Musk Threatens Defamation Lawsuit Against ADL Over Declining X Revenue

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition in Washington on March 9, 2020. Susan Walsh/AP Photo

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has issued a threat to sue the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), accusing the self-described “anti-hate” organization of being responsible for a decline in ad revenue on X, the social media platform he recently took control of, formerly known as Twitter.

In a series of tweets, Mr. Musk alleged that the ADL was actively trying to sabotage his social media platform, resulting in a significant drop in advertising revenue in both the United States and Europe.

Since Mr. Musk’s acquisition of X, the ADL, along with other organizations, has raised concerns about the platform allegedly allowing antisemitic content to flourish. X has countered this in a safety report released in March.

“To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!” Mr. Musk wrote on Monday night.

Responding to news of a judge imposing a $10 million fine on the ADL in an unrelated defamation case, Mr. Musk commented: “Interesting. In our case, they would potentially be on the hook for destroying half the value of the company, so roughly $22 billion.”

Earlier on Monday, Mr. Musk disclosed that advertisers had informed X of alleged pressure exerted by the ADL.

“Based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss,” he wrote. “Giving them maximum benefit of the doubt, I don’t see any scenario where they’re responsible for less than 10% of the value destruction, so ~$4 billion. Document discovery of all communications between the ADL and advertisers will tell the full story.”

Mr. Musk, who is the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, accused the ADL of pressuring advertisers and causing a significant decline in the platform’s advertising revenue in the United States.

“Our U.S. advertising revenue is still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!” Mr. Musk wrote.

The ADL is a prominent organization with the mission of “preventing the defamation of the Jewish people and advocating for justice and fair treatment for all.”

Mr. Musk vehemently defended free speech on social media while strongly condemning antisemitism.

“To be super clear, I’m pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind,” he wrote. “Since the acquisition, The @ADL has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic,” he added.

In further comments, Mr. Musk explained that advertisers tend to “avoid controversy,” and all it takes for the ADL to impact their U.S. and European ad revenue is to make “unfounded accusations.”

“They have much less power in Asia, so our ad revenue there is still strong,” he wrote.

Mr. Musk elaborated on the situation, stating that the “controversy” causes advertisers to “pause” their campaigns until they receive approval from the ADL.

“[B]ut that pause is permanent until ADL gives the green light, which they will not do without us agreeing to secretly suspend or shadowban any account they don’t like,” he wrote. He noted that this relationship has existed between the ADL and X/Twitter for many years and presumably extends to other Western search and social media organizations.

Mr. Musk also highlighted the ADL’s efforts to curtail accounts on X, such as Chaya Raichik’s prominent account, Libs of TikTok, even when the content has no connection to antisemitism, which he asserted contradicts the organization’s stated mission.

In response to Ms. Raichik, Mr. Musk expressed willingness to provide full transparency by sharing communications between the ADL and Twitter regarding the censorship of specific accounts, suggesting a “giant data dump.”

On Saturday, Mr. Musk responded to a campaign on the platform calling for the ADL to be banned, suggesting, “Perhaps we should run a poll on this?”

Despite the significant harm Mr. Musk claims the ADL has caused to X/Twitter, he asserted that they would not be banned from the platform, even in the midst of a lawsuit.

“Despite the immense harm ADL has done to X/Twitter, they still will not be banned in this platform, unless they break the law,” he wrote.

The ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, has dismissed Mr. Musk’s allegations of trying to kill the X.

“It is flat out dangerous and deeply irresponsible,” Mr. Greenblatt said in comments obtained by NBC News. ”We need responsible leaders to lead, to stop inflaming hatred and to step back from the brink before it’s too late.”

The Epoch Times contacted ADL for comment.

Earlier this year, X’s safety team reported that the platform had seen a surprising reduction in hate speech under Mr. Musk’s tenure, per an independent assessment.

In March, X’s safety team, in collaboration with Sprinklr, used an AI-based Toxicity Model to analyze publicly available data, finding hate speech to be even lower than Twitter’s own measurements. Sprinklr’s definition of “hate speech” is more specific, assessing slurs in context.

To quantify hate speech, Twitter provided Sprinklr with a list of undisclosed slur words. Sprinklr analyzed English-language tweets from January to February 2023 and identified 550,000 containing at least one word from Twitter’s list.

Katabella Roberts contributed to this report.