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Donate. slash donate. Elon Musk, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and damage control at X.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lily Jamali. This time of year is prime season for advertisers and the platforms on which they choose to advertise.

In the case of X, formerly known as Twitter, those ad dollars are the company's lifeblood.

In the last quarter of 2021, the year before Elon Musk purchased the social media

company it reported more than a billion and a half dollars in revenue.

Almost 90% of that came from ads. That business model was already showing signs of

where after the purchase given Musk's habit of writing and endorsing

controversial posts. Now, as the war between Israel and Hamas rages on,

another Musk post has accelerated the flight of advertisers.

New York Times Tech reporter Ryan Mack

picks up the story from there.

A couple weeks ago, he decides to start engaging with an account that's promoting a white

nationalist conspiracy theory called the Great Replacement Theory.

And Elon Musk decides to engage with this tweet and call it, you know, the actual truth.

And so this sets off, you know, alarms everywhere.

Brands, companies who are advertising don't want to be associated with this blatant kind of anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Yeah let's look at that. What are some of the brands that are suspending advertising on the

platform in response to that specific reply post that you just mentioned.

...