Elon Musk on Wednesday clarified some of the criticism he levied at major corporations who pulled advertising from his social media platform X while telling them “don’t advertise.”
During the Cannes Lions advertising event in Cannes, France, Mr. Musk was asked by Mark Read, the CEO of advertising firm WPP, about defiant remarks that Mr. Musk delivered seven months ago.
“Back in November, you had a message to us. You told us to go [expletive] ourselves,” Mr. Read said to the X owner. “Why did you say that? And what did you mean by that?”
In November 2023 at a New York Times-related event, Mr. Musk told advertisers who were trying to “blackmail” him “with money ... I hope they stop. Don’t advertise.” He then said, “Go [expletive] yourself ... is that clear? I hope it is.” He then appeared to single out Disney CEO Bob Iger, who had said he didn’t want his firm to be associated with X or Mr. Musk.
Mr. Musk responded to Mr. Read’s comment by saying he was delivering a message to companies that push for censorship on his platform and that his message was more about free speech in general.
“It wasn’t to advertisers as a whole,” Mr. Musk said, according to a video feed of the Cannes event. “It was with respect to freedom of speech, I think it is important to have a global free speech platform, where people from a wider range of opinions can voice their views.”
The multi-billionaire Tesla CEO then framed his company’s advertising issue as a choice between making money and freedom of speech.
He added that there have been cases where advertisers “were insisting on censorship” on X, adding that “if we have to make a choice between censorship and losing money, [or] censorship and money, or free speech and losing money, we’re going to choose the second.”
“Advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they find compatible with their brands. That’s totally fine ... what is not cool is insisting that there can be no content that they disagree with on the platform,” Mr. Musk, who also is the CEO of SpaceX, continued to say.
“In order for X to be the public square for the world, it really better be a free speech platform,” he said, adding, “That doesn’t mean people can say illegal things. It’s free speech within the bounds of the law.”
A number of major corporations such as Disney, IBM, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony Pictures, and Apple halted their advertising on X, formerly known as Twitter, last year amid reports that their content was appearing alongside questionable posts.
Explaining why his company paused advertising, Mr. Iger said that Mr. Musk had been “taking the position that he took in quite a public manner, we just felt that the association with that position and Elon Musk and X was not necessarily a positive one for us, and we decided we would pull our advertising.”
“I have a lot of respect for Elon and what he has accomplished. We know that Elon is larger than life in many respects, and that his name is very much connected to the companies he founded or owns,” he said.
Despite X’s problem with advertising, Mr. Musk struck a positive tone, noting that world leaders and other notable people still use the platform.
“If you’re trying to reach senior decision makers, if you want to reach the most influential people in the world … the X platform is by far the best,” he said.
Mr. Musk took over the social media platform, then-called Twitter, in November 2022 after acquiring it for $44 billion. In the months afterward, he restored the accounts of a number of conservative and controversial figures.
