The Washington Post reports:

A social media account recommended by Elon Musk for its coverage of the Israel-Gaza war with a long history of antisemitic posts is connected to a southwest London teenager, according to research and a text exchange with the account.

The @WarMonitors account on X, formerly Twitter, is one of two that drew hundreds of thousands of new followers the weekend that the Palestinian militant group Hamas rampaged into Israel after Musk recommended them.

The second account Musk recommended in the now-deleted post, @sentdefender, has been identified by a research company as belonging to a member of the U.S. military from Georgia who has amplified Russian propaganda. As previously reported, both have spread false information, including reporting a nonexistent explosion near the White House that sent stock prices down.

Both accounts were among seven cited a week ago by researchers at the University of Washington as the “new elites” of influence on X, with more than 1.6 billion combined views in the first three days of the war.

By that point, @WarMonitors had drawn 132 million views and @sentdefender 302 million views. The University of Washington report said the seven accounts were achieving more views than established media accounts despite having fewer followers. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports:

One year after billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, aiming to rid it of a “woke mind virus” that he believed was suppressing free speech, the site’s business outlook appears dire.

The number of people actively tweeting has dropped by more than 30 percent, according to previously unreported data obtained by The Washington Post, and the company — which the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX has renamed X — is hemorrhaging advertisers and revenue, interviews show.

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But in at least one respect, Musk has delivered on his original promise: Twitter has become far less “woke.” [Continue reading…]