Advertisement

Elon Musk Takes Aim At ‘Woke’ And ‘Unwatchable’ Netflix

Photo of Carmine Sabia Carmine SabiaApril 20, 2022
Getty Images
Advertisement

OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.

MessengerTelegramPrint

Billionaire Elon Musk is not making any friends from the progressive faction on social media ever since he made an offer to purchase Twitter, but now he has taken aim at them again.

Between January and March Netflix lost around 200,000 subscribers it said in its quarterly report yesterday which caused the stock to fall 25 percent, and Musk believes that it is because the service is “unwatchable” because of wokeness.

“The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable,” he said in response to a report from Slashdot.

One of his followers then said, “Woke mind virus is the biggest threat to the civilization<” to which Musk responded “Yes.”

“Not just Netflix. Movies in general, videogames, tv, it’s all infested with current year trend woke garbage for fear offending a green haired freak next to the ban button. Nothing original anymore at all, except for media coming out of places like Japan or Korea, ironically,” another follower said to which Musk responded “True.”

Advertisement

“Can they please just make sci-fi/fantasy at least *mostly* about sci-fi/fantasy?” he said.

CNBC reported:

Netflix on Tuesday reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers during the first quarter — its first decline in paid users in more than a decade — and warned of deepening trouble ahead.

The company’s shares cratered more than 25% in extended hours after the report on more than a full day’s worth of trading volume. Fellow streaming stocks Roku, Spotify and Disney also tumbled in the after-hours market after Netflix’s brutal update.

Netflix is forecasting a global paid subscriber loss of 2 million for the second quarter. The last time Netflix lost subscribers was October 2011.

“Fellow shareholders, Our revenue growth has slowed considerably as our results and forecast below show. Streaming is winning over linear, as we predicted, and Netflix titles are very popular globally. However, our relatively high household penetration – when including the large number of households sharing accounts – combined with competition, is creating revenue growth headwinds. The big COVID boost to streaming obscured the picture until recently. While we work to reaccelerate our revenue growth – through improvements to our service and more effective monetization of multi-household sharing – we’ll be holding our operating margin at around 20%. Key to our success has been our ability to create amazing entertainment from all around the world, present it in highly personalized ways, and win more viewing than our competitors. These are Netflix’s core strengths and competitive advantages. Together with our strong profitability, we believe we have the foundation from which we can both significantly improve, and better monetize, our service longer term,” the company said in a letter to shareholders.

Last week the Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink CEO Elon Musk shredded one of the Saudi owners of Twitter with two simple questions.

Advertisement

It came after Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alawaleed bin Talal said he would vote “no” on the proposal by Musk to purchase the company.

“I don’t believe that the proposed offer by @elonmusk ($54.20) comes close to the intrinsic value of @Twitter given its growth prospects,” the Saudi prince said. “Being one of the largest & long-term shareholders of Twitter, [Kingdom Holding Company] & I reject this offer.”

“Interesting. Just two questions, if I may. How much of Twitter does the Kingdom own, directly & indirectly? What are the Kingdom’s views on journalistic freedom of speech?” Musk said.

Musk gave a simple response when asked about whether he has a “plan B” option for Twitter.

During a TED talk, host Chris Anderson asked Musk if there was a “Plan B” if his current offer to buy Twitter in an all-cash deal were rejected.

“There is,” Musk said.

“Well, I think we would want to err on — if in doubt, let the speech — let it exist. If it’s a gray area, I would say let the tweet exist. But obviously, in a case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversies that you would not want to necessarily promote that tweet, you know. So, I’m not — I’m not saying that I have all the answers here, but I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things and have — just be very cautious with permanent bans. You know, timeouts, I think, are better than sort of permanent bans,” he continued.

“But just in general, like it said, it won’t be perfect, but I think we wanted to really have like the perception and reality that speech is as free and reasonably possible, and a good sign as to whether there is free speech is, is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like? And if that is the case, then we have free speech. And it’s damn annoying when someone you don’t like says something you don’t like. That is a sign of a healthy, functioning free speech situation,” he added.

Advertisement
Test your skills with this Quiz!
Photo of Carmine Sabia Carmine SabiaApril 20, 2022