The Elon Musk-owned social media platform, X has yet again landed itself in hot water with advertisers after ads have been placed on a white supremacist page.
Forming the latest instalment in what seems to be a never-ending saga, CNN’s ‘Reliable Sources’ has found that ads for companies such as Amazon, Samsung, Starz, The Wall Street Journal and Ad Age have been placed directly on VDARE’s verified account – a source of far-right, white nationalist content.
Many advertisers will question how this was allowed to happen, given X’s recent introduction of so-called ‘sensitivity controls’ meant to allow brands to have more say over what kind of content their ads are placed next to.
The wisdom of allowing VDARE to continue running a monetised account on the site will also be called into question, especially when the far-right news outlet has already been banned by rival platforms Facebook and YouTube.
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In statement given to CNN, an X spokesperson said: “X cares about the health and safety of the platform for all its users, advertisers and publishers, and we’re accelerating products so our content partners can be removed from some in-app placements like profile and search.”
This debacle will no doubt prove a further nail in X’s advertising coffin and will be highly embarrassing for the brands involved, who will now need to engage in some urgent damage control.
If Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino are truly serious about turning around the platform’s fortunes, then they must surely demonatise politically controgersial platforms such as VDARE at the very least – lest they continue to fuel X’s ongoing advertiser exodus.
