Topline<\/p>\n
The official X account of Elmo\u2014the popular muppet star of the children\u2019s show Sesame Street\u2014was taken over by a hacker on Sunday who made a series of antisemitic posts, demanded the release of the so-called \u201cEpstein files,\u201d and attacked President Donald Trump over his refusal to do so.<\/p>\n
FILE PHOTO: The Sesame Workshop said Elmo’s X account was taken over by a hacker on Sunday.<\/p>\n
NBCU Photo Bank\/NBCUniversal via Getty ImagesKey Facts<\/p>\n
In a series of now-deleted posts, the Elmo account<\/a> posted several antisemitic slurs and called for violence against Jewish people.<\/p>\n The hacked account also made a couple of profane posts attacking Trump, claiming he was a \u201cpuppet\u201d of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and \u201che is in the Epstein files.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Forbes has reached out to the Sesame Workshop for comment, but the non-profit has confirmed to other<\/a> outlets<\/a> that the account was hacked.<\/p>\n The Sesame Workshop said the Elmo X account was \u201ccompromised today by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts.\u201d<\/p>\n They added that the organization was working to \u201crestore full control of the account.\u201d<\/p>\n Big Number<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Tangent<\/p>\n The Elmo account hack comes just days after X was mired in another controversy involving antisemitic posts on the platform. Last week, X\u2019s AI chatbot Grok made a series of antisemitic posts<\/a> attacking Jewish people and praising Adolf Hitler. The chatbot claimed the platform\u2019s owner, Elon Musk, had \u201cbuilt me this way from the start,\u201d and a \u201cMechaHitler mode\u201d was its \u201cdefault setting for dropping red pills.\u201d The posts were eventually deleted by xAI, Musk\u2019s artificial intelligence firm that operates Grok, and the company said it had \u201ctaken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.\u201d Grok\u2019s antisemitic outburst came a few days after Musk, who has complained about other AI platform being too \u201cwoke\u201d, announced an update to the chatbot. After the controversy, xAI appeared to make some adjustments to the system prompts that guide Grok\u2019s responses, removing recently added guidance<\/a> that directed the chatbot to post responses that don\u2019t \u201cshy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.\u201d<\/p>\n Further Reading<\/p>\n