Updated at 10:32 a.m. CT: According to The Hollywood Reporter, it appears that YouTube and Meta will allow distributor Bleeker Street to run paid ads on Alex Gibney’s Musk documentary.
The reversal follows a wave of social media backlash accusing YouTube, Meta, and TikTok of suppressing a film critical of Elon Musk to avoid drawing the ire of the SpaceX and X CEO.
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In a comment left under THR’s original report of the story, YouTube’s X account replied that the ads were “temporarily restricted” and are now cleared to run. Meta will also run the ads as well, telling THR that the decision was “an error”. However, TikTok and X have yet to make a decision.
You can read our original report of the story below.
Musk, Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary about Elon Musk, hits theaters in two weeks and received rave reviews out of its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival. Yet distributor Bleecker Street can’t buy ads on major social media platforms in order to promote it.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, YouTube, TikTok, and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, have all refused to run the trailer for Musk. The same goes for X, which is owned by Musk and which reportedly won’t accept advertising for Bleecker Street’s other upcoming releases.
YouTube, TikTok, and Meta told Bleecker Street representatives that they rejected the trailer because of “political content.” TikTok and Meta do not allow paid political and campaign ads, with Meta’s rules stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. YouTube does, with ads requiring “paid for” disclosures. The Musk trailer contains references to the 2024 election, but it is not itself a political campaign.
Bleecker Street has appealed YouTube, TikTok, and Meta’s decision. While YouTube and TikTok are still mulling over the request, Meta has rejected it outright.
This isn’t the first bump in the road for Musk. Universal Pictures, which is distributing the film internationally, reportedly got cold feet on releasing Musk. Evan Langweiler, Universal’s Executive Vice President of Global Communications and Media Relations, has since told The Hollywood Reporter that, “the studio remains committed to releasing [Musk] in theaters internationally.”
The incident recalls Amazon MGM Studios’ dropping of Luca Guadagnino’s OpenAI and Sam Altman film Artificial, another fall release that looks to take a prominent tech figure to task. Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, also out this fall, will follow a similar path with Mark Zuckerberg.
Source: https://mashable.com/entertainment/elon-musk-documentary-no-ads-youtube-tiktok-meta-x
