The White House on Monday launched accounts on Meta’s Threads service for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, gaining a sizable following on an app that competes with Elon Musk’s X.

Accounts on Threads were also established for the first lady and second gentleman as well as for the White House itself. Biden’s account racked up 2 million followers within an hour of its debut.

The Threads push comes after Musk last week called an antisemitic conspiracy theory “the actual truth” on X to his 163 million listed followers. He also said some “Jewish communities” promote “anti-white” messaging and views, calling out the Anti-Defamation League and minorities. White House officials repeatedly rebuked Musk for what they called “anti-semitic rhetoric” on X over the last week.

Several major advertisers including Apple and Disney subsequently paused their spending on X. Musk defended himself on Sunday, without apologizing or rescinding his statements.

  • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Based on my experience in lemmy, if you are avoiding antisemitism, mastodon probably isn’t a good place to go.

    • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Lemmy is probably still one of the best I’ve seen; but that’s also a reallyyy low bar.

      There is a lot of anti-Israel on lemmy, but I believe in good faith it isn’t coming from a core place of anti-semitism. Like like, anti-US if anything.

      • drislands@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        People jump to conclusions real fuckin fast on here, so let me put a disclaimer:

        The Palestinian people, and the Israeli people, are ultimately the victims of everything that is happening and has happened in recent months. The Israeli government, and Hamas, are both terrorist organizations that need to be stopped.

        That out of the way, I agree with you. There are people on here that express legitimate grievances with Israel, and a lot of folks will immediately counter that they must be supporting Hamas.

        • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          You can speak up about genocide without supporting Hamas parading around the corpses of dead civilians, but lemmy leans towards the latter.

          Don’t be disingenuous about the conversation.

            • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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              1 year ago

              If you’re seriously interested I can bring you the receipts.

              Edit: although to be fair to us both your instance has already been defederated from the most guilty other instances, so you would be the least likely to see it anyway.

            • drislands@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              It’s quieted down lately, but the month of October had a ton of people saying the victims deserved what Hamas did. It was disgusting.

          • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world
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            11 months ago

            I haven’t seen the latter, but I admit I don’t go out of my way to enter those particular corners. That’s sick behavior whoever is perpetrating it. Hamas is fucked and needs to disappear. The Israeli regime is also fucked and needs to disappear.

      • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world
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        11 months ago

        My anti-Israel stance is about the shitty humans in charge of its current regime and their abhorrent human rights abuses. It has nothing to do with the religion of anyone involved, except to the extent that all fundamentalism is bad… my heart goes out to all the Israelis who have been hurt by their government’s bad decisions - which includes cultivating a violent extremist opposition allowing them to justify violence of their own. The US uses the same playbook, and I condemn it for that too.

    • DrZoidbergYes@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Are you confusing animtisem with being against a horrific genocide that has being going on for decades? A lot of Americans don’t seem to be able to make the destination. Hamas is a shockingly disgusting terrorist group, that doesn’t mean Israel isn’t a shockingly disgusting terrorist state. Being anti Israel is not the same as being anti Jewish

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        There’s still a significant portion that are straight up hamas apologists, and straight up anti-semitists that use the “I’m criticizing Israel, not jews” just like “I’m not racist, I have a black friend.”

        • DrZoidbergYes@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Israeli is not the same as Jewish, as much as the the Israelis want to push that narrative to claim anyone who criticises their genocide is an anti-semite.