'A big, blinking "Welcome Nazis" sign': Elon Musk shredded by veteran tech observer

For all of his claims to be working on content moderation, billionaire Elon Musk has allowed neo-Nazi accounts to proliferate across X, the rebranded platform previously known as Twitter, wrote tech analyst John Gruber in a scathing analysis this week.

This comes in response to independent multimedia journalist David Leavitt flagging several facially anti-Semitic accounts that the site has explicitly said do not violate policies, including accounts with names like "@J3wsAreBad" and "@gasthejews6969."

These sorts of accounts, wrote Gruber, "should be two of the easiest reports of your day to deal with" if you are a content moderator on the platform: "You don’t even need to look at any of their tweets — both of their usernames should be sufficient on their face to just delete them. No warnings, no suspension, just nuke them. There should be no more question whether these accounts should be deleted than there is whether a turd ought to be scooped off the sidewalk."

Instead, wrote Gruber, "these accounts are welcome on Twitter."

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All of this comes at a moment when Musk, who has caused chaos with a series of impromptu rules changes since taking over the site, is under fire for escalating attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, one of the most renowned Jewish advocacy groups, even threatening to sue the organization for allegedly causing X's drop in ad revenue with allegations of anti-Semitism on the platform.

It also comes as he increasingly interacts with and signal-boosts far-right content on the platform, and pushes conspiracy theories about billionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor George Soros, a favorite target of anti-Semites.

This issue, concluded Gruber, "has nothing to do with any sort of reasonable criticism of or disagreement with the Anti-Defamation League." Rather, it's about the fact that the platform has "a big blinking 'Welcome Nazis' neon sign. Antisemitism is more than just a form of bigotry and hatred, it’s a millennia-old conspiratorial crackpot worldview. And Elon Musk is seemingly sinking into it."