(NewsNation) — Tech billionaire and X CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday attempted to walk back comments he made in November when he told advertisers who pulled their spending to “go f— yourself.”
Musk said during a conversation with WPP CEO Mark Read that his comments weren’t targeting advertisers “as a whole” and instead were making a point of free speech, NewsNation’s partner The Hill reported.
“I think it is important to have a global free-speech platform, where people from a wide range of opinions can voice their views,” Musk said Wednesday at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.
Late last year, Musk said companies advertising with X, formerly Twitter, were “blackmailing” him by threatening to pull their spending. IBM, NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast were among those that stopped advertising on X on the heels of a report that said their ads were appearing alongside material praising Nazis.
Musk has also been accused of tolerating antisemitic messages on the platform since he bought it.
On Wednesday, Musk recognized that advertisers “have a right to appear next to content that they find compatible with their brands.”
“If we have to make a choice between 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 is, I think, the right moral decision.”
NewsNation partner The Hill contributed to this report.