‘Go f**k yourself’: Musk blasts advertisers who left X
Elon Musk has warned that companies that have pulled their advertising from X will just kill the platform off, saying to those who have: “Go f**k yourself.”
Musk made the heated comments onstage during The New York Times DealBook Summit, after interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin brought up the current flood of advertisers leaving the platform.
Earlier this month, a report by Media Matters showed that IBM’s ads on the platform were being displayed alongside content “promoting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party”.
Not surprising IBM pulled their ads, as did a number of other big advertisers like Apple, Disney, and Lionsgate, when, later in that same day, Elon Musk retweeted an antisemitic conspiracy theory with the message: “You have said the actual truth.”
Now Musk is claiming it’s the advertisers that will cause the demise of the popular social media platform.
“What this advertising boycott is going to do is, it is going to kill the company,” Musk said.
“And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company.”
He directed his ire at Disney CEO Bob Iger, who earlier spoke at the same summit and touched upon the company’s decision to pull advertising, saying, “we felt that the association was not necessarily a positive one for us.”
Later in the day, Musk responded in a manner not suitable for the Disney Channel.
I was in the room when these five minutes happened and still can’t believe these five minutes happened. pic.twitter.com/eyoNcYrUTW
— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) November 30, 2023
“Don’t advertise,” Musk said. “If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f**k yourself. Go f**k yourself, is that clear? Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience. That’s how I feel, don’t advertise.”
Musk apologised for amplifying and commented on the conspiracy theory, saying: “I should, in retrospect, not have replied to that particular post, and should have expanded in greater length about what I meant. I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me.”
He called it “one of the most foolish” things he had written on X.
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