Let’s play a parlor game titled “What’s the dumbest thing Elon Musk has ever done?”

Is it promoting tweets from outspoken antisemites and racists on X, formerly Twitter, the social media platform he owns? Embracing antisemitic tweets himself?

Or was it, telling some of the largest corporations in the world to, um, perform a sexual act on themselves because they stopped advertising on the platform? (Warning: Link not safe for work.)

Maybe the top prize goes to his reinstating thousands of accounts of Nazis, white supremacists and disinformation purveyors that had been banned from Twitter by its previous management?

Actually, my vote goes to the federal lawsuit X filed on Aug. 6 accusing big advertisers of colluding in a boycott of the platform, ostensibly because they disapprove of its content.

The filing was announced in a video tweet by Linda Yaccarino, the chief executive of X. Yaccarino’s hostage-like affect and her theatrical hand-wavings in the video are so eerie that some viewers speculated, also on X, that the video is an AI-generated deepfake. And why not? Musk himself promoted on X a deepfake fabricating a purported speech by Kamala Harris with the words, “This is amazing.”

The lawsuit targets the World Federation of Advertisers, a networking organization for big advertisers. It specifically names WFA and four companies — the Danish energy company Ørsted, CVS Health and the consumer companies Unilever and Mars. Why it singles out those companies isn’t entirely clear, though it’s notable that they are members or have leadership positions in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.

GARM, as the lawsuit asserts, was founded to establish brand safety standards for advertisers on X and other social media platforms. In other words, standards to help advertisers keep their messages from showing up alongside posts and accounts promoting hate speech and other noxious messages.

The lawsuit and Yaccarino’s video assert that the advertisers colluded through GARM to boycott X, depriving it of its lifeblood, advertising revenue. “That puts your global town square, the one place that you can express yourself freely and openly, at long-term risk,” Yaccarino said.

Leaving aside this rather inflated and anachronistic description of X — its status as a “global town square” hasn’t survived Musk’s acquisition of the platform in 2022 — the idea that you can sue corporations for deciding not to advertise with you is beyond absurd.

A couple of points about all this:

First, the lawsuit piggybacks on a report issued last month by the Republican staff of the House Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by that outstanding blowhard, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. One in an ever-lengthening line of useless, conspiracy-addled reports from the GOP House caucus — see, for example, its ignorantly anti-scientific screeds about the origins of COVID — this one was oh-so-cleverly titled “GARM’s Harm” and claimed that GARM members colluded to put X out of business.

“I was shocked by the evidence uncovered by the House Judiciary Committee that a group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott against X,” Yaccarino says, ludicrously.

More to the point, this lawsuit reflects Musk’s habit of blaming X’s financial ills on everyone but himself. Over the last year or so, X has sued the watchdog organizations Media Matters for America and the Center for Countering Digital Hate for trying to “censor” X by asserting — inaccurately, X says — that the platform has become a haven for pro-Nazi content and other hate speech.

Musk also threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League for purportedly pressuring companies to stop advertising on X because of the apparent rise in hate speech. That lawsuit never materialized. The Media Matters lawsuit is pending. The case against CCDH was thrown out by U.S. Judge Charles R. Breyer of San Francisco in March. More on that in a moment.

Put it all together, and it appears that Musk doesn’t realize that X needs advertisers more than they need X. The platform was generally an also-ran as an advertising medium online, trailing Meta and Google. Under Musk, it may have fallen further behind.

The first hint of the cynicism attending this lawsuit comes from where it was filed. As X notes in its complaint, among the defendants the World Federation of Advertisers is headquartered in Belgium, Ørsted in Denmark, Unilever in London, Mars in Virginia and CVS Health in Rhode Island. X itself is headquartered in San Francisco.

So of course Musk filed the lawsuit in Wichita Falls, a North Texas community with a population of 102,000, which makes it the 39th-largest city — in Texas. What Wichita Falls does offer litigants of a certain ideological slant, however, is a one-judge federal court.

That judge is Reed O’Connor, a right-wing George W. Bush appointee whose hit parade includes rulings invalidating government anti-discrimination laws protecting transgender rights, blocking a COVID vaccine mandate for Navy SEALs and declaring the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. (That last ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court, 7 to 2.)

O’Connor, by the way, is also presiding over the lawsuit against Media Matters. A year ago he reported owning shares worth $15,001 to $50,000 in Tesla, the electric vehicle company Musk controls.

Unsurprisingly, none of these lawsuits alludes, even in passing, to the possibility that the steep decline in revenues or advertising from major consumer firms at X might have something to do with Musk’s policies and behavior.

The lawsuits generally describe their goal as the protection of free speech and open debate online, and present X as the innocent target of one cabal or another.

Judge Breyer in San Francisco made short of that claim in his dismissal of the lawsuit against CCDH; indeed, he found that the shoe was on the other foot. “This case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech,” he ruled. (My emphasis.) He rejected X’s assertion that it had lost “at least tens of millions of dollars” because of CCDH’s reports of the presence of hate speech on X, finding that the platform couldn’t document that its losses were traceable to CCDH reporting or that the money could be recovered even if it could do so.

“X Corp.’s motivation in bringing this case is evident,” Breyer ruled. “X Corp. has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp. — and perhaps to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism.” X’s demand for tens of millions of dollars in compensation, he found, seemed designed to “torpedo the operations of a small nonprofit … because of the views expressed in the nonprofit’s publication.”

That brings us to the new lawsuit, against the World Federation of Advertisers and the four corporations. These are defendants that might not blanch at the cost of defending what might be a frivolous lawsuit, but at some level it seems to have made them nervous: The federation said last week that it is “discontinuing” the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.

Musk and his peanut gallery crowed that this represented a victory, but it’s hardly that. The four corporate defendants — like any members of the federation or GARM — always have the right to make their own decisions about where to place their ads. Indeed, it’s inconceivable that a $60-billion multinational such as Unilever would cede those decisions on its hundreds of brands, which include Ben & Jerry’s, Dove beauty products and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, to outsiders.

It’s true that GARM developed standards to help members assess whether they wanted their ads to appear on social media platforms and methods to ensure that the platforms understood the brands’ concerns. It’s also true that advertisers expressed concerns after Musk’s acquisition, and his firing of most of the staff responsible for trust and safety at X, that the chances their ads would end up cheek by jowl with posts from malodorous tweeters would rise.

But the GOP report acknowledges that GARM offered advice, not mandates, and that its advice was typically solicited by the advertisers themselves. What may have irked the Republicans and Musk is that most of the content that scared advertisers away tended to come from the right-wing fever swamp, which no self-respecting corporation would want to be seen endorsing.

One variety of content involved claims that evidence found on a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden, the president’s son, suggested Hunter was involved in wrongdoing. “Unilever, through GARM, … expressed issues with Mr. Musk exposing the truth about how Twitter, prior to Mr. Musk’s acquisition, censored the Hunter Biden laptop story,” the GOP report says.

The Biden allegations are cherished by the Republican right wing even though no connection to President Biden has ever been established. The GOP report says claims that “incriminating evidence about the Biden family’s influence peddling was found on Hunter Biden’s laptop … have since been authenticated,” which is untrue; that only underscores that the GOP report was a partisan smear, and not something on which X should rest its legal case.

In any event, the GOP report acknowledges that Unilever is “free to unilaterally stop spending its advertising money on [X],” which apparently has happened. Shed a tear for Musk, if you’re so inclined.

Musk may have turned into the biggest obstacle to the survival of X. Directing a profane insult at big advertisers and treating their refusal to spend their ad dollars at his hobbyhorse as “blackmail,” as he did in November, is hardly a way to cozy up to them.

Musk tried a charm offensive this summer at the Cannes Lion Festival, which brings together international advertisers, telling them they “have a right to appear next to content that they think fits with their brand.” But whatever goodwill he might have generated then evaporated last week with his lawsuit. “We tried peace for 2 years, now it’s war,” he said in announcing the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Musk’s behavior gets worse. Just last week, the CCDH, freed from the financial burden of defending itself against his lawsuit, reported that his “false or misleading claims about the U.S. elections” have been viewed nearly 1.2 billion times on X, “with no fact checks” such as the “community notes” that often debunk disinformation from other accounts.

Why would any advertisers hoping to attract and keep customers want their ads to be seen on a platform that has become a source of informational sewage? To ask the question is to answer it.

Dear Liz: My father-in-law, age 100, has more than $1 million in stocks and bonds purchased in the 1980s and 1990s. With the stock market so high, I have suggested that he might want to sell the investments, take the tax hit and consolidate into short-term certificates of deposit or similar. This would make it easier for his family to manage (in trust) upon his death. Does this make sense or do we leave it alone?

Answer: Selling now means your father-in-law would have to pay a substantial and perhaps unnecessary tax bill on the gains he’s incurred over the years. If he instead leaves those assets to his heirs at his death, most likely no tax would be owed on the gains.

There are some exceptions, such as if the investments are held in retirement accounts or an irrevocable trust. But investments held in revocable trusts, such as living trusts, should qualify for the favorable step-up in basis that would eliminate the taxable capital gain at his death.

Yes, there’s always a risk that the markets could drop — but they would have to drop pretty far to wipe out all his gains, assuming he’s got a reasonably diversified portfolio. A fee-only, fiduciary financial planner could review the portfolio and offer recommendations about any changes that might be needed, while a tax pro could discuss potential strategies for minimizing the tax bill.

Closing the case on the couple moving into their rental property

Dear Liz: You recently answered a question from a couple who wanted to move into their rental property, make it their primary residence and use the $500,000 home sale exclusion if they sold the property after living there for two years. You should have made it clearer that not all of the gains on the property would qualify for the exclusion.

Answer: Quite right. In 2008, Congress closed the loophole that allowed people to exclude all the gains when they turn rental property into their primary residence. So the couple would not be able to count the gain that occurred between 2009 and whenever they move in. They would, however, be allowed to include the gain from 1988, when they bought the property, through 2008, as well as any increase in value after they move in if they live in the house at least two years, says Mark Luscombe, principal analyst for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting.

In some parts of the country, there may not be enough gains from those two periods to qualify for the full $250,000-per-owner exclusion, especially after accounting for the depreciation recapture, which requires landlords to pay back the depreciation tax break when they sell a rental property.

In higher-cost areas, however, there still could be more than $500,000 of qualifying gains, Luscombe says.

An update on the inheritor trying to stay below the poverty line

Dear Liz: I have an update about a recent question in your column. A reader wrote that they had been low income but had recently inherited $175,000. You noted that Medicaid has strict asset limits. Actually, that is no longer the case in California, where Medicaid is known as Medi-Cal. I just received literature from it that says, “A new law means assets will not be counted during Medi-Cal renewals.”

Answer: Again, quite right! Some other states have increased asset limits for Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, but California is the first to remove asset limits entirely as of January 2024.

This column appears in different states, which can vary dramatically in their laws and policies. That’s why I constantly suggest getting personalized advice from attorneys, tax pros and financial planners. A column can dispense general education but can’t offer individualized advice tailored to the realities of where you live.

Liz Weston, Certified Financial Planner, is a personal finance columnist. Questions may be sent to her at 3940 Laurel Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA 91604, or by using the “Contact” form at asklizweston.com.

The violence that flared in Porto was neither spontaneous nor unexpected. It followed months of vitriol on social media that came not only from disgruntled Portuguese, but also from prominent far-right figures inside and outside the country.

The posts linked a global network of agitators who have seized on the influx of migrants seeking political asylum or economic opportunity to build seething followings online.

Ideas like this once festered on the fringes of the internet but are now increasingly breaking through to the mainstream on social media platforms like X and Telegram, which have done little to moderate the content. The ability to clip and share videos and to instantly translate foreign languages has also helped make it easier to spread hateful material across geographic and cultural divides.

These networks peddle a toxic brew of bigotry online that officials and researchers say is increasingly stoking violence offline — from riots in Britain to bloody attacks in Germany and arson in Ireland. Establishing a direct correlation between online language and events in the real world is difficult, but researchers and officials said the evidence of a link has become overwhelming.

“What is said ultimately will shape what people will do,” said Rita Guerra, a researcher at the Center for Psychological Research and Social Intervention in Lisbon who studies online hate in Portugal. “That is why this is very concerning, not just for Portugal and Europe, but worldwide.”

‘Fuel for a Fire’

In Britain, false and inflammatory posts by white supremacists and anti-Muslim agitators set off clashes across the country after the stabbing deaths of three children in Southport, a town outside Liverpool, on July 29.

Posts on TikTok, YouTube, X and Telegram circulated false or unsubstantiated claims that the attacker was a Syrian refugee, when in fact he was from Wales.

Since then, unrest has convulsed Britain. Protesters clashed with the police, lit cars on fire and ransacked businesses.

“They used Southport as fuel for a fire,” Lee Marsh, a Liverpool resident, said at a demonstration against racism on Wednesday. “The only thing that should have happened online,” he added, “was support and respect for those families of the girls killed.”

The incendiary language inundated social media platforms despite their own policies prohibiting it, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit research organization in London that has tracked the fallout of the stabbing. The companies, the organization said, lack “an understanding of the real-world impacts of misinformation” that appears on their platforms.

Elon Musk, the owner of X, himself weighed in on the events, declaring last weekend that “civil war is inevitable” in Britain.

Since Mr. Musk bought the platform, then known as Twitter, in 2022, the company has reinstated far-right figures who had previously been banned, leading to a sharp increase in hateful content on the platform. Mr. Musk has also used it to rail against governments he says have failed to bring immigration under control.

Representatives from Meta, X and TikTok did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Telegram said “calls to violence are explicitly forbidden” by its terms of service.

YouTube, when contacted by The New York Times about this article, suspended the account of Grupo 1143, the extremist group organizing protests in Portugal. “Any content that promotes violence or encourages hatred of people based on attributes like ethnicity or immigration status is not allowed on our platform,” the company said, “and we’re committed to removing this content as quickly as possible.”

Immersed in Rabid Content

Racism and xenophobia have haunted the internet since the earliest dial-up connections, but they have, by most accounts, become pervasive in recent years.

Online influencers have weaponized the issue of immigration with disinformation and racist conspiracy theories, including one that predicts a “great replacement” of white people by nefarious global forces.

“Europe has been invaded by the world’s scum, without a single bullet being fired,” Tommy Robinson, one of Britain’s most notorious activists, wrote on X days before the attack in Porto in May. The post included a video with a voice over in Portuguese and subtitles in French.

Right-wing political parties in Europe have surged with the use of similar anti-immigrant language. In the United States, Donald J. Trump has made the influx of refugees and migrants a central issue in this year’s presidential election.

Russia, too, has used immigration as a cudgel in its propaganda in Europe, amplifying incidents and protests, including the recent unrest in Britain, through its state media and covert bot networks.

European governments have stepped up warnings about the threat of extremism online, but they are struggling to find effective ways to respond while respecting freedoms of speech and assembly.

In the Netherlands, the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security warned last year that people “can immerse themselves in rabid content for years, until an isolated incident incites them to concrete violence.”

After the recent violence in Britain, the government urged the public to “think before you post,” warning that hateful messages could amount to a crime. On Friday, a man from Leeds was sentenced to 20 months for posts on Facebook calling for attacks on a hotel housing asylum seekers. Among hundreds of people arrested was a 55-year-old woman from near Chester for a social media post said to “stir up racial hatred.”

“The internet has evolved from a passive cheering section to the active shaping and fomenting of ethnic and sectarian conflict,” said Joel Finkelstein, a founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute in New Jersey, which studies threats online. “This new reality poses a profound challenge to democracies, which find themselves ill-equipped to manage the rapid dissemination of these dangerous ideas.”

A Front Line

In 2023, researchers from the Network Contagion Research Institute and two universities documented a hashtag was going viral across Ireland that said the country was full. It was used to promote demonstrations in cities across the country against efforts to build housing for migrants.

One of the researchers, Tony Craig of Staffordshire University in England, warned that the campaign would inevitably lead to violence. “It’s going to get worse,” he said last summer.

He was prescient.

In November, a homeless immigrant from Algeria stabbed three children and their guardian in Dublin. Within hours, the internet churned with calls for protest — and retaliation — and soon hundreds rioted on Parnell Square in the city’s center. It was the worst public unrest in Ireland in years.

After the riots, the government vowed to toughen the law against incitement. “It’s not up-to-date for the social media age,” Leo Varadkar, the prime minister then, said.

The challenge is that the incitement also comes from outside their borders. Only 14 percent of posts on X about the stabbings and resulting outcry originated in Ireland, according to an analysis by Next Dim, a company that tracks activity online.

Since then, accounts online have continued to foment anger. This year, agitators circulated maps with the locations of migrant housing, which have become targets. Outside one center in June, protesters slit the throats of three pigs as a threat to Muslims believed to be living there.

Last month, a former paint factory being converted to housing for asylum seekers in Coolock, near Dublin, became a new flashpoint.

As anger about the project spread online, arsonists twice attacked the building. On July 19, hundreds gathered nearby, leading to a violent confrontation with the police.

Driving the Conversation From Afar

A leading figure in the growing chorus of bigotry online has been Mr. Robinson, the notorious activist whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

Mr. Robinson has been known for his ardent anti-immigration views for more than a decade, but by 2019 he faced bans or other restrictions on Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube for spreading hateful content and struggled to find much of an audience online.

Then, last November, X reinstated Mr. Robinson. (“I’m back!” his profile declares). He now has more than 960,000 followers on the platform.

Mr. Robinson’s prolific posts are widely shared across like-minded accounts on other platforms and in other countries.

An example of his reach was clear in March, when he reacted to news of a fire at a migrant housing center in Berlin. He posted a brief video clip on Telegram claiming that migrants had deliberately set fire to the center, located in the city’s old Tegel Airport, “in hope of securing better” accommodations.

His followers replied with a torrent of hateful and racist comments, according to an analysis by the SITE Intelligence Group. Though the cause of the fire remained unclear, the insinuation that it was intentional caromed from Britain to the Netherlands and Portugal and back to Germany.

Joe Düker, a researcher at the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy, an organization in Germany that studies extremism, said Mr. Robinson’s post helped drive the narrative in Germany, where the authorities reported 31 violent crimes against migrants in the first three months of this year. An extremist group active in Austria and Germany, Generation Identity Europa, forwarded his post on Telegram to its own followers.

Asked whether he believes his social media posts contribute to violence, Mr. Robinson responded: “I believe the teachings in the Koran contribute to violence. Shall we ban it?”

Other figures have similar international reach, including Eva Vlaardingerbroek in the Netherlands, Martin Sellner in Austria and Francesca Totolo in Italy. They often amplify one another’s posts, forming a global echo chamber of hatred toward migrants.

“There isn’t enough of an appreciation of how transnational these networks are,” said Wendy Via, a founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, an organization in the United States that tracks the spread of racism.

‘Whoever riots gets heard’

In the initial hours after the stabbing attack in England, when little information was released by the authorities, agitators quickly stepped into the void.

By the time officials said that the suspect was a 17-year-old British citizen from Wales, it was too late. Angry calls for protests had swept TikTok, Telegram and X, calling people into the streets. “Whoever riots gets heard,” Mr. Robinson declared. “The British need hearing.”

One Telegram channel created to discuss the stabbing shared the address of 30 locations to target for protest. The platform blocked the channel, but only after it had swelled to more than 13,000 members.

“They won’t stop coming,” one member of the group said, “until you tell them.”