Elon Musk and Twitter

[singalion]

 

 

Twitter was locked in a chaotic doom loop. Now it’s on the verge of collapse

 

Since the ‘genius’ bought Twitter last year, he’s made a series of poor decisions – and now the platform is almost unusable

 

Wed 5 Jul 2023


 

 

 

If you use Twitter, the service that not so long ago was the best way to take in breaking news and find audiences for serious conversations, you may have found it substantially less useful in the past year. Over this past weekend you found it almost unusable. On Saturday, everything melted down.

 

Thousands of users reported that they had major issues using the platform, including an inability to access any tweets or to post their own tweets – so, basically, everything for which one might want to use Twitter.

 

 

On Saturday, Musk announced that Twitter was limiting the ways all users could access tweets “to address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”. In other words, Musk was blaming commercial services that might want to scrape tweets and incorporate them into machine-learning models. There is no reason to believe this is actually happening, but Musk’s longtime hostility to artificial intelligence must have led him to deploy such services as likely suspects to blame for Twitter’s fragility.

 

 

Then Musk announced that accounts that didn’t pay for the company’s Twitter Blue service (almost all of them) would be limited to viewing a total of 600 posts a day, while accounts that did pay up would be limited to 6,000.

 

Newly created Twitter accounts would be limited to viewing 300 posts a day. Later on Saturday, after significant public ridicule and anger, Musk twice raised the limits, as if that would appease users. As of Sunday night the limits stood at 10,000 posts a day for Blue subscribers, 1,000 a day for free accounts and 500 for newly created free accounts.

 

 

Such chaotic decisions certainly cast further doubt on Musk’s competence. There is no way he ran any predictive analyses to come up with such policies and numbers. He’s just winging it – poorly.

 

 

Over the past year, since the former genius assumed complete control of Twitter, he has expressed hostility toward its most loyal and active classes of user, including journalists, political and social activists, and the very businesses Twitter depends on for advertising revenue. By driving away advertisers from an already shaky and poorly run firm, Musk has lurched toward a desperate but ultimately futile move: to coerce (not encourage) users to subscribe to Twitter Blue, a special tier of membership that costs $8 (£6) a month, or 38.29 reis in Brazil, the third-largest market for Twitter after the US and Japan.

 

Those 38.29 reis are about half what most people in Brazil pay each month for internet access itself and is beyond a reasonable expense for the vast majority of people there.

 

Full article:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/05/twitter-elon-musk-verge-of-collapse

 

 

[Steve5380]

6 hours ago, singalion said:

 

Twitter was locked in a chaotic doom loop. Now it’s on the verge of collapse

 

Since the ‘genius’ bought Twitter last year, he’s made a series of poor decisions – and now the platform is almost unusable

 

 

This could be the result of Musk's mind having been taken over by a losing ideology.  I have been thinking that he has ambitions to become a successful GOP politician.  And maybe run for president?  Ambitious guy!    But from the example Trump is giving,  this is not a way to end with a successful life!

[Guest Vote Him In]

8 hours ago, Steve5380 said:

 

This could be the result of Musk's mind having been taken over by a losing ideology.  I have been thinking that he has ambitions to become a successful GOP politician.  And maybe run for president?  Ambitious guy!    But from the example Trump is giving,  this is not a way to end with a successful life!

Elon Musk, once become president, will be able to eradicate all fake news in America.  Americans need a huge load of fresh air. 

[singalion]

4 hours ago, Guest Vote Him In said:

Elon Musk, once become president, will be able to eradicate all fake news in America.  Americans need a huge load of fresh air. 

 

By shutting down twitter, right?

[singalion]

Woops that came come faster than expected...

 

 

Twitter chaos after Elon Musk takeover may have violated privacy order, DoJ alleges

US Department of Justice questions compliance with FTC order on data security and privacy practices

 

Wed 13 Sep 2023

 

 

 

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter created a “chaotic environment” at the social media platform that may have violated a government order requiring an overhaul of its data security and privacy practices, according to a court filing.

 

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) alleged in a legal filing on Tuesday that depositions from former employees at Twitter, now rebranded X, raised “serious questions” about whether the company was complying with an order imposed by the consumer and competition watchdog, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

 

“The information obtained revealed a chaotic environment at the company that raised serious questions about whether and how Musk and other leaders were ensuring X Corp’s compliance with the 2022 administrative order,” the filing said.

Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images

 

Twitter’s former director of security engineering, Andrew Sayler, testified that he had “ongoing questions about Elon’s commitment to the overall security and privacy of the organisation” because he thought “the manner in which Elon was requesting us to grant access to third parties that had not undergone our regular vetting process … [had] some degree of disregard for the overall sensitivity and security at that level of access”.

 

In a further example from the filing, another employee said the Tesla CEO “insisted on launching the new Twitter Blue user verification service on an accelerated basis, despite staffing limitations”. Musk, according to the testimony, insisted that the service had to launch “right now” even though Twitter’s staffing was reduced so drastically that remaining employees were “struggling to keep the service up”.

 

Last year the site’s parent company Twitter Inc, now known as X Corp, settled charges that it had misled consumers about the privacy and security of their data.

 

In a settlement struck before Musk bought the company, it agreed to pay a $150m (£120m) fine and agreed to update a 2011 order that had been imposed by the FTC after an investigation into misrepresenting its data privacy and security practices to users. The DoJ said X Corp’s attempt to jettison that updated agreement, in a filing made in July, should be refused.

 

The updated order requires X Corp to implement a privacy and data security programme and update the FTC on compliance with it when asked. The DoJ filing claims X Corp is complaining that the FTC has asked “too many questions” since Musk bought the company.

 

The filing says the FTC had to ask questions because of “sudden, radical changes” at X after Musk’s takeover in October last year.

 

In March this year, it was disclosed that the FTC was investigating Musk’s mass layoffs at the company and trying to obtain his internal communications as part of ongoing oversight of the social media company’s privacy and cybersecurity practices, according to documents described in a congressional report.

 

The DoJ filing also counters X Corp’s argument that Musk should not have to testify about its compliance with the order. The DoJ argues that Musk has “unique, firsthand” knowledge about the company’s data practices.

 

The filing states that half of the platform’s employees were fired or resigned within weeks of the acquisition including “key executives in privacy, data security, and compliance roles”. It goes on to list problems under Musk’s leadership including the botched relaunch of the Twitter Blue subscription service and reports of site outages.

 

“The FTC had every reason to seek information about whether these developments signalled a lapse in X Corp’s compliance,” said the filing, which adds that the company’s attempt to dismiss the FTC order “largely fails to acknowledge” the concerns that triggered the regulator’s questions.

 

X Corp has been approached for comment.

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/13/twitter-elon-musk-takeover-ftc-order-data-security-privacy-doj-case

 

 

 

[singalion]

 

 

EU warns Elon Musk after Twitter found to have highest rate of disinformation

Musk is told his platform, now known as X, must comply with new laws designed to combat fake news and Russian propaganda

 

 

 

26 Sep 2023 

 

The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk to comply with sweeping new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda, after X – formerly known as Twitter – was found to have the highest ratio of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms.

 

The report analysed the ratio of disinformation for a new report laying bare for the first time the scale of fake news on social media across the EU, with millions of fake accounts removed by TikTok and LinkedIn.

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/26/eu-warns-elon-musk-that-twitter-x-must-comply-with-fake-news-laws

...

 

[Steve5380]

The US government should have some ways to rein in Elon Musk. 

 

This individual, born in South Africa, became a US citizen through naturalization.  As part of this process, he had to swear allegiance to his adoptive country. 

 

The episode where Musk's SpaceX refused to provide Ukrainians internet help in its battle with Russia,  against America's position supporting Ukraine,  should be considered a violation against his sworn commitment to America.  Maybe a US Court could take control of SpaceX away from Musk, and force it to abide by the international policies of the country.  

 

Same with the fake news and Russia propaganda on Twitter, now under the stupid name of X.   Perhaps a US Court could threaten to make an X on Twitter and shut it down.

[singalion]

Looks like Elon Musk has no interest in truth and accuracy...

 

From bad to worse...

 

X/Twitter scraps feature letting users report misleading information

Critics say decision by Elon Musk-owned company is ‘extremely concerning’

 

 

Wed 27 Sep 2023

 

X, the company formerly known as Twitter, has removed the ability for people to report a tweet for containing misleading information just weeks before a referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament in Australia.

 

Since 2021, users on X in countries including the US, Australia and South Korea had been able to flag tweets that they believed contained misleading information for review by staff at the company – separate to other processes the company has in place to report abuse or hate speech.

 

The feature had been available in the US, Australia and South Korea since August 2021 and was expanded to Brazil, the Philippines and Spain in early 2022, with the administration of the company at the time noting the importance of such a tool during elections. However, this tool has now been removed from those markets in the past week or two, according to digital platforms critic group Reset Australia.

 

 

...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/27/xtwitter-scraps-function-letting-users-report-misleading-information

 

 

[singalion]

maybe that was the plan from the start to bring it down... paying the billions to buy twitter for Musk it was the same as gambling billions off at a casino...

 

 

Twitter takeover: how a year of Elon Musk rendered the platform useless

Sat 28 Oct 2023

 

 

We’ve watched in horrified fascination as the town square that was once the world’s collective pulse has gone up in flame

 

 

ver the last year, we’ve watched with horrified fascination as Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, rained deathblow after deathblow upon a social network that once served as the global town square for the world’s most influential people, brands and institutions.

 

 

Since buying Twitter for $44bn in October 2022, Musk has fired thousands of staffers, including those working in content moderation, trust and safety, and public policy. He’s opened up verification, once reserved for notable users, to anyone that pays a $8 subscription fee, making it impossible to tell who’s real and who’s not. He’s blown up messaging, restricting the platform’s ability to privately text nearly any user to only those who pay. He’s booted journalists he doesn’t like from the service, labeled NPR as “state-affiliated media”, throttled traffic to news sites, reinstated previously-banned white nationalists, resurrected Donald Trump’s account, unleashed threats and harassment on former staff members, killed the best bots, feuded with the Anti-Defamation League, deprecated headlines, toyed with putting the whole site behind a paywall, installed a CEO who will forever be known for a disastrous first public interview, and destroyed one of the world’s most recognizable brand names – Twitter – by changing it to X.

 

The result, one year later, is a platform in the throes of enshittification. X now resembles a creature from The Walking Dead – rotting, dangerous and a shadow of its former self. Under Musk’s reign, its usage is reportedly shrinking. Advertisers are pulling back; users are signing off or decamping to rivals; and the town square that was once the world’s collective pulse, is now on fire.

 

“The word I am looking for is ‘trashy’,” said a former Twitter reliability engineer who requested to remain anonymous for fear of Musk’s famed litigiousness. “Musk’s Twitter is trashy. My feed is filled with trash. The ads between those tweets are also trash.”

 

The ongoing war between Hamas and Israel is the latest geopolitical crisis to expose X’s putrid guts. Hours after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, X was awash in misinformation. Accounts with thousands of followers passed off footage from military video games as scenes from the conflict. Screenshots of fake White House statements promising billions of dollars in aid to Israel went viral. Far-right influencers juiced X’s algorithms by pumping out endless streams of dangerous falsehoods for profit and engagement.

 

Musk amplified it by recommending people follow two known antisemitic accounts to keep up with the latest Israel-Palestine news. Devoid of moderation teams, X’s official safety account suggested that people rely on crowdsourced Community Notes to figure out truth from lies (it didn’t work). Nearly two weeks after Hamas attacked, X suddenly removed The New York Times’ verification page for a few hours and then restored it with no explanation.

 

“The only reason I am still on Twitter is because I want to see what’s going to happen to it,” the reliability engineer said.

 

A recent analysis by NewsGuard showed that X’s verified users, who had paid for their blue checks, were responsible for 74% of Israel and Hamas war-related falsehoods that went viral on the platform.

 

Before she was one of the thousands of employees Musk laid off from Twitter at the end of last year, Melissa Ingle worked on a team responsible for civic integrity and tackling the spread of political misinformation on the platform. She also wrote algorithms to moderate harmful content. Ingle, who is now a senior data scientist at an IT company, said she couldn’t believe how bad these problems are now.

“The things that we were protecting against then are exactly the things that we’re seeing all over the site right now,” she said. “When it comes to political misinformation, you have to be on top of that stuff at all times, or it just spreads everywhere.”

 

Twitter once played a crucial role in the Arab Spring and in amplifying the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements.

 

In countries like India where freedom of expression has increasingly come under threat from a Hindu nationalist government, the social network formerly known as Twitter served as a much-needed space for dissent, birthing a new class of influencers who questioned the country’s government when mainstream media did not. But now, X runs on the whims of a billionaire and is among the worst places on the internet to keep up with news or make an impact.

 

Instead of showing you posts from people you follow, the platform now defaults to a “For You” mode filled with grifters, recycled memes, idiots, AI hustlers, cat videos, car accidents and far-right influencers. Sensible, informative posts appear to get virtually no engagement – links are explicitly deprioritized, stifling the news while viral garbage floats to the top, thanks to an algorithmic tweak that Musk says optimizes for time spent on the platform above anything else.

 

Like most journalists around the world, I used Twitter perhaps a bit too much. For years, it was one of the best places to find new voices, network and make new sources. And even though it didn’t drive a significant amount of traffic to stories, no other platform got you the digital clout that Twitter did.

 

Of course, it wasn’t without its problems. It struggled with hate speech and harassment issues and moved too slowly to fix them. In emerging markets in particular, these problems were even worse. Like other major social media platforms, Twitter was slow to invest in local language moderation outside of the US. And its senior leadership was shockingly ignorant of cultural dynamics that fuelled hate speech outside the US. But there were still moments when it shone, like when it boxed with with nationalist governments to protect its users’ freedom of speech.

 

In March 2021, a deadly second wave of Covid-19 rolled across my home, India, weeks after the BJP government declared that it had defeated the pandemic. Some estimates say nearly 5 million people died. New Delhi, India’s capital, broke down almost entirely – makeshift pyres burned alongside the river as cremation grounds ran out of space and hospital chains ran out of oxygen supplies. Bodies, bloated beyond recognition, floated serenely down the Ganges.

 

The government tried its best to hide the human cost of that wave. But anyone scrolling through Twitter could see the nightmare unfolding in real time. Our timelines filled with pictures and videos from sources we could trust and pleas for oxygen, medicines and supplies from people, hospitals and even embassies amplified by thousands of retweets as people scrambled to keep each other alive. It was horrible, but it was all true.

 

Now, I can’t trust much of anything that crosses my timeline. The community of journalists I was a part of has evaporated and decamped for smaller alternatives that have yet to live up to their potential. I have spent this year mourning the loss of that special space we had, despite the endless problems like hate speech and harassment that we also complained about constantly.

 

A former employee once called Twitter a “honeypot for assholes”, a reputation that the company tried to fix for years before the world’s richest man snapped it up. Now, after a year of being owned by Elon Musk, only the assholes reign supreme.

 

 

 

[singalion]

Get ready for more price hikes...

 

Business wise Twitter / X is also a loss...

 

 

‘Musk destroyed all that’: Twitter’s business is flailing after a year of Elon

Advertisers are spending less, regulators are circling, staff is at less than 50% of what it used to be and user numbers are down

 

Fri 27 Oct 2023

Elon Musk wrote within hours of buying Twitter that he “didn’t do it because it would be easy”.

 

That statement has proven to be one of the few certainties about his ownership of the influential social media platform, which has tipped the business into a state of constant flux, with advertisers slashing spending, user numbers down, regulators circling and the staff at less than 50% of what it used to be.

 

 

 

From dumping a world-renowned brand to attempting to overhaul the company’s business model, Musk has changed Twitter more in the past year than any other executive in the 16 years prior.

 

Rebranding Twitter

Musk acquired Twitter on 27 October 2022. The biggest single change in a tumultuous 12 months was rebranding Twitter as X, a long-mooted move for an entrepreneur who has harboured ambitions to create an “everything app” that handles messaging, social networking, audio, video, payments and online shopping.

 

Shortly before he completed the $44bn (£36bn) takeover, Musk signalled what was coming when he described the deal as an “accelerant to creating X, the everything app”.

 

Nonetheless, the sudden dumping of the Twitter brand in July this year took the tech world by surprise. Compared with Facebook and Instagram’s multibillion-person combined user base, Twitter was a modest platform with 238 million daily users – but it was influential and well-known.

 

According to X’s new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, speaking at a conference last month, the social network now has between 200 million and 250 million users, although she indicated later during her appearance that the number is 225 million – which would indicate a decline. Visits to X dropped 10% on the prior month to 5.8bn in September, according to data firm Similarweb.

 

Bruce Daisley, the former head of Twitter’s European operations, said the rebranding move had damaged a business that was in “brand heaven”.

 

“There was plenty wrong with the product, but the brand was in the top tier of companies in the world,” he said. “Names as diverse as Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian, The Rock and Greta Thunberg would all use the name and help promote the platform. Musk destroyed all of that.”

 

Changing the social media business model

If the rebranding of Twitter signalled a shift in the company’s business model, there was a need for change anyway due to the pressure on its main revenue stream.

 

Advertising accounted for nearly 90% of Twitter’s $5.1bnin annual revenue in 2021. That total has slumped due to an advertiser exodus triggered by fears over moderation standards on the platform and general concerns about Musk’s leadership. In a post last month, Musk said US advertising revenue had fallen 60%, a situation which he blamed on pressure from the Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against antisemitism and bigotry. With quarterly debt payments of $300m and a fall in the main source of cash to pay it, the company needs to find money elsewhere – if it can.

 

When you include the capricious decision-making, advertisers have said: ‘We don’t want to be part of that’

Bruce Daisley

 

 

It is against this backdrop that Musk has sought to overhaul the platform’s subscription product, formerly known as Twitter Blue but now branded as X premium. The X rebrand has carried promises of turning the business into an “everything app” modelled on Tencent’s WeChat, dominant in China, that carries out a multitude of tasks from messaging to payments and food deliveries.

 

But even before completing the takeover – a tortuous process in itself – Musk had signalled that he aimed to reduce the platform’s reliance on advertising via a subscription drive, which he also hoped would reduce the number of automated accounts vexing the social network.

 

To this end, he oversaw a botched relaunch of the Blue product in November, which resulted in a slew of impersonator accounts operated by pranksters who took up the offer of a verified account checkmark – and all the chaos that could cause if, for instance, you’re not really George W Bush – for $8 a month.

 

Since then, the subscription service has relaunched again with perks, including the verified checkmark and greater prominence on the platform for your posts. According to one estimate from Travis Brown, a software developer who tracked Twitter Blue sign-ups, the number of subscriptions had reached more than 600,000 by April this year, or more than $5m a month in extra revenue which is not enough to cover a multibillion-dollar advertising slump.

 

 

Last week Musk went a step further, following up on hints that he was going to charge to access the site by rolling out a $1 annual charge to new users in New Zealand and the Philippines. The policy was dubbed “Not a Bot” by X, following the logic that spammers won’t want to pay up for every troll account they launch.

 

Musk also indicated that two new subscription tiers will be coming: one with “higher cost” that features no ads; and another “lower cost” option with all the extra features, but no reductions in ads.

 

Bruce Daisley, the former head of Twitter’s European operations, says that trying to diversify away from advertising is “strategically a good call” but it has been badly handled.

 

“With the changes he has made, not least bringing in paid verification, he has served to reduce the quality of the platform. When you include the capricious decision-making, advertisers have said: ‘We don’t want to be part of that.’”

 

Diminishing moderation

One of Musk’s first acts as owner of Twitter was firing approximately 50% of the platform’s 7,500 staff.

 

Evan Hansen, then a director of curation at the platform, was among the thousands of people axed abruptly by an owner who had claimed before the takeover that the platform had a “very far-left” bias.

 

“He believed that our team was biased … that the entire moderation team was actively promoting liberal conversations and being partial with conservative ones,” says Hansen, who had had a long career as a respected tech journalist before joining Twitter in 2016.

 

Hansen says his team would “nourish a variety of viewpoints” via features such as Twitter Moments or ensure that readers “experienced perspectives that they would otherwise not encounter”. That service included demoting toxic trending subjects or putting a representative tweet in hashtag timelines to explain why certain subjects were trending.

 

Referring to the social network now, Hansen says: “Our work is completely gone.”

 

Musk has reinstated previously banned users such as Donald Trump and the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, while also arbitrarily banning tech journalists who crossed his path. In September, Musk posted on his X account that he had disbanded X’s election integrity team ahead of more than 70 elections around the globe in the coming year. Musk and Yaccarino are pushing X’s crowd-sourced fact-checking feature, Community Notes, as a key element of its moderation systems. But doubts have been raised over its ability to cope with a deluge of misinformation related to the Israel-Hamas war.

 

The past 12 months have seen Twitter go from a solid third or fourth option ... for digital advertising to the bottom of the pile

Farhad Divecha

 

The social network’s approach to content moderation, and general concerns about Musk’s leadership, have hurt the business by warding off advertisers. Farhad Divecha, owner and managing director of the London-based digital marketing agency AccuraCast, says X’s standing among advertisers has plummeted. Since that initial wave of firings, X’s workforce was reduced further to about 1,500, Musk said in April.

 

“The past 12 months have seen Twitter go from a solid third or fourth option – after Google, Meta and occasionally LinkedIn – for digital advertising to the bottom of the pile,” he said. “Changes to brand safety, opening up the network to extremists under the guise of free speech, requiring advertisers to pay for verification, and firing a lot of the staff have sent signals that the platform doesn’t care about brand safety or advertisers.”

 

X’s handling of hateful or misleading content has come under further scrutiny in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel. Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner responsible for the bloc’s Digital Services Act, has written to Musk alleging that the platform is “being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU”.

 

Meta (the owner of Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok have also been warned about Israel-Hamas coverage on their platforms, but X’s issues threaten to compound its problems with advertisers.

 

CEOs on parade

Musk fired Twitter’s chief executive, Parag Agrawal, as soon as the billionaire completed the deal and took over running the platform. Tumult ensued.

 

In a nod to the damage done to the cornerstone of X’s business model, in May Musk appointed a renowned advertising industry executive as CEO. Yaccarino, then head of global advertising at media and entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, is highly respected within her field.

 

She has moved to repair the company’s relationship with advertisers by reinstating a “client council” for marketing and ad agency executives but admitted she has found the job hard.

 

Linda Yaccarino at the International CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, Nevada, on 8 January 2020. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

 

 

“It’s hard. It’s hard on me. It’s hard on my family, my children, my parents,” she told the Financial Times.

 

Yaccarino told a conference in September that X would be profitable next year (the platform is historically loss-making), that engagement from users was up “dramatically” and that advertisers were coming back, despite indicating that daily users numbers had dropped to around 225 million. Banks expect to take a $2bn hit, according to The Wall Street Journal.

 

Musk remains heavily involved in running X, with an executive role focused on product design, new technology and tweeting a lot. Yaccarino needs to ensure that advertisers are around to fund Musk’s planned transformation. She also has regulatory pressures to deal with. The US Department of Justice is investigating whether the “chaotic environment” at the platform under Musk violated a government order requiring an overhaul of its data security and privacy practices, while the US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the Tesla CEO’s actions ahead of the deal.

 

“It’s a new day at X,” Yaccarino said in September. Some users, advertisers and former employees, however, are nostalgic for the old days.

 

 

 

 

[singalion]

 

Elon Musk’s $56bn Tesla pay package is too much, judge rules

Judge ruled his pay – six times larger than the combined pay of the 200 highest-paid executives in 2021 – was set inappropriately

 

Tue 30 Jan 2024

 

A Delaware judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of the investors who challenged billionaire Elon Musk’s $56bn Tesla pay package as excessive, a court filing showed. The judge found that Musk’s compensation was inappropriately set by the electric-vehicle maker’s board and struck down the package. If the decision survives any potential appeal, the Tesla board will have to come up with a new compensation package for Musk.

 

Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta filed the lawsuit five years ago, accusing the company’s chief executive of improperly dictating negotiations around the compensation package and claimed that the board acted without independence.

 

“Swept up by the rhetoric of ‘all upside,’ or perhaps starry-eyed by Musk’s superstar appeal, the board never asked the $55.8 billion question: Was the plan even necessary for Tesla to retain Musk and achieve its goals?” Judge Kathaleen St J McCormick wrote in her decision.

 

Full article:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/30/elon-musk-tesla-pay-package-too-much-judge-rules

 

Edited January 31 by singalion

[singalion]

Tesla Faces 'Reputational Downfall' Thanks To Elon Musk, Analyst Says

April 2, 2024

 

 

This reputational downfall hasn’t been reflected in Tesla sales, at least not at the time of writing.

Few technology company CEOs have polarized audiences like Elon Musk. Right from his online crusade against what he calls the “woke mind virus,” to profane attacks against anyone crossing his ideological paths, and publicly analyzing cash flows of rival EV brands in an amateur-ish manner, Musk’s actions seem to have consequences for one of his biggest companies—Tesla.

 

it’s unclear how detached buyers can be from the CEO’s controversies.

Market intelligence firm Caliber said that the share of potential Tesla buyers in the U.S. is shrinking. It attributes the drop to Musk’s shenanigans. The report obtained by Reuters states that Caliber’s “consideration score” for buyers wanting Teslas has shrunk to 31% in February 2024 from a high of 70% in November 2021.

 

Meanwhile, the consideration scores for Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi have increased, reaching 44-47%. Musk has previously said that Tesla was “recession resilient” but that “even the best ship is still going to have tough times.” Caliber CEO Shahar Silbershatz said, “It’s very likely that Musk himself is contributing to the reputational downfall.”

 

Caliber’s survey, the sample size of which was unknown at the time of publication, states that 83% of Americans connect Musk with Tesla.

...

full report here:

https://insideevs.com/news/714565/tesla-reputational-downfall-due-to-elon-musk/

 

 

[Steve5380]

It is within the realm of possibilities that Musk will keep depleting the value of his possessions.  He is sufficiently young at 53 that it is not assured that he will come to the end of his life as a successful person.  And if karma is real, he seems to be doing everything he can to became a failure.   Like another American arrogant asshole who very probably will end up in jail, quite different from his flashy younger life.   

[Guest I like him]

5 hours ago, Steve5380 said:

It is within the realm of possibilities that Musk will keep depleting the value of his possessions.  He is sufficiently young at 53 that it is not assured that he will come to the end of his life as a successful person.  And if karma is real, he seems to be doing everything he can to became a failure.   Like another American arrogant asshole who very probably will end up in jail, quite different from his flashy younger life.   

He is doing just fine. Don't you worry about it.  

[Steve5380]

4 hours ago, Guest I like him said:

He is doing just fine. Don't you worry about it.  

 

I don't worry. I have no shares in what used to be Twitter.  

 

We can compare him to a former "richest man in the world", Bill Gates. Quite a difference!  Gates was never controversial, no big mouth but instead a wise one,  didn't make stupid money losing investments,  but has dedicated himself to charity work in his Gates Foundation.  

[Guest No comparison]

3 hours ago, Steve5380 said:

 

I don't worry. I have no shares in what used to be Twitter.  

 

We can compare him to a former "richest man in the world", Bill Gates. Quite a difference!  Gates was never controversial, no big mouth but instead a wise one,  didn't make stupid money losing investments,  but has dedicated himself to charity work in his Gates Foundation.  

Musk is wiser than Gates will ever be. He has diverse talents and uses them to help mankind. Not everything is about money to him. He does things to benefit fellow humans and doesn’t get enough credits for it. 
 

His Neuralink company helps people to use their thoughts to control computer. This will open opportunities to disabled people to regain some independence and freedom. Musk truly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize or Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. 
 

Whatever “controversies” are merely created by his jealous naysayers because his views do not confirm with those of fringe minorities. 

[Steve5380]

1 hour ago, Guest No comparison said:

Musk is wiser than Gates will ever be. He has diverse talents and uses them to help mankind. Not everything is about money to him. He does things to benefit fellow humans and doesn’t get enough credits for it. 
 

His Neuralink company helps people to use their thoughts to control computer. This will open opportunities to disabled people to regain some independence and freedom. Musk truly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize or Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. 
 

Whatever “controversies” are merely created by his jealous naysayers because his views do not confirm with those of fringe minorities. 

 

Your example of Neuralink is typical of Musk:  the URGE to make breakthroughs ( hopefully without breaking brains ) that promote his image.  Like "Hyperloop pod", the underground tunnel between LA and SF that could transport passengers as fast as an airplane. Gate's contributions have been more down-to-earth,  launching the era of personal computing with Microsoft, whose Windows platform ( a copy of DEC's platform ) revolutionized the capabilities of the home computer.   He smartly advanced a technology that was already realistic.  And now that the revolution is done, he dedicates his smartness to help the needy,  plus investigating other technological advances like new nuclear reactors.

 

Neuralink has not proven yet that its proposed implanted device is useful.  Many neuroscientists are not convinced.  Perhaps a more useful investment, and candidate for some Prize in Medicine, would be an educative enterprise and organization to lobby the medical authorities that promotes the PREVENTIVE MEASURES to maintain mental health and even enhance our brain functions with potential to reverse Alzheimer's and other dementias, with low cost NUTRITIONAL OPTIMIZATIONS.  And, as related "side effects",  prevent and reduce cancer and diabetes.  

 

 

[Guest No comparison]

7 hours ago, Steve5380 said:

 

Your example of Neuralink is typical of Musk:  the URGE to make breakthroughs ( hopefully without breaking brains ) that promote his image.  Like "Hyperloop pod", the underground tunnel between LA and SF that could transport passengers as fast as an airplane. Gate's contributions have been more down-to-earth,  launching the era of personal computing with Microsoft, whose Windows platform ( a copy of DEC's platform ) revolutionized the capabilities of the home computer.   He smartly advanced a technology that was already realistic.  And now that the revolution is done, he dedicates his smartness to help the needy,  plus investigating other technological advances like new nuclear reactors.

 

Neuralink has not proven yet that its proposed implanted device is useful.  Many neuroscientists are not convinced.  Perhaps a more useful investment, and candidate for some Prize in Medicine, would be an educative enterprise and organization to lobby the medical authorities that promotes the PREVENTIVE MEASURES to maintain mental health and even enhance our brain functions with potential to reverse Alzheimer's and other dementias, with low cost NUTRITIONAL OPTIMIZATIONS.  And, as related "side effects",  prevent and reduce cancer and diabetes.  

 

 

Musk’s urge to make many breakthroughs in diverse fields arise from his desire to help mankind and not promote his image.
 

His image merely gets promoted as a consequence of his breakthroughs and positive impact on millions or billions of people around the world. And rightly so because he deserves it for helping so many people. 
 

Breakthroughs take years and even decades to materialise. This is no different for Neuralink. Neuralink has already proven to be useful in controlling computers using a person’s thoughts. This is a major step in the right direction and in future, more advancement will come and its impact on paralysed individuals will be tremendous. 
 

Many Nobel Laureates only gotten their prizes decades after their initial work and discovery. Some were even ignored for their groundbreaking work only to win the Nobel Prize decades later. In Musk’s case, he is truly deserving of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine and Nobel Peace Prize. 

Musk’s breakthroughs span multiple disciplines from info technology to medicine to engineering and space. Not many people can claim to have achieved so much in some many diverse fields and Musk is clearly in a league of his own. We need more people like Musk to help mankind. 

[Guest Am I right?]

18 hours ago, Steve5380 said:

 

I don't worry. I have no shares in what used to be Twitter.  

 

We can compare him to a former "richest man in the world", Bill Gates. Quite a difference!  Gates was never controversial, no big mouth but instead a wise one,  didn't make stupid money losing investments,  but has dedicated himself to charity work in his Gates Foundation.  

That is not the reason you dislike Elon Musk.  Your main reason simply because he hated his own transgender daughter and using the same stroke the entire LGBT is not his cup of tea.

[Steve5380]

4 hours ago, Guest Am I right? said:

That is not the reason you dislike Elon Musk.  Your main reason simply because he hated his own transgender daughter and using the same stroke the entire LGBT is not his cup of tea.

 

You are right, and I am right.

 

Thomas Edison was also a tireless inventor who did much good to humanity, same as Nikola Tesla and others.  But they were not homophobic, and they did not capriciously mix themselves into social issues.