Elon Musk recommends anti-Semitic Twitterers as Israel sources: “Go cry, Jew”

War in Israel
“Go cry, Jew”: Elon Musk recommends anti-Semitic Twitterers as Israel sources

Hardly any other channel can react to current developments as quickly as social media. For Twitter owner Elon Musk, an attempt to promote it backfired.

Since Hamas attacked Israel at the weekend, the situation on the ground has developed rapidly. To stay up to date, many observers also rely on social media. Elon Musk wanted to use this as advertising for his short message service X/Twitter. But he made a huge mistake in his choice of disseminators.

The tweet was apparently meant as an honest recommendation. “To follow the war in real time, @warmonitor @sentdefender are well suited,” Musk tweeted on Sunday morning (US time). When Musk sends something like that, it has weight: the post was viewed 11 million times within three hours. Then it was deleted. Presumably because Musk was made aware of which channels he was currently offering a platform to.

Fake news and anti-Semitism

In the past, both accounts attracted attention neither with balanced nor with well-researched reporting, but primarily with sensational, often hasty reports. In May, both spread the false report that there had been an explosion near the White House. Political scientist Emerson Brooking had tweeted just before that “Sent Defender” was an “absolutely toxic account” that would almost exclusively post “false and unverified” reports. The operator is clearly concerned with driving up its subscription numbers at all costs, he warned.

The second account, “The War Monitor,” suffered completely different failures. Almost a year ago, in keeping with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, he claimed that the media and banks were under the control of the Zionists. In some tweets, the account used the word “Jew” in a clearly derogatory way and sent “Go cry, Jew” or “Mind your own business, Jew” as replies to other X users. Some of the posts have apparently since been deleted, but they can still be found in internet archives.

Strange praise

Musk himself also seems to have realized that his recommendations to more than 150 million followers may not be unproblematic. The tweet with the follow-up recommendation has now disappeared. However, several replies to posts from the accounts are still online. He contradicts a post by War Monitor and emphasizes that he finds it problematic that the account writes about the “murder of martyrs” by Israeli troops. In one, he responds to Sent Defender’s thanks for the recommendation and emphasizes that he wants to get as close to the truth as possible, even if he doesn’t like it. “This platform strives to amplify the signals of the human collective,” Musk said.

In fact, highlighting individual accounts fits perfectly with Musk’s general strategy for his short message service. Musk has repeatedly emphasized that he wants to inherit the traditional media by democratizing news and information. He himself hardly uses any traditional media anymore. Under his leadership, X is also actively working to weaken the media companies on the platform. Most recently, the preview of linked news items was redesigned; instead of a headline, users now only see the associated image without any further information.

In fact, many users see the changes as counterproductive. Because the verification of accounts has been replaced by a subscription model, which is also associated with increased visibility and a financial contribution to advertising revenue, reliably verified users are suddenly no longer displayed: Instead, there is an incentive to publish unconfirmed but spectacular reports as quickly as possible , some users complain. This would make it easier for even targeted false reports to be spread. It makes “a difficult, rapidly evolving situation absolutely impossible to decipher,” according to Brookings’ harsh verdict. Meanwhile, Musk took care of other topics. And posted videos of Tesla trucks or himself playing video games.

Sources: Twitter/X, “Washington Post“, Archives