• by Colin Kirkland , April 19, 2024

Even after DoubleVerify's unprecedented correction of X's brand-safety rating last week, the social messaging platform formerly known as Twitter continues to display harmful and offensive content alongside brands' promotions.

Automaker Hyundai has announced that it is pausing its ad spend on X after its promotions appeared alongside pro-Nazi content.

“We have paused our ads on X and are speaking to X directly about brand safety to ensure this issue is addressed,” Hyundai said in the statement after freelance journalist Nancy Levine Stearns posted a screenshot Wednesday of a Hyundai ad displayed on an X account that frequently posts conspiratorial antisemitic content defending Adolf Hitler.

Before being made “temporarily unavailable” by X, the account has held a blue checkmark for months. It was a paid Premium subscriber with over 55,000 followers.

The news comes after ad-measurement platform DoubleVerify unexpectedly confirmed a misrepresentation of X's brand-safety measurement, stating that its software matched the wrong visual graphs to the correct data, ultimately lowering X's score significantly.

The company corrected the score to 99.99%, which came as a surprise to many -- not only because of the advertiser exodus that has taken place on the platform due to an explosion of antisemitic posts, but because DoubleVerify's mistake only affected X.

Earlier this week, NBC published a report showing thousands of unpaid accounts, plus 150 blue checkmark profiles, that have posted and/or amplified pro-Nazi content on X in recent months.

“The pro-Nazi content is not confined to the fringes of the platform,” NBCstated. “During one seven-day period in March, seven of the most widely shared pro-Nazi posts on X accrued 4.5 million views in total. One post with 1.9 million views promoted a false and long-debunked conspiracy theory that 6 million Jews did not die in the Holocaust.”

NBC says that over 5,000 accounts, both verified and unverified, reshared that post, in addition to other popular antisemitic posts being reshared hundreds of times apiece.

X denied the report earlier this week, claiming that it lacked “comprehensive research, investigation, and transparency” but has since been working with Hyundai’s marketing team to correct the ongoing issue.