Elon Musk Begs Advertisers to Return as Twitter's Revenue Plunges

“If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience. That’s how I feel, don’t advertise.”
Elon, 2023
- Careful, you might convince Tesla shareholders to fork over a few more billion to keep the big brained genius motivated.
  
  If the market were rational that would have been the end of Tesla. It takes some extreme brainletry to turn a huge market advantage into actively losing ground to new entrants. And he is still at it. Being a dimwitted Nazi on Twitter is his top priority. Tesla sales will continue to spiral down the drain.
  (Yes, if the market were rational the end might have come sooner, but certainly giving billions to a brainlet actively sabotaging the company should end it.)
  
  Go fuck yourself! Is that clear?
  Can I have a few billion now too?
- I think this should be posted as a comment to every article about this.
  
  Someone needs to make a drawing of it because when he originally said it he opened his mouth wide and through his head back like was a literal puppet
  
  It's right there in the 4th paragraph of the article itself.
  
  What's it say? Go find yourself? Go Fill yourself? IDK is this some game you Americans have where you have to guess the word, because the amount of pearl clutching is just too insane in America?
  Ah yes that's the amazing freedom of speech Americans are so proud of, except they don't actually have it, they are just indoctrinated to think so.
  My god American regulation is so idiotic sometimes!!!
- Musk sheepishly suggested that he didn't mean "advertisers as a whole."
  "Advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they find compatible with their brands," he told ad giant WPP CEO Mark Read during an interview on Wednesday. "What is not cool is insisting that there can be no content that they disagree with on the platform."
  How is that “not cool?” I don’t understand how he can possibly object to a company spending their advertising dollars wherever they damn well choose to. He repeatedly makes it clear that he feels entitled to their budgets. There is zero basis for that. I truly cannot fathom how he can be so dense about this.
  
  He can object because he's decided that's what is right. Literally nothing else matters.
  The piece of shit that used to own my company is like this. His decision is correct and gospel, and if you don't agree or if it's provably false you are wrong. And it's your fault you are wrong, because he has decided it to be correct.
- Wowow! That was so long ago! Literally dozens of weeks ago! I’m sure this full-blown narcissist has seen the error of his ways and changed his mind. Surely.
- Calling out Bob Iger in particular was the cherry on top.
  Massive hubris.
- Yes. Elon should approach his advertisers on bended knee -- after changing Twitter back to Twitter, and creating a proper moderation system that filters out neonazis and Russian AI Trump-bots.
  Oh, George Washington rode the waves
  \ Abe Lincoln wore his hat with praise
  \ Thomas Jefferson, the sandy king, and
  \ Teddy Roosevelt, the beach-hiking thing
  \ Barrack Obama, surfing gracefully
  \ Historical presidents at the sea!
  \ -- @hisvault.eth
- Elon with TSLA stock at 2023 levels, lol
- This is the most upvotes I've seen on a Lemmy post so far... Granted, I've only been here a couple days, but still!

"I do shoot myself in the foot from time to time, but at least you know it is genuine, not from the PR department," he admitted.
He's been brainwashed by his fans if he thinks that somehow makes it better.
Like, authenticy is good for good things, but it makes shitty things even shittier. It's not a value that's always good in every context. And the worst thing he could be doing is doubling down on his opinions and policy.
If he left the company is the only way this would help, he wouldn't even be a fall guy because most of this is entirely his fault
- Like, authenticy is good for good things, but it makes shitty things even shittier.
  sounds like he needs that PR department
  
  That's pretty much how he kept the public image of "eccentric genius" for so many years. I once read an article (can't remember where, don't care enough to search) that said that SpaceX had/has a team whose entire purpose was to babysit Musk when he had a temper tantrum. The team formed organically, like a cyst around a foreign object, and minimized damage to PR.
  When Twitter was infested, it didn't have this immunity and now the world (or those of us who care) knows how much of a shithead he is.
  
  That and a set of kneepads.
  
  💩
- Reminds me of the people who say things like "I say it like it is, and most people don't like it"...not knowing that the reason they don't have many friends is because they don't have a filter and don't think they need one, lol
  But this looks like Elon Musk admitting that he's genuinely an idiot, lol
- Yeah I robbed that gas station but at least some crime boss didn't make me do it. It was genuine so you should forgive me
- Idk, I'd prefer if CEOs were more transparent and why mistakes happened instead of the generic PR nonsense of: "We messed up, and we're sorry. We're taking time to review what happened to make sure it never happens again." That kind of statement only matters if there's some way for the public to know what happened and verify that it actually won't happen again.
  That's not what we're getting from Elon, so screw him, but I just figured I'd point out that this particular broken clock could say something close to what we probably all want.
  
  Trouble is, their main job is to game public perception
  A transparent, honest CEO would win a lot of people over (although they'd also probably be less likely to ignore the horrible decisions that require apologies)
  Just remember - generic PR apologies are an attempt at mimickingv leaders actually taking responsibility for a mistake. The transparency will just become as soulless and corporate as the apologies are now
  We need to fix the system to remove the incentive to put heartless demons in positions of power
- "Shoot oneself in the foot" is a really charitable description of "inviting all the worst Nazis back on to social media and removing fact checking."
- Authenticity only works when you don't jump ships and stay on point. Not for billionaires, tho.

“I hope they stop. Don’t advertise, If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is." - Elon Musk, November 27th 2023
- Advertisers:
- Advertisers: OK. Call.

Literally all he needs to do is shut the fuck up and collect money, and he can't even manage that.
- Nope, he can't manage that. Because he's an attention-whoring malignant narcissist.
  I can't wait for the bubble of mystique to pop on this arsehole, if only so we don't have to ever hear from or about him again. Sadly, there are still plenty of rubes in his cult of personality and greedy investors willing to ride his coattails. So I'm not holding my breath.
- Don't do kids, drugs
- Doesn't even have to collect money, he could just sell everything except SpaceX and still live a happy life and fly to Mars one day.
  
  If only... That's the universe I want to live in.

Tells customers to go fuck themselves
They leave
They stop paying for advertisement
Twitter/X makes no money from advertisement
Elon:
- That is the clearest I've ever seen the surprised Pikachu image.
  
  Hey! I wanted to comment that! Seems like it got vectorized 🙊
  
  I think someone drew a new one.
- Don't forget his total lack of actual 'prowess' in running Twitter.
  changing the name to X
  Firing employees
  employees severance issues
  Reneging on free speech promises
  Using hidden accounts
  Unbanning of people who should be banned
  Killing API access
  Forcing login to view tweets
  add your fave Twitter dumpster fire item here
- You forgot "Tells advertisers to go fuck themselves"
  
  Them's the customers.

Can't remember the last time I was on Twitter. Turns out I don't need it. Turns out I'm just a little happier without it.
- I was trying to find active users since he took over. But the only numbers I can find are numbers provided by Musk, who is a well known liar.
  I know Lemmy and Mastodon are niche communities, and that people put up with a lot of garbage from Big Tech, but I have to believe that a lot of users have left Twitter, or least that usage is down. I also assume bots are way up, because Musk wants his numbers to be up regardless of the source (save for people with an opposing opinion).
  Hopefully Musk's shitty little empire crumbles...soon.
  
  3 years
- I wish some politicians, artists, and scientists that I used to follow used Mastodon.
- I deleted my account and my stress level is way down.
  Twitter was never good, but it's a cesspool of scum and villainy.
- I also left it for the most part (only there to squat my user handle - I have some enemies), and I'm better without it. Even before the Muskrat overtake, its algorithm often bought the worst out of me, and I had to realize that wasn't me. After that, it became worse than the forums from the late 2000's that were overtaken by a few moderators to turn them into "free speech zone", except they liked to harass people for having "dumb opinions", one of which was not liking racism, and those admins also liked to claim PoC robbing whites are a "race motivated crime".
  I like the smaller communities of the Fediverse, I even started to remember usernames and avatars here on lemmy (and before that, kbin) without having a follow function I know of. When I was on Reddit, I felt massively alienated, didn't know anyone there really, and the place got more and more dominated by a select few toxic individuals.

I thought, it was only "woke" companies went broke. Are we now saying "Go fash, no cash"?
- Go fash, no cash.
  Fukkkin saved.

Go fund yourself.
- He just got approved for that big $40+ billion compensation package from Tesla so he's got lots to work with.
  
  A single billion is an obscene amount of money for an individual, I can't fathom how anyone can be worth/earn a billion in a couple of years.
  
  To me it's mental that stock holders would approve such package when company itself for its entire existence had income that is smaller than his "bonus". Some people are downright stupid.
  
  What's absolutely insane to me, is that other CEOs think that's fair and fine and that Elon is very smart and not a con artist? No wonder Elizabeth Holmes got so far. It's just so obvious he's not above board
  
  Don’t worry, he seems hard at work making sure all that Tesla stock he got will also be worth less everyday.
- We ought to normalize this phrase, it's pure gold!

"I do shoot myself in the foot from time to time, but at least you know it is genuine, not from the PR department”
Yeah we know. He’s genuinely a white supremacist, misogynist, queerphobe piece of shit. A PR department doesn’t give a fuck about any of that, but at least they’d be savvy enough to pretend like they give a damn in order to make money.
- misogynist, queerphobe? I never heard him say things like that. Where have you?
  Edit: getting downvoted for asking questions... Some people man
  
  asking questions
  Yeah thanks there Tucker Carlson.
  
  I think you're getting downvoted because everyone assumes that you're being a pedant, not because you asked a question.
  
  He made "cis" a slur on Twitter because it upsets him that his ex who left him is trans, and he hates trans people. He's had plenty of tweets and posts complaining about pronouns, trans people in general, and so on.
  I can't speak to the misogyny (but I'm sure it's there), but instead if arguing with people about you "jUsT aSkInG a QuEsTiOn" you could just Google "Elon Musk queerphobic tweets" and Google will supply plenty.
  I did, and the first two results were articles from former Twitter/X employees claiming there were homophobic and anti-semitic attacks on the platform after Musk took over. So yeah... Not sure what you want anyone here to do for you that you can't do yourself via a Google search, you clearly know how to type, and the phrase I suggested is less characters than all your comments combined.
  Edit: And then after you did some googling and found the answers, you could edit your comment to say, "Wow, hey guys, I was wrong, he really is misogynistic queerphobic piece of shit," and be done with it, instead of doubling down like a troll.
  
  On twitter.com presumably
  
  Yes, you're getting downvoted for asking a stupid question. Do you think people announce "I am a queerphobe and a misogynst"? Read between the fucking lines!
  
  Someone who is not misogynistic doesn't usually offer to pay for sex with someone who isn't a sex worker. That he offered to pay for said sex with a horse makes it extra damning, but that could be my personal bias.

Didn't he tell advertisers leaving to go fuck themselves? I don't expect a very long queue of returning ones.
- Surely the appreciate the "authenticity" with which he told them to "go fuck yourselves" before flip-flopping and begging them to come back?
  
  "I'd rather be told to 'have a nice day' by someone who doesn't mean it than be told to 'go fuck yourself' by someone who does."

Oh, so telling advertisers to go fuck themselves DIDN'T help Twitter make money? 🤔

Apparenlty telling your customers to go fuck themselves isn't a good business strategy.

aw, he may be a genocide loving nazi, but at least its from the heart. won't someone give him some money?
- No! Well, some idiot will. But not this idiot! Have you ever heard of Mastodon Social (https://mastodon.social/)?
  https://joinmastodon.org/
- What do you mean ? (sources)
  
  Google "Elon Musk Nazi", and/or "Elon Musk genocide"
  
  There are links in the actual article being discussed here.

tardigrade-playing-violin.jpg

I Always thought he just wanted to flush xitter, it never occurred to me that he was actually trying to succeed.
- I think he was trying to dump Tesla stock without making it look like he didn’t have faith in the company. His plan was always to say he was buying it. sell a bunch of Tesla stock. Back out of the Twitter deal and walk away with a ton of cash.
  He tried to get out of it based on a bunch of bullshit and then was surprised when a judge actually forced him to buy Twitter.
  
  Now he wants shareholders to give him stock as he demands 25% of ownership plus he wants 56 billion payout. Meanwhile he's firing whole departments.

"If you’re trying to reach senior decision makers, if you want to reach the most influential people in the world," Musk told Read, "the X platform is by far the best."
Does someone want to break it to him that he's one of about 4 executives of a fortune 500 who spends any time on Twitter? The rest have PR people who might make a couple posts a month for them, but they sure as shit aren't wasting any time on it arguing with idiots and bots. They're busy flying around on private jets or playing golf when they aren't spending their 30 minutes a month working.
- I could believe all the psychopaths still use shitter. Anyone I see that links to it is either a financial news organization or the scum they cover.
  
  I'm a psychopath and I don't use Twitter. I have PTSD. Also you shouldn't call mentally ill people psychopaths, it's considered offensive. You should say mentally ill person in the same language you're speaking, in this case English. And maybe stop saying mentally ill people are rich. We're not rich.

'Begs' sounds like a strong word comparing to the actual content of the article
- Click bait headlines? Never!

Well, well, well if it isn't the consequences of my own actions.

Oh no, poor rich boy

I can't find the exact quote right now, but I saw in another article he said something like, "If they don't pay for advertisements, X will be gone. How sad!"
It seems Musk thinks he's tending another Mona Lisa or some other world cultural artifact that society would hate to lose. Not some website that's fairly easily recreated by, say, a bunch of hobbyists.
- nooo don't kill twitter it's too sexy aha

I wonder why nobody wants to set up their billboards on a burning heap of shit...

Is he trying to put on a good appearance for the advertisers? I thought it was strange that he didn't have a transphobic streak of Twitter interactions this June. Very out of character.
- huh. that is unexpected isn't it?
- Maybe that big bonus package that the board approved stipulated that he must not, quote "say anything stupid" for a little while.
  
  he must not, quote "say anything stupid" for a little while.
  Did they sew his mouth shut?

any company that advertises with Twitter deserves to go bankrupt and vanish.

Oh no, if revenue continues to slip in just a few hundred years Musk will be down to his last billion. (assuming he never makes any more money)
- That's not exactly how billionaires work, they don't keep their money as cash, they keep it as equity. So if the value of his companies fall fast enough, he could lose all of his wealth.
  Just food for thought.
  
  Also when you own as much of a company like he does, and try to cash out, you cause the stock to plummet rapidly as you increase the available amount of shares. Basic supply and demand.
  It was quite dramatic as he was selling shares to buy Twitter.
  Whatever number gets thrown around as his wealth is just a paper number. It's a fraction of that if he sold it all.
  
  One can hope.

The majority of the ads I get on Twitter now are deepfaked Elon shilling coins — I don’t know how any advertiser (or user) could have any faith in that platform anymore.
- I don’t know how any advertiser (or user) could have any faith in that platform anymore.
  For the advertisers they know it's full of rubes who will easily fall for their scams. Hence the cryptocurrencies.

I believe the appropriate, corporate-friendly answer in this case is "go fuck yourself"
- "Do be a dear and remove yourself from my presence"

He deserves to lose every dollar, it's the most arrogant business move in history and he disrupted thousands of lives of workers with good jobs in the process. Unfortunately it's only like 10% of his net worth, he's the one who will suffer the least relatively speaking.

Go anti-woke, go broke, Apartheid Boy!
- Go fash, lose cash. 👍🏻

Mastodon Social awaits! https://joinmastodon.org/

Elon, yangot a 50 bil payout, just finance your dogshit website.
- The problem is that his payout, like the rest of his fortune, is in exceedingly overvalued Tesla stock. So using that to finance Twitter means selling, and every time he sells the price takes a hard dip because Tesla investors know they're standing on a soap bubble and they are extremely nervous about it bursting. Any sudden uptick in sales pressure is liable to cause a small avalanche of investors abandoning ship.
  The process of buying Twitter alone cut his net worth by half because of how much it cratered the Tesla stock price.
  
  Imagine being the wealthiest person on the planet and deciding to burn half of it to ensure that Nazis have an audience for their hot takes. Elon could have bought entire parks of grass to touch instead.
  
  Hahah, so him personally bailing out Twitter with a cash infusion would kill Tesla in the process?
  What a world.

Anyone could be a CEO if this douche nozzle can. And for like 6-7 different corporations to by the way.
What do you say you do here elon?
- Disagree. You have to be completely devoid of morals and ethics to be a CEO. Empathy too. Most of us have those things on at least some level.
  
  Only to be CEO of a massive capitalist company.
  I've heard a few tales of some CEO's (of very small companies) here in the Nordics actually being generous to their employees. Like it's most definitely a rarity, but I believe it is possible.
  Like a CEO who values profits but values employees and paying their fair share more and isn't blinded by greed and addicted to money. A socialist, literally. A market socialist, but a socialist nonetheless.
  Everyone could have their basic needs met, and we could still have rich people. Just not filthy rich, not "rich-to-the-point-no-one-else-has-anything" rich.

Masterful gambit, Sir.

He brought it all upon himself
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCRlgxoTsQs

"Go fuck yourself."

- Eh, I think that might be too smart for Musk. I don't doubt the Saudi's investment but that investment only came after the SEC forced him to take the "deal" (since he couldn't keep his mouth shut even when around SEC officials). In other words, I think the Saudi's saw their chance and took it.

Well changing the name to "X" didn't do him any favors
- Twitter is a cute name. X just sounds like some perverted shit. Elon is a moron.
  
  Or an asshole, Being X from Saga of Tanya the Evil Comes to mind. Hell both Being X and Musk are petulant children who damand praise, I fucking hate it.
- Threw away the branding, threw away the user base, threw away the advertisers, throw away the staff.
  What exactly does he have left?
  
  His ego🤣🤣😂😂😂

Go eat a dick Elon
- Asking him to auto-cannibalise? I like it.

The Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund expects returns.
Mr. Bonesaw waits......
- Haha that would be a fitting end for Elon.

"I do shoot myself in the foot from time to time, but at least you know it is genuine, not from the PR department," he admitted.
A basic statement of human fallibility is an absolute revelation to this guy. I can’t WAIT for him to just shut up and go away.
- Yeah, I know, but a man can dream.
  
  We can hope that the missing 45B will be critical for tesla to keep its market share, and then we end up getting good EV's

I so very hope this idiot asshole winds up either jailed and/or has his wealth severely diminished and most of his businesses fail from being unable to repay loans / convicted of fraud.
He's the closest person on earth to becoming Horatio from the Endless series, yet he's also basically a badly written Bond villain.
What a pos.
- I so very hope this idiot asshole winds up either jailed and/or has his wealth severely diminished and most of his businesses fail from being unable to repay loans / convicted of fraud.
  Jail would be too easy for him. I want him to be on "Would you like fries with that?" for a living. Forced to pander to the people he looked down on in order to put food on the table. Bonus if he also has to work three minimum-wage jobs he hates for a total of sixty hours or more a week.
  
  This would happen in a just world.
  It won't though.
  Reminds me of the recent millionaire guy who got lambasted on YT (i think his actual posts were on TikTok?).
  Guys, I am going to lock up my money, my phone have no contacts and go to a new city and start from nothing and earn a million dollars in 30 or 90 days or something.
  Whoah big surprise, a few weeks in he has to call the whole thing off for health reasons.
  OMG he got robbed? Lost his paper work and thus couldn't get the right aid? The shelters are full? Sleeping outside in a city is extremely dangerous and unhealthy? Your hygiene suffers? No one talks to you or treats you like a human being?
  In a just world we'd put the income tax levels back to around FDR levels and thus be able to actually fund social programs and eliminate a great deal of the wealthy's massive over representation in politics.
  Instead it looks like we will be making a b-line toward theocratic corporatocracy.
  Blargh.
  Edit: Income and Corporate tax levels.

I, for one, would like to hear Elon beg.

Dude must be in the largest bubble of yes people ever.
- Got to be hard to even walk around when there is constantly a mouth stuck on your dick

In b4 Elon decides he can do advertising better, too.

I'm surprised more brands aren't simply defaulting to Threads. You still see links to their Xitter profile instead of Threads.
I prefer Mastodon, myself, but I get why major brands would prefer a centralized network.

Womp womp.

The G20 doesn't meet on twitter. If you want to talk to like second rate journalists or nazis you go to twitter.

Begs??? Wasn’t he the one that said: “Fuck yourselves” to advertisers???? I thought he didn’t need them… lol

Squeal Boy! Squeal!

HOW BOUT NOOOOOOOOO?!!!

He was tolerated as a phreak, but he mistook that tolerance as adulation.
Ultimately his arrogance, ignorance, bigotry, misogyny, and intolerance, leads to ignoring rather than tolerating the phreak.
- Oh there's still far too much adulation. All those Tesla bros, for example. Given what an insufferable turd Musk is, and the crumby reputation Teslas have, I don't understand it. And I don't think I ever will.
  
  Agreed.