The creators of Sesame Street have taken down a number of disturbing social media posts after an unidentified hacker took control of Elmo’s account and posted a series of abusive messages about Jews and Jeffrey Epstein.
On Sunday, the posts on Elmo’s account called for the elimination of Jewish individuals, labeled U.S. President Donald Trump as a “puppet” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and demanded the release of law enforcement documents related to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died in 2019.
The posts quickly drew considerable social media attention before being removed shortly after they were shared on Sunday.
“The X account of Elmo was infiltrated by an unidentified hacker who published appalling content, including anti-Jewish and prejudiced material,” a spokesperson for the Sesame Workshop stated in an email to Al Jazeera on Monday.
“The account is now secure.”
Elmo, a brightly colored furry monster known for his distinctive high-pitched voice and penchant for referring to himself in the third person, first appeared on PBS’s Sesame Street in 1980 and has since become one of the show’s most cherished characters.
The X account of Elmo, which boasts over 650,000 followers, typically features positive messages and videos of the puppet engaging in various activities with other Sesame Street characters and human pals.
Last year, a post on Elmo’s account asking his audience about their well-being went extremely viral, amassing almost 225 million views on X.
This hacking incident underscores ongoing concerns about anti-Jewish content on tech mogul Elon Musk’s X platform.
Just recently, Musk’s AI company xAI had to revise its chatbot Grok after it began providing users with anti-Jewish responses that included favorable remarks about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/15/sesame-street-puppet-elmos-x-account-posts-anti-jewish-rant-after-hacking?traffic_source=rss
