Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

[Hefeweizen 5306]

9 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

As long as it stays above $66/share, I'm still in the black.  But yes.

And Greg Abbott says...

Let’s roll!

[fattyflattie 4636]

5 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

I saw a Cybertruck on 183 yesterday. It had an old school black farm truck bumper on the back to make it street legal. Thought that was on brand.

Saw one pulled over on 290 in waller on Sunday.  Didnt check for a bumper, but drivers door had a yellowish stain/tint covering the entire bottom 1/3 of the drivers door.   It got back on the road behind me but I exited a mile or so up.   It entered highway slow, nothing cool. 

[Fastbreak 3935]

5 hours ago, Chopper said:

Who's Next (to piss on Elmo)?

as an Ubisoft employee, I fully support this move...

[Nice Guy Eddie 13388]

8 hours ago, Chopper said:

Or how the Board hasn't demanded he -- at a minimum -- take a leave of absence and get serious mental counseling.

The Board is there to do his bidding not protect or represent the common shareholders. 25% of the board have the last name Musk.

[SubliminalHorn 6622]

Wait what’s this about the bumper and not being street legal?

[NoName 16265]

"both born near water" - what an incredible stretch lol

re: the thermonuclear lawsuit:

https://abovethelaw.com/2023/11/elon-musk-thermonuclear-lawsuit-tepid/
 

Quote

 

Over the weekend, Elon Musk threatened a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters “the split second court opens on Monday” despite electronic filing rendering business hours obsolete. As it happens, a lawsuit did not materialize the split second the court opened, though a complaint did emerge this evening and it is… far from thermonuclear.

Perhaps one reason it took so long to get the 18-page complaint to the docket could be found in the signature block, where Musk’s usual stable of go-to firms — Biglaw mainstays like Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius — don’t appear. Mayhaps the split second timeframe took a backseat to finding lawyers willing to sign their names to this turkey. Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel has more or less functioned as Musk’s outside counsel consigliere, representing the billionaire in everything from defamation actions to advising on Twitter layoffs, but he couldn’t be bothered to lend a “pending admission pro hac vice” to this one.

 

+

 

---

this is a long thread on bluesky about the lawsuit that points out some additional info and is worth a read, really really really interesting that the choice of lawyers here isn't anywhere close to the biglaw folks who he typically uses which says a LOT.

https://bsky.app/profile/akivamcohen.bsky.social/post/3keo2c3iews2s

 

 

 

 

[Chopper 17057]

2 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The Board is there to do his bidding not protect or represent the common shareholders. 25% of the board have the last name Musk.

Yeah I know. It's somehow become a quaint notion that the BOD has actual responsibilities but oversight of executive management is theoretically at the top of their list. Having the CEO become a publicly enraged racist filing laughable lawsuits against media organizations seems like a good reason to mandate he gets some psychological help if he wants to keep his job.

[Chopper 17057]

 

4 minutes ago, NoName said:

this is a long thread on bluesky about the lawsuit that points out some additional info and is worth a read, really really really interesting that the choice of lawyers here isn't anywhere close to the biglaw folks who he typically uses which says a LOT.

I love reading Akiva Cohen. Muskkk's lawsuit is as big a joke as anything trump ever filed. It won't get past a challenge to jurisdiction but if it did the next fail would be failure to state a claim. These are the easiest hurdles in a lawsuit. Well, that and hiring an attorney who's barred in the court you want to file in - another Muskkk fail, as neither of the Paxton clowns are barred in the ND of Tx

Here's the anatomy of the coming failure on jurisdiction.

TOS: CA is the jurisdiction of choice

 

 

Muskkk's lawsuit.

 

pertinent Texas law

 

 

[C-Man 26936]

This get posted yet: https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/20/business/brody-musk-lawsuit-invs/index.html

Quote

Ben Brody says his life was going fine. He had just finished college, stayed out of trouble, and was prepping for law school. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Elon Musk used his considerable social media clout to amplify an online mob’s misguided rants accusing the 22-year-old from California of being an undercover agent in a neo-Nazi group.

The claim, Brody told CNN, was as bizarre as it was baseless.

But the fact he bore a vague resemblance to a person allegedly in the group, that he was Jewish, and, that he once stated in a college fraternity profile posted online that he aspired to one day work for the government, was more than enough information for internet trolls to falsely conclude Brody was an undercover government agent (a “Fed”) planted inside the neo-Nazi group to make them look bad.

For Brody, the fallout was immediate. Overnight, he became a central character in a story spun by people seeking to deny and downplay the actions of hate groups in the United States today.

The lies and taunts, which Musk engaged with on social media, turned his life upside down, Brody said. At one point, he said, he and his mother had to flee their home for fear of being attacked.

Now, he’s fighting back.

Brody filed a defamation lawsuit last month against Musk, the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter. The suit seeks damages in excess of $1 million. Brody says he wants the billionaire to apologize and retract the false claims about him.

Brody’s lawyer—who is the same attorney who successfully sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over his lies about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre —said he hopes the suit will force one of the world’s richest and most powerful men to reckon with his careless and harmful online behavior.

“This case strikes at the heart of something that I think is going really wrong in this country,” attorney Mark Bankston said in an interview with CNN. “How powerful people, very influential people, are being far too reckless about the things they say about private people, people just trying to go about their lives who’ve done nothing to cause this attention.”

Elon Musk's X is testing an annual fee for unverified accounts

Asked for comment on the lawsuit, an attorney for Musk told CNN “we expect this case to be dismissed.” Musk’s lawyers have until Jan 5, 2024, to file their response in court.

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On the night of Saturday, June 24, 2023, Ben Brody was in Riverside, California.

About 1,000 miles away, a gay pride event was being held near Portland, Oregon. In recent years, the city has become a flashpoint for often violent clashes over the country’s ongoing culture wars.

It was no great surprise then that the event became a target for rival far-right groups and neo-Nazis who began fighting among themselves while protesting. Video of the skirmish, where the far-right protesters pushed and pulled at each other, quickly spread across social media.

Online conspiracy theorists soon jumped into the fray.

Rather than accept the fact that two far-right groups who have previously embraced violence were responsible for the clash, online trolls insisted it must be a so-called “false flag” event – a set-up of some kind to make the neo-Nazis look bad.

That’s when they found Ben Brody.

‘You’re being accused of being a neo-Nazi…’

The day after the Pride event, Brody began getting text messages from his friends telling him to check out social media.

“You’re being accused of being a neo-Nazi fed,” he recalled some of his friends telling him.

Somehow, someone on social media had found a photo of Brody online and decided he looked like one of the people involved in the clash.

Anonymous people online, self-appointed internet detectives, began digging and found out Brody was Jewish and had been a political science major at the University of California, Riverside. On his college fraternity’s webpage, he had once stated he wanted to work for the government.

“I put that I wanted to work for the government. And that’s just because I didn’t know specifically what part of the government I wanted to work for. You know, I was like, I could be a lawyer,” Brody recalled in an interview with CNN.

His being Jewish was relevant to them because conspiracy theories are often steeped in antisemitism – suggesting there’s a Jewish plan to control the world.

Brody’s social media inboxes filled up with messages, such as “Fed,” “Nazi,” and “We got you.” He and his mom were forced to leave their family home after their address was posted online, he said.

‘Looks like one is a college student (who wants to join the govt)’

Some of Brody’s friends began posting online, trying to correct the record and explain this was a case of mistaken identity. Brody himself posted a video to Instagram where he desperately tried to prove his innocence. He even went as far as getting time-stamped video surveillance footage showing him in a restaurant in Riverside, California, at the time of the brawl in Oregon, as proof he could not have been at the rally.

But to no avail. The conspiracy theory kept spreading across the internet, including on X. But it wasn’t just anonymous trolls fueling the lie. Musk, the platform’s owner, had joined in, amplifying the lie to his millions of followers.

Video from the Oregon event showed the masks of at least one protester being removed during the fight between the opposing far-right groups. Musk asked on X on June 25, “Who were the unmasked individuals?”

Another X user linked to a tweet alleging Brody was one of the unmasked individuals. The tweet highlighted a line from Brody’s fraternity profile that noted he wanted to work for the government after graduation.

The tweet claimed the unmasked alleged member of the far-right group was Brody, pointing out he was a “political science student at a liberal school on a career path towards the feds.”

“Very odd,” Musk responded.

Another user shared the tweet alleging Brody’s involvement and commented, “Remember when they called us conspiracy theorists for saying the feds were planting fake Nazis at rallies?”

“Always remove their masks,” Musk replied.

On June 27, having engaged with conspiracy theories about the subject over a number of days, Musk alleged that the Oregon skirmish was a false flag. “Looks like one is a college student (who wants to join the govt) and another is maybe an Antifa member, but nonetheless a probable false flag situation,” he tweeted.

“I knew that this was snowballing, but once Elon Musk commented, I was like, ‘boom, that’s the final nail in the coffin,’” Brody recalled.

Musk has more followers than anyone else on X – approximately 150 million at the end of June, around the time he tweeted about the fight in Oregon, according to records from the Internet Archive. That tweet has been viewed more than 1.2 million times, according to X’s own data.

Brody worried his name would forever be associated with neo-Nazism, that he wouldn’t be able to get a job. Though he had finished college, he hadn’t yet graduated, and he said some of the accounts messaging him were threatening to contact his university. “My life is ruined,” he thought.

Attempting to clear his name, he gave an interview to Vice.com, which caught the attention of Mark Bankston.

The man who took down Alex Jones

Bankston is best known as the lawyer who successfully took on the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in court on behalf of parents who lost their children in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.

Bankston said Brody’s case is not only an opportunity to help clear the young man’s name but could also force what he views as a necessary conversation about the vitriolic nature of online discourse.

The lawsuit filed last month in Travis County, Texas (the same county in which Bankston successfully sued Jones), alleges Musk’s claims about Brody are part of a “serial pattern of slander” by the billionaire.

Musk, the suit argues, is “perhaps the most influential of all influencers, and his endorsement of the accusation against Ben galvanized other social media influencers and users to continue their attacks and harassment, as well as post accusations against Ben that will remain online forever.”

Musk's X cashes in on 'superspreaders' of Israel-Hamas misinformation, new report finds

Soon after he took over Twitter in 2022, Musk said the platform must “become by far the most accurate source of information about the world.”

But, on the contrary, the suit alleges, “Musk has been personally using the platform to spread false statements on a consistent basis while propping up and amplifying the most reprehensible elements of conspiracy-addled Twitter.”

The suit outlines how Musk has engaged with accounts that traffic in racism and antisemitism and lists instances in which he publicly shared or engaged with conspiracy theories – including last October when he shared false claims about the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The suit alleges that in August after Musk was made aware through his lawyers about Brody’s case for defamation, Musk refused to delete his tweets.

Bankston and his client said the lawsuit is about a lot more than money.

“I just want to make things right,” Brody told CNN. “It’s not about vengeance. I’m not angry. It’s not resentment. I just want to make things right, to get an apology, so that this doesn’t happen again to anyone else.”

 

[Francisco 2.0 32290]

Elon is having a day:

 

 

[mdmost 42696]

Of course, he's a samurai sword dork. 

[texasdago 7544]

Maybe Elon Musk is really Andrew Tate in a fatsuit.  Both have an accent... 

[F250 28623]

39 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

 

[Schulz2.0 28710]

1 minute ago, F250 said:

 

 

He needs the matching neck beard and ponytail.

[Chopper 17057]

"Those who pick fights with me do so at their own peril because I hide behind high walls like a little bitch."

[Deej 76400]

49 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Elon is having a day:

 

 

 

[Francisco 2.0 32290]

17 minutes ago, Deej said:

 

 

The great thing about this scene; it was ad-libbed by Ford:

 

Quote

While the scene is still in character for Indiana Jones as he exhaustedly pulls out the gun because he’s in a time crunch to find Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), the original plan for the sequence was markedly different. Spielberg originally intended for Indy to engage in a sword fight with the instigator, though behind-the-scenes troubles on set changed the minds of those involved. At the time of filming the scene, Harrison Ford and much of the crew were extremely sick with dysentery, so filming a long fight scene would have been too taxing. Ford suggested Indy just “shoot the sucker” instead, to which director Steven Spielberg obliged.

 

Quote

The original scene was three-and-a-half pages long compared to the less than a minute sequence seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which included a lengthy and highly choreographed sword fight wherein Indy still came out the winner. The scene would have had Jones, almost played by someone other than Ford, show off his mastery and skill with his bullwhip as he took on the swordsman, giving audiences a clearer view of its use in combat added to its other multi-functional uses on his adventure. Spielberg also intended to include a gag in which the Cairo swordsman accidentally uses his sword to perfectly cleave a market man's meat in half, whereafter the vendor thanks the swordsman.

 

[chainsaw 9813]

31 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

The great thing about this scene; it was ad-libbed by Ford:

 

 

 

Dysentery?

[Francisco 2.0 32290]

TIL that Tesla sold car insurance.  Well, as you would expect, it's not much to write about:

 

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-insurance/

 

Quote

In February, Mark Bova purchased a used 2018 Tesla Model S. Before leaving the dealer, he bought insurance from Tesla itself, finding the initial $93 monthly premium “really reasonable.”

Sixteen days later, as he drove along the Capital Beltway to his Maryland home, he engaged Autopilot, Tesla’s automated driving system. The car started beeping and lurched left — striking a median and flipping. He escaped through a window as the car filled with smoke. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital with back injuries that later required surgery.

 

Quote

“I’m a former Green Beret,” Bova said, referring to the U.S. Army Special Forces. “That was probably the second-most traumatic thing I've gone through other than being in combat.”

His ordeal isn’t over. Tesla Insurance, launched in 2019 by the electric-car company, has promised policyholders “vastly better” service than rivals, as Tesla chief Elon Musk put it in April 2022. Musk also said he aimed to offer “same-day” collision repairs. But Bova says he has been battling the insurer ever since the crash.

 

Quote

He said he waited seven months for payment on the totaled vehicle and still hasn’t been compensated for about $50,000 in medical expenses. That required a call to the automaker’s product liability department because the crash involved Autopilot, he was told. He waited on hold for hours and got hung up on four times, he said. When someone finally answered, the person promised another callback in two weeks. Four months later, he’s still waiting.

Tesla and Musk did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters for this report.

 

Spoiler

Bova isn’t the only customer Tesla Insurance has angered, according to scores of complaints in social media and online posts, including on a Better Business Bureau website, and Reuters interviews with half a dozen policyholders. While some customers in online posts have praised the insurer’s low premiums, others, like Bova, complain of waiting weeks or months for payouts and repairs, and an inability to reach claims adjusters.

Tesla officials have said they started the insurer to solve a problem: Prospective customers walking away from car sales after getting sky-high insurance quotes, based on the electric vehicles’ high collision-repair costs. Despite promising to revolutionize automobile insurance, Tesla has at times run the business on a shoestring budget, at one point with only about a dozen adjusters who were quickly overwhelmed by hundreds of claims, according to several sources familiar with the insurer’s operations.

The insurer’s problems fit into a pattern of rushed and sloppy management leading to consumer and worker harms across Musk’s empire of technology and manufacturing firms. The billionaire’s decisions have come under fire in the year since he bought Twitter, now renamed X. Advertising revenue and company value plummeted after Musk slashed the firm’s staff by more than half and introduced a series of unpopular platform changes. After Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on X last week, several major companies halted their advertising on the platform. Musk denied being antisemitic.

At Tesla, employees shared sensitive videos and images of owners recorded by the cars’ cameras, Reuters reported in April, prompting two U.S. Senators to write Musk a letter stating that the article raised “serious questions about Tesla's management practices.” In July, the news agency exposed a systematic effort by Tesla to overstate its vehicles’ driving range— including by rigging the algorithm that controls in-dash estimates — leading to a federal investigation and several class-action lawsuits.

This month, a Reuters investigation documented at least 600 injuries at rocket-maker SpaceX, and pervasive failures to report safety data to regulators, as workers scrambled to meet Musk’s ambitious deadlines for space missions. Late last year, Reuters exposed how experiments at Musk’s brain-chip startup, Neuralink, resulted in the unnecessary suffering and deaths of lab animals as researchers rushed to appease Musk’s demands for speedy regulatory approvals.

Complaints about Tesla Insurance are drawing scrutiny from state regulators and the plaintiffs’ bar. The Ohio Department of Insurance at least twice this year determined that Tesla had violated the state’s insurance regulations in handling claims, including for a lack of timely communications with a policyholder, according to correspondence obtained by Reuters through a public records request. The department was considering opening formal investigations, the records show. The agency declined to comment.

Customer complaints against auto insurance companies aren’t uncommon. And there’s no way to know exactly how many have been made against Tesla Insurance and how its record compares with competitors’. That’s in part because regulators in some states where it does business – including California, Utah, Illinois and Virginia – consider details of complaints confidential.

In interviews, customers described their interactions with the insurer as frustrating on many levels. Phil Fioresi Sr., a stonecutter in South San Francisco, California, told Reuters it took about 15 calls to reach someone at Tesla Insurance after his daughter’s car was struck by one of its policyholders in September. He called the service “totally ridiculous.”

“What do they have, three people answering phone calls?” he asked.

The insurer wouldn’t divulge the current number of claims adjusters. But the dozen or so adjusters who started handling California claims in late 2021 were quickly so swamped that resolving cases took weeks or months, the people familiar with the operations said. At the time, Tesla insured more than 50,000 vehicles in the state, according to California Department of Insurance records.

Working out of a Tesla office in Draper, Utah, the initial adjusters sometimes had to take on hundreds of claims each, far more than at other insurers, according to the sources with knowledge of Tesla Insurance’s operations. Unlike competitors that often have separate call centers to take claim reports, Tesla’s adjusters had to answer the phones themselves while also handling claims.

Tesla has since expanded into 11 more states, hired additional claims adjusters in Texas and Maryland, and has been trying to bring on more, according to LinkedIn profiles and company job listings. But accounts of delayed repairs and compensation, and long waits for service continue to appear online.

The accounts of customers interviewed by Reuters contrast sharply with Tesla’s bold promises to policyholders. On an earnings call in April 2022, Musk said: “Basically, the customer experience is just vastly better because if there’s an accident, there’s no argument. We’ll repair it immediately.”

He blasted the typical auto insurance experience as a “nightmare” of arguments with insurance companies, adjusters and repair centers. “So we’re trying to turn a nightmare into a dream with Tesla Insurance,” he said.

 

High repair, insurance costs

Tesla decided to enter the auto insurance business “kind of unintentionally,” Zachary Kirkhorn, then Tesla’s chief financial officer, explained during an earnings call in October 2021.

“Our customers were coming to us, complaining that the price of traditional insurance was too high, and it was reducing the affordability of a Tesla,” Kirkhorn said. “And part of our journey here at Tesla is, we want as many people as possible to be able to afford our products.”

Kirkhorn didn’t respond to a request for comment.

High insurance costs had for years made it harder to sell Teslas. It’s a common problem among makers of electric cars, which often have higher collision repair costs, especially for replacement of their pricey batteries, than gasoline-powered vehicles.

In 2015 and 2016, the Highway Loss Data Institute, a nonprofit insurance research organization, reported that Teslas had significantly higher collision and property damage claim frequencies and losses than conventional large luxury vehicles. Based in part on that data, insurer AAA-The Auto Club Group said in 2017 that it was raising its rates to cover Teslas by up to 30%. Tesla disputed AAA’s analysis at the time.

That fall, Tesla launched InsureMyTesla, a new insurance offering for U.S. Tesla owners, in partnership with Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. But the cost issue persisted. In an online discussion on Reddit at the time, Tesla owners swapped stories about steep premium quotes from InsureMyTesla. One Reddit user called the rates “horrible.”

InsureMyTesla was eventually pulled from the U.S. market, although it’s still offered in some other countries. A spokesman for Liberty Mutual declined to comment on its relationship with Tesla.

In April 2019, Musk announced that Tesla would launch its own insurance business that would be “much more compelling than anything else out there." Four months later, Tesla Insurance became available in California, Tesla's largest car market, promising greatly reduced rates and saying it would expand to other states.

To enter California, Tesla partnered with Markel Group's State National Insurance Company, which the state had already approved to sell insurance. State National has had the worst consumer complaint record among California’s top 50 auto insurers for the past three years, according to the state insurance department. State National works with other companies besides Tesla, and the statistics don’t show how many of the insurer’s complaints involve Tesla policyholders.

State National declined to comment.

Musk continued expressing sky-high hopes for the business. In July 2020, Musk called Tesla Insurance “revolutionary” on an earnings call. He predicted in another call three months later that insurance eventually could account for 30% or 40% of the value of the Tesla car business, which currently has a market capitalization of more than $700 billion.

Tesla Insurance has expanded rapidly. It’s now offered in states including Illinois, Colorado and Ohio, and Tesla has applied to sell insurance elsewhere, including Florida, Georgia and Washington, regulatory filings show.

Automated rate hikes

In many states where Tesla Insurance is available, its monthly premiums can vary based on daily “Safety Scores" that the automaker says reflect “real-time driving behavior” measured by sensors and software. Tesla is facing at least two class-action lawsuits that allege its vehicles are prone to producing false collision warnings that can lower the scores and inflate premiums. In court filings, Tesla has denied the allegations and sought to dismiss the cases.

Chanda Santiago, a Tesla Insurance policyholder who is not involved in the litigation, told Reuters a similar story about safety-system malfunctions, including false warnings and spontaneous slamming of the brakes. Santiago, a Maryland real estate investor, said her monthly premium recently jumped nearly 50% to about $190.

“I’m not satisfied with how the safety score is calculated,” she said. “You’re grading me on something that’s not working properly.”

Santiago said she brought her 2020 Tesla Model 3 into service several times, but was told technicians couldn’t duplicate the problems or fix them. Once, she said, a technician didn’t wear a seat belt while driving the car – a no-no automatically detected by its safety systems.

“So I got dinged” on the safety score that day, she said.

Reuters was not able to independently verify Santiago’s interactions with Tesla.

Other customers have had trouble handling the most mundane insurance matters. Lester F. Aponte, a Los Angeles attorney who signed up for Tesla Insurance in August, described a maddening ordeal to obtain proof of insurance. He said the Tesla phone app froze when he tried to access the documents. He called multiple times and was placed on hold for as long as 90 minutes.

He complained on Facebook: “The problem is there is no customer service. At all.”

He told Reuters he didn’t hear from the insurer until after he complained to the Better Business Bureau. In the end, he said, Tesla Insurance had to cancel his policy and issue a new one so that he could access the documents on the phone app.

“Fortunately, I haven't had an accident or needed to contact them about repairs,” he said.

Tesla Insurance monitors drivers using their cars’ technology, and in many states raises or lowers their premiums based on a daily “Safety Score” for their driving, as shown in these screenshots. Some customers contend the cars’ automated driving system sometimes slams on the brakes or generates false collision alerts that hurt their safety scores and drive up their rates.  

 

Understaffed and overwhelmed

In the fall of 2021, Tesla began hiring claims adjusters to work in the company’s Draper, Utah, office, luring them with perks including free health insurance and a company stock purchase plan, according to the several people familiar with Tesla’s insurance operations. Their assignment: handle claims for policyholders in California and eventually in other states. Until then, Tesla had relied on another company to process California claims.

Claims soon started arriving — not only from California but also from Texas, where Tesla recently had begun offering insurance. The dozen or so adjusters saw their caseloads jump from four or five claims a day to sometimes two dozen or more. Backlogs grew into the hundreds and could take adjusters two weeks or longer to get back to a customer.

Policyholders were supposed to report claims on a phone app, but there were often glitches, so many had no choice but to call. The call queue seemed endless, the sources said, and adjusters could spend anywhere from a few minutes to nearly an hour taking initial claim reports from customers. That interrupted their work processing the claims, which takes longer and involves such tasks as reviewing repair estimates or arranging rental cars, according to the sources.

The adjusters also couldn’t tell how long people were waiting on hold and were often greeted by furious customers. Some complained about spending more than an hour on the phone, the sources said. Some callers reported being stranded on highways.

Tesla tried to hire more employees, but the process was slow, the people with knowledge of its insurance operations said. About a year after it started hiring in-house adjusters in late 2021, there were still only about a dozen adjusters in Draper because some had quit.

Waiting months for repairs, payouts

Jonathan Garcia was driving in North Carolina last year to visit family over Thanksgiving when a deer darted in front of his 2021 Tesla Model S. Garcia, an Ohio physician, submitted a claim to Tesla Insurance for damages to the hood and bumper, according to documents Reuters obtained from the Ohio Department of Insurance through a public records request.

After Garcia reported the accident on Nov. 23 last year, he repeatedly called, emailed and left voicemail messages with a Tesla Insurance claims adjuster for three months seeking repairs and a rental car, the records show.

“There were times I was calling every day. I was leaving messages every day. I was emailing every day," Garcia said in an interview.

The insurer didn’t respond until after he filed a complaint with the Ohio insurance department, he said. Documents released by the department showed that it found Tesla "did not adequately comply with timely claim communications" as state regulations require. The department informed Garcia in March that its findings were under further review that could result in an investigation, the results of which would remain confidential.

Tesla Insurance acknowledged its adjuster “did not timely communicate and process the claim,” according to a company letter to the department dated March 2. It explained that the “communication gap” resulted “from some staffing adjustments that occurred during the time of this claim.” The insurer compensated Garcia in part by agreeing to extend his car rental for up to 21 days, according to the letter.

Garcia said it took about six months to repair his car. He said he terminated his Tesla Insurance on May 17 and switched to another company at a higher premium.

“I would have paid a very high amount of money to not go with Tesla Insurance again," Garcia said.

Scott Sawyer, a college researcher in Riverside, California, said he and his wife signed up for Tesla Insurance to cover their 2021 Model Y “because we thought it would be more seamless and easy.”

Then an uninsured driver in a pickup truck rear-ended their Tesla on a freeway in February 2022. Sawyer said it took repeated calls over seven months before the vehicle was finally repaired. While awaiting parts delayed by shortages, “we drove it with a big dent for a while,” he said.

Then, this year, on August 25, the car was parked in front of their house when a minivan struck it, crushing the vehicle’s front left side. Sawyer said someone from Tesla Insurance called him a few days later and said the company would inspect the vehicle, which had been towed.

A month went by, and “we didn’t hear a peep from Tesla,” he said. “We have tried emailing, calling, texting and the claims adjuster will not respond,” his wife, Lauren Lee Sawyer, wrote on Facebook, adding: “I am furious. I hate that I am making payments on a totaled car.”

Sawyer said he filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the California Department of Insurance, and contacted a lawyer. He said he eventually heard from a claims adjuster who estimated the damage at $10,000. Convinced the car wasn’t repairable, Sawyer insisted that the car be taken to a body shop.

The shop determined the car was totaled, he said, but it took more than two weeks – and intervention by his lawyer – before Tesla finally agreed. It has offered him $44,852 to settle the claim.

Will he stick with Tesla Insurance?

“Of course not,” Sawyer said. “Lesson learned there.”

 

[Dutchrudder 11087]

1 hour ago, Chopper said:

"Those who pick fights with me do so at their own peril because I hide behind high walls like a little bitch."

Preventing searches for terms like that isn't a bad thing though. I'm guessing he's banking on MM not having saved evidence and screenshots of their claims. 

[Chopper 17057]

43 minutes ago, Dutchrudder said:

Preventing searches for terms like that isn't a bad thing though. I'm guessing he's banking on MM not having saved evidence and screenshots of their claims. 

Not (a bad thing) in and of itself, I agree. But the TOS allow it, they do nothing to users who post it, and from all reports it's more vile of a website than ever. For example I saw this earlier.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Chopper

[atomheartbevo 89304]

4 hours ago, BeardIP said:

I think we found out who first said:

When you were partying

I studied The Blade

When you were having premarital sex

I mastered The Blockchain

While you wasted your days at the gym in pursuit of vanity

I cultivated Inner Strength

And now that the world is on fire and the barbarians are at the gate you have the audacity to come to me for help?

Elon as a child probably built a lot of sand castles.  And he was probably bullied.

Edited November 21, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89304]

5 hours ago, mdmost said:

Of course, he's a samurai sword dork. 

He's really going all in on the "incel living in mom's basement" lifestyle and I like that he framed his sword photo with an American flag and a skull (although it's probably some little restaurant in the area)

It really is awesome - 3 years ago, a lot of people were ambivalent or even pro-Musk because of Tesla or SpaceX or whatever.

But as has been said in this thread, since buying twitter, he keeps on pumping out stuff that causes people to pick a side and either worship him or ridicule him, and it's like he can't stop looking like a huge dork.  Zuckerberg maybe an experiment in human/cyborg relations, but he looks downright grounded and normal compared to Musk.

edit: Musk thinks posting quotes about graveyards full of his enemies or photos of him with a sword make him look cool, and the rest of us are like "thank the gods you are 30+ years out of high school, because with that kind of energy and lack of a filter, you were not far away from donning a trench coat and doing something awful".

Edited November 21, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[Chopper 17057]

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/11/21/congrats-to-elon-musk-i-didnt-think-you-had-it-in-you-to-file-a-lawsuit-this-stupid-but-you-crazy-bastard-you-did-it/

It’s not a good lawsuit. It’s barely even a lawsuit at all.

Let’s start at the top.

Quote

 

Problem 1: It was filed in Texas federal court, even as the complaint admits that exTwitter is a Nevada corporate entity, based in California, and Media Matters is a D.C.-based entity. The lawsuit barely makes any effort at all to justify the venue.

Indeed, what little justification they do present is not at all how any of this works. To get jurisdiction in Texas for non-Texas parties, they have to show that someone in Texas was involved, that the laws were violated by parties while they were in Texas, or were somehow directed at Texas parties. The complaint doesn’t even make an effort to do any of that. It just says “a substantial part of the events giving rise to the claims occurred herein.” But that’s not how any of this works.

Of course, we all know the real reason it was filed in a Texas federal court. While Texas has a pretty good anti-SLAPP law, the 5th Circuit had deemed that you can’t use it in federal court. If the lawsuit had been filed in the 9th Circuit, where exTwitter is, then California’s (or Nevada’s) anti-SLAPP law would apply.

Problem 2: The lawsuit flat out admits that Media Matters’ reporting was accurate. It makes a big deal of claiming that Media Matters “manipulated” things and “manufactured” the controversy but… still admits that Media Matters used the platform, and saw what it saw, and reported on it.

Media Matters executed this plot in multiple steps, as X’s internal investigations have revealed. First, Media Matters accessed accounts that had been active for at least 30 days, bypassing X’s ad filter for new users. Media Matters then exclusively followed a small subset of users consisting entirely of accounts in one of two categories: those known to produce extreme, fringe content, and accounts owned by X’s big-name advertisers. The end result was a feed precision-designed by Media Matters for a single purpose: to produce side-by-side ad/content placements that it could screenshot in an effort to alienate advertisers.

But this activity still was not enough to create the pairings of advertisements and content that Media Matters aimed to produce.

Media Matters therefore resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed, generating between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than viewed by the average X user repeating this inauthentic activity until it finally received pages containing the result it wanted: controversial content next to X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts.

Thus, on page 3 of the complaint, Musk’s newfound lawyers (not from a “BigLaw” firm like he usually uses) tell you that Media Matters did use the platform and did, in fact, see what it reported it saw. It’s just that exTwitter (i.e., Musk) doesn’t like how they they portrayed their usage of the platform.

Notably, the original article never made any claims suggesting that everyone was seeing ads on neo-Nazi content. They just said they saw these ads appearing next to neo-Nazi content, and the complaint admits as much.

So the complaint is “Media Matters set up an account that followed neo-Nazis, which we allow, and found ads next to that content, which we allow, but we’re mad because Media Matters should have followed other people instead.” That’s… not a cause of action.

Problem 3: The lawsuit admits that its real complaint is that it disagrees with how Media Matters framed the story. But, and I know Musk still can’t seem to wrap his brain around this rather important fact: part of free speech and a free press is that you don’t get to dictate how others cover stories about you.

You’d think that a “free speech absolutist” would get that. But Elon Musk appears to have deeply censorial instincts rather than free speech ones:

Media Matters omitted mentioning any of this in a report published on November 16, 2023 that displayed instances Media Matters “found” on X of advertisers’ paid posts featured next to Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist content. Nor did Media Matters otherwise provide any context regarding the forced, inauthentic nature and extraordinary rarity of these pairings

So, yeah, you might also notice that this is Musk admitting that “Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist content” appear on exTwitter and that Media Matters did, in fact, see ads appear next to that content. Great work.

Problem 4: The lawsuit admits that not just Media Matters saw these ads next to neo-Nazi content, even if not that many others saw those ads.

And in Apple’s case, only two out of more than 500 million active users saw its ad appear alongside the fringe content cited in the article—at least one of which was Media Matters

Again, throughout the complaint, it admits exactly what Media Matters reported.

Its only complaint is it doesn’t like how Media Matters reported it. But the 1st Amendment protects such editorial choices. As should any self-respecting “free speech absolutist.”

Problem 5: The lawsuit attacks Media Matters for… using exTwitter’s system the way exTwitter allowed them to. It claims Media Matters “manipulated” the platform, but then describes how it used it in a perfectly reasonable manner, and that exTwitter served up the ads. Media Matters didn’t make exTwitter show these ads. ExTwitter just showed them.

Literally, the complaint admits that exTwitter’s systems worked exactly the way they were designed to, showing ads on content that someone followed, and if someone follows neo-Nazis, then ads are likely to show on that content.

First, Media Matters set out on their attempt to evade X’s content filters for new users by specifically using an account that had been in existence for more than thirty days.

Next, Media Matters set its account to follow only 30 users (far less than the average number of accounts followed by a typical active user, 219), severely limiting the amount and type of content featured on its feed. All of these users were either already known for posting controversial content or were accounts for X’s advertisers. That is, 100% of the accounts Media Matters followed were either fringe accounts or were accounts for national large brands. In all, this functioned as an attempt to flood the Media Matters account with content only from national brands and fringe figures, tricking the algorithm into thinking Media Matters wanted to view both hateful content and content from large advertisers.

Even this did not produce Media Matters’ intended result. An internal review by X revealed that Media Matters’ account started to alter its scrolling and refreshing activities in an attempt to manipulate inorganic combinations of advertisements and content. Media Matters’ excessive scrolling and refreshing generated between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than would be seen by a typical user, essentially seeking to force a situation in which a brand ad post appeared adjacent to fringe content.

So, now… going on exTwitter, following neo-Nazis that Musk refuses to ban, and following advertisers is manipulative? As is “reloading” your feed? Under what theory?

Problem 6: It claims Media Matters “defamed” exTwitter, but then doesn’t include a defamation claim. The lawsuit mentions defamation three times, but not in the claims. So it repeatedly pretends that it’s arguing defamation, even though it’s not:

On November 16, 2023, Media Matters published a false, defamatory, and misleading article with the headline, “X has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity3 next to pro-Nazi content,” claiming that X was responsible for anti-Semitic content being paired with X’s advertisers’ paid posts.

If it was actually defamatory, Musk would have sued for defamation. The problem was that it was not. So calling it defamatory and not alleging defamation in the claims kinda makes it clear that they’re really just suing because Musk is mad about the article.

Honestly, it reads like the poor lawyer who had to do this rush job thought he was filing a defamation claim, and so added in a few claims of defamation, then a more senior lawyer realized before filing that there’s no fucking way any of this is even remotely defamation, but no one bothered to take out the language about defamation.

Now, there is a “business disparagement” claim and that’s kind of like defamation, but… even harder to show? And it still requires proving actual malice, which this complaint doesn’t even attempt to do. It does do a “Media Matters hates conservatives,” but that’s not how actual malice works.

Problem 7: Other than the “business disparagement” claim, the only thing they can sue over are nonsense throw-in causes of action: “interference with contract,” and “interference with prospective economic advantage.”

These are the kinds of claims that terrible lawyers often include with defamation claims to try to make the lawsuit more scary, and they’re usually dismissed with the defamation claims when judges say “um, you’re really just trying to say defamation in another way here.”

None of the causes of action make any sense here. What Media Matters did was find these ads and accurately report what it found. If that causes advertisers to bail, that’s not “interference with a contract.” It’s… just reporting. If accurate reporting causes someone to end a business relationship, you don’t get to sue over it.

Problem 8: The lawsuit names Media Matters employee Eric Hananoki as a defendant and then never makes a single claim against him. It mentions (mostly in footnotes) that Hananoki has written articles critical of Musk, including the article in the complaint. But, um, if you file a lawsuit against a particular party, you have to say in the lawsuit how that party actually violated the tort in question. And the lawsuit doesn’t even bother trying.

Honestly, Hananoki has the easiest “motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim” argument ever. Normally, you have to respond to the claims made about you and how, even if true, you didn’t violate the law in question. Hananoki doesn’t even need to do that. He can just point out that the lawsuit literally makes no claims against him.

Problem 9: The lawsuit insists advertisers bailed because of this article, but conveniently leaves out the fact that Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory a day earlier, and has been promoting bigoted nonsense content for months now. Also, advertisers are free to leave if they want.

Finally, this isn’t exactly a “problem” with the lawsuit, but I’ll just note the conflict in two separate statements:

X Corp. and Elon Musk are a critical Media Matters target because X is the most prominent online platform that permits users to share all viewpoints, whether liberal or conservative, and Mr. Musk is the most prominent voice on the platform and a passionate supporter of free speech.

That’s in paragraph 41 on pages 11 and 12. On Page 14 in the prayer for relief we get this:

A preliminary and permanent injunction ordering Defendants to immediately delete, take down, or otherwise remove the article entitled “As Musk Endorses Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory, X Has Been Placing Ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity Next to Pro-Nazi Content From Its Web” from all websites and social media accounts owned, controlled, or operated, directly or indirectly, by Defendants;

So… within the span of about 2 to 3 pages we are told that Elon Musk and exTwitter are passionate supporters of free speech that allow “all viewpoints” to be shared and that Musk is filing this lawsuit to force Media Matters to take down speech that he admits is absolutely true, but where he doesn’t like how they portrayed things.

Anyway, kudos to Elon. This really takes stupid SLAPP suits to incredible new levels. I didn’t think you’d be able to find a lawyer who would file a lawsuit so stupid, that makes you look this ridiculous, but you did it. Just like people doubted your ability to shoot rockets into space or make popular electric vehicles, I should not have doubted your ability to file absolutely nonsense SLAPP suits that are this laughable.

 

 

[Chopper 17057]

posting this but I'm logging off the internet for the night so won't be reading it 'til tmrw

 

https://www.wired.com/story/neuralink-uc-davis-monkey-photos-videos-secret/

[mchookem 15885]

7 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89304]

2 hours ago, Chopper said:

posting this but I'm logging off the internet for the night so won't be reading it 'til tmrw

I just hope it ends with a bunch of Elmo fanbois implanting his chips in their brains.

[Thetexashammer 1062]

5 hours ago, Chopper said:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/11/21/congrats-to-elon-musk-i-didnt-think-you-had-it-in-you-to-file-a-lawsuit-this-stupid-but-you-crazy-bastard-you-did-it/

It’s not a good lawsuit. It’s barely even a lawsuit at all.

Let’s start at the top.

 

according to Techdirt.com. You forgot to add that.

[atomheartbevo 89304]

Are they testing the thing?

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13530]

15 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Elon is having a day:

 

 

I had almost forgotten you challenged Zuckerberg to a cage match and then weaseled out of it until you just reminded me.

[DigglerontheHoof 20965]

6 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Are they testing the thing?

 

That woman is the most easily impressible person ever. 

[Underdog 28392]

The mashed potatoes video afterwards was more interesting. 

[wildcat09 29146]

8 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

according to Techdirt.com. You forgot to add that.

Do you think Elon’s lawsuit against Media Matters has merit? If so, why?

[cactusflinthead 27588]

8 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

according to Techdirt.com. You forgot to add that.

How many citations do you want?

As if it's going to make a difference.

How about this? Come up with a defense for Elon embracing Nazis.

[Serak The Preparer 3421]

28 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Do you think Elon’s lawsuit against Media Matters has merit? If so, why?

 

13 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

How many citations do you want?

 

8 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

according to Techdirt.com. You forgot to add that.

I think (hope) he was just commenting on the many references in the image, which I did find kind of funny.

[cactusflinthead 27588]

Nah, he wants to dismiss it as invalid because he doesn't like what it says. It doesn't matter where it came from.

[texasdago 7544]

8 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Are they testing the thing?

 

Looks like it's redneck ready

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13530]

Why should Musk pay for something lots of other people have noticed?

[Chopper 17057]

Hey y'all just a heads up this is probably from CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/21/tech/elon-musk-texas-lawsuit-media-matters/index.html
 

Quote

 

CNN  — Some legal experts are panning Elon Musk’s lawsuit targeting the watchdog group Media Matters, saying the complaint filed Monday by X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, runs contrary to the First Amendment and could backfire wildly — if it progresses at all.

The lawsuit filed Monday accuses Media Matters of publishing a report that distorted the likelihood of ads appearing beside extremist content on X, a move the social media company says led major and influential advertisers to suspend their campaigns en masse. The company alleges that the group’s testing methodology was not representative of how real users experience the site and calls for a judge to force Media Matters to take down the analysis.

The case appears to be a “bogus” attempt to chill criticism in a way that “flatly contradicts basic First Amendment principles,” Ted Boutrous, a First Amendment attorney with years of experience dealing with the tech industry, told CNN. Boutrous added that the case could backfire for X in the discovery phase, as Media Matters could demand internal information that, if presented at trial, could prove embarrassing or highly damaging to the social media company.

The lawsuit also contains “fatal flaws” by conceding that ads did, in fact, appear beside extremist content, regardless of how Media Matters achieved that result, according to Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas and a CNN contributor.

“The complaint admits that the thing Media Matters was making a big deal about actually happened,” Vladeck said. “Most companies wouldn’t want their ads running next to neo-Nazi content even once, and wouldn’t care about the exact percentage of users who were encountering such side-by-side placement.”

Contrary to the complaint, Media Matters “never claimed that what it found was typical of other users’ experience,” Vladeck added.

But even as some analysts mock the lawsuit as weak on the merits, they aren’t ruling out that it could move forward, thanks to X’s apparently deliberate decision to file in a Texas court seen as generally favorable to his cause.
A Texas forum

On Monday, X’s case was assigned to District Judge Mark Pittman, a Donald Trump appointee who was previously at the center of some of the nation’s biggest legal battles, including over gun rights and President Joe Biden’s blocked student loan forgiveness plan.

The big question, legal experts say, is whether Musk’s choice of venue — the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas — can help him overcome some of the lawsuit’s substantive shortcomings.

In accusing Media Matters of distorting the truth, X has alleged that the group misrepresented how likely it is for advertisers’ ads to show up against pro-Nazi or White supremacist content. According to Musk, Media Matters established a test account following extremist material and then refreshed the feed until X’s ad system displayed an ad for major brands.

X does not appear to dispute the fact that X has monetized extremist content or that the brands’ ads ran beside it.

“X does admit the ads were shown next to hateful content, but argues it was ‘rare,’” said Joan Donovan, a professor of journalism and emerging media studies at Boston University. “This is the same strategy employed by advertisers that got YouTube to demonetize political content in 2017.”

Akiva Cohen, a litigation attorney at Kamerman, Uncyk, Soniker & Klein in New York, pointed out that while Musk has historically relied on massive, white-shoe law firms in his other cases — such as his lawsuit with Twitter over the original acquisition and against former Twitter employees — in this situation, he is relying on a much smaller firm.

“All those big firms Elon usually uses? They probably went ‘f***, no, are you out of your mind? This is a baaaaad idea,’” Cohen said in a post on the X alternative BlueSky.

“He went with politically connected Texas lawyers, reflecting the extent to which people think that Texas courts are political actors, not legal actors,” Cohen added. “All three of the lawyers in that signature block have backgrounds with the Texas AG’s office or Solicitor General’s office.”

As it happens, immediately following Musk’s lawsuit on Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a fraud investigation into Media Matters. And Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey posted on X that his office was doing the same, news to which Musk responded: “Great!”

Musk’s court pick reveals an attempt to “shore up a weak claim on the merits with a bench more likely to be sympathetic even to weak claims,” said Vladeck. “It’s one of those lawsuits that’s filed more for symbolism than for substance.”
Media Matters’ response

In a statement Monday evening, Media Matters President Angelo Carusone vowed to defend the group against the suit.

“This is a frivolous lawsuit meant to bully X’s critics into silence,” Carusone said. “Media Matters stands behind its reporting and looks forward to winning in court.”

Some legal experts suggested that Media Matters’ first course of action may be to try to move the case out of the Texas federal court. X is headquartered in California, while Media Matters is based in Washington, D.C. The Texas court reflects an “absence of any logical connection to the dispute,” Vladeck said.

If the case isn’t transferred out of Texas, the apparent deliberate choice of court could work in X’s favor by preventing Media Matters from leveraging state laws in California and the District of Columbia that are designed to limit litigation intended to suppress criticism. These so-called “anti-SLAPP” laws do not apply in the federal appeals court that oversees Texas, said Ken White, a First Amendment lawyer based in Los Angeles.

“X filed this in federal court in Texas to avoid application of an anti-SLAPP statute,” White said on BlueSky, adding: “X’s purpose is to harass and abuse and maximize the cost of litigation, and anti-SLAPP statutes interfere with that aim.”

Even if Musk can somehow convince a court to look skeptically at Media Matters’ methodology, it does not prove that Media Matters’ report was directly responsible for the advertiser revolt, said Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the civil rights group Free Press. So far, none of the brands that have suspended advertising on X have directly cited the Media Matters analysis as the reason for their decision.

“Musk and his lawyers seek to isolate Media Matters’ investigation as the sole reason major advertisers have joined the exodus from X. But these major brands are not naive,” Benavidez told CNN. “They have not only seen their ads placed next to repulsive content, but also witnessed Musk’s own abhorrent online behavior, including amplifying antisemitic posts by other bigots and bullies on the platform.”

Brands “have every right to exercise their own free speech rights when deciding how to spend their ad dollars,” she added.

– CNN’s Oliver Darcy and Jon Passantino contributed to this report

 

 

[Chopper 17057]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/20/tech/white-house-threads-social-media/index.html
 

Quote

The White House launched its own official account, as well as accounts for the president, first lady, vice president, and second gentleman.

Additionally, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign told CNN that the president, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, would launch personal accounts on Threads as well.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/20/tech/senate-judiciary-tech-ceos-child-safety-hearing/index.html

CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN CNN C

Quote

On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee said it had subpoenaed three top social media executives — X CEO Linda Yaccarino, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Discord CEO Jason Citron — for a Dec. 6 hearing on children’s online safety and content moderation. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew are also expected to testify at the hearing, albeit voluntarily without a subpoena, the lawmakers added in a release, saying that discussions with those companies are ongoing.

US Marshals were forced to deliver subpoenas personally to Yaccarino and Citron after the companies declined to accept the summons on their behalf, the committee said, describing the companies’ response as a “remarkable departure from typical practice.”

The hearing’s topic reflects policymakers’ steady and mounting criticism against social media companies over everything from hosting extremist speech to allegedly harming the mental health of teen users.

 

 

 

Edited November 22, 2023 by Chopper
fixed

[Nivek 16772]

Ooooooweeee!
I just invested $15k for a potential $2k return. Guadaloopy probably. 

That is a ~13% return, which isn’t bad.

[Captainant 27250]

7 minutes ago, Nivek said:

That is a ~13% return, which isn’t bad.

Not sure I agree with your police work there, Lou. Spending $15k to make back $2k is a loss of $13k, not a profit of 13% lol

[Thetexashammer 1062]

1 hour ago, cactusflinthead said:

Nah, he wants to dismiss it as invalid because he doesn't like what it says. It doesn't matter where it came from.

Not at all. The point is that the media writ large is obviously offended and biased. They have a long history of writing untruths, and I have no capacity to evaluate the merits of the case. 

I see no reason to grant legitimacy to an obviously biased and untruthful media. Whether the case has merit is something I have no opinion on.

[Thetexashammer 1062]

1 hour ago, cactusflinthead said:

How many citations do you want?

As if it's going to make a difference.

How about this? Come up with a defense for Elon embracing Nazis.

What I react to is obvious lies. The post you quoted describes "his own endorsement of white genocide theory and all the Nazi/extremist content on his website". To any reasonable person, that never happened. Even the single post he made wasn't an endorsement of Nazism, it was an attack on the ADL. Elon has been going after the ADL for months if not years. 

I don't think Elon is a Nazi, I think he holds a political position you disagree with so you and your fellow travelers want to call him a Nazi/racist etc. It's not a new formula, it's old and tired. But you do you.

I though Elon should have been fired from Tesla years ago, he is obviously acting against the interest of shareholders. I have no idea how he manages to hang on to his CEO titles.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Thetexashammer

[Captainant 27250]

1 minute ago, Thetexashammer said:

What I react to is obvious lies. The post you quoted describes "his own endorsement of white genocide theory and all the Nazi/extremist content on his website". To any reasonable person, that never happened. Even the single post he made wasn't an endorsement of Nazism, it was an attack on the ADL. Elon has been going after the ADL for months if not years. 

I don't think Elon is a Nazi, I think he holds a political position you disagree with so you and your fellow travelers want to call him a Nazi/racist etc. It's not a new formula, it's old and tired. But you do you.

Bruh you sound like guadaloopy stanning his $15k beta software. 

 

Elmo has been courting nazis and racists and people who subscribe to his hierarchial worldview. Shocking that an apartheid gem mine heir may be sympathetic to those views, right?

[Nivek 16772]

Not sure I agree with your police work there, Lou. Spending $15k to make back $2k is a loss of $13k, not a profit of 13% lol

Return is what is above the investment, by convention. When one invests in the us markets that track the s&p500 they don’t claim to expect a 110% annual return, they say 10%.

But it really just depends on one’s conventions, from the natural sciences background it would be 110%. From a business degree it’s 10% return.

[Handcruser 2805]

Not sure I agree with your police work there, Lou. Spending $15k to make back $2k is a loss of $13k, not a profit of 13% lol

Not sure if serious.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13388]

The EU and gasp, Paris Hilton pulling their ads from X. The funny part of the Paris Hilton change is that Yaccarino highlighted Paris last month. 

When do we fast forward where Elon just pulls the plug on X? There is no chance that he admits his mistakes and leaves the platform to professionals. 

[Firemans4Horn 17775]

30 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

Not at all. The point is that the media writ large is obviously offended and biased. They have a long history of writing untruths, and I have no capacity to evaluate the merits of the case. 

I see no reason to grant legitimacy to an obviously biased and untruthful media. Whether the case has merit is something I have no opinion on.

 

[Left Coast 863]

2 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The EU and gasp, Paris Hilton pulling their ads from X. The funny part of the Paris Hilton change is that Yaccarino highlighted Paris last month. 

When do we fast forward where Elon just pulls the plug on X? There is no chance that he admits his mistakes and leaves the platform to professionals. 

I don’t think he’ll pull the plug on X. He’ll just keep it around as it continues to devolve into his own “Truth Social” playground full of hate and dildo ads.