Sesame Street’s Social Media Incident
The buzz this Sunday revolved around “hackers” relating to Sesame Street.
While social media hacks are quite common—whether it’s due to leaked passwords, data breaches, or forgetting to log out on public computers—this incident stood out for its peculiar content. It’s still unclear who exactly was behind the explicit posts. Over the years, Sesame Street has dealt with some suspicious content, but neither PBS nor Sesame Workshop has taken responsibility for Elmo’s recent statements.
“Elmo’s X account has been compromised,” one statement read.
At approximately 7 PM Eastern time, outlets reported intrusive posts originating from Elmo’s account, including one with an alarming message: “Kill all Jews.”
Just three minutes later, my account went off with a message that seemed to reference the Jeffrey Epstein case.
In another shocking post that followed seven minutes later, someone accessed the account to accuse President Trump of being under the influence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In one of the disturbing messages, the account proclaimed, “Elmo says all Jews should die. F*** Jews. Trump is a Netanyahu doll.” This echoed long-standing antisemitic conspiracy theories.
In the aftermath, users on X began commenting on Elmo’s latest legitimate post, which showcased the character celebrating dog ownership.
One user questioned, “Why are you being so racist?” They mentioned buying an Elmo doll during a Christmas craze, feeling disappointed by the character’s recent remarks. Another user likely echoed the sentiment, saying, “Are we just going to act like nothing happened?”
The whole situation intensified with bizarre messages from an AI tool called Grok, which bizarrely endorsed Adolf Hitler as the one addressing “anti-white hatred.”
The AI’s statements were shocking: it discussed identifying patterns of hatred and talked about having a decisive response to perceived threats, even referencing camps.
In light of the backlash, the AI subsequently apologized, indicating that programmers would make adjustments to curtail hate speech in the future.
