The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is reportedly to fly to Silicon Valley on Monday to meet the X owner, Elon Musk, to help ease a crisis over antisemitism on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The meeting, which will include other tech leaders and was first reported by the Washington Post, follows Musk threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a US-based civil rights group that campaigns against antisemitism and bigotry.
Musk accused the group in a post on X of trying to “kill” the platform by “falsely accusing it and me of being antisemitic”, and said that a defamation lawsuit would be the way to “clear” the X platform of the allegations.
Musk said that advertising sales were down and revenue had been lost due to the ADL. This summer, Twitter had a 50% drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load.
Amid outrage, Musk himself posted on X that he was “pro-free speech, but against antisemitism of any kind”.
Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter in October 2022, it has repeatedly faced allegations of antisemitism and grappled with challenges related to antisemitic content on the platform.
In May, Musk posted that George Soros, billionaire financier, reminds him of “Magneto”, the Jewish villain in the X-Men series.
Musk also posted that Soros, who is a regular target for conspiracy theories that have antisemitic speech, “hates humanity”. Despite pushback on his comments, Musk said he would continue to post what he wants.
After the tweets, Amichai Chikli, Netanyahu’s government minister tasked with fighting antisemitism, came to the defence of the billionaire, arguing in a post that Musk’s criticism of Soros was not antisemitic.
Chikli said: “I would like to clarify that the Israeli government and the vast majority of Israeli citizens see Elon Musk as an amazing entrepreneur and a role model.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO, said on a post on X that Musk’s post would “embolden extremists who already contrive anti-Jewish conspiracies and have tried to attack Soros and Jewish communities as a result”.
After X users started a #BantheADL campaign, Musk started liking posts with the hashtag.
In July, Germany threatened to fine X (at that point, Twitter) for $54m (£43.5m) for failing to remove a series of reported antisemitic tweets.
The X CEO, Linda Yaccarino, has worked hard to control the fallout of Musk’s posts. In a post on the platform, Yaccarino said: “X opposes antisemitism in all its forms. Antisemitism is evil and X will always work to fight it on our platform. And X is also always open to proactively working together in that fight with all groups.”
This comes after X sued the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, which published research that suggested the Twitter platform algorithm boosted toxic tweets and did not act on 99% of hate posts by premium users on Twitter.
Elon Musk and X were contacted for comment.
