Elon Musk stands within the Oval Office to attend a press occasion with U.S. President Donald Trump, on the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 30, 2025.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
Elon Musk this week urged his followers to cancel their Netflix subscriptions over an argument surrounding an animated present and its creator.
Musk on Wednesday posted on his X platform saying, “Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids.” The submit was in response to a picture accusing Netflix of finishing up a “transgender woke agenda.”
The controversy appears to stem from conservative backlash over an animated Netflix present, “Dead End: Paranormal Park,” which encompasses a transgender character. The present was canceled in 2023 after two seasons.
In addition to a number of anti-trans posts, Musk additionally responded to a submit criticizing alleged statements made by the present’s creator, Hamish Steele, {that a} outstanding conservative X account stated “mocked” the homicide of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Steele responded to Musk’s callout on rival social media platform Bluesky saying, “It’s probably going to be a very odd day.” Steele additionally shared a submit by TV author Jack Bernhardt that referred to as “Dead End” a “brilliant show about kind, wonderful characters.”
Netflix didn’t reply to CNBC’s request for remark.
Analysts say the backlash won’t pose as huge of a risk to Netflix as Musk could also be hoping for.
Netflix reported 301.63 million subscribers as of the fourth quarter of 2024, the final time it reported the metric earlier than shifting precedence to income over person progress. The firm has a roughly $490 billion market cap, and its inventory is up greater than 60% up to now yr.
Shares are down 4% thus far this week.
“Is that going to move the needle necessarily? … You’re going to see people sign up on the back of that to counter it,” CNBC contributor Guy Adami stated Wednesday on “Fast Money.”
“I don’t think this is a reason to sell the stock,” he added.
Wedbush Securities’ Alicia Reese instructed CNBC that the feedback got here too late within the third quarter to make any significant affect on subscriber counts.
Still, she stated she believes the backlash will not make a significant dent and that any affect shall be offset by a rise in advert income.
“Their numbers should come out just fine,” Reese stated. “I think that shares haven’t been hit too hard.”
Seymour Asset Management’s Tim Seymour stated although a day of headlines could transfer the inventory round, Netflix shares are in the end too costly to be considerably affected by web backlash.
“We’ve had these moments in time where, whether it was an ad campaign that went wrong or whether it was some sense that a company was aligned in a particular political channel… I don’t think that that’s going to be the reason to sell Netflix here,” Seymour stated Wednesday.
The calls for a boycott mirror these towards Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2023 after it released an advert marketing campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. But the boycott of Bud Light, CNBC contributor Karen Finerman famous on Wednesday, yielded “far greater” destruction than another current examples.
“I feel like this will be very fleeting,” Finerman stated.