So much for free speech.

The studio releasing Alex Gibney’s new Elon Musk documentary Musk is finding itself unable to buy an ad on the biggest social platforms.

YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram and Facebook owner Meta are all declining to run the trailer for Musk, along with X itself, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

That last one is perhaps understandable, given its owner. But the rejection by the other platforms has taken distributor Bleecker Street by surprise, and it is internally scrambling to understand why the ad has been rejected, according to a person familiar with the company’s processes who is not authorized to talk about them publicly.

The unwillingness of platforms to accept even paid advertising is sure to raise concerns about free speech and the dwindling number of companies that control many of the platforms in this country — and ironically provide a proof-text for the very point the film is coming to make. Gibney’s doc is a four-hour look at a title character who attempts to control the conversation in various ways, including with alleged suppressions on X, which he bought in 2022.

Bleecker Street opens Musk in theaters on Oct. 9.

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[–] Pronell@lemmy.world 74 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Blocking political ad content... during the time in which I am being deluged with ridiculously biased political ads.

That is legitimately hilarious reasoning. The tears are of laughter.

[–] radish6367@lemmy.ca 23 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

In 2024, 10% of Meta’s annual revenue ($16B) was derived from ads for scams or banned goods (Source). Even better, they actually charge a higher price for ads that are automatically flagged as potentially problematic, augmenting the revenue generating capability of, and Meta’s dependence on, these ads. Internal documents also showed that Meta consciously chose a tempered approach to combatting such ads because of the revenue they bring in. But Zuckerberg draws the line at accepting ad revenues from a movie about an awful tech bro. Cool.

[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

There's the answer... Gibney just produces a few fake slop product ads to submit,

"My husband's baseball bat could not hit no more home runs in middle off my legs, before we did this one trick for hard good sex, he looked like this so pathetic [play full musk trailer]"

"I noticed at 40, sex women around me say hey, you're a bad weird and ugly. And I guess I was, because I see old footage and can't believe I looked like this before taking Power Vitamin 7, so much an idiot and smelled very bad also [play full musk trailer]"

"Don't ever do apologies to work people. Do you want to have 600% confidence more by today? If you don't, you will keep look such bitch and have a sad face always like this is [full musk trailer]"

[–] IronBird@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

i'm surprised people still see ads at all, ublock is the goat

[–] Pronell@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

YouTube on my TV. Haven't figured out how to block those.

[–] Jivebunny@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

grayjay.app and chromecast

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Google really shot themselves in the foot by killing off the original Chromecast protocol. Ad-blocking on your TV used to be hard because the actual Chromecast device would play the video and it had hardcoded DNS entries you couldn't overwrite. Nowadays it's just a receiver for streams and it's trivial to block ads simply by using an app that doesn't show them.

[–] TediousTasks@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

I use SmartTube from F-Droid on my TV which works pretty good except for some occasional buffering.

[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 3 points 2 weeks ago

I saw a dumbass NEWSMAX ad while I was at a bar the other night. The only good thing that came out of it was that I connected with someone to make fun of it together. Unity.