Mark Cuban has fun pushing Elon Musk.
The billionaire entrepreneur clashed with Musk on X, formerly Twitter, over diversity initiatives.
And Cuban says he likes to poke the bear — even if his discussions about DEI with the tech mogul aren’t always fruitful.
“It’s fun to engage, but he doesn’t really engage, you know. He just comes back with sarcastic comments,” Cuban said in an interview on the Lex Fridman podcast.
The two billionaires have often clashed over the topics of diversity, equity and inclusion in the corporate world, which are frequent targets of Musk’s online scorn. Cuban was candid about his views on Musk’s opposition to DEI initiatives.
“When we start talking about DEI and how it’s de facto racist — this stuff that I consider nonsense — I have no problem sharing my opinion,” Cuban said.
The “Shark Tank” star suggested he felt a responsibility to challenge Musk’s views on his own social media platform.
“It’s his platform, and he can run it however he wants; he pays for it,” Cuban said. “I have total respect for every choice he makes, even if I don’t agree with them. But because it’s his agenda, people are less likely to disagree with him.”
Later in the interview, Cuban said that rather than worrying about DEI, we should worry about the “bigger problem.” This, he said, without specifically referring to X, constitutes a lack of accountability when it comes to misinformation and groupthink online.
“The person who controls the algorithm controls the world, right? And if you commit to one platform as your sole source of information, then whoever controls the algorithm and the programming controls you in many ways respect,” he said.
This isn’t the first time Cuban has drawn attention to what he considers to be an “echo chamber” on X.
After sparring with the tech mogul over DEI earlier this year, he told Trevor Noah that Musk’s thousands of followers were “the audience that needed to hear it.”
“If there was a light bulb that went on, it was a victory,” he said at the time.
However, Cuban downplayed the nature of his disagreement with the Tesla CEO: “I wouldn’t say it’s a problem, it’s just fun, to me,” he said on Fridman’s podcast, acknowledging that his responses tend to have “a bit” of snark too.
businessinsider
