TikTok permanently bans advertising account for Musk documentary
Alex Gibney film cited for political content while X refuses its ads, streaming home HBO is run by the son of TikTok's part-owner
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TikTok has permanently suspended the advertising account for "Musk," the Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney's four-hour documentary about Elon Musk, citing the account's political content. The film's distributor, Bleecker Street, was recently notified of the ban, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The suspension follows a string of rejections. Ads for the film's trailer were initially turned down by Meta and YouTube before both platforms allowed them to run; Meta later labelled its rejection "an error." X, owned by the film's subject, has refused to carry the film's advertising at all.
The platforms' ownership runs through the same politics. TikTok's US operations are partly owned by Larry Ellison, who like Musk has been a prominent supporter of Donald Trump. HBO, which is set to stream "Musk" next year, is now part of Paramount/Skydance and is led by David Ellison, Larry Ellison's son.
None of these decisions rests on a rule anyone outside the companies can read. TikTok's notification to Bleecker Street offered no reasoning beyond "political content." Advertising review happens inside the platforms, the criteria stay unpublished, and appeals run back to the same reviewers. A documentary about the world's richest man cannot buy reach on several of the platforms where reach is sold — the subject owns one of them, a political ally of the subject part-owns another, and the ally's son runs the network that will carry the film next year.
"Musk" opened in four theaters last weekend and is now rolling out more broadly. Universal, the film's international distributor, had wavered on releasing the film at all before confirming it will move forward.