Elon Musk has found himself walking back his incendiary comments to advertisers last year as he tries to rebuild X’s flagging ad business.

At the Cannes Lions advertising festival this week, he told advertisers that he wasn’t referring to all of them when he lashed out at those who dropped X in opposition to hate speech on the platform.

“Well, first of all, it wasn’t to advertisers as a whole,” Musk said. “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.”

Musk’s comments are quite the about-face from what he said in November, when advertisers fled X over his endorsement of an antisemitic post on the platform. At the time, he struck a defiant tone, saying that he hoped that companies would stop advertising on X if they were going to “blackmail” him with money.

“Go f— yourself,” he told them.

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‘Go f— yourself’: Elon Musk responds to advertisers boycotting his social platform November 29, 2023 / 03:11

X has struggled with its ad business since Musk took over the company formerly known as Twitter. He has restored previously banned accounts and allowed hate speech to run, largely unfettered, on the platform, and such content appeared alongside ads. That, along with his volatile leadership and fondness for antisemitic conspiracies, spooked advertisers.

Executives, including CEO Linda Yaccarino, told employees last week that X has recovered 65% of its advertising businesses since January, The New York Times reported, with most of it coming from small- and medium-size companies.

Big advertisers have remained elusive. Musk and Yaccarino had set out to make good with them at the festival this week to convince them to return to X, though whether that has worked remains to be seen. Part of that effort entailed Musk walking back his previous comments to them.

He also tried to portray his capricious nature as a positive. “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 told them.