Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk diagnosed the historic decline in stocks and valuation of streaming giant Netflix in a tweet on Tuesday after the company’s losses on Wall Street.
Specifically, Musk blamed them on the company’s embrace of “woke’ content that he believes has alienated a large swath of the Netflix audience.
The Washington Examiner notes:
Netflix’s video streaming service lost 200,000 subscribers between January and March, according to a quarterly report released Tuesday. The reported losses led to its stock dropping 25% in aftermarket trading, setting the stage for a loss of $42 billion in value Wednesday.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO replied to a Slashdot tweet about Netflix’s loss, saying, “The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable.”
The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable
— Elon Musk
Next, Pranay Pathole, an artificial intelligence engineer, responded to Musk by writing that the “woke mind virus is the biggest threat to the civilization,” to which Musk replied, “Yes.”
Yes
— Elon Musk
Other Twitter users also chimed in to voice their opinions.
price increases, wokeness, high inflation = C ya
— Woody ()
Pricing, content issues, and stiff competition
— Yomi Oyediji
Another user suggested that Netflix stop raising its prices.
Maybe they should stop hiking the price up? Part of the reason people love Netflix is the fact that it’s cheaper than traditional cable. I remember when it was $6.99 a month…
— Stretch 🇨🇦
The streamer lost around 700,000 customers after withdrawing the service from Russia in protest of that country’s invasion of Ukraine.
However, the Examiner said that the company is bracing for an additional loss of around 2 million subscribers, which will likely further hurt its stock price and valuation.