After Musk’s Profane Anti-Advertiser Tirade, Billionaire Investor Bill Ackman Comes to His Defense: ‘We All Should Be Grateful That X Is Owned by Musk’

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Elon Musk this week angrily told big advertisers like Disney and Apple who have halted spending on X/Twitter to “go fuck yourself.” Bill Ackman, head of investment holding company Pershing Square Holdings and an investor in X, believes Musk has a point — opining that large marketers employ a double standard in reacting to Musk’s combative rhetoric and “free speech” stance. “I thought @elonmusk’s interview with @andrewrsorkin was one of the great interviews ever,” Ackman wrote in a post on X Thursday evening, referring to Musk’s appearance the New York Times’ DealBook Summit. “Musk is a free speech absolutist which I respect.

I think he is entirely correct that he and @X are treated unfairly and inconsistently by advertisers.” Ackman also wrote, “To use a Muskism, Earth is fortunate that @X is owned by an individual that is largely insulated from financial and other influence.” However, he added, X should possibly move to “some form of very carefully governed trust” rather than being owned and controlled by one individual. “Until then, we all should be grateful that X is owned by Musk,” Ackman said. “Musk is targeted because the other media organizations view @X as a competitor and any time his name is in an article about controversies, it draws clicks,” the hedge fund manager wrote.

Mainstream media outlets are “incentivized to attack him as it actually drives attention to their sites and therefore more revenues.

It is these attack articles by other media organizations that put pressure on the @Disney’s of the world to stop advertising on X.” Musk, at the DealBook conference, accused advertisers who pulled ads from X — over his support of an antisemitic conspiracy theory — of “blackmail.”.