Major advertisers are fleeing for fear of their imageElon Musks(52) Online platform X – but instead of doing damage control, the tech billionaire verbally shows them the middle finger. “If someone tries to blackmail me with ads? Blackmail me with money? “Go fuck yourself!” Musk said on stage at a New York Times conference on Wednesday. He specifically mentioned Disney boss Bob Iger (72).
A boycott by advertisers will kill X (formerly Twitter), said Musk. “And the whole world will know that the advertisers killed the company,” he added. When asked whether, as the richest person in the world, he would keep the platform afloat permanently, Musk seemed to indicate that he would accept X’s financial failure.
X will then disappear, said Musk, who paid around 44 billion US dollars (40 billion euros) for Twitter a good year ago. Most of the money came from selling its shares in the electric car maker Tesla. However, around 13 billion US dollars came from loans from banks, which now burden X. The financial service Bloomberg estimates Musk’s fortune at $228 billion – but it consists almost entirely of stocks.
Musk regrets post
Several major companies stopped advertising on A day later, hate speech researchers demonstrated in a report how advertising from well-known brands appeared on X next to Nazi posts. In a lawsuit, X claims that the placement was artificially achieved through frequent requests.
Musk said for the first time after the weeks-long controversy that the “truth” post was a mistake, “perhaps the worst and stupidest post I have ever published.” His views were misunderstood. He simply wanted to say to Jewish organizations that it was not wise to support radical Islamists who wanted their destruction.
Musk’s X contribution was condemned by the White House, among others, and received approval in anti-Semitic circles. He then repeatedly emphasized that he was not an anti-Semite. Musk was received in Israel on Monday. There he visited, among others, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (74), a kibbutz that was attacked by the Islamist Hamas on October 7th. Musk emphasized on Wednesday that the visit had nothing to do with the controversy surrounding his X contribution.