Elon Musk can do a lot of things. At his rocket company Space-X, he is still discussing the final details with the engineers. He puts fear into the titans of the automotive industry with his electric cars Tesla, and he also founded a tunnel drilling company. There’s just one thing he can’t do: hold back. This has already gotten him into a lot of trouble with the strict US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and with investors when he raved on Twitter about taking Tesla off the stock exchange.
As you know, Twitter is now called X, and a lot of other things have changed on the platform since Elon Musk decided on a whim to take over Twitter. He constantly produces headlines with it, and most of the time they are not good ones. Like right now. At an event of New York Times the moderator asked him what he thought about the fact that major advertising customers such as IBM and Disney have suspended or terminated their contracts with X. And then it burst out again: “Go fuck yourself,” he hurled at the company bosses, an expletive that doesn’t translate nearly as vulgarly enough as “go to hell.”
Of course, Musk brought this on himself. The impulse to take over Twitter came from his feeling that the platform was going too far in suppressing unpleasant expressions of opinion. When he owned the short message service, he not only unblocked the blocked accounts of people like former President Donald Trump, but also let all sorts of other users back in that Twitter had excluded after a lot of pressure and with good reasons.
Advertisers have been cautious for a long time
Twitter employees also felt this. Musk drove through the workforce like one of his rockets, quitting half of them in a very rude manner. He demanded unconditional devotion to the company from the rest. Although he portrays himself as an advocate for free speech, he blocked the accounts of users who criticized him. People who are proven to be spreading false information are now allowed to use this again.
Many advertising customers had therefore not been enthusiastic about X for a long time. But then Musk not only allowed anti-Semitic posts, but also agreed to a post from the Nazi corner on to weaken. This even brought the White House into action. In a statement it said it condemned “in the strongest possible terms this disgusting promotion of anti-Semitic and racist hatred.”
Now the richest person in the world has a big problem on his hands. He financed the purchase of Twitter for $44 billion not just by selling Tesla shares, but also with bank loans totaling $13 billion. They are now weighing heavily on X. But Musk doesn’t back down, but instead speaks of blackmail. The advertising boycott could kill X, he admits. And then suggests that he will then let the platform die. But Musk probably wouldn’t be Musk if there weren’t one or two surprising twists.