Apple has started advertising on X again
Apple has resumed advertising on X for the first time since pausing ads more than a year ago. The company was one of many to halt advertisements over concerns for brand safety following Elon Musk’s purchase of the social network. While X’s approach to content moderation has changed little since then, Big Tech’s relationship with Musk has shifted since President Donald Trump took office.
MacRumors spotted on Wednesday that the Apple and AppleTV accounts are respectively running promotions for Safari’s privacy features and the Apple TV Plus show Severance on the social media platform. The iPhone maker was reportedly debating whether to test ads on X again in January.
Apple was among several major advertisers, including Amazon, Disney, Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery, and IBM, to pull out of the platform in November 2023 over concerns regarding controversial remarks about antisemitic conspiracy theories and white pride made by X owner Elon Musk.
Now with the addition of Apple, all of the aforementioned brands have since returned to advertising on X, with Amazon planning to “significantly” increase its ad spending according to The Wall Street Journal. This follows X filing an antitrust lawsuit against a group of major advertisers (which Apple isn’t a member of) in August 2024, alleging they held an “illegal boycott” and conspired to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from the company.
X’s approach to moderation since Musk acquired the platform in 2022 has been widely criticized for failing to remove illegal or harmful content, including posts regarding misinformation, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other hate speech. Musk himself has also repeatedly engaged in such behavior, and gained more influence since befriending President Donald Trump and being handed his DOGE leadership position. The European Union is currently investigating the platform’s content moderation efforts, having already found that it violates the bloc’s rules around advertising transparency.