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Over the weekend on X, the everything but most often vile bigotry app, the account @elmo was hacked. We won’t be sharing the tweets here, but, in addition to calling for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, the hacker fired off several posts calling for violence to Jewish people. By Monday morning, the posts were deleted, but screenshots of the tweets were shared widely, according to CNN.
Sesame Workshop confirmed in a statement to Variety on Monday morning that the account had in fact been “compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts.” The spokesperson confirmed that the “account has since been secured.”
The proliferation of bigotry, and anti-semitism specifically, is increasingly common on the app once known as Twitter. Last week, the platform’s AI chatbot Grok dubbed itself “MechaHitler” while spewing anti-semitic vitriol. Ex-X CEO Linda Yaccarino stepped down in the immediate aftermath of that episode, though she didn’t cite it as a reason for her departure. While some may have speculated that the hateful AI chatbot may have scared off advertisers, NBC News reported on Friday that while companies like Apple had decided to pause ad spending on X in 2023 after a different instance of anti-semitism from Musk, the same company (and others like Amazon, the NFL, and Microsoft) declined to comment on their plans in the wake of MechaHitler. Perhaps the defiling of a beloved children’s character’s digital footprint could convince the NBA and Samsung to spend their advertising dollars elsewhere.
