Commentary

Expletive Not Deleted: Turns Out Elon Musk Meant Himself

by Joe Mandese , August 5, 2026

It's been nearly three years since Elon Musk sat on stage at a high-profile New York Times event and told the ad industry to "go [expletive deleted] yourself." In retrospect, it appears he may have been referring to himself, because that's exactly what the data released by his publicly traded SpaceX shows.

SpaceX -- which now includes the remnants of what was Twitter and is now called Xai -- reported just $367 million in advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2026, about a third of the $1.076 billion that Twitter reported in its last publicly traded quarter in 2022.

That was just before Elon Musk paid $44 billion to acquire Twitter, take it private, rebrand it X, abandon most of the platform's brand-safety efforts, disenfranchise the ad industry, sue some of the world's largest advertisers, as well as the highly-regarded global trade association (the World Federation of Advertisers) for organizing a global alliance for responsible media, and got it to settle by agreeing not to ever organize an alliance to promote responsible media again.

Did I leave anything out?

Oh yeah, at presstime, Musk filed arguments with the appeals court to revive his "brazen boycott" suit against the responsible media advertisers, so it ain't over until it's over.

You can revisit Musk's profane attack on the ad industry in the Times' summit video below and go to the 11-minute mark if you want to hear the "good" stuff.

Clearly, Musk has had a chilling effect on the ad industry, but in retrospect the chill cuts both ways.

advertising, politics, revenue, twitter, x

2 comments about "Expletive Not Deleted: Turns Out Elon Musk Meant Himself".

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Dan C. from MS Entertainment, August 7, 2026 at 12:35 p.m.
He didn't tell "the ad industry"
to F off. He said any advertiser who is going to tell him what kind of content is/isn't appropriate and using their ad dollars as investment can F off.

Advertisers threatening to remove or reduce their ad spend based on editorial coverage or content is nothing new. A publisher not kowtowing to the threat and telling the advertiser he doesn't care is.
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Chris Marine from Campfire Consulting, August 11, 2026 at 8:06 p.m.

I appreciate this piece Joe. I think that last point is really interesting. The chill does cut both ways. Advertisers have every right to decide what environments they want to fund, and publishers and platforms have every right to decide how they want to operate but neither gets to pretend those decisions don’t have consequences. Three years later, the revenue numbers make that pretty hard to ignore. It’s also a good reminder for those of us making media decisions every day that where we invest has an impact on what ultimately grows.