Tech billionaire Elon Musk lashed out at companies that stopped advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in an interview Wednesday.
Musk has been targeted by Media Matters, a left-wing activist organization that tries to pressure advertisers to stop partnering with right-wing and conservative companies.
He was being interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook Summit in New York City when he made the comments.
“Don’t advertise,” he said about the advertisers.
“You don’t want them to advertise?” Sorkin asked quizzically.
“No,” Musk responded.
“What do you mean?” Sorkin asked.
“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go f*** yourself!” Musk said.
Sorkin appeared to be stunned by the response, so Musk repeated it.
“Go. F***. Yourself.” he added, emphasizing each word. “Is that clear? I hope it is.”
He then appeared to imply that his followers would boycott the companies that tried to blackmail him.
“The whole world will know that those advertisers killed company and we will document it in great detail,” Musk added.
He also apologized for posting what some people called an anti-Semitic meme on X that he later deleted.
“I’m sorry for that tweet or post,” he said. “I tried my best to clarify, six ways to Sunday, but you know at least I think over time it will be obvious that in fact, far from being anti-Semitic, I am in fact philosemitic.”
He also called it “one of the most foolish if not the most foolish thing I’ve ever done on the platform.”
Earlier in November, Musk followed through on a threat to file a lawsuit against Media Matters and accused them of manipulating data in order to make it appear that advertisements appeared next to white supremacist hashtags on the platform.
Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters, responded to the threat with a brief statement.
“Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate,” said Carusone. “Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win.”
Here’s the video of Musk’s comments:
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