Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine is urging City Hall to steer away from X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter, amid ongoing tension between billionaire owner Elon Musk and the Anti-Defamation League
In May the ADL, which opposes antisemitism, published a report finding more than 5,000 examples of bigotry against Jews on the social media platform. The rampant antisemitism, the report found, occurred after thousands of previously banned accounts were reinstated shortly after Musk acquired X.
Several months later, Musk publicly blamed the ADL and its findings for a major loss in profits on the site, stating that advertising revenue “is still down 60% primarily due to pressure on advertisers” by the nonprofit. On Monday, Musk threatened to file a lawsuit against the ADL “to clear our platform’s name on the matter.”
In a letter exclusively obtained by Gothamist, Levine proposed the city start including Threads, a new social media platform owned by Meta, in its 311 inquiries. Currently, the city’s 311 program regularly responds to New Yorkers who interact with the service on X.
“I think, for the good of our democracy, we have got to find a platform which is not boosting the voices of scammers and trolls and bigots the way X does,” he said in an interview. “The New York City government — I do believe — is unwittingly continuing to prop Twitter up because it still makes it the only place you can go to for certain information about city government.”
Although the letter — addressed to Chief Technology Officer Matthew C. Fraser last month — does not mention the ADL or antisemitism, Levine, who is Jewish, said his own experience with antisemitism on the app partly led him to draft the correspondence.
“I can tell you from a personal perspective, the amount of antisemitic bile that was directed at me — and still continues to be directed at me — is alarming,” Levine told Gothamist. “And I’m not unique.”
In the letter, Levine…
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