Elon Musk's profane attack on advertisers boycotting X, formerly known as Twitter, has baffled experts. If advertisers keep leaving and don't come back, can X survive?

Axar.az reports that in April, I sat down with Musk for the first of his many chaotic interviews about his acquisition of X.

He said something that, in hindsight, was rather revealing, but which passed me by at the time.

Talking about advertising, he said: "If Disney feels comfortable advertising children's movies [on Twitter], and Apple feels comfortable advertising iPhones, those are good indicators that Twitter is a good place to advertise."

Seven months later, Disney and Apple are no longer advertising on X and Musk is telling companies that have left to "Go [expletive] yourself."

The companies paused adverts after an investigation by a US organisation, Media Matters for America, flagged ads appearing next to pro-Nazi posts. X fiercely challenged the report, questioning its research methods, and launched a lawsuit against the organisation.

In a fiery interview on Wednesday, Musk also used the "b" word bankruptcy, in a sign of just how much the ad boycott is damaging the company's bottom line.