TikTok Banned the Musk Documentary's Account. The Billionaires Are Doing Fine
As Alex Gibney's four-hour Elon Musk film widened to 470 screens, TikTok gave its promo account a permanent suspension for political content. One report says it's already back.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
Alex Gibney's documentary Musk, a four-hour look at the world's most online rich man, expanded to more than 470 screens in North America this weekend. On Friday, The Hollywood Reporter reported, TikTok gave the film's promotional account a permanent suspension over political content, without saying which posts did it. The distributor, Bleecker Street, says it's appealing. By Saturday, one outlet reported the page was reachable again, and nobody has explained that either, which is how you know you're dealing with a tech company and not a court.
The account had more than 10,000 followers, which is a lot for a documentary and not many for a dog. Recent posts included an ad suggesting things to do at intermission, like deleting your X account, and one urging people to see the film before it got shut down. I've seen a lot of movie marketing, but never a prophecy that fulfilled itself inside a week.
Now the family tree, which is where it gets good. Oracle, co-founded by Larry Ellison, holds a 15 percent stake in the joint venture that runs TikTok in the U.S. Ellison turns up in the film, in a text exchange offering money for Musk's 2022 Twitter purchase. THR is careful to say there's no evidence he had anything to do with the suspension, and I'll be careful too. I'll only point out that the film heads to HBO next year, and that HBO's parent is owned by Skydance, which is run by David Ellison, Larry's son. It's a small world when you own most of it.
Musk, meanwhile, refused to run the film's ads on X and dismissed the documentary as a collection of people with grudges. Meta and YouTube had turned down its ads too, before reversing themselves in September. So a film about the man who bought a social network in the name of free speech can't advertise on his network, briefly couldn't exist on someone else's, and is headed to a streaming service owned by the son of the fellow in the text messages. It's like a fire department that won't take calls about the fire chief.
They say sunlight is the best disinfectant, which is why the very rich have always been so fond of a good awning.