Hacker Takes Over Elmo’s X Account—Makes Antisemitic Posts


Topline

The official X account of Elmo—the popular muppet star of the children’s show Sesame Street—was taken over by a hacker on Sunday who made a series of antisemitic posts, demanded the release of the so-called “Epstein files,” and attacked President Donald Trump over his refusal to do so.

Key Facts

In a series of now-deleted posts, the Elmo account posted several antisemitic slurs and called for violence against Jewish people.

The hacked account also made a couple of profane posts attacking Trump, claiming he was a “puppet” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “he is in the Epstein files.”

The posts were deleted on Sunday night, and no new posts have been made by either the Elmo account or the official Sesame Street account.

Forbes has reached out to the Sesame Workshop for comment, but the non-profit has confirmed to other outlets that the account was hacked.

The Sesame Workshop said the Elmo X account was “compromised today by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts.”

They added that the organization was working to “restore full control of the account.”

Big Number

647,783. That is the total number of followers the Elmo account had on X as of early Monday morning. This make Elmo the most followed Sesame Street character on X. The official Sesame Street X account has 1.86 million followers.

Tangent

The Elmo account hack comes just days after X was mired in another controversy involving antisemitic posts on the platform. Last week, X’s AI chatbot Grok made a series of antisemitic posts attacking Jewish people and praising Adolf Hitler. The chatbot claimed the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, had “built me this way from the start,” and a “MechaHitler mode” was its “default setting for dropping red pills.” The posts were eventually deleted by xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence firm that operates Grok, and the company said it had “taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.”“taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.”

This is a developing story.



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