In a letter to current and former advertisers, CEO Linda Yaccarino said X is making a priority of keeping children safe online and supports a series of online safety bills proposed by US legislators, seeking to draw a distinction from other social network leaders who are more circumspect on new regulation.

The message, reviewed by Bloomberg and written after Yaccarino attended a congressional hearing on the topic, urges commercial partners to “come back to X”, which “will always work to protect our most precious members of society”. The CEO stressed that X is an entirely new company from the Twitter that was, though recent times have shown a recurring inability to control the spread of harmful, offensive or violent content on the network.

X has struggled to stamp out disturbing images of violence from the Israel-Hamas war and had to block searches for Taylor Swift’s name after deepfake pornographic images started spreading.

In November, Musk offered an expletive retort to advertisers that stopped spending on X, after his posts on the platform elicited accusations of antisemitism. Ads remain the biggest source of revenue. Yaccarino, whose background is in working with advertisers, has sought to bring them back.