- Mark Cuban says he enjoys his online sparring matches with Elon Musk.
- Cuban told podcaster Lex Fridman that he likes pushing back on Musk's platform.
Mark Cuban is having fun prodding Elon Musk.
The billionaire entrepreneur has clashed with Musk on X, formerly Twitter, over diversity initiatives.
And Cuban says he enjoys poking 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 snark comments," Cuban said in an interview on the Lex Fridman Podcast.
The two billionaires have frequently sparred over the subject of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the corporate world, which are frequent targets of Musk's online scorn. Cuban has been candid about his take on Musk's opposition on DEI initiatives.
"When we start talking about DEI and that it's de facto racist — this stuff that I just think is nonsense — I have no problem sharing my opinion," Cuban said.
The "Shark Tank" star suggested that he felt a responsibility to challenge Musk's views on his own social media platform.
"It's his platform, and he gets to run it any way he pleases; he pays for that," Cuban said. "I have total respect for any choices he makes even if I don't agree with them. But because it's his platform, people are less likely to disagree with him."
Later in the interview, Cuban said that, rather than worrying about DEI, we should be worried about the "biggest problem." That, he said, not specifically referring to X, is a lack of accountability for online misinformation and groupthink.
"The person who controls the algorithm controls the world, right? And if you are committed to one single platform as your singular source of information, then whoever controls the algorithm and the programming there controls you in a lot of respects," he said.
It's not the first time that Cuban has drawn attention to what he sees as 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 one lightbulb that came on, that's a win," he said at the time.
However, Cuban has downplayed the nature of his disagreement with the Tesla CEO: "I wouldn't call it a beef, it's just fun, for me," he said on Fridman's podcast, acknowledging that his responses tend to have "a little bit" of snark too.