I did not have “terrorist enabler” on my Elon Musk Bingo card. But it turns out we can add that to his resumé of ruining Twitter, running Tesla into the ground and sabotaging the U.S. government for the sake of cramming his oligarchy and extremist, racist views down Americans’ throats.
According to new reporting, Musk’s social media company has been doing business with and giving perks to more than 200 groups associated with terrorists and other sanctioned groups for more than a year after it was warned about what was going on.
Via The New York Times:
The report, by the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit focused on accountability for large technology companies, said X had continued to take payments from accounts that appeared to be affiliated with Hezbollah leaders, Houthi officials, and militia leaders in Syria and Iraq. The subscriptions, which cost $8 a month, offer users a blue check mark — once limited to notable users like celebrities — and come with perks. Those include more prominent placement in X’s algorithm, the ability to edit posts and the option to share longer videos.
After the Tech Transparency Project reported last year that X had granted paid blue check marks to 28 accounts belonging to entities subject to U.S. sanctions, the social media company stripped badges from some of the accounts and suspended others. But within a month, several of those accounts bought badges again — and have displayed them ever since.
More than 200 accounts linked to terrorist groups and other sanctioned groups have bought blue check marks, according to the Tech Transparency Project.
Those accounts, such as one belonging to a Hezbollah founder, are using their subscription benefits to amplify their propaganda and videos, The Times further reported. Some of them use Xitter “to raise funds, either by using X’s tipping and subscription features to solicit payments or by directing users to send money to a cryptocurrency wallet.”
Meanwhile, Musk has recently criticized the U.S. Treasury Department for not having “basic controls” to prevent payments to terrorist groups, The Times noted.
I guess the world’s richest man just forgot to mention he’s OK with receiving money from terrorist groups.
We don’t call it Xitter for nothing.