Mark Zuckerberg and his billionaire tech bros have twisted themselves into pretzels, coming up with excuses to avoid running ads for a documentary that dares to rip Musk.
Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary about Musk gives him “the takedown he richly deserves,” Deadline reviewer Matthew Carey wrote. By that he means it depicts Musk as “petty, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, cruel, detached from humans at a personal level (including various ex-partners and many of his children) while purporting to want to save humanity by colonizing Mars. A real prince.”
That totally tracks with Musk’s public persona, right?
Yet the billionaires who should be eternally grateful to this country for getting them the wealth they now enjoy are too cowardly, greedy, and/or power-hungry to take even a small step against the wealthy Nazi fan and in support of our democracy.
“YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook owner Meta, and, predictably, Musk’s own platform X have all refused to run the trailer as a paid advertisement for Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney’s new four-hour documentary Musk, according to The Hollywood Reporter,” The Daily Beast has reported.
YouTube, TikTok and Meta have all claimed “political content” is the reason for their denial, The Hollywood Reporter said. But the trailer “simply contains a shot of a political rally in 2024 and a reference at the end to the 2024 election — the kind of flicks that occur in numerous documentaries and are hardly meant to stump for a particular candidate in an upcoming race,” THR noted. Instagram has reportedly not provided an excuse for rejecting the ad.
“The reason for YouTube’s rejection is even less clear, as the platform does allow campaign ads, albeit with ‘paid for’ disclosures from vetted candidates,” THR also noted.
“The social media wall now helping to shield Musk underscores a key point in the film: the tech mogul is so alarmingly wealthy and powerful that he wields enormous influence over what the public sees and learns,” The Daily Beast observed.
The movie, titled “Musk,” premieres in New York and Los Angeles on October 9, with a nationwide release the following week.
Watching the trailer and seeing the full film is a great way to push back.
