Elon Musk on Wednesday tried to walk back remarks lashing out at advertisers fleeing his X social media platform.<\/p>\n
At the Cannes Lions advertising festival in Cannes, France, Musk was asked by WPP CEO Mark Read what he meant by telling advertisers threatening to pull ads from the platform late last year to \u201cgo f\u2014 yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk said it was meant as a general point on free speech rather than a comment to the wider advertising industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t to advertisers as a whole,\u201d Musk said. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some cases, there were advertisers who were insisting on censorship,\u201d Musk said. \u201cAt the end of the day \u2026 if we have to make a choice between censorship and losing money, [or] censorship and money, or free speech and losing money, we\u2019re going to choose the second.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to support free speech rather than agree to be censored for money which I think is the right moral decision,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Musk flew into Cannes earlier this week with an aim to reassure ad groups and global brands over the future of X.<\/p>\n
He was joined by Linda Yaccarino, X\u2019s CEO and former chairman of global advertising and partnerships for\u00a0NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal is the parent company of NBC News. <\/p>\n
Last year, some of the world\u2019s largest advertisers including Apple,\u00a0IBM,\u00a0Disney, and\u00a0Sony\u00a0pulled their advertising on X\u00a0in the wake of controversial comments made by Musk, as well as instances of their ad placements being featured alongside toxic posts.<\/p>\n
In November, Musk travelled to Israel to meet with local officials after he was accused by civil rights groups of amplifying anti-Jewish hatred on X.<\/p>\n
The tech billionaire, asked at the time whether this trip was an \u201capology tour\u201d to advertisers, said onstage at 2023 DealBook Summit in New York that advertisers threatening to halt spending on ads on the platform should stop advertising on his platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t advertise,\u201d he said in the November interview with CNBC\u2019s Andrew Ross Sorkin. \u201cIf somebody is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f\u2014 yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk on Wednesday backpedalled on his attacks against advertisers.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, advertisers have a right to appear next to content they find compatible with their brands,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is not cool is insisting that there can be no content that they disagree with on the platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIn order for X to be the public square for the world, it really better be a free speech platform \u2014 that doesn\u2019t mean people can say illegal things; it\u2019s free speech within the bounds of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Elon Musk on Wednesday tried to walk back remarks lashing out at advertisers fleeing his X social media platform. At the Cannes Lions advertising festival in Cannes, France, Musk was asked by WPP CEO Mark Read what he meant by telling advertisers threatening to pull ads from the platform late last year to \u201cgo f\u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5471,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}