Lionsgate pauses all advertising on Elon Musk’s X as concerns about antisemitism fuel backlash

Lionsgate, one of the world’s most prominent film and television companies, has suspended all advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the entertainment giant said Friday afternoon, and it was first reported by Bloomberg.

The decision by Lionsgate suggests an intensifying advertiser backlash to X after the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk, embraced an antisemitic conspiracy theory popular among White supremacists.

Lionsgate’s ad pause follows a similar move on Thursday by IBM, whose ads were found appearing alongside pro-Nazi content. In a statement, IBM explicitly called out what it described as an “entirely unacceptable situation.”

IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.

IBM spokesperson

An analysis by the watchdog group Media Matters found this week that in addition to IBM, ads by Apple, Comcast, NBC and Oracle had appeared alongside similar content.

A spokesperson for X said the pro-Nazi accounts identified in Thursday’s Media Matters report would no longer be eligible for monetization, meaning ads would no longer be run on those pages.

In August, two other brands, NCTA — the Internet and Television Association — and Gilead Sciences paused their spending on X after their ads were also run alongside pro-Nazi content.