Elon Musk hurls expletives at advertisers as they desert X
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New York: Elon Musk responded combatively to advertisers after they pulled money from social media platform X for his endorsing ‘antisemtic tweet’, according to The Guardian.
Musk in a video interview uttered expletives on Wednesday in New York, saying ‘If someone’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money’ and then he cussed.
He was attending the New York Times’ DealBook Summit when Musk used expletives.
Moments before, he was expressing remorse for his 15 November tweet endorsing an anti-Semitic post on X.
Musk reportedly bristled at the charges of anti-Semitism, saying that advertisers who had left X should not think they could blackmail him.
Several times through the interview he resorted to expletives to express vehemence.
While bristling, at one point he said ‘hey, Bob,’ apparently referring to Robert Iger, the chief executive of Walt Disney which pulled ads on X, according to The Guardian.
Other companies to pull paid advertisement from X include Apple, IBM and Coca-Cola which could lose X up to $75m in revenue.
The trend of companies removing advertisements began after non-profit Media Matter ran a report showing ‘advertisements from major companies alongside pro-Nazi posts’.
The situation continued to spiral after Musk endorsed an anti-Semitic tweet that accused Jewish people of ‘hatred against whites’.
Meanwhile, Musk travelled to Israel and met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu reportedly urged Musk during the talks to ‘strike a balance between the protection of free speech online and fighting hate speech.’
Following his trip to Israel, Hamas invited Musk to see places in Gaza where Israel’s bombing caused vast devastation.