Tesla has removed Disney+ from some of its vehicles amid Elon Musk having an online fight with Disney CEO Bob Iger. The fight started when Disney halted its advertising on X after Musk agreed with and amplified anti-Semitic content for which he eventually apologized.
Every week, there’s a new drama with Elon Musk on X, formerly known as Twitter.
It sometimes indirectly affects Tesla, but this time, it affects it directly.
The current drama stems from Musk giving support to an antisemite post on X, which he didn’t initially apologize for and admitted that it was a mistake a week later. He further apologized but was already attacking Disney.
In the meantime, it resulted in a massive backlash, including many companies stopping advertising on X, including Apple and Disney.
Musk took a particular issue with frequent right-wing target Disney, and in the interview when he apologized for the tweet, he attacked advertisers pulling out almost in the same breath.
He also decided to single out Disney, which he sees as being “infected by the woke mind virus”, by saying “go fuck yourself” to advertisers and then saying “hi Bob” which was targeted at CEO Bob Iger, who Musk believed was in the room.
Musk has in the past propped up Florida governor Ron Desantis who was in a huge fight with Disney. Now, Musk seems to have made another move against Disney, but this time through an unrelated public company he runs, Tesla.
Electrek heard from a source that Tesla informed Disney+ last week that it would remove its native app from the Tesla Theatre in its vehicles without giving a reason as to why.
A few days later, Tesla told Disney that it would only remove the app for Tesla owners who never used the app before.
The automaker now appears to have acted on the threat as many Tesla owners are reporting not seeing the Disney+ app in Tesla Theatre anymore. Others, presumably those who have used the app before, are still seeing the app available in their cars.
Tesla originally added Disney+ in Tesla Threatre back in its Holiday update in 2021.
Electrek’s Take
We were told that Tesla didn’t officially give a reason to Disney, but the message was sort of “read between the lines”.
If that’s really the case and Elon told Tesla to remove Disney+ from its cars because he thinks they are too woke, and he is mad that pull their advertising from X, that’s some childish temper tantrum nonsense.
Personally, I believe it because of the chronology of the situation. It seemed rushed with Tesla first saying they would pull the app and then changing it to only removing it from cars of owners who never used it before – probably realizing that it would negatively affect their owners.
But even then, what if some Tesla owners never used it, but planned to eventually? And why is a public company with lots of stakeholders performing revenge on private company Twitter/X’s perceived “enemies”?
This is so dumb. Not your best moment Elon.