World Bank halts paid advertising on X after CBS News finds its promoted ads under racist content

The World Bank has ceased all paid advertising on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, which was formerly Twitter, after a CBS News investigation found promoted advertisements from the organization showing up under a racist post from an account that prolifically posts pro-Nazi and white nationalist content. 

CBS News found a verified X account with more than 115,000 followers that had posted a racist image alongside a post praising Europe’s colonization of Africa. CBS News is not publicly identifying the accounts spreading racist content on X. 

A promoted advertisement for the World Bank showed up in the comments section below the post. 

“The World Bank Group had already reduced its paid marketing on X while working with the platform to implement the strongest safety protocols X offers for our content,” a spokesperson for the World Bank told CBS News on Friday, adding: “This latest incident is entirely unacceptable, and we are immediately ceasing all paid marketing on X.”

CBS News has asked X to comment on the World Bank’s withdrawal from the platform but had not received a reply by the time of publication. 

The account has shared dozens of  antisemitic and racist posts over the course of the past week alone, and CBS News found promoted advertisements from numerous businesses under multiple posts from the account as it shared pro-Nazi content, including one post showing archival video of Adolf Hitler with the caption: “We defeated the wrong enemy.” That post has garnered more than two million views on the platform, according to X’s own metrics. 

CBS News has found more than a dozen accounts on X with the blue check indicating “verification” by the platform that have large followings and regularly post white nationalist or pro-Nazi content, and which have promoted advertisements from some recognizable brands showing up in their comments threads. 

X’s policy on hateful conduct states that users “may not attack other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.” It says the platform prohibits any targeting of people or groups with media that refers to or depicts the Holocaust or “symbols historically associated with hate groups, e.g., the Nazi swastika,” as examples.

A promoted advertisement from Saudia Airlines, the flag carrier of Saudi Arabia, showed up under the same post as the World Bank advertisement. CBS News has sought comment from Saudia Airlines on the placement of its advertisement and on how the airline determines whether and how to spend money on the platform.

In public court filings unsealed Tuesday, it was revealed that Kingdom Holdings, a Saudi Arabian conglomerate operated by members of the country’s royal family, is a key investor in the X platform. Saudia Airlines is owned by the government of Saudi Arabia. 

On at least five occasions, promoted advertisements for the backpack company Nordace showed up under white nationalist or pro-Nazi posts on X. This included an advertisement for a Nordace backpack under a post from another verified account with 161,000 followers. 

The thread shared by the account included pro-Nazi posts that said “antisemites will save the world,” and “Weimar problems require Weimar solutions” with the “Weimar problems” phrase painted in the colors of the LGBTQ rainbow flag. The Weimar Republic was a name used for Germany before Hitler rose to power with the Nazi regime. 

On its website, Canadian-owned Nordace describes its core values as including, “Respect People” and “leave a positive impact.” 

CBS News has sought comment from Nordace about the placement of its advertisements on X and how the company determines its ad spend on the platform. 

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has dismantled safeguards on the platform since his October 2022 takeover of what was then Twitter — including dramatic changes to its verification system and the disbanding of its Trust and Safety advisory group, as well as changes to broader content moderation and hate speech enforcement.

Musk has created a system that sees X’s algorithms favor accounts that pay for the platform’s blue-check subscription service. According to X’s own marketing for its verification service, X premium offers “reply prioritization” for all subscribers. 

Changes made by Musk to the X business model since his purchase of the company have allowed influencers who buy into the company’s verification subscription to monetize their content. Subscribers are eligible to receive a share of advertising revenue for their content if they “have at least 5M organic impressions on cumulative posts within the last 3 months” and “have at least 500 followers.”

According to the platform’s terms of use, accounts can do this without publicly disclosing their identity, provided the account holder privately discloses their ID to the platform. 

“X allows the use of pseudonymous accounts, meaning an account’s profile is not required to use the name or image of the account owner. Accounts that appear similar to others on X are not in violation of this policy, so long as their purpose is not to deceive or manipulate others,” according to the platform’s own guidelines. 

All of the verified X accounts reviewed by CBS News would, according to the company’s own guidelines, qualify for a share of its ad revenues under this policy.

One account that has frequently shared antisemitic posts, with more than half of a million followers, has even bragged about its earnings on X.

In a post from March, the account shared a screenshot allegedly showing earnings from X’s ad revenue sharing program for verified accounts. The screenshot was accompanied by the caption: “X monetization is about to overtake TikTok and change the whole social media landscape. I’m not sure if live-streaming made the difference or if X has increased its revenue sharing, but this is approaching the point where I can support myself off of X.”

CBS News has reached out to X for comment on whether the accounts reviewed are profiting from their content and on how it decides which verified accounts should receive ads and revenue. 

The account under which the Nordace ad appeared had shared several antisemitic posts, including one that said “our country is controlled by an international criminal organization that grew out of the Jewish mob and now hides in modern Zionism behind cries of ‘antisemitism.'”

While no promoted advertisements showed up under that specific post, ads have shown up under other posts by the account, including some spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation. 

In recent months, Musk even boosted engagement for this specific X account as it peddled an unfounded conspiracy theory that influential figures in the media wanted to take American children away from their parents. In July, the account shared a clip of an old MSNBC commercial taken out of context with a caption reading: “The goal IS to take your children. They openly say it. This is why we have the second amendment.”

Musk replied “absolutely” to the post in question, which has been viewed 4.3 million times according to X’s metrics.  

Musk has also repeatedly engaged with another verified account, which has almost 366,000 followers, with an interaction between the tech mogul and the account as recently as Friday morning.

This account has repeatedly touted the so-called “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, an unfounded far-right claim that White European populations are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-whites. 

Last week, the account posted the unfounded claim that there is “a war on White people going on and the mainstream media and politicians are ‘ignoring’ it.” 

Paid advertisements also showed up under that post. 

CBS News has asked X’s press office whether it is comfortable with the platform’s owner engaging with such content, but there was no reply by the time of publication.

In an October 2022 post, Musk had vowed that X’s new policy would be “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter,” he said, adding that such content would be unfindable “unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.”