Top social media platforms are reportedly declining to run paid ads for an upcoming film on Elon Musk, a documentary which the right-wing billionaire tech mogul once predicted would be the “most convincingly terrible hit piece” on him.
YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Musk’s own X have all refused to run ads for Alex Gibney’s “Musk,” a searing look into the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s businesses and political influence, according to reports by The Hollywood Reporter.
The trailer for “Musk” was released Thursday and featured snippets of his life, including his many controversies.
JS has reached out to the social media companies for a statement, but has not yet received a response from TikTok and X.
However, according to The Hollywood Reporter, YouTube, TikTok and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, have all cited “political content” as the reason why they’re not running the ads.
YouTube released a statement on Saturday after The Hollywood Reporter’s article, saying “the ad has been cleared to run.”
A Meta spokesperson emailed JS on Saturday, “this was an error and the ads are being restored.”
The film’s distributor, Bleecker Street, has appealed to the platforms, according to the outlet, but Meta has already rejected the appeal.
The film has also drawn plenty of outrage from Musk himself. In addition to his “hit piece” commentary, he has also called Gibney “a douchebag to his core and, in his own words, incredibly biased against me.”
Musk’s attorney put Gibney on notice earlier this month and threatened a defamation lawsuit over debunked conspiracy theories about SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. A page created on X shares what it called “Facts, sources, and receipts” from the upcoming documentary.