Last year, Elon Musk had a message for advertisers who were fleeing his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, in droves.
“Go f*** yourself.”
This week, the billionaire entrepreneur appeared to have changed his tune, in a bid to boost ad money spent on X, Axios reported.
At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Wednesday, Musk insisted that his blunt remark was not addressed to all advertisers but only those insisting on “censorship”.
“First of all, it wasn’t to advertisers as a whole. It was with respect to freedom of speech,” Musk told Mark Read, CEO of advertising giant WPP, during an onstage discussion.
“It is important to have a global free speech platform where people with a wide range of opinions can voice their views. In some cases there were advertisers who were insisting on censorship.”
He added that X was going to “support free speech rather than agree to be censored for money.”
After Musk bought Twitter in 2022, right-wing accounts that had been previously banned — like those of conspiracy theorist and Sandy Hook school shooting denier Alex Jones, and white supremacist Nick Fuentes — were allowed back on the site.
Musk also introduced paid-for verification badges. In the past, users could only become verified on Twitter by meeting certain criteria including proving their identity with a valid photo ID. After Musk took over, he sold verified badges for $8 per month as part of a “Twitter Blue” subscription package.
Some X users quickly showed what a questionable idea this was by buying verified badges for famous people and brands, and tweeting from fake accounts.
“I miss killing Iraqis,” a fake -but verified – account claiming to be former president George W Bush tweeted.
Another fake, verified account claimed to be Nintendo of America, and posted an image of the company’s flagship character, Mario, giving the middle finger.
“Can’t imagine why all the advertisers are pulling out of Twitter lmao,” video game journalist Jason Schreier tweeted in response to the image.
Advertisers, afraid that their products or companies might be parodied or that ads might appear next to hate speech or other questionable content, left the site.
Musk addressed the issue on Wednesday after Read asked him what he meant when he told advertisers to “go f*** yourself.”
“Of course, advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they find compatible with their brands. That’s totally fine,” Musk said. “What is not cool is insisting that there can be no content they disagree with on the platform.”
Read suggested that Musk’s comment showed that he understood the concept of brand safety.
“I believe in sort of freedom of choice,” Musk said. “Advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they think is compatible to their brand.”
A financial report issued this year, prepared by X and obtained by Bloomberg, revealed that the social media platform began hemorrhaging money when Musk took over two years ago.
In the first six months of 2023, the first full year under Musk’s ownership, company revenue fell by 40 per cent from the same period the previous year, according to the report. The documents showed that X lost $456m in the first quarter of 2023, according to Bloomberg.
