Twitter running major brands’ ads with extremist tweets—until they get flagged

Enlarge (credit: Anadolu Agency / Contributor | Anadolu Agency)

After the US Department of Health and Human Services realized its promoted tweet about updated COVID vaccines was appearing on Twitter pages of white nationalist accounts, the agency told The Washington Post it promptly moved to remove the ads from Twitter. But their promoted tweets weren’t the only ones populating near extremist tweets.

A review by the Post found “roughly 40 brands” put in the same position due to Elon Musk’s recent decision to restore controversial accounts of Twitter users known to promote white nationalist views.

Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, was among the most famous accounts that Musk restored (and then quickly banned again), but around the same time, Musk also brought back other controversial right-wing influencers, like the editor of The Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin, and the former leader of a white nationalist group called the American Identity Movement, Patrick Casey. It was these recently reinstated influencers whose accounts raised red flags for some brands with promoted tweets that the Post reported began appearing in Anglin’s and Casey’s feeds, including Amazon, Uber, and Snap.