Elon Musk, recently declared the world’s first half-trillionaire with a net worth of $500 billion in October 2025, has turned his attention to Netflix. The Tesla and SpaceX chief is calling on parents to cancel their Netflix subscriptions, accusing the streaming giant of promoting what he describes as “transgender woke propaganda” in children’s programming.
On 1 October, Musk amplified the campaign with the caption, “Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids,” reposting a user-created meme depicting Netflix as a Trojan horse being pushed into a fortress labelled “Your Kids. Through his repeated posts urging ‘Cancel Netflix,’ Musk, with 227 million followers on X, transformed a simple phrase into the trending hashtag #CancelNetflix, fuelling a wave of users sharing screenshots of their cancelled subscriptions.
The backlash began with a resurfaced clip of Dead End: Paranormal Park, a 2022 Netflix animated series for children aged seven and up that features gay characters. As attention grew, the debate spread to other shows, including Ridley Jones (2021–2022), The Baby-Sitters Club (2020), and CoComelon Lane (2023), which shows a boy dancing in a tutu for his two dads. Musk directly criticised these clips, describing them as “Super messed up for a kids show!” and “Demonic,” while urging everyone to cancel their subscriptions, claiming he had already done so.
For Musk, this fight seems both cultural and personal. In 2022, one of his firstborn twin boys, Xavier Musk, came out as transgender at age 18 and legally changed his name to Vivian Jenna Wilson. Musk has publicly stated that he was “tricked” into consenting to gender-affirming treatment at age 16 and has described the situation as a result of what he calls the “woke mind virus.” This personal experience appears to have shaped his stance on content in children’s media, fuelling his vocal criticism of Netflix.
Over the years, other public figures, including Matt Walsh, rapper Snoop Dogg, Charlie Kirk, and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, have criticised Netflix and other media companies, such as Disney+ and Cartoon Network, accusing them of promoting a skewed agenda in children’s programming.
Netflix has not commented on Musk’s posts but has consistently defended its inclusive programming, stating that representation matters for children from diverse backgrounds.
Meanwhile, this campaign coincided with a nearly 4% drop in Netflix’s stock following Musk’s initial posts.
Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids https://t.co/uPcGiURaCp
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 1, 2025
