After 18 months of Elon Musk announcing efforts to eliminate "hate posts," the social media platform "X," owned by the controversial American billionaire, has placed ads in search results for at least 20 hashtags used to promote racial extremism and antisemitism, including the hashtag "whitepower."
Research into various hashtags promoting racism and antisemitism, as well as browsing accounts on "X" that frequently post hateful and racially charged comments, revealed numerous tags with clear slogans such as "whitepride" and "unitethewhite," alongside more niche and coded terms like "groyper" (an online white nationalist movement) and "kalergi" (a discredited theory claiming a conspiracy to eliminate whites in Europe), according to NBC News.
While these hashtags represent a small percentage of daily posts on X, they add to previous examples showing how the platform has struggled to maintain control over its advertising network and how it intersects with hate speech—a problem that has plagued the platform for years.
It remains unclear how aware X officials were that the company was monetizing extremist hashtags prior to NBC News's reports. Twitter, the name of the platform at that time, began placing ads amid search results around 2010, and last year, some users on X reported seeing ads in search results for "heilhitler." Some of these users tweeted about this issue to X's management, indicating that the company could have been aware for months, at least, that it was generating revenue from certain hashtag searches involving problematic content.
After NBC News requested comments from X regarding these findings, X appeared to take action against at least five of the 20 hashtags that previously had ads, which removed users' ability to search for those tags. The remaining 15, including "whitepower," remained searchable.
In a statement to NBC News, X did not contest the findings but stated that the company "has already taken action on a number of these terms and will continue to expand its approach as necessary."
The statement also reiterated the company's intention, announced in January, to establish a "center of excellence" comprising 100 people to oversee content. The email statement asserted that the findings from NBC News do not reflect the full extent of the enforcement practices followed by the company, including those concerning violent content.
X stated in the message: "X has clear rules in place regarding violent and hate speech, along with robust protections implemented for advertisers. One of our enforcement tools is limiting the reach of posts, which is not reflected in this research."
