There’s now one fewer distraction on the gigantic display screens inside Tesla cars. According to reports from the cursed demographic overlap of Tesla owners and Adult Disney Fans, the Disney+ app is no longer available in Teslas, most likely because CEO Elon Musk is lashing out at Disney for pulling advertising from Twitter, which he also owns. A user whose handle is @TheTeslaHoe was one of several Tesla owners who reported they could no longer access the Disney+ app in their car: “So now I, as a mom, get to deal with telling my toddlers we can’t watch Disney+ while in our Tesla and deal with their upset feelings because 2 grown men can’t have a civil discussion and move on,†@TheTeslaHoe wrote.
Neither Tesla nor Disney+ have commented on the removal (Vulture reached out to both). The site Electrek reports that a source with Tesla confirmed to them that the Disney+ app was being pulled from the cars’ interface, but that it was only being pulled for drivers who had never used the app before. The plight of @TheTeslaHoe seems to suggest that the removal is more widespread, though. In any case, it is still possible, if you really want to and already had Disney+ on your Tesla, to surreptitiously access the app, you just need to plug in the URL via a browser first and let it redirect you. This is the future Henry Ford ushered in when he made the Model T.
The move comes a month after several major companies, including Disney, Apple, and Sony, pulled advertising from X because the site is becoming a racist, transphobic cesspool whose owner is promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories. In response to the free market doing its thing, Musk told Disney CEO Bob Iger and anyone else who had stopped advertising with Twitter to “Go fuck yourself†at the New York Times’ Dealbook Summit last month.
“Hey, Bob, if you’re in the audience, that’s how I feel, don’t advertise,†Musk added, specifically shouting out Iger. Apparently, Musk’s harsh, edgy, very epic words weren’t enough, and now Tesla owners can’t watch Disney+ in their cars unless they go through a series of workarounds.
Perhaps this is a good thing. It feels like it should be illegal to have a screen basically the size of a small TV playing The Book of Boba Fett on the dashboard of a motor vehicle, even if Disney+ and other video apps could only be played while the car was parked. Also, maybe it should just be illegal to watch The Book of Boba Fett.