Elon Musk mocked Mark Zuckerberg’s Fourth of July celebrations – which included surfing while clad in a tuxedo and drinking a beer – in the latest instance of the longstanding feud between the two men.
The Meta CEO showed off his Independence Day festivities in a brief video shared to Facebook and Instagram. In an impressive display of balance, Zuckerberg held an American flag in one hand and a drink in the other, while riding a hydrofoil.
I hate to admit it but Mark Zuckerberg has swagger pic.twitter.com/dbPkYLeSUh
— greg (@greg16676935420) July 4, 2024
The video received hundreds of thousands of views and was subsequently posted to other platforms – including Musk’s website X.
“May he continue to have fun on his yachts. I prefer to work,” Musk wrote in response to the video.
May he continue to have fun on his yachts. I prefer to work.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2024
Musk’s jab came just one day after Zuckerberg announced his X alternative, Instagram Threads, has reached 175 million monthly active users.
X’s value has plummeted since Musk took over; meanwhile, Zuckerberg is building Threads’ up. Musk, of course, claims that X is increasingly popular, with 550 million monthly active users, but analysts say it’s lagging behind social media rivals.
By March 2024, daily active users on X were down 23% from the time Musk acquired it in late 2022. And in April, Threads overtook the site in terms of that metric: Threads had 28 million daily active users; X had 22 million.
Since its debut last year, Meta’s Threads has branded itself as a “less angry” alternative to X. Zuckerberg has also positioned Threads as a better kind of social media for society by making it part of an interconnected digital ecosystem called the “fediverse.”
Musk’s Fourth of July comments were far from the first instance of him making barbed remarks at Zuckerberg. Last summer, after Zuckerberg initially launched Threads, Musk challenged his social media rival to a cage fight. Zuckerberg, who has trained in martial arts, initially agreed to the fight.
After Musk repeatedly delayed, however, Zuckerberg called the planned fight off.
“Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity. Elon won’t confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead,” Zuckerberg wrote on Threads.
“If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me.”
-Laura Bratton contributed to this article.