Elon Musk to advertisers boycotting X: "Go f**k yourself"

stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to News@lemmy.world – 350 points –
axios.com

Elon Musk pushed back on advertisers boycotting X over antisemitism and other hate speech on the platform formerly known as Twitter during the 2023 DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday.

What he's saying: "If somebody's gonna try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f**k yourself." Musk said. "Don't advertise."

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That'll get em back.

He knows they will be back. They're only pausing buys.

Big companies all claimed they wouldn't donate to J6 insurrectionists... that lasted about three months before the bribes started again.

It's actually been more than just pausing ads. There was a news story yesterday that a number of the big names have stopped using Twitter entirely since pausing too.

Twitter needs ad money, but it also needs these companies. If they stop using it to contact customers and make announcements, the appeal of Twitter falls heavily.

We'll see how long it lasts.

I believed the corporations when they said they'd cut off Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. Nope, all bullshit.

Does it need those companies? I don't think anyone ever used Twitter because it's where they could receive little ads from Apple and Disney. The interesting people on Twitter are just people, not faceless PR flacks for massive brands.

Above all else, Twitter (and all social media, including Lemmy) needs engagement. By extension, it needs users and posts/comments. Without these, any social network withers and dies. Twitter also needs to sell ads to make a profit, but those only work when there's engagement.

Corporate Twitter accounts have their place, but it's usually only a small piece of the puzzle.

The reports of their shrinking user base and posts are far more indicative of their downfall. While they don't paint a rosy picture, they also don't show quite the same level of implosion.

LMAO! Not buying your shitty product isn't blackmail, drama queen.

Or am I blackmailing McDonald's by not eating their burgers?

I have been boycotting Rolls Royce and Lear Jets for years and I thought I was just poor.

I’m blackmailing the meat industry

And I'm boycotting the tofu industry. Together we can end all foods!

fistbump

I actually also rarely eat tofu (mom was a health nut who couldn’t cook well and my wife has a low grade soy intolerance). It’s all beans. Mostly black beans because they’re wonderful. Also lentils, miracle food those lentils are.

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Just as with Donald Trump or America's other high profile narcissistic capitalists, Musk's shadow over society is entirely driven by the attention he is given. They DO NOT CARE what kind of attention it is. Clearly.

Stop following Xitter links. Stop regurgitating his idiotic vitriol of the day. Stop giving him oxygen.

Report on what his companies do or fail to do, report his business failures on objective terms. if you haven't realized by now, the nonsense he says is nothing but self-hype or in this case shock/outrage bait.

With one notable exception: report, inform and spread news about Swedish metalworker union strike against Tesla.

Just as with Trump when he was in office, the right thing to do is report on actions, not their baiting words.

Your example falls under that. How is his company actually parcipating, not participating, undermining, etc union negotiations? Thats legit. Hypothetically reporting on Elon xeeting "fuck unions herp derp im edgy!" during said negotiations is a bad idea on the other hand.

While I agree with the sentiment, he's only in deep shit right now because people talked about his antisemitic remarks. I think it's good to continue reporting on his idiotic vitriol as much as possible, because it's actively hurting him.

This. And also it makes the markets think twice about providing capital to this psychopath for future endeavors.

Because he's such a breathtaking narcissist, he's the front face of his companies, and that face is decaying in real time and the markets are reacting BECAUSE it's in zeitgeist to talk about it

What remarks did he make that were "antisemitic"?

"I have no problem being hated," Musk said, emphasizing that the trip was planned before his controversial post on X.

Grimes still doesn’t want you back, dude.

"What this advertising boycott is going to do [is] to kill [X]. The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we will document it in great detail."

Spoken exactly like the person who doesn’t care if they’re hated or not. “I WILL DOCUMENT YOUR TRANSGRESSIONS IN GREAT DETAIL!!”

"What this advertising boycott is going to do [is] to kill [X]. The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we will document it in great detail."

I, too, prefer making other people the scapegoat to avoid letting myself feel any personal responsibility over my actions.

It's like a rapist who ends up in jail and blames the victim with the rationale that "she was asking for it".

He wants Twitter dead, he never wanted the company and he's stuck with it and is basically doing the most above board sabotage of the company he can get away with.

...funded by Saudis, who also want Twitter dead so it can't be used to organize Arab Spring 2.0.

I don't really follow this. If he actually doesn't want Twitter to be a thing, there's a button in the data center that turns off all the servers. He can just push that. There's no law against it and he's the majority shareholder - what's he going to do, sue himself?

To advance his political agenda, it needs to look like an accident. Or incompetence.

I'm not convinced that's what he's actually doing, but I do acknowledge that it's a pretty strong case. But as the old adage goes, never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.

Yeah I have my doubts that it's a purposeful plan. He'd have to know people would see him as a laughingstock, and his ego couldn't handle that.

"I WILL WATCH THAT DOCUMENTARY AND LAUGH EVERY TIME I SEE YOU GETTING SADDER AND SADDER AT YOUR FAILING BUSINESS WHICH IS ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT MR MUSK, YOU SMELLY CARROT OF A MAN"

Is how I'd respond to that.

What this advertising boycott is going to do [is] to kill [X]

Sounds fucking good to me. Keep it up, non-advertisers.

and I will buy the crap out of those products that were the downfall of Twitter X

From the NYT reporting

Although Mr. Musk acknowledged that an extended boycott could bankrupt X, he suggested that the public would blame the brands rather than him for its collapse.

lol, yeah, sure.

The word he's looking for is "thank." As in I'd like to thank the brands not advertising on Twitter. Not just the ones that withdrew their current ad campaigns, but also and especially the brands that never advertised there. I'm glad he's documenting them because I can't be arsed to keep a list.

This statement is the strongest evidence I've seen so far that he actually doesn't know what he's doing. Anyone who was self-aware, anyone who didn't live in a double-hulled iron-clad bubble would certainly know that we are out here laughing at and blaming him. Not the brands.

If this isn't a sincere proof of his ignorance, then who is this statement even for? The brands don't believe this, and wouldn't care if they did. The public no longer has any horse in this race. He's talking to himself with this statement, and that's why it's clear that he truly has no idea what he's doing.

That’s… kinda pathetic, actually. He’s acting like a literal child. “I didn’t want the cookie anyways!”

I would laugh at the absurdity if he wasn’t in charge of a major communications network.

It’s kind of inspiring, really. A guy with the mental age of myself when I was a teenage edge-overlord can “effectively” run a massive social media website. I really can do anything! I mean, I could if I had an emeralds mine from my papa, but still!

Oh, but he does want it. At the same time he’s whining about how they’ll “kill X” and threatening to document it and tell the world what a victim he is.

That's the sort of thing I've been saying for years back when he first became involved with Tesla and SpaceX and everybody was fellating him for being such a "visionary" or whatever. I'd point out that what he was doing was nothing more than what any 12-year-old nerdy kid with a Popular Science subscription and a billion dollars would do, and would get downvoted to Hell for it.

tfw you no longer need adblock on twitter because no one will advertise there

elons a genius /s

I live in Ireland and for a very long time, I received so few ads I could simply block them away or tolerate them. Then one day, for no apparent reason, my feed was lousy with ads. Not relevant ads, or even generalised ads that anyone in Ireland might see - no, they were Chinese regional development ads, ads in Turkish, ads for various NGOs in Africa. It was absolute meaningless dreck. Were Twitter putting these in my feed as a bug, or to boost impressions of this junk to skim some pennies? I have no idea.

But I uninstalled the app. When I use twitter I launch it through Firefox mobile and uBlock origin and all the ads are stripped out. I don't know if the feed issue I suffered was fixed or is still there. I don't care any more. The way I look at it is, is Twitter is the predominant social media out there but there are many others. I'll leech off the service and if Elon burns his platform to the ground, then there is always somewhere else. He makes out that the world will rise up against advertisers but the reality is Threads or Bluesky will takeover and that will be that.

Make a Mastodon account, and migrate your X account to Mastodon. Apparently you can set them up to sync with each other, but I'm not sure how, as I never had a Twitter.

"What this advertising boycott is going to do [is] to kill [X]. The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we will document it in great detail."

The whole world has been watching Musk single-handedly tank the company since he acquired it.

That's not the behaviour of a adult, that's also not the behaviour of someone in charge of a company I want to give any of my time to and certainly not the behaviour of someone who should be in charge of this Internet bank thing he wants X to become.

There's a theory that wealth masks a lot of mental health issues behind the eccentric billionaire persona, and it definitely shows with him.

Musk reminds me of Charlie Sheen in the midst of his coke fueled Tiger Blood rants. He is unhinged, we are watching him meltdown in real time.

Imagine being the head of advertising at Twitter and hearing your boss say this.

Exactly, his “graveyards are full of my enemies” batshit rant reminded me exactly of “strafing runs in my underwear”. Dude’s fucking gakked to the gills or whatever’s stupider and worse than coke.

That's when it all made sense to me. That graveyard rant pretty much confirmed he never matured beyond a 13 year old.

Yaccarino presumably huffs Andrew Tate farts just like he does, why else would she be there?

And yes the Charlie Sheen thing is a very apt comparison. Both whacked out sex addicts.

Shes an avid Trump booster according to her NBC coworkers. Also a "scorched earth" boss, who "created her own reality" as needed.

So, yup.

She has an add background but is the CEO, not the person who has to actually make calls trying to placate companies to keep their add spend.

She is there (and well paid) to be the fall guy when EM needs one.

Just follow his directions: don't advertise.

Also don't visit. Why would you?

Artists and porn artists.

Bluesky hasn't got enough of them yet, mastodon apps aren't quite on that level yet.

Also overseas users. Lots of Japanese developers are sticking with it for now, until they have to go back to mixi or some shit.

I don't. Though I do follow a couple feeds for important things like the local NWS office. As soon as they post regularly elsewhere that can include notifications of new posts, I'll happily drop them and Xitter.

This is the thing keeping the Xitter paper-bag-of-poop from being set on fire - a clear, easy, how-to for municipal and government agencies to get on mastodon and cross-post for a temporary period.

Somebody make one please

So Musk is fine with the boycotting advertisers using their own free speech to boycott Twitter? Okay.

"What this advertising boycott is going to do [is] to kill [X]. The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we will document it in great detail." -Musk

Who would have thought that a company stopping advertising on an internet platform would actually be some of the greatest advertising?

What a ridiculous thing to for Musk to say. He clearly can’t handle being wrong or to blame. These companies are not under any obligation to advertise and support him or his business. His job is supposed to be to provide a platform where they want their ads to be seen, and failing do that, he’s acting like a victim instead.

These companies are not under any obligation to advertise and support him or his business.

You mistake my meaning. I'm talking about the advertisers that dropped Twitter. Those companies earn respect because they stopped advertising on Twitter. It cost those companies nothing to stop advertising on Twitter, and earns them a good name.

Oh, I didn’t mean you said something ridiculous - I was referring to the Musk quote.

you act like his intent wasnt to kill twitter with a legal scapegoat.

hes never cared about making money on twitter, not a dime. why anyone is talking about proftis or losses.. income at all... is beyond me.

Musk acted stranger in that interview than even his default setting. It looks like he's on something. If I were a shareholder in one of his companies I'd be wondering if he's about to have to check into rehab and/or the funny farm.

Anyway regarding his comments, telling the companies that are the lifeblood of Twitter to go f themselves is very brave. In the British understated sense meaning of "very brave", i.e. suicidally dumb.

It looks like he’s on something.

He's been looking like that for a long while.

It would've shocked me if he had shown any amount of maturity or integrity. Fucking regressed edgy pre-teen.

Little divorced boy with a pocket full of bloody emeralds.

You can make it Elon, after all, you are one of them geniuses...

I see he's going for the diplomatic route

Never thought I would see someone try pick up artists negging as a business strategy.

Oops I killed the nerve center of American journalism that constantly reported on my repeated business failure, legal and ethical malfeasance, sexual misadventures, and despicable origin.

Whoops.

Lazy journalism maybe. Ooh a tweet let me barf out three paragraphs about it all done journalism’s fun!

Of note: At one point, he also looked out at the audience and said "Hey Bob, if you're in the audience," presumably in reference to Disney CEO Bob Iger who spoke on stage earlier. "That's how I feel, don't advertise," he added.

FFS. Tesla, SpaceX - what are you doing? Eject this chud now.

Why would they go fuck themselves when they could fuck with your ad revenue instead? 🤡

I'm convinced the reason Musk rebranded away from Twitter is so that they can sell off the brand name when the business inevitably folds.

Since many. many people still call it twitter, he is still killing the brand name. Google tried to rebrand as alphabet and FB as Meta but everyone still knows them as goofle and fb.

If/When the business folds I feel the office furniture will be worth more than the Twitter brand.

I feel like meta is slowly succeeding at getting people to call them meta when not referring directly to the Facebook website specifically. Like for their idiotic VR initiative and whatnot. Slowly. And it helps that it’s in the context on non-Facebook-the-website activities.

Twitter has no such advantage.

Are you talking about media reports or actual humans?

I have yet to hear a person call it meta or anyone use that term online.

fb, insta is all that I see and hear from people.

People I know who work there refer to their employer as Meta. And I laugh at them every single time. I guess they get into the habit at the office? Lol.

Media reports help as they influence and are influenced by larger numbers of people. When a media outlet no longer feels it necessary to specify to their readers that meta was formerly known as Facebook, that is an indicator of wider acceptance. Local anecdotes are less useful. Your friends and acquaintances don’t say meta. Mine do. That doesn’t really say anything about broader trends.

How you gonna make money though Elon? Or is Twitter suddenly a non profit business.

Twitter's always been a non-profit (-making) business

I actually believe him that he doesn't care about the money. He cares about his image and his ego when Twitter inevitably fails as a business.

This comment section is the most fediverse comment section of all comment sections

EDIT: Y'all, I agree with you. Your downvotes don't make it any less true.

Is that really a surprise?

The article and video is a steak to the fediverse's hungry dog.

Not a surprise at all. Just funny. I don't even disagree with them (despite the down votes) I'm just self aware enough to recognize when I'm being like that lol

I honestly respect him for this. At least he's putting his money where his mouth is

This is just more edgelord shit man. They have already stopped advertising.

Talking about his "graveyard of enemies" and saying a variant of "fuck you, i dont want the money you wont give me anyway" is pretty sad, honestly.