When asked about his statement from late 2023, where he told advertisers threatening to pull ads to “go f— yourself,” Musk aimed to downplay the harshness of his remark.
“It wasn’t to advertisers as a whole,” Musk said at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
“It was with respect to freedom of speech, I think it is important to have a global free speech platform, where people from a wider range of opinions can voice their views,” he added.
At that time, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said that Musk has offered an apology and “an explanation and an explicit point of view about our position. X is enabling an information independence that’s uncomfortable for some people. We’re a platform that allows people to make their own decisions.”
Musk says X made progress on brand safety on platform
Elon Musk addressed concerns about brand safety on X, stating that the company has made strides in creating a safer environment for brands despite some major advertisers having pulled out due to anxieties over content moderation.
“Advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they find…compatible with their brands. That’s totally fine. What is not cool is insisting that there can be no content that they disagree with on the platform,” Elon Musk said.
Musk noted that in some cases, advertisers were insisting on censorship.
“At the end of the day … if we have to make a choice between censorship and losing money, [or] censorship and money, or free speech and losing money, we’re going to choose the second,” he said.
“We’re going to support free speech rather than agree to be censored for money, which I think is the right moral decision. We don’t want to take money to censor. I think that would be wrong,” he added.
While talking about his own posts on X, Musk said, “I do shoot myself in the foot from time to time. If you’re constantly going through a filter, now you aren’t being real. It’s better to be real.”
