Elon Musk's birthday: From 'F**k you-s’ to flipflops, X CTO’s tough year with advertisers
In the recent past, Elon Musk’s contentious statements about advertisers and his prolonged tussle with big brands who baulked at his version of X have provided endless fodder to newspapers
The most influential and controversial man-of-the-moment, Elon Musk turns a year older as the X owner celebrates his birthday today, on June 28. The outspoken tech mogul—whose annual remuneration ($56 billion for anyone who’s asking) is more than Tata Motors’ annual revenue—has had an eventful year, to say the least.
Elon Musk, who was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, has cofounded PayPal, set SpaceX and Tesla in motion, and more controversially, acquired Twitter.
Ever since he took over, the microblogging platform has seen a mass exodus of big-time advertisers, mainly due to Musk’s endorsement of absolute free speech on the platform and his polarising stance on many key issues.
In the recent past, Musk’s contentious statements about advertisers and his prolonged tussle with big brands who baulked at Musk’s version of X have provided endless fodder to newspapers.
The Tesla CEO’s lax approach towards content moderation contrasted heavily with Twitter’s previous reputation of having left-leaning biases. He vociferously endorsed free speech on the platform, leading to concerns about hate speech and misinformation. This led to many advertisers dropping out of the platform for fear of falling prey to cancel culture.
Musk tried to compensate for the problem with a subscription model for X with enhanced features, as a means to reduce reliance on ad revenue, which led to more ruffled feathers.
Some companies such as Disney, Walmart, Apple, IBM, Paramount, Liongsate and Sony Pictures openly announced their “boycott” of X.
In December 2023, Musk was trolled for seemingly promoting an anti-Semitic post on X during the height of the Israel-Palestine conflicts. To the advertisers who pooh-poohed at his candour, he let his mutual disdain known with an expletive-riddled rant. “If somebody’s going to try and blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go f*** yourself. Go. F***. Yourself,” Musk stated.
A little over a year later, Musk would eat his words at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity—the hallowed grounds of advertising—extending an olive branch to the very advertisers he once seemingly scorned.
In his fireside chat with WPP CEO Mark Read, Musk pitched for the current version of X as “worth trying out.”
Musk clarified that the “f*ck yourself” heard around the world was not aimed at the advertisers, but the busybodies on the internet who tried accusing him of anti-Semitism.
“I do shoot myself in the foot from time to time, but at least you know it's genuine. Any normal human will often say things they will regret. If there is a constant filter, you are not being real. It’s better to be real than behind a filter,” he explained.
Musk attempted to woo back advertisers by promising that the ads on X will be targeted to only those who will find them interesting. “We have made progress and will make more. Every third-party reviewer has given us an A-plus on brand safety,” he said.
Despite promises to advertisers, Musk held his ground as far as free speech is concerned. He reiterated that while it’s the advertisers’ prerogative to put their ad monies where it pleases them, they cannot demand censorship of content.
“If there is a choice between censorship and making money or free speech within legal lines and losing money, I will support the latter. It is the right moral decision,” said the tech maverick.
It stands to see what else Musk has in store for X and advertisers. But if past behaviour is an indicator of the future, and given Musk’s own caprices, it will surely be a content goldmine for news outlets.
