Did the ADL and Elon Musk just make peace?

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, left, and X CEO Elon Musk. Photo by Getty Images

By Lauren Markoe October 4, 2023

It looks as if Elon Musk and the ADL just agreed to a truce.

A month after Musk, the owner of X, threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, the nonprofit on Wednesday tweeted that it will resume advertising on X: 

But in that same announcement, the ADL, which has criticized Musk for failing to stem rising hate speech on the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, took issue with his claim that it had tried to damage the company by calling for an advertising boycott. Last month the billionaire threatened to sue the ADL for $4 billion over lost business.

“To be clear, any allegation that ADL has somehow orchestrated a boycott of X or caused billions of dollars of losses to the company or is ‘pulling the strings’ for other advertisers is false,” the statement reads. “Indeed, we ourselves were advertising on the platform until the anti-ADL attacks began a few weeks ago. We now are preparing to do so again to bring our important message on fighting hate to X and its users.”

Three hours after the ADL posted its statement to X, Musk replied to it, “Thank you for clarifying that you support advertising on ?.”

Numerous reports have documented a spike in antisemitism and other bigotry on X since Musk bought the platform in October 2022. The ADL in its announcement said the social media platform has yet to tackle its antisemitism problem.

“As we have noted in our research over the past several years, X — along with other social media platforms — has a serious issue with antisemites and other extremists using these platforms to push their hateful ideas and, in some cases, bully Jewish and other users,” the statement reads.

But the ADL also said that it appreciates “X’s stated intent over the last few weeks to address antisemitism and hate on the platform.”

On again, off again

The Forward in August reported that the ADL had resumed advertising on X despite its call last fall for advertisers to stop doing business with the platform because of its failure to police hate speech among its users.

The ADL explained its return to the platform at the time: “ADL needs to be where the antisemites and extremists are, and when those bad actors are on a platform as large and influential as Twitter/X, we need to be able to reach people.”

But Musk’s anger with the ADL only seemed to grow, and apparently, the ADL had again stopped advertising on the platform.

Early last month, around the time that he threatened to sue, Musk accused the ADL of being the “biggest generators of anti-Semitism” on Twitter  and “liked” a #BantheADL campaign organized by extremists.

More recently, however, Musk has made efforts to counter accusations that he tolerates and promotes antisemitism, both personally and on X.

He met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the Israeli leader’s visit to the U.S. two weeks ago. And he sat down for a two-hour conversation last week with a group of well-known right-wing Jewish men, in which he said, without offering evidence, that hate speech had dropped on X since he took over. He also declared his admiration for Jewish people and that he has more Jewish than non-Jewish friends. 

I’m “aspirationally Jewish,” he said.

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