Somebody had to say it first

The Muslims in Makkah had a problem they had been talking around. The Qur'an had never been recited aloud, publicly, in front of Quraysh. Somebody had to be the first.

The obvious candidates were the men with clans — the ones whose families would retaliate if they were harmed, which is what made them relatively safe. But the sources record the group hesitating, because the man who did it would be attacked and there was no version of this that ended well.

Ibn Mas'ud volunteered.

The objection raised was practical and it was not an insult: he had no clan. Quraysh could do whatever they liked to him and no one would answer for it. They wanted a man whose people would defend him.

His answer was to do it anyway.

He went to the gathering at the Ka'bah in the morning, stood where they could all hear him, and recited.

They set on him and beat his face. He kept going as far as he could, then went back to the Muslims. When they said this was exactly what they had feared, he told them the enemies of Allah had never seemed more contemptible to him than they did now — and offered to go back and do it again tomorrow.

The point of the episode is not the beating. It is that the first public recitation of the Qur'an in Makkah was made by the person in the room with the least protection and the least to fall back on, because he was the one who offered.