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.”
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.