Another day, another person of note being singled out by conspiracy theorist and X owner Elon Musk.
The mercurial CEO’s latest target is Disney CEO Bob Iger, whose empire recently pulled out of advertising on Musk’s much-maligned social media network.
Along with plenty of other big names in the advertising space, Disney decided to call it quits after Musk infamously threw his weight behind an appalling and deeply antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Instead of engaging in some clearly much-needed introspection, Musk lashed out at Iger this week, posting that “he should be fired immediately.”
“Walt Disney is turning in his grave over what Bob has done to his company,” he added.
To get a coherent answer as to why Musk made the demand takes some unpacking, so bear with us.
Musk implied that Disney was to blame for not pulling its ads from Meta, following a lawsuit alleging the much larger social media company had failed to keep child sexual abuse material (CSAM) off of its platform.
“Bob Eiger thinks it’s cool to advertise next to child exploitation material,” Musk wrote, misspelling Iger’s name, in response to a tweet that argued sex exploration material on Meta was “sponsored” by Disney. “Real stand up guy.”
To be clear, Meta has an extremely well-documented problem with keeping disgusting CSAM off of its platforms. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal found that there have been instances of Instagram and Facebook actually promoting pedophile accounts, making what sounds like an already dangerous situation even worse.
At the end of the day, nobody’s a real winner here. Iger’s own track record is less-than-stellar, especially when it comes to Disney’s handling of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
Yet in many ways, Musk is the pot calling the kettle black. Why? Because X-formerly-Twitter has its own considerable issue with CSAM. Especially following Musk’s chaotic takeover last year, the New York Times found back in February that Musk is falling far short of making “removing child exploitation” his “priority number one,” as he declared last year.
Since then, child abuse content has run rampant on the platform. Worse yet, in July the platform came under fire for reinstating an account that posted child sex abuse material.
Meanwhile, instead of taking responsibility for all of the hateful things he’s said, Musk has attempted to rally up his base on X, arguing that advertisers were conspiring against him and his “flaming dumpster” of a social media company.
During last month’s New York Times DealBook Summit, the embattled CEO accused advertisers of colluding to “blackmail” him “with advertising” — a harebrained idea that highlights his escalating desperation.
At the time, after literally telling advertisers to go “fuck” themselves, Musk took the opportunity to take a potshot at Iger as well.
“Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience, that’s how I feel,” he added for emphasis. “Don’t advertise.”
More on the beef: Twitter Is in Extremely Deep Trouble
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