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Elon Musk Responds to Allegations of Advertiser 'Blackmail' With a Profane Remark

Lanon Wee

Over the past few weeks, Musk has been boosting what the White House labeled as "antisemetic and racist hate" on X, the social media platform in which he has a stake and operates as the Chief Technology Officer. This led to several well-known firms, including Disney, Apple, and others, to pull their ad campaigns from the site. At the 2023 DealBook Summit on Wednesday in NYC, Musk derided the boycotts by advertisers and remarked to Andrew Ross Sorkin, interviewer, "If someone is planning to blackmail me with adverts, they should get lost." At the 2023 DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday, Elon Musk, the owner of the X (formerly Twitter) social media site, rejected advertisers' threats to leave the platform over antisemitic posts he distributed. "If someone attempts to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f---yourself," he articulated and further suggested his fans should boycott such businesses. He particularly targeted Disney, warning, "The entire world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we will document it in great detail." With regards to the backlash from his incendiary posts, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO stated, "I have no problem being hated. Hate away." He then proclaimed, "I'm sorry for that tweet or post," adding, "I tried my best to clarify, six ways to Sunday, but you know at least I think over time it will be obvious that in fact, far from being antisemitic, I am in fact philosemitic." In response to the outcry, big companies like Disney, Apple, and others halted their marketing on the website, and famous users, like Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, departed the platform. While in Israel this week, Musk met and spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and declared he was ready to help with Netanyahu's plan to "deradicalize" and "rebuild" Gaza. Musk denied his visit to Israel was part of an "apology tour," pointing out it was planned before his tweets. He had previously said he wanted to bring SpaceX satellite communications service to Israel and humanitarian organizations in Gaza. Musks' current X follower count is more than 164 million, though a Mashable report in August showed a majority of Musk's followers likely to be inauthentic or inactive accounts. Earlier on Wednesday, the United Auto Workers (UAW) initiated campaigns directed at Tesla and 12 other automakers in the United States. Stephen Sorkin inquired about what this might mean for Musk's electric vehicle (EV) enterprise. The CEO declared that unions have a tendency of fostering a "lords and peasants" atmosphere within businesses, as they "naturally try to create negativity" between staff and management. Musk also stated that "many people at Tesla have gone from working on the line to being in senior management and there is no lords and peasants—everyone eats at the same table." He also went on to add that "if Tesla gets unionized, it will be because we deserve it and we failed in some way." Sorkin questioned Musk if he felt any pressure from anybody, to which he replied, "if we make bad products that people don't want to use, the users will vote with their resources and use something else," and explained that SpaceX, Starlink, and Tesla are observed by "a few hundred regulators because we're in 55 countries." He also mentioned that he commonly abides by the regulations imposed on his companies, however, he sometimes disagrees with particular regulations and chooses not to follow them. After that, Sorkin asked if Musk thinks about the leverage that China has over him. Alluding to Tesla's factory in the country and the relevance of Chinese patrons in Tesla's sales, Sorkin nudged Musk if this would be regarded as hypocritical given his free speech beliefs. The CEO answered that "the best that the platform can do is adhere to the laws of any given country." He also said that Chinese electric car companies are competitive, and expressed his opinion that the top ten EV companies in the world will be Tesla and nine Chinese firms. Afterwards, Sorkin mentioned OpenAI and its recent boardroom wars, to which Musk commented that he had spoken to a lot of people but hadn't managed to learn the cause of the recent termination and rehiring of CEO Sam Altman. The Tesla CEO also stated that he has "mixed feelings" about Altman, implying that he feels as though the OpenAI CEO holds too much control. Musk then discussed his fear of AI potentially harming humankind and that he is having "trouble sleeping at night" due to it. This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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