Elon Musk is in the Oval office to attend a press event with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, UU., May 30, 2025.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
Elon Musk urged his followers this week to cancel his Netflix Subscriptions on a controversy around an animated show and its creator.
Musk published Wednesday on his platform X saying: “Cancel Netflix for the health of their children.” The publication was in response to an image that accused Netflix of carrying out a “Woke Transgender Woke” agenda.
The controversy seems to come from a conservative reaction on a animated Netflix show, “Dead Dead: Paranormal Park”, which presents a transgender character. The program was canceled in 2023 after two seasons.
In addition to several Anti-Trans positions, Musk also responded to a publication that criticizes the alleged statements made by the creator of the program, Hamish Steele, that a prominent conservative account said “Burlada” of the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Steele responded to Musk's call on the rival social networks Bluesky saying: “It will probably be a very strange day.” Steele also shared a publication by television writer Jack Bernhardt that called “Dead” a “brilliant program on wonderful and wonderful characters.”
Netflix did not respond to the request for comments from CNBC.
Analysts say that the reaction may not represent such a large threat to Netflix as Musk may be waiting.
Netflix reported 301.63 million subscribers to the fourth quarter of 2024, the last time the metric reported before changing the priority to income on user growth. The company has a market capitalization of approximately $ 490 billion, and its shares have increased more than 60% in the last year.
The shares have dropped 4% so far this week.
“Is that going to move the needle necessarily? … you will see the people to register on the back of that to counteract it,” said CNBC collaborator, Guy Adami, Wednesday about “Fast money.”
“I don't think this is a reason to sell the actions,” he added.
Alicia Reese of Wedbush Securities told CNBC that the comments arrived too late in the third quarter to have a significant impact on subscriber counts.
Even so, he said that he believes that the reaction will not make a great dent and that any impact will be compensated with an increase in advertising income.
“His numbers should go well,” Reese said. “I think the actions have not been beaten too much.”
Tim Seymour of Seymour Asset Management said that although one day of headlines can move the actions, Netflix's actions are too expensive to be significantly affected by the violent reaction online.
“We have had these moments at the time when, whether it is an advertising campaign that went wrong or if it made sense that a company was aligned in a particular political channel … I do not think that is the reason to sell Netflix here,” Seymour said on Wednesday.
Calls to a boycott reflect to those who Anheuser-Busch Inbev In 2023, after he launched an advertising campaign with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. But the Bud Light boycott, the CNBC collaborator, Karen Fignerman, said Wednesday, produced a “much greater” destruction than any other recent example.
“I feel this will be very fleeting,” said Fignerman.
