Twitter displayed Microsoft, Disney and NBA ads alongside neo-Nazi propaganda

This week, Twitter has featured ads from popular brands such as Disney, Microsoft, and the Telegraph alongside neo-Nazi propaganda, and it seems that on Elon Musk-run Twitter, there’s no guarantee that your ad won’t appear next to racist and hateful images. .

Twitter users have published screenshots of a racist film being shown next to the advertisements of some companies, which was also confirmed by the Gizmodo website. This movie, called Europa: The Last Battle, which aired in 2017, is used by neo-Nazi groups against Jews, and the interesting thing is that before Musk owned it, Twitter prevented the publication of neo-Nazi content on its platform. But now we see that this company has given a blue tick even to people like Richard Spencer, who is one of the leaders of neo-Nazi groups, under the pretext of freedom of speech.

The website Gizmodo has confirmed by searching Twitter that clips from this film have been placed next to advertisements from prominent companies such as Microsoft, Telegraph, Disney, Adobe and the NBA. Other brands such as Freddie Mac, Harper Collins, Colonial Penn Life Insurance and Public Rights Project are also involved in this issue. None of these brands have yet reacted to Twitter’s action.

The changes that Musk has recently made on Twitter and also the firing of a large number of employees of the company’s security department have caused the Twitter social network to face an unfavorable situation in terms of dealing with hateful content. It should be noted that the aforementioned neo-Nazi video, which was broadcast alongside the company’s advertisements, violated Twitter’s own rules, but apparently Twitter administrators do not care about this issue. Recently, Twitter’s security director was fired by Elon Musk for restricting the publication of a video on Twitter.

Twitter’s lack of attention to spreading racist content alongside advertisements may reduce the number of advertisers of this company. According to a recent report by SensorTower, Twitter now has only 625 advertisers out of the 1,000 advertisers it had before Musk bought Twitter in September 2022. This has caused Twitter’s revenue to decrease by about 60% between October 2022 and the end of January 2023.

However, it remains to be seen whether Twitter will take effective steps to combat the spread of racist content on its platform.

Source: Gizmodo