Elon Musk’s X and Meta-owned WhatsApp are hosting a thriving arms trade tied to Houthi militants in Yemen, a Tech Transparency Project (TTP) investigation has found.
TTP is a Washington DC-based research initiative of Campaign for Accountability that seeks to hold large technology companies accountable.
TTP’s report builds on the findings of an August 2024 report from The Times in the UK, which found similar arms trading activity on X and WhatsApp. In a separate report in May 2025, TTP identified a number of Houthi officials with blue checkmark accounts on X, indicating they paid the platform for premium service, the TTP website said.
According to the report, TTP identified 130 Yemen-based X accounts that offered high-powered rifles, grenade launchers, and other weapons. More than half of the accounts were located in Sanaa, the Houthi-controlled capital of Yemen, and many expressed allegiance to the Houthis or displayed the Houthi emblem in their posts.
In some cases, the weapons offered for sale were clearly marked as “Property of US Govt.” The accounts did not explain how they acquired these US-branded weapons, but militants around the world have tapped into a thriving black market for weapons left behind by US forces in Afghanistan.
Both X and WhatsApp have policies barring weapons sales but evidently were not enforcing them in these cases. In addition to hosting the arms dealers, X ran ads beneath some of weapons posts, indicating the company generated revenue off them.
"X and WhatsApp are providing an essential platform to Houthi-linked arms dealers selling weapons of war. The companies have policies in place that prohibit that kind of illicit trade but are allowing it to take place in the open. This represents a threat to US national security interests, given that the Houthis are a U.S.-designated terrorist group," TTP said.
Adverts appeared in the comments of posts selling weapons, suggesting X could be making money off the posts. In one instance, X placed an ad for a company selling Tesla accessories under a post where an arms dealer offered an “all-American” Glock 17 handgun.
After Elon Musk bought X in 2022, he laid off about 80% of the company’s trust and safety team, which was dedicated to content moderation. A previous report by TTP found that more than 200 accounts affiliated with terrorist and other sanctioned groups had blue ticks and were subscribed to X Premium, The Guardian reports.
Meta has laid off thousands of employees in the last two years, many dedicated to safety. In January, Meta vowed to roll back content moderation, in what seemed to be an acknowledgment of Donald Trump’s complaints of censorship on social media platforms, the report added.