Major Social Media Platforms Reportedly Rejected Ads for Musk

There’s always skywriting. According to The Hollywood Reporter, most of the major social media platforms have rejected the Musk trailer as a paid ad, citing “political” content. YouTube, TikTok, Meta, and the Musk-owned Twitter X all said no, leaving distributor Bleecker Street “internally is scrambling to understand why their ad has been rejected.”

TikTok and Meta both do not allow paid political ads on their platform — For Meta, because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But as anyone without YouTube Premium will tell you, that platform allows hella campaign ads, as long as there’s disclosure on the video. Bleecker Street has appealed to all the non-Musk companies. 

To be clear, the Musk trailer is on YouTube. Just not as a paid ad. The four-hour doc from Alex Gibney traces Musk’s upward failure to the White House, delivering a scathing portrait of a Wile E. Coyote-style self-proclaimed genius. Musk comes to theaters October 9.