Disney CEO Bob Iger Goes After Musk's X In SAD Stunt

During an appearance at the New York Times Dealbook conference, Disney CEO Bob Iger went after Elon Musk's social media platform X. This came after the entertainment company decided to pull ads from Musk's X for an alleged rise in antisemitism on the platform since Musk took over it in late 2022 and Musk's purported role in enabling said rise. 

"I have a lot of respect for Elon and what he's accomplished," Iger said, referencing Musk's many business accomplishments. "And we know that Elon is larger than life in many respects and that his name is very much tied to the companies that either he has founded, or he owns, whether it's Tesla, SpaceX, or now X... By him taking the position that he took in quite a public manner, we just felt that the association with that position, and with Elon Musk, and X, was not necessarily a positive one for us and we decided we would pull our advertising."

Of course, these accusations are baseless - X is a free speech platform, after all, and Musk's hands-off approach is commendable. Even if X had more anti-semitic content than Facebook or TikTok, which is very doubtful, Musk would not be to blame. Indeed, Musk has already qualified the allegedly anti-semitic X post that Iger refers to. As previously reported by Forbes, Musk commented on the controversial November 15 post during an appearance at the New York Times Dealbook conference, saying, "I mean, look, I'm sorry for that … post... It was foolish of me. Of the 30,000 it might be literally the worst and dumbest post I've ever done. And I've tried my best to clarify six ways from Sunday, but you know at least I think it'll be obvious that in fact far from being antisemitic, I'm in fact philosemitic." Musk also told advertisers that were boycotting X to "Go. F***. Yourself." Strong words indeed, but words merited by the baseless boycott. 

In turn, Musk recently tweeted a chart showing the Chinese-owned TikTok - not X - was the most anti-semitic platform around. "So then why is Disney boycotting 𝕏, yet spending millions on other platforms," Musk wrote. He also replied "strange standards" to remarks made by Twitter user ALX, who posted, "Big brands were more than happy to advertise on Twitter 1.0 when they deplatformed a sitting President of the United States and interfered in elections but they now want to pull out because 𝕏 supports Free Speech. Really makes you think.." These remarks are absolutely on target, and it is great to see that Twitter has a CEO with the awareness necessary to challenge the status quo.