Elon Musk has unveiled his latest crusade against the media’s “woke agenda”: urging his audience to cancel their Netflix subscriptions. Musk spent most of Thursday, October 2 blasting Netflix to his 227 million followers on X. In approximately 30 different posts, the X owner and Tesla CEO slammed the streamer’s alleged promotion of a transgender “agenda,” citing supposed “sexualized content for children” in shows like CoComelon, Strawberry Shortcake, and The Baby-Sitters Club. (Vanity Fair has reached out to the creators of all three for comment.) Musk is the father of 14 known children—including model Vivian Jenna Wilson, who has been financially independent from Musk since she came out as transgender in 2020.
“Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids,” Musk wrote October 1, retweeting a meme showing Netflix hiding a “transgender woke agenda” in a Trojan horse entering a castle labeled “your kids.”
In another X post, Musk wrote, “Netflix is deliberately choosing to pay people to create sexualized content for children. Freedom of speech should be respected, but this is PAID speech. Netflix is going out of their way and reaching into their wallet to push this.” He later accused Netflix of “grooming our children” with a clip of Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City featuring the cartoon depiction of drag queens, and reposted a tweet that read, “A Netflix show, CoComelon, features interracial gay dads attempting to raise a baby as transgender who make the toddler dance for them in drag. This is the woke version of Bacha Bazi.”
Musk recirculated numerous other posts, including one from right-wing activist account Libs of TikTok that targeted a clip of Netflix’s Dead End: Paranormal Park. The animated series, which was canceled by Netflix in 2022 after two seasons, featured a transgender lead character and actor.
Controversial businessman Musk commented with the “100” emoji while retweeting conservative podcaster Benny Johnson claiming, “The real reason the Netflix cancellation campaign has gone so viral: Netflix is sexualizing children by packaging explicit, graphic, radical sex topics as ‘children’s entertainment’ / What Netflix is doing goes beyond a culture war fight. It’s immoral. / And It should be illegal….” Musk also linked to a March 2025 Tudum article titled “Celebrate Trans Day of Visibility with These 16 Movies and Shows” as supposed proof of Netflix promoting transgender rights and representation. Netflix hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.
Actor Rob Schneider commended Musk for “standing up against the evil Trans indoctrination programming of our children on Netflix and Disney” in his own X post. Schneider encouraged Musk to buy “1 billion dollars in stock” in Christian conservative production company Angel Studios, apparently in an effort to counteract the output of Netflix content.
Musk publicly disowned his transgender daughter Vivian Wilson after she changed her name in 2022. Wilson wrote on Meta’s Threads that she was “relentlessly harassed” by Musk as a child for exhibiting “femininity and queerness.”
In a July 2024 interview with Jordan Peterson, Musk claimed that he “lost” his “son” after Wilson transitioned. Musk alleged that he had been “tricked” into approving gender-affirming care for her, saying that Wilson is now “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.” In a March 2025 transphobic tirade, Musk wrote on X that “hormone injections cause extreme emotional volatility.
Though Netflix has previously been criticized for supporting artists who have voiced anti-trans beliefs–with the studio most infamously defending Dave Chappelle after his controversial 2021 stand-up special The Closer, which led to a company walkout–Musk has found even more evidence of “wokeness” at the platform. Musk reposted a claim by Libs of TikTok that Netflix employees gave “100 percent” of their political donations in 2024 to the Democratic Party; he also has publicly slammed Netflix for “discriminating against White people” in its hiring process, years prior to the DEI rollbacks under the second Donald Trump administration.
Netflix amended its culture memo in July 2024 to include a statement about representation both onscreen and among its employees. “Our members come from many different backgrounds and cultures, and they want to see a wide variety of stories and people on screen,” reads the section titled “Artistic Expression” in part. “This diversity is wonderful and it can create real tension since we all have such different views about what’s acceptable—and what’s harmful—on TV….We support the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with…As employees, we support these principles, even if some stories run counter to our personal values. And we understand that, depending on our roles, we may need to work on TV shows, films or games we perceive to be harmful. If you’d find it hard to support the breadth of our slate, Netflix is probably not the best place for you.”
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