At least two brands have said they will suspend advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after their ads and those of other companies were run on an account promoting fascism. The issue came less than a week after X CEO Linda Yaccarino publicly affirmed the company’s commitment to b...
The issue came less than a week after X CEO Linda Yaccarino publicly affirmed the company’s commitment to brand safety for advertisers.
The nonprofit news watchdog Media Matters for America documented in a report published Wednesday that ads for a host of mainstream brands have been run on the account, which has shared content celebrating Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Ads for brands including Adobe, Gilead Sciences, the University of Maryland’s football team, New York University Langone Hospital and NCTA-The Internet and Television Association were run alongside tweets from the account that had garnered hundreds of thousands of views, CNN observed.
But Wednesday’s report suggests that the company still has work to do if it wants to avoid monetizing, and placing ads alongside, objectionable content.
“Media Matters and other observers have documented how X has remained a dangerous cesspool of content, especially for advertisers,” Wednesday’s report states.
Media Matters says it has also documented instances of brands’ ads being placed next to content from Holocaust denial and white nationalist accounts.