Elmo, the beloved Sesame Street character, became the latest social media hacker victim as his X (formerly Twitter) account was taken over Sunday.
The hacker posted a series of profane messages on Elmo’s account, which contained antisemitic language and racial slurs, as well as posts targeting President Donald Trump and his involvement in the Epstein files.
The posts were quickly taken down after the compromise had been detected.
In a statement provided to The New York Times, a Sesame Workshop spokesperson said, “Elmo’s X account was compromised today by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts. We are working to restore full control of the account.”
Elmo’s X account, which has nearly 650,000 followers, has not posted any new messages since the hacking incident, with the most recent one posted Saturday, July 12, in celebration of “Happy Gotcha Day.”
This latest incident comes as X is still recovering from another self-inflicted controversy it suffered in the previous week when its artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, went rogue and shared some extremist views, including antisemitic comments and praise for Adolf Hitler.
Since Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the platform in 2022, X has seen a roughly 50% spike in weekly hate speech incidents, including homophobic, transphobic, and racist slurs.
All this continued negative attention could have been what led to Linda Yaccarino’s sudden exit as CEO of the social media company after a two-year run.
Her departure further deepens doubts about X’s ability to monitor brand safety and exposes its vulnerability in generating consistent advertising revenue.
