Cuban says he’ll still use X even if Musk calls him racist

The “Shark Tank” star has clashed with Musk on a number of topics over the past year, from corporate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to the US presidential election.

“99% of the posts here are useless or hateful or both. But every once in a while there is an opportunity to have a real discussion and learn something valuable,” Cuban wrote Monday.

Sparring, Cuban said, is part of the reason he prefers X to Meta’s competing platform, Threads.

“Signal to noise is much better on Threads. But the breadth of content is much better here. So here I am,” Cuban said in his post.

Cuban declined to comment when contacted by Business Insider. Musk’s representatives at X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

Cuban has certainly made no secret of his disdain for how Musk runs X. Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 before rebranding it as X in July 2023.

On Sunday, Cuban said in an X post that he doesn’t think X is the “bastion of free speech” that Musk claims it is.

“He’s as free as Elon wants. He can bully. He can change the algorithm. He can suspend anyone he wants at any time,” Cuban wrote.

“He is the supreme arbiter of all things here. And the biggest power play is making everyone think their speech is free speech, until he decides it’s not, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Last month, Cuban accused Musk of tweaking X’s algorithm to suit his own preferences during an interview on “The Daily Show.”

“When you write an algorithm — I haven’t written many, it’s been a while — but when you write one, you can set the parameters of what you want to see happen,” Cuban told show host Jon Stewart.

“And he certainly did that with the things he likes,” Cuban said of Musk, though he did not provide evidence that Musk manipulated the algorithm.

Cuban’s accusations quickly drew the ire of Musk, who said in an X post a few days later that X’s algorithm was working exactly as it was supposed to.

“Unlike the other platforms, our algorithm is open source! And if you interact and argue with ‘right’ accounts, which Cuban does a lot, the algorithm will assume that’s what you want to do and give you more,” Musk wrote, before writing another post, calling Cuban a giant turd in human form.

Cuban, who has been known to respond to a wide variety of accounts on X, responded only briefly to Musk’s rant: a series of hand-heart emojis.