem Musk will never be able to fix is that he cannot help himself. He lacks the restraint, humility, and perspective you’d expect to see in a CEO—or for that matter, a 10-year-old boy. And across what might be X’s most embarrassing few days since he bought it, it has been clearer than ever that he will never, ever develop those traits.

    . . .

    Displaying advertisements next to Hitler stuff is ultra-bad “brand safety,” that advertising term that’s come up a lot since Musk bought Twitter and gutted its content moderation team. But maybe Musk could’ve kept Apple’s and IBM’s business if he were not personally providing antisemitic content on his own platform.

    . . .
    If Musk put a bit more effort into rationalizing his prejudices, he might have gotten off easier. But since the beginning of his pursuit of Twitter in the spring of 2022, he has had a hard time muzzling himself when he sees the opportunity to say something that will soothe his brain but hurt his business. Buying the company at all was a good example; Musk made the deal without thinking it all the way through, spent months trying to get out of it, and only closed when Twitter’s lawyers held him at trial-point. During his first few days as owner, Musk chased off advertisers with erratic comments and cuts to his trust and safety team, and then he threatened a “thermonuclear name and shame” of advertisers who did not return. (Ad spending still languishes.) Last December, Musk tried to start a fight with Apple, the same company that just stopped advertising on his site, before realizing that was a mistake and he couldn’t sustain it.

    Musk has the restraint of a squirrel. That wouldn’t be such a big problem if his base desire were to make Twitter a better business. In the weeks before he took the platform over, Musk had been talking like a guy who’d bought the company on a lark but found more motivation in making a buck than making a point. Clearly not. Musk’s priority is not to save Twitter as a viable entity or a good place for a lot of people to hang out on the internet; it is to preserve it as an outlet where bad ideas can find oxygen. At one time, I thought Musk was buying Twitter so that internet-addled conservatives, the ones who were cheering him on, would clap more for him. Maybe that was Musk’s idea, but he may have just been selfish. Musk is now indistinguishable from the boring, unimaginative racists and antisemites he was trying to impress.

  2. 2.

    Suzanne

    You know what…. I just literally have no idea how these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories grow so huge. It’s so weird to me. I literally never hear anyone ever mention them, except when I read about white supremacists on the intertubes. Like when I read about the Charlottesville tiki torch march, and they were chanting “Jews will not replace us!”, my first thought was, “Ummmm, was that something you were concerned about?”.

  3. 3.

    eclare

    @Scout211:

    Also his self-reverence is extreme.  He thinks it is comedy genius when he makes 4/20 allusions and responds to all press questions with a poop emoji.  Hi-larious I tell ya, no one else could be so witty!

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    @Suzanne: There’s a whole nasty underbelly of the Internet that we all prefer not to see. 4chan and its relatives/descendants, for example. A lot of the hatred spreads there. And, thanks to Musk and other malignants, it’s now metastasized to more “mainstream” venues. Though, also thanks to Musk, Twitter is becoming less mainstream all the time.

  7. 7.

    RevRick

    Musk probably comes by it naturally. According to Wikipedia, his “maternal grandfather and namesake, Joshua Elon Haldeman, was an American born Canadian… a member of the Social Credit Party of Canada, possessed antisemitic beliefs, and supported the Technocracy movement.” And “the Social Credit Party was a populist party in Canada… In its early years, the Socreds gained a reputation for antisemitism.”

  9. 9.

    Alison Rose

    @Suzanne: If you don’t associate with bigots, then yeah, you probably wouldn’t encounter such things. But they are nothing new. They might take new forms as societies change and technology advances, but the demonization goes back to antiquity.

  10. 10.

    CarolPW

    @Suzanne: When I was a kid watching the nightly replay of civil rights marches, and the reactions to them, I was aware that there were many Jewish supporters in the marches. And I saw that they were lynched with no more concern than what was given to the lynching of black marchers.

  11. 11.

    eclare

    @Suzanne:

    I never have either, I was just guessing.

    Antisemitism has existed for a few thousand years, a lot of people have kept it going.

  12. 12.

    Suzanne

    @Alison Rose: Oh, certainly. I just…. have had to learn about it through reading about it. It feels like such a niche thing, but I’m probably the one in the niche.

    It’s great here in my niche. We’re nice here and we have snacks.

  13. 13.

    geg6

    @CarolPW:

    Yes, same here.  My mother was very pro civil rights and she made sure we saw Walter Cronkite every night to see what was happening in the country and the world, regardless of age.  And my parents always provided context like that.  They made me the raving liberal that I am.

  16. 16.

    VOR

    @Suzanne: These people are out there. Nothing new. But they used to understand that normal society did not approve so they kept a low profile. TFG showed them you didn’t need dog whistles, that you could be out in the open with the ugliness. He set them free. Now the wealthiest man in the world is telling them to let their freak flag fly. No, TFG and Elmo did not invent this, they simply enabled it.

  17. 17.

    CarolPW

    @geg6: My parents also subscribed to Life and Look, and both magazines had photo essays showing and talking about the dogs, fire hoses and lynchings.

    My folks were Republican, but they weren’t idiots. I turned out to be a flaming liberal. My sister initially turned into an east coast independent voting both ways depending on the election, but has now firmly become a Democrat.

  19. 19.

    CarolPW

    @eclare: I think they did. A farmer and a clerk. The best thing my dad did was say he didn’t care what we grew up be and do, as long as it was interesting. Neither parent went to college. I have a Ph.D. and my sister has an undergraduate degree from Harvard and an MBA.

  22. 22.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    The best part of this whole mess for Apartheid Clyde is that he gets to keep complaining that Jews are driving his advertisers away.

    Burn, Shitter, burn… be the flaming outhouse that represents Elon’s ego.

  23. 23.

    Raoul Paste

    I hope this represents a tipping point for Musk.  Not that he will change, but decent society as a whole shuns him

    I don’t think Musk will be back on Saturday night live any time soon

  24. 24.

    geg6

    @CarolPW:

    I have five siblings, though one has passed.  All of us are (or were) yellow dog Dems.  My parents did it right. Regardless of other disagreements I may have had with my mom, she was on the side of good 95% of the time.

  25. 25.

    RevRick

    @eclare: There’s a story in the Bible (the book of Esther) about the threat of a Jewish pogrom in the Persian Empire, so at least 2,400 years.

  26. 26.

    SFAW

    @geg6:

    Your description of your family’s politics brings to mind my own family. I consider myself quite fortunate that, at Thanksgiving, when the extended family (incl. cousins, etc.) gathers at Chez SFAW, we are ALL on the same page re: politics. The closest thing to conflict was some years ago, when one cousin’s then-beloved thought Nancy Pelosi was too conservative.

    And then I read about the troubles of some jackals — Jeffro comes to mind, although there are certainly others — re: having rational discussions with their RWNJ family, and it only reinforces how fortunate I am.

  28. 28.

    eclare

    @SFAW:

    There are no rational discussions with one of my cousins, who assumes everyone thinks like he does.  I try to avoid him, I never argue, as he is a very successful and wealthy litigator.  You know, full of economic anxiety.

  29. 29.

    Calouste

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: Also, this is literally the worst time of the year for a company that depends on ads for their advertisers to walk away. About 25% of the total yearly advertising budget in the US is spend in the six weeks between now and Christmas. And that won’t be coming back.

  30. 30.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Calouste:

    Yup. I’m damned sure that the Emerald Edgelord intended all along to destroy Twitter. Tesla and SpaceX show that as bad as he is, he can be successful in business. I think his Boring Company is just a 420-type thing. It’s a boring company that promises a lot and delivers nothing except shits and giggles for the owner. I think he wanted to destroy Twitter because the peasants used it to call out rich assholes like the Saudi royals and his own sorry ass (flight tracking, for example).

    This wreckage is intentional. When you have stupid money you can afford to do stupid stuff like destroy a communication platform for the lols.

  31. 31.

    Ksmiami

    Billionaires deserve massive massive taxation. They are a threat to our nation. And I believe in capitalism, but these people rise to a level where there are no consequences and no one to tell them no.

  32. 32.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    Oh FFS – I look at my Xitter profile and it says “paid”. I updated my profile to say “I haven’t paid Musk anything.”

  33. 33.

    Pink Tie

    Jews have done so much to advance civil rights in the US, promote creativity in the fields of literature, drama, film, and music, and led academic fields. My father wrote a textbook about human sexuality coauthored by Ruth Westheimer. Fuck off with the argument that Jews manipulate American democracy or anything else for that matter. American Jewish people are the very definition of self-made people, particularly when you consider that our government refused European refugees until after Pearl Harbor. My great-uncle was a lawyer in Vienna pre-war and he came to the Midwest to be a paintbrush salesman because the American government wouldn’t recognize his law license. While he was grieving his wife and 3 daughters who died in camps. I am so infuriated by the anti-semitic arguments. I’m sorry that it pissed you off to be called anti-semitic, but if you stop saying, I’ll stop too.

  34. 34.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Suzanne: I think the way it works is that for a long time, antisemitism mostly hid itself behind euphemisms about “woke liberals” (or “PC” or whatever), “ivory-tower eggheads” and “Hollywood elites”, and it just now got to a point where the practitioners feel safe saying it’s the Jews they hate out loud. But it really never went away. They were always talking about the Jews.

  35. 35.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: The Boring Company was a ruse to inhibit public-transit projects by presenting itself as a (nonsensical) alternative. Hyperloop was the same thing–there, Musk didn’t even bother actually founding the company, he just put the idea out there and got people buzzing about it so they’d think it was an alternative to high-speed rail.

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