Mediaboss Marketing

Elon Musk, who has been accused of allowing antisemitic messages on his social media platform, X, visited the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on Monday.

Musks visit to the most notorious site of the horrors of the Holocaust came before a scheduled appearance later Monday at a conference on antisemitism organised by the European Jewish Association in the nearby Polish city of Krakow.

The billionaire has faced accusations from the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish civil rights organisation, and others of tolerating antisemitic messages on the platform, formerly known as Twitter, since purchasing it in 2022.

He sparked an outcry in November, including from the White House, when he responded on X to a user who accused Jews of hating non-Jewish white people and professing indifference to antisemitism by posting, You have said the actual truth.

He later apologised for the comment, calling it the dumbest post that hes ever done.

Several big brands, including Disney and IBM, stopped advertising on the platform last year after liberal advocacy group Media Matters said that their ads were appearing alongside pro-Nazi content and white nationalist posts.

X has since sued Media Matters, saying the Washington-based non-profit manufactured the report to drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.

Musk was photographed visiting the Birkenau site together with Jewish right-wing podcaster Ben Shapiro, who is set to attend the EJA conference.

Birkenau is a village near Oswiecim, in southern Poland, fenced off with barbed wire, where wooden barracks for the prisoners and the ruins of a gas chamber endure as evidence of Nazi crimes, and where a monument to the victims stands. International ceremonies are held there each year.

Elon Musks X tells watchdog it has shed 1,000 safety staff

Musk had been expected to make the visit on Tuesday and take part in a memorial service, together with political figures attending the EJA conference in Krakow, but showed up at the Nazi death camp on Monday instead.

Due to schedule concerns, before Elon Musks arrival to the European Jewish Association conference, he took part in a private visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau with EJA chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Ben Shapiro and Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev, the EJA said in an email.

Musk laid a wreath at the wall of death and took part in a short memorial ceremony and service by the Birkenau memorial.

Musk was set to discuss antisemitism online with Shapiro at the conference in Krakow, which was held before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.

More than 1.1 million people were murdered by the Nazis and their henchmen at Auschwitz during World War II.

Most who were killed were Jews, but the victims also included Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and others.

In all, about 6 million European Jews died during the Holocaust. When the Soviets liberated the camp, they found about 7,000 survivors.

Continue reading here:

Elon Musk visits Auschwitz after uproar over antisemitic messages on X - South China Morning Post

For years, Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood has been a supporter of electric vehicle company Tesla Inc TSLA and its CEO Elon Musk, calling for the company to trade as a technology stock and not as a traditional automotive company.

On Tuesday, Wood echoed her praise for Musk and the growth of electric vehicles.

What Happened: Musk recently said he would like to have increased ownership of 25% of Tesla in order to support his future artificial intelligence endeavors within the electric vehicle company.

"I am uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI & robotics without having ~25% voting control. Enough to be influential, but not so much that I can't be overturned," Musk said.

Wood was asked about Musk's 25% ownership request during an interview Tuesday on CNBC.

"Elon Musk is a visionary leader. He's our renaissance man. He's the inventor of our age," Wood said.

In todays market, investors are too focused on the short term and want immediate profits, dividends and buybacks, Wood said instead of focusing on investing in some of the biggest opportunities of our lifetime right now.

"We are looking for visionary leaders looking to stand up to short-term oriented shareholders."

As for Musk wanting 25% ownership of Tesla, Wood said Ark is "all for it."

Wood was also asked about the news of Hertz Global Holdings HTZ selling off some of its Tesla vehicles and scaling back its electric vehicle initiatives.

Wood said there is a learning curve when people first try out electric vehicles, and while the repairs are more costly than for traditional automobiles, she said the maintenance can be up to 60% less.

"When innovation is evolving you're going to go through fits & starts but the trend is undeniable. Last year, EV sales globally were up 28% while gas powered vehicle sales were up 9% so share gains still."

While Hertz is slowing down its electric vehicle plans, Wood said Uber Technologies UBER is encouraging more drivers to drive Tesla vehicles because it improves operations and consumers love them.

"The trend is undeniable."

Related Link: Heres How Much $1,000 Invested In Tesla Stock Will Be Worth If Cathie Woods Price Target For 2027 Comes True

Why It's Important: Tesla is one of the largest positions in several of the Ark Funds ETFs.

Tesla is the largest holding in the Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF ARKQ, comprising 10.96% of assets in the fund. Tesla is also the second-largest and fifth-largest holding in the Ark Innovation ETF ARKK and Ark Next Generation Internet ETF ARKW, respectively, comprising 7.64% and 5.06% of assets.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives recently said the comments from Musk created a firestorm.

The analyst, who has an Outperform rating and $350 price target on Tesla, said that if Musk created next-generation artificial intelligence projects outside Tesla, it "would clearly be a big negative for the Tesla story."

"It's no secret and a key to our bullish thesis that all AI initiatives be kept within Tesla form Dojo to Optimmus to FSD to various robotaxi and other robotic developments," Ives said.

Tesla's board and Musk should be able to resolve the issue in the next three to six months, the analyst said.

"Musk is Tesla and Tesla is Musk and AI is a key to the future of Tesla."

TSLA Price Action: Tesla shares trade at $209.19 versus a 52-week trading range of $138.01 to $299.29. Shares of Tesla are up 45% over the last year.

Read Next: Elon Musk Wants To Own 25% Of Tesla: Heres How Much Of The EV Stock The CEO Owns

Illustration made using Shutterstock photo.

Follow this link:

'Elon Musk Is A Visionary Leader, He's Our Renaissance Man': Cathie Wood Backs Tesla CEO's Push For 25% O - Benzinga

Little information is publicly available about her early life, with most coverage focusing on her relationship with Elon, now the worlds richest person who serves as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Justine lifted the lid on their turbulent relationship in an explosive Marie Claire column in 2010. Walter Isaacsons recent biography of the tech mogul cast further light on the couples time together. Justine Musk is a fantasy author from Canada. Photo: @justinemusk/Instagram

Justine Musk was born in 1972 as Jennifer Justine Wilson and grew up in Peterborough, Ontario, around 13km (80 miles) northeast of Toronto. She studied at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, where she majored in English literature. It was here, when she was 18, that she met the then-19-year-old Elon.

For their first date, he invited her for ice cream, but when he came to pick her up she wasnt there. He walked around campus carrying the gradually melting cone until he found her studying, she wrote in her Marie Claire column. Hes not a man who takes no for an answer, Justine wrote.

While Elon studied at Queens, she was not the only woman he pursued, she added. He ended up transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, but they stayed in touch. He would sometimes send her roses and go for dinner with her when he came back to visit his friends at Queens.

It was the first time that a boy found my sense of ambition instead of my long hair or narrow waist attractive, she wrote.

Who is Nigel Lythgoe, the SYTYCD producer being sued for sexual assault?

After studying, Justine spent a year teaching English in Japan, where she ultimately decided to ditch the name Jennifer because it was far too common and the name of a lot of cheerleaders, she told Isaacson. She returned to Canada, took a bartending job while working on a novel, and mulled over whether to return to Japan or go to graduate school, she wrote in her Marie Claire column.

But things changed when she rekindled her relationship with Elon, culminating in her moving into the flat in Palo Alto that he shared with his housemates and their dog. Justine spent most of her time writing in their bedroom. Friends would not want to stay at my house because Justine was too grumpy, Elon told Isaacson.

Their relationship was turbulent. They often had big arguments in public, and Elon never hesitated to let me know that I was wrong about something, Justine told Isaacson. And I would fight back. I realised that I could say anything to him, and it just did not faze him.

As his wealth grew, Justine made uneasy jokes that hed dump her for a supermodel, she wrote. But instead, Elon proposed to her one day on a street corner.

What happened to Gypsy Rose Blanchards ex-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn?

But the couple still got married in Saint Martin, in the Caribbean, in January 2000. Elon and Justine got into an argument the day before the ceremony was due to take place over their unsigned prenup and Elon told his mother that the wedding was off to her delight, Isaacson wrote.

But the wedding ultimately went ahead. During their first dance, Elon whispered to Justine that he was the alpha in this relationship, she wrote in her Marie Claire column.

Justine also said that Elon wanted to get married and have kids early on, according to Ashlee Vance, once of his biographers.

Their first child, Nevada, who was born in 2002, died from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). He stopped breathing in his sleep when he was 10 weeks old and his parents took him off life support after three days, Justine wrote in Marie Claire. I held him in my arms when he died, she recalled.

Nevadas death sent me on a years-long inward spiral of depression, Justine wrote. One of the ways she coped was by trying to get pregnant again as swiftly as possible, visiting an IVF clinic less than two months later.

Through IVF, Justine gave birth to twins Griffin and Jenna in 2004 and triplets Damian, Kai and Saxon in 2006. In between, she published her first novel Bloodangel in 2005.

But they werent happily married.

It was a dream lifestyle, privileged and surreal, she wrote. But the whirlwind of glitter couldnt disguise a growing void at the core. Elon was obsessed with his work: when he was home, his mind was elsewhere. I longed for deep and heartfelt conversations, for intimacy and empathy.

Stephen Hawkings controversial past and his Jeffrey Epstein link

During some arguments, Justine would say how much she hated Elon and he would call her a moron or idiot, per Isaacsons book. She wrote in her Marie Claire column that he sometimes told her that, if she were his employee, hed fire her.

I met him when he didnt have much at all, she told Isaacson. The accumulation of wealth and fame changed the dynamic.

Elon kept urging her to dye her hair blonder and even go platinum, and she had to attend events where the men talked and the women smiled and listened, she wrote in her Marie Claire column.

I barely recognised myself, she wrote. I had turned into a trophy wife and I sucked at it.

I didnt want to be a sideline player in the multimillion-dollar spectacle of my husbands life, she wrote. I wanted equality. I wanted partnership. I wanted to love and be loved, the way we had before he made all his millions.

Describing the social circle she was in during their marriage, Justine wrote: Women disappeared after some point in their 30s, and any female ambition other than looking beautiful, shopping and overseeing the domestic realm became an inconvenience.

Who is Justin Biebers controversial dad, Jeremy?

Just six weeks after starting divorce proceedings, Elon texted her to say he was engaged to actor Talulah Riley, Justine wrote.

But Justine didnt regret her marriage to Elon, in the end. I will always respect the brilliant and visionary person that he is, she added.

See original here:

What was Elon Musks relationship with his first wife Justine Wilson like? - Style

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) Elon Musk said that X, his social media platform, could have saved Jews from the Holocaust after visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on Monday.

Musk made the comment during a conversation with Jewish right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro during a forum of senior politicians and Jewish leaders from 25 European countries hosted by the European Jewish Association in Krakow. Speakers focused on a dramatic increase in antisemitic incidents across the world since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel responded with on a bloody war on Hamas in Gaza.

The tech mogul has drawn criticism over several antisemitism controversies in recent months, including his endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, vicious spats with the Anti-Defamation League and a documented spike in antisemitic posts on X formerly known as Twitter since he took over the company.

But he was treated as a heroic figure at the EJA conference, in keeping with his reception among right-leaning Jewish audiences generally. To demonstrate how X might have mitigated the mass murder of Jews, EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin played a video that scrolled through an imagined X feed during World War II.

Set to dramatic music, the posts included messages such as, The Nazis told the Jews to get inside the synagogue entire families, infants in their mothers arms, right? Theyve closed the doors and windows with metal bars and then SET IT ON FIRE! OH. MY. GOD. The world must know!

Another post suggested that social media could have improved upon Jewish resistance efforts. Its time to fight back, it said. Join the Jewish Fighting Organization, under my command, and attack Nazis in Warsaw Ghetto!

When the video concluded, Margolin said about the platform, It could have saved millions of lives.

Musk endorsed this alternate historical universe. If there had been social media, it would have been impossible to hide, he said about the Nazis campaign against the Jews. If there had been freedom of speech, as well. One of the first things the Nazis did when they came in is they shut down all the press and any means of conveying information.

Historians have also pointed out that the Nazis were masters of using existing media to press their case against the Jews, suggesting that in this alternate universe, the Nazis might have weaponized social media as well as countries today have been accused of doing in their internal and external conflicts.

As a token of appreciation, Margolin, who is affiliated with the Chabad Hasidic movement, also presented Musk with an art piece made from a Hamas rocket that fell on a kindergarten in Kibbutz Beeri, where about 100 residents a quarter of the population were killed on Oct. 7.

Never again was carved on the rocket, along with a plaque reading, Presented to Mr. Elon Musk in January 2024 in recognition and appreciation of your fight against antisemitism and to mark your visit to Auschwitz.

When asked about critiques that X is permissive when it comes to antisemitic content, Musk argued that the platforms community notes feature, in which users can attach context to others posts, counteracts hate speech.

If somebody tries to push a falsehood, like Holocaust denial or something like that, they can immediately be corrected, he said.

Despite the increase in antisemitic content under his watch, Musk said he was nearly unexposed to antisemitism in his personal life because of his personal Jewish circles.

Two thirds of my friends are Jewish, he said. I have twice as many Jewish friends as non-Jewish friends. Im like Jewish by association Im aspirationally Jewish.

Margolin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he did not know enough about social media to weigh in on specific policies at X but said he believes Musks visit to Auschwitz will help him combat antisemitism online.

I believe that he is absolutely against any expression of antisemitism and that the visit today helped him to understand it even better, he said. So I can only anticipate that we will see much less antisemitism on social media.

View original post here:

Following Auschwitz visit, Elon Musk says X could have saved Jews from the Holocaust - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

The fix is in, apparently.

MrBeast, the most popular creator on YouTube, uploaded his latest YouTube video to Elon Musk's X for the first time. According to MrBeast, he was "curious" about "how much ad revenue" he would make from the upload, so he uploaded the video directly to the platform as a "test."

Now, X users are reporting that MrBeast's post containing the video upload is being forced into their feed multiple times a day as an unlabeled advertisement.

"This has shown up in my feed maybe 7 times now," posted one X user, referring to the MrBeast video. "It is both missing the post time next to the username (indicative of a normal user post) and the Ad indicator on the top right."

The user is referring to the proliferation of apparently unlabeled ads, a fairly recent phenomenon on X that began after Musk acquired the company in October 2022. It is one that Mashable has previously reported on.

X has served some of its users unlabeled advertisements since September of last year. These ads appear in a users' feed without any "ad" or "promoted" label that the platform usually affixes to paid posts. However, users can tell that these are unlabeled ads and not organic posts because they are missing the date the post was published, which are shown on posts but not ads. In addition, as Mashable previously reported and as the quoted X user also discovered, users can still find an option to tell X that they are "not interested in this ad" in the dropdown ellipsis icon menu on unlabeled ads. This option does not appear for organic posts.

Adtech watchdog Check My Ads has already previously filed a complaint against X with the FTC over the company's lack of transparency regarding this labeling issue.

An X employee claimed to Ryan Broderick of the Garbage Day newsletter in a recent report that because there's a labeled pre-roll video ad that plays before MrBeast's video, the company considers that to be the disclosure. This, according to the X employee, explains why there's no "ad" or "promoted" label affixed to the actual Mr Beast post itself.

That doesn't make any sense. The pre-roll video ad is a completely different advertisement. If viewers are being served MrBeast's post in their feed and it isn't organically showing up and the aforementioned attributes point to it being served via X's advertising platform then MrBeast's post containing the video is a completely separate advertisement, and needs to be labeled as such.

In fact, as some other X users have pointed out, older versions of the X app indeed show MrBeast's post with the "promoted" label which means it is being served to users via X's advertising platform.

We should note here that it's possible that some users are being served MrBeast's post organically. Many ads on X are published as regular posts and then later boosted through its ad platform. The instances mentioned in this piece, however, are promoted posts being served through X's ad platform.

So, it appears that X is juicing MrBeast's impressions via unlabeled ads. One can certainly argue whether this lack of transparency is intentional or not, but this does seem to be what's happening.

Musk's vision for X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, depends heavily on video content. X CEO Linda Yaccarino's big announcement at this year's CES, for example, was that the company signed former CNN host Don Lemon, sports radio host Jim Rome, and Fox News contributor Tulsi Gabbard to exclusive video deals.

Musk has been known to drop into creators, influencers, and other media figures' replies and urge them to upload their content directly to X. In fact, he did this very thing to MrBeast on a few occasions.

MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, previously voiced opposition to uploading to X. According to MrBeast, his videos cost too much to produce, and YouTube was the only platform that could compensate him fairly for the amount of views his content receives. But MrBeast was apparently convinced to try uploading directly to X at least once as a "test."

If Musk wins over MrBeast entirely with a big payday based on how his video upload performs, then the X owner just secured the most popular content creator on the internet for his multimedia vision for the future of X.

MrBeast has commented on his "test" just a few times since posting the video earlier this week.

The creator appeared shocked that his post had over 100 million views. (As of publication, Mr Beast's post has 128 million views.) However, on X, views aren't counted like they are on video platforms like YouTube. On the contrary, those "views" are actually just impressions on the post itself, not the number of people who played MrBeast's video. In May 2023, Musk had X remove the public video view count from the platform, so it's unclear now how many actual views a video gets on X.

In his latest post, MrBeast has asked his followers to vote on just how much they think X will pay him as part of the ad revenue share program: $10, $10,000, $100,000, or $1 million.

It's almost impossible to tell how much MrBeast will rake in due to how X's creator monetization program works. X users can only participate in the monetization program if they are paying subscribers to X's monthly subscription programs like X Premium or X Premium+. In addition, X only pays creators for ads that appear in the replies to their posts. Furthermore, only impressions from other paying X Premium subscribers count towards monetization.

As Mashable has previously reported, X's payout amounts to each creator seems completely arbitrary. X employees have shared that users can't really calculate how much they'll actually make as pay isn't determined by a set number of views like they are on other platforms. Those who have made the most on X appear to mostly consist of Musk's personal favorite political commentators, Tesla fans, and meme accounts.

And, of course, we've yet to mention that Musk himself promoted MrBeast's video to his 169 million followers.

MrBeast has promised to share just how much he makes from X's monetization program from this test. So, we'll soon find out the answer to that question. Whatever MrBeast makes though, it seems clear that X put its fingers heavily on the scale to make sure circumstances favored a massive view count.

See the original post here:

X appears to be juicing MrBeast's views as Elon Musk tries to woo the YouTuber to the platform - Mashable