Audits show less antisemitism on X than other apps, Elon Musk says

Social media company X’s platform has less antisemitic content compared with other applications, according to audits it has commissioned, X owner Elon Musk said on Monday at a conference on combating antisemitism.

Musk visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau site of a former Nazi German concentration camp earlier in the day, before appearing at the conference in the southern Polish city of Krakow, which addressed the rise in antisemitism since the Israel-Hamas conflict started in October.

The X platform has come under fire in recent months and has seen some major advertisers pause spending or flee since Musk late last year agreed with an X user who espoused an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Musk said on Monday that free speech was still the social media platform’s general bias and that falsehoods being pushed should be corrected.

“The outside audits that we have had done . . . show that there is the least amount of antisemitism on X, if you look at all the other social apps,” he said as he was interviewed on stage by U.S. conservative journalist Ben Shapiro.

Musk did not say who performed the audit or share any details from the report. He did not answer any questions for other journalists.

The Krakow event, organised by the European Jewish Association (EJA), focussed on the “disconcerting surge of anti-Semitism in Europe” since the start of war between Israel and Hamas in October.

When asked about balancing free speech and tackling hate speech, Musk said the platform favored free speech.

“I think at end of the day free speech wins, in that if somebody says something that is false, especially on our platform, you can then reply to it with a correction,” he said.

“So if somebody tries to push a falsehood, like Holocaust denial, they can immediately be corrected. And you can’t get rid of the tag.”

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By Karol Badohal and Jason Hovet, Reuters