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Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter, has been facing an advertising crisis. Major players such as Disney, IBM, and Apple hit the pause button on advertising following Musk's assertion that a dangerous anti-Semitic conspiracy theory was the "absolute truth." As the company loses a potential $75 million in revenue this quarter, Musk served a clear message to the advertisers who have pulled back.
"If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. Go FUCK yourself," Musk said onstage Wednesday at The New York Times Dealbook summit. He then called out Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger, whose company was one of the first big brands to boycott X. "Hey Bob, if you're in the audience," Musk said, waving his hand.
Musk made the comments in an extraordinary interview with the Time's Andrew Ross Sorkin, in which the owner of the platform unleashed a stream of invective and defiance in response to questions about the advertising situation and his role in it. "Let the chips fall where they may," Musk declared at one point, after urging any marketers who don't like what he has to stop advertising on X. "Don't advertise," he repeatedly taunted.
In the audience was also X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who has been the proverbial pain sponge for the company. While Musk's disruptive approach wreaks havoc and drives advertisers away like a bull in a china shop, Yaccarino has been left to pick up the pieces. With her two decades of experience in advertising (with many at NBCUniversal, an advertiser that also paused spending on X), the responsibility of wooing back advertisers seemingly falls on her shoulders. And there on stage, the 52-year-old Musk, in a brown leather bomber jacket and black jeans, is openly berating the advertisers.
"What this advertising boycott is going to do is it's going to kill the company," Musk said. "The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we'll document it in great detail."
Musk's appearance comes a week after X Corp moved to sue the media watchdog group Media Matters following its report on antisemitic content on the platform. Yaccarino spoke to staff as the lawsuit dropped in a hastily-assembled all hands, reported exclusively by Fortune, where she urged employees to find new sources of revenue. Musk called the Media Matters report "fraudulent," and Yaccarino told staff that it was "a contrived experience that could be curated...on any platform today.” This hasn't seemed to gel with advertisers, though.