Starlink Watch

The Musk tracker

Elon Musk and governments worldwide

A sourced record of 212 statements and actions by Elon Musk and his companies since 2022: interventions in the politics, governments, courts and regulation of 43 countries and the European Union, threats and legal action against critics, and the use of market power against competitors. Each entry sets out what he said or did, the background, the response and what happened next.

Compiled by Starlink Watch editors · Updated

212entries
44countries and the EU
147with an official response
35with a fact-check or court finding
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10 entries: Market power and competitors · United StatesClear filters

How Musk and his companies treat competitors, advertisers and customers: lawsuits, boycott claims, throttling rivals and market dominance.

2025 3

Market power

X and xAI sue Apple and OpenAI alleging collusion against Grok in App Store; Apple claims later dropped

X and xAI sued Apple and OpenAI in federal court in Texas, alleging that their ChatGPT partnership locked up markets to protect their monopolies, that Apple deprioritised rival AI apps in App Store rankings and that it slowed reviews of Grok updates. They sou…

Response: OpenAI said the filing was consistent with Mr. Musk's ongoing pattern of harassment. Sam Altman had earlier asked Musk to sign an affidavit that he had never directed changes to X's algorithm to hu…

United States5 sources
Market power

OpenAI countersues Musk, alleging a campaign of harassment including a sham bid to harm a competitor

OpenAI filed counterclaims in Musk's lawsuit, alleging he has tried every tool available to harm OpenAI, citing public attacks on X, legal claims, a pretextual demand for corporate records and a sham bid for OpenAI's assets. Reuters reported it asked th…

Response: OpenAI posted that Elon's nonstop actions against us are just bad-faith tactics to slow down OpenAI. The reports reviewed did not include a response from Musk.

United States3 sources
Market power

Musk-led group offers $97.4bn for OpenAI; board rejects it as an attempt to 'disrupt his competition'

A consortium led by Musk made an unsolicited $97.4 billion offer to buy OpenAI and return it to an open-source, safety-focused force, while Musk's xAI competed with OpenAI and his lawsuit against it was pending.

Response: Sam Altman replied no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want. Board chair Bret Taylor said OpenAI is not for sale and that the board had "unanimously rejected Mr. Musk's…

United States2 sources

2024 2

Market power

Musk adds antitrust claims against OpenAI and Microsoft, seeks to stop investors being asked to avoid xAI

Musk's lawyers expanded his federal suit to allege that OpenAI and Microsoft violated antitrust law, including by asking investors not to fund rivals such as Musk's xAI, which they called a group boycott. A motion filed 29 November sought a preliminary inju…

Response: OpenAI said: Elon's fourth attempt, which again recycles the same baseless complaints, continues to be utterly without merit. Microsoft declined to comment.

United States4 sources
Market power

X sues advertisers and World Federation of Advertisers alleging illegal boycott; court dismisses case in 2026

X sued the World Federation of Advertisers and companies including Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted in Texas federal court, alleging that through the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) they organised an illegal advertising boycott. Musk posted:…

Response: Within days the WFA discontinued GARM, saying the allegations misconstrue its purpose and activities and had significantly drained its resources and finances.

United States7 sources

2023 4

Market power

X found to delay links to New York Times, Reuters and rival platforms by about five seconds

A Washington Post analysis, confirmed in Reuters tests, found X delayed by about five seconds the loading of links to The New York Times and Reuters and to rival platforms including Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram.

Response: X confirmed the delay had been removed but gave no explanation. A New York Times spokesperson said we don't know the rationale behind the application of this time delay and that the paper would be…

United States2 sources
Market power

Twitter threatens to sue Meta over Threads launch, alleging trade-secret theft; Meta denies

Hours after Meta launched Threads, Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro wrote to Mark Zuckerberg accusing Meta of systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets by hiring former Twitter staff, and reserving the right to sue. Musk posted…

Response: Meta spokesman Andy Stone said: No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that's just not a thing.

United States2 sources
Market power

Twitter changes developer terms to bar third-party clients, shutting down Tweetbot and Twitterrific

Twitter added a clause to its developer agreement forbidding use of its API to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications, after third-party apps had already stopped working without notice.

Response: Twitterrific's developer blamed an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter.

United States2 sources

2022 1

Market power

Twitter bans links and handles for Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram and other rivals, then scales policy back

Twitter announced it would no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms, barring links or usernames for Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post, and saying it would remove accounts created to promote them.

Response: After criticism, Musk wrote the policy will be adjusted to suspending accounts only when that account's primary purpose is promotion of competitors.

United States2 sources