Elon Musk is making millions from verified neo-Nazi X accounts

Elon Musk’s X has given “Premium” blue checkmarks to at least 150 paid neo-Nazi subscribers, NBC News reported. These subscriber accounts regularly violate X’s policies against hate speech by reposting hateful views, swastika imagery, Holocaust denialism, speeches from Adolf Hitler, and antisemitic content praising violence against Jews and other groups.

Several of the posts received millions of views in just seven days in March, including one repeating the debunked claim that 6 million Jews didn’t die in the Holocaust. The subscribers pay $8 a month and benefit from “prioritization” that helps make their posts visible to others. Thousands of unverified non-subscribers repost this content, spreading and normalizing neo-Nazi views.

Related: Meta regularly allows anti-trans hate posts calling for murder of “pedophiles”

The posts refer to trans people as “mentally ill,” “satanic,” “sexual predators,” pedophiles,” “terrorists,” and “perverts.”

X’s policies ban the glorification of violence. However, the site does not regularly enforce its policies. NBC News said that the number of paid neo-Nazi accounts may be even higher than 150 since, at the time of its investigation, premium subscribers could hide their verification check marks from the public. X recently announced that it will remove this option in the coming months.

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X also recently implemented a change to provide free premium subscription checkmarks to accounts with over 2,500 verified followers. This change will make it more difficult to figure out which accounts are paid and which aren’t.

Since Musk bought X (formerly Twitter) for $44 billion in October 2022, hate content has proliferated on the site. Musk himself reinstated numerous right-wing, anti-LGBTQ+, and neo-Nazi accounts that had previously been banned from the platform. He has also repeated transphobic talking points and neo-Nazi conspiracy theories like the “Great Replacement Theory,” causing big-name advertisers to flee. The site’s ad revenue has decreased by 50% and it may lose another $75 million as advertisers stay away. Musk has responded by telling advertisers to “f**k off” and suing watchdog organizations that have reported on X’s hate speech problem.

Five of the accounts most responsible for pushing anti-LGBTQ+ “groomer” attacks on X generated up to $6.4 million per year for X in ad revenues, according to a March 2023 report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

The March 2023 CCDH report noted that anti-LGBTQ+ tweets accusing queer people of “grooming” children for abuse increased 119% since Musk’s acquisition of the social media network. Five of the accounts most responsible for pushing anti-LGBTQ+ groomer attacks were set to generate up to $6.4 million per year for Twitter in ad revenues, the CCDH’s report noted.

In July 2023, Musk sued the CCDH for allegedly making “troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally and its digital advertising business specifically.”

CCDH founder and CEO Imran Ahmed said of Musk, “He’s normalizing the idea that hatred against Muslims, Jews, Black people, LGBTQ+ people is acceptable, normal, and tolerable in society.”

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