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Your move, Linda. Elon Musk said \u201cgo fuck yourself\u201d to advertisers who recently paused spending on X after he endorsed<\/a> an antisemitic<\/a> conspiracy theory on the platform.<\/p>\n Onstage at the DealBook conference, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked the X owner about these pauses in advertising. Musk replied, \u201cDon\u2019t advertise.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t want them to advertise?\u201d Sorkin said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf somebody\u2019s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself,\u201d Musk said. \u201cGo. Fuck. Yourself. Is that clear?\u201d<\/p>\n He then waved to the audience and said, \u201cHey, Bob,\u201d referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who was also at the event.<\/p>\n Needless to say, it\u2019s not an encouraging message for advertisers who are deciding whether or not to continue giving the platform their ad dollars. And it seems contrary to the strategy of bringing in an advertising industry bigwig like Linda Yaccarino as CEO.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat this advertising boycott is going to do is kill the company,\u201d Musk continued. \u201cAnd the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout his tenure as X\u2019s owner, Musk has sued or threatened to sue nonprofit organizations like Media Matters, the Center for Countering Digital Hate<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Anti-Defamation League<\/a>, alleging that their reports are responsible for the increasingly tenuous relationship between X and advertisers. Companies that have paused or pulled advertising on X in the last few weeks include Apple, Comcast\/NBCUniversal, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, IBM, Paramount Global, Lionsgate and the European Commission.<\/p>\n In the post that Musk described as \u201cthe actual truth,\u201d an X user accused Jewish communities of spreading \u201cdialectical hatred against whites.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk did admit that his \u201cactual truth\u201d comment was \u201cfoolish.\u201d He even apologized and said he is sorry onstage. But Musk is clearly not repentant about spreading violence-prone conspiracy theories. Just yesterday, he posted a meme endorsing Pizzagate, a debunked<\/a> conspiracy<\/a> theory that accused high-ranking Democrats of child sex-trafficking and inspired real-world violence when one Pizzagate adherent stormed a Washington, D.C. pizzeria with an AR-15. Musk has since deleted the post.<\/p>\n Per research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, X has\u00a0failed to moderate<\/a> hate speech on its platform that promotes antisemitic conspiracies, praises Hitler and dehumanizes Muslims and Palestinians. Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media watchdog,\u00a0also published a recent report<\/a> showing how ads from companies like Apple, IBM, Bravo, Oracle and Xfinity have appeared next to posts that praise Nazi ideology. In a statement, X said that the report \u201ccompletely misrepresented the real user experience on X, in another attempt to undermine freedom of speech and mislead advertisers.\u201d X has since filed suit against the media watchdog.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n