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Ads from major brands are running alongside hateful content and dangerous conspiracy theories from far right Twitter users, The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) claims.
Elon Musk’s restoration of 10 Twitter accounts that were banned under the platform’s previous management has generated enough engagement since they returned to the platform to likely generate $19 million in advertising revenue annually, a nonprofit dedicated to countering hate speech online has concluded.
The CCDH uncovered multiple examples of advertisements from major national brands, including Amazon, Apple TV, the NFL and Fiverr, that appeared next to content from the 10 extremist influencers.
In one instance, an ad for Wendy’s appeared next to a tweet by Stew Peters, an anti-vaccine influencer with 168,000 followers, where he referred to the vaccine as a “BioWeapon” and claimed people have been “murdered” by it.
The 10 influencers CCDH considered in its survey are Andrew Tate, Robert Malone, Andrew Anglin, Emerald Robinson, Rogan O’Handley, Peter McCullough, Stew Peters, Anthime Gionet, Rizza Islam, and Gateway Pundit. All had their accounts removed from Twitter for violating rules before Musk restored them.
“Just 10 of these reinstated bad actors will generate billions of Twitter views, all of which Elon Musk can sell to household brands and advertisers. Brands’ ads are appearing right next to Nazi-level hate and lies that can kill,” said CCDH’s chief executive Imran Ahmed.
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