Elon Musk’s X, which used to be Twitter, has been having trouble with ads. Major companies like Disney, IBM, and Apple stopped advertising after Musk said that an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory was “absolute truth.” This quarter, the company could lose $75 million in sales, and Musk made it clear to marketers that they should back off.
If someone wants to blackmail me with ads, they should blackmail me with money. Then go fuck yourself. Musk told the crowd at The New York Times Dealbook conference on Wednesday, “Go FUCK yourself.” Then he called out Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney Co., whose company was one of the first big ones to stop supporting X. Musk waved his hand and said, “Hey Bob, if you’re in the crowd.”
Musk said those things in a very interesting interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin of Time. When asked about the advertising situation and his role in it, the platform owner let loose with a torrent of insults and resistance. Musk said at one point, “Let the chips fall where they may,” after telling advertisers who don’t like what he has to say to stop putting ads on X. “Don’t advertise,” he told her over and over.
At the event was also Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, who has been the company’s “pain sponge.” The way Musk does things causes a lot of problems and scares away advertising like a bull in a china shop. Yaccarino has been left to fix the problems. With 20 years of experience in advertising, many of those years spent at NBCUniversal, an advertiser that also stopped spending on X. It looks like she is in charge of getting marketers to come back. Musk, 52, is yelling at the sponsors right there on stage. He is wearing a brown leather bomber jacket and black jeans.
“What this advertising boycott is going to do is it’s going to kill the company,” Musk stated. “The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we’ll document it in great detail.”
A week before Musk’s appearance, X Corp sued Media Matters for reporting on antisemitic material on the platform. Fortune was the only outlet to report that Yaccarino spoke to her staff right before the case was filed. In a hurriedly called “all hands” meeting, she told them to find new ways to make money. Musk said that the Media Matters story was “fake,” and Yaccarino told his staff that it was “a fake experience that can be curated today on any platform.” Advertisers don’t seem to like this, though.
After the anti-Semitic content on X caused a lot of backlash and advertisers pulling their ads, Musk went on what some critics called a “apology tour” to Israel and talked with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In particular, Musk hinted on Monday that his Starlink satellites, which provide high-speed internet, could be used in the Gaza Strip if the Israeli government gave permission. When asked if he agreed with the antisemitic plot theory, Musk said on stage at the Dealbook Summit that his trip to Israel was “not an apology tour” and that he “has no problem being hated.” He said he wasn’t anti-Semitic and pointed to a post from not long after the debate started that said so.
When Musk got on stage, he seemed defensive and a little crazy. But he later said that his “actual truth” tweet was “perhaps one of the most foolish—if not the most foolish thing—I’ve ever done on the platform.”
“It might be literally the worst and dumbest post that I’ve ever done,” Musk stated.
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