An online hate prevention charity which monitors and reports antisemitic content says trillionaire Elon Musk is partly to blame for anti-Jewish hatred on social media platform X.
Formerly called Twitter, the platform has not responded to repeated requests for engagement by the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
The third round of hearings has been examining the prevalence of antisemitic content and other forms of hate speech on social media, with witnesses telling the commission of the barriers they have encountered in attempting to get offensive and threatening posts removed.
The Online Hate Prevention Institute’s Andre Oboler said the organisation has had success in getting antisemitic and extremist content removed from some platforms, while others were less cooperative.
Dr Oboler says the charity has not had contact with X for years. (ABC News)
An analysis by the institute showed that in a sample of more than 400 videos reported to TikTok, 64 per cent were removed, while just 17 per cent of more than 1,000 Reddit posts were taken down by the platform.
Meta had removed 54 per cent of the 950 Facebook posts reported as offensive, and X scrubbed 24 per cent of the 1,700 posts that were flagged.
Dr Oboler told the inquiry on Wednesday X Corp was “generally difficult to work with, particularly from Australia”.
“Its been quite a few years since we were able to have contact with them,”
he said.
“I believe the current eSafety commissioner [Julie Inman Grant] was the last Australian-based staff member at Twitter that I was able to engage with [when she worked there].
“We have had engagement with them back to head office since then, but that was coincidence that one of their senior legal people happened to be someone I studied with here in Australia.”
Impact of mass X staff lay-off
Dr Oboler said the change in collaboration with X coincided with Mr Musk buying the platform in 2022.
“[The purchase] led to about 80 per cent of the trust and safety staff being fired almost immediately,” he said.
“[There was also] a philosophical change where it went from a platform that was at least trying to improve safety, to a platform that said ‘no we believe in absolute free speech’ almost.
“A lot of people who had been removed from the platform prior to that were invited back on.
“A lot of people that had been causing problems were allowed back in and the environment just became more and more toxic.“
‘Huge degree of influence’
Dr Oboler said: “Elon Musk himself has amplified certain content that really promotes antisemitism and pushes hate.”
“After Trump’s [second] election we saw the Nazi salute that [Mr Musk] did at the [inauguration] event.
“So read it as you will, but there’s certainly a problem there that is being amplified and is coming from someone with a huge degree of influence over the platform.”
In the gesture Dr Oboler referred to, Mr Musk was seen slapping his hand to his chest and extending his arm outward and upward in January 2025.
Mr Musk was criticised for a salute he made following US President Donald Trump’s second inauguration. (Supplied: Reuters/Evan Vucci)
Mr Musk then turned around and made the gesture again while facing the other way.
After criticism, Mr Musk wrote on X: “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”
Despite being called to explain, Mr Musk has not offered any clarity.
Some said it was not a Nazi salute but a Roman salute, used in the era of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
X Corp no longer has a dedicated phone number or email address for media inquiries.
It has previously been reported emails to Twitter’s legacy media email address received an automated poo emoji in reply.
