An X account for the Sesame Road character Elmo has been focused by an unknown hacker who posted antisemitic and racist messages.
The profile is adopted by greater than 650,000 customers on the social community – and often posts upbeat and motivational updates.
Sunday’s messages, which have since been deleted, referred to as for violence towards Jews, insulted Donald Trump, and referred to alleged recordsdata associated to Jeffrey Epstein.
In an announcement, Sesame Workshop stated the X account has now been secured – and described the posts uploaded to Elmo’s web page as “disgusting”.
That is the newest controversy to befall Elon Musk’s platform in latest days.
Final week, X’s AI chatbot Grok additionally produced content material with antisemitic tropes, which had been later eliminated and denounced as “inappropriate”.
Musk bought the web site, previously referred to as Twitter, again in 2022 – with extremist content material rising towards a backdrop of much less moderation.
The Anti-Defamation League, a US organisation that fights antisemitism, stated: “It is appalling that Elmo’s official account, recognized for spreading kindness, was hacked solely to unfold violent antisemitism.”
“Antisemitism on social media fosters the normalisation of anti-Jewish hate on-line and offline – and contributes to an more and more threatening surroundings for Jewish individuals in every single place.”
Elmo’s account has not posted because the hack.