Hyundai pauses ads on X over brand safety issues

(Reuters) - South Korea's Hyundai said on Friday that it had paused advertising on X, formerly known as Twitter, and is speaking to the Elon Musk-owned social media platform directly about brand safety issues.

It was not immediately clear why the auto giant had paused the advertisements on the site, and Reuters has sought a comment. Meanwhile, X did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request for comment.

Last November, the White House condemned Musk's endorsement of what it called a "hideous" antisemitic conspiracy theory on X, while major companies such as Walt Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, and NBCUniversal parent Comcast paused their advertisements on his social media site.

Advertisers have fled the site ever since Musk acquired it in October 2022 and reduced content moderation, resulting in a sharp rise in hate speech on X, according to civil rights groups.

Media watchdog Media Matters has previously found that corporate advertisements by IBM, Apple, Oracle, and Comcast's Xfinity were being placed alongside antisemitic content.

(Reporting by Aatreyee Dasgupta and Urvi Dugar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)