Elon Musk vows ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’ as advertisers flee X over antisemitism::Tesla founder threatens to take action against media watchdog ‘the split second court opens on Monday’

  • M500@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    What is wrong with him? I think he legit needs psychiatric help.

    Maybe the people who get this rich due so at the cost of their mental health. Maybe it’s not healthy for a single person to hold so much wealth.

    Deep down, does he know what he is doing is wrong? Is his Twitter behavior an expression of some negative feelings he can’t cope with?

    • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      He’s always been a shit head like this. He just got rich enough that he thought he could get away with showing his true colors.

      The dude comes from a family of slave owners and was born with a silver spoon up his ass.

      • Subverb@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Or, as former Texas governor Ann Richards said of George H. W. Bush in 1988:

        ‘He can’t help it, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth!’

        • adhdplantdev@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          I don’t mean to rag on you dude but I don’t think he started that many companies. His company was bought out by PayPal in like the late '90s, despite being listed as a cofounder he wasn’t a founder of Tesla, I think spaceX was also founded before Musk. He did help these companies succeed though so I suppose credit for that.

          • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            He founded SpaceX, but he was the money man. He didn’t like the way he was treated in Russia, so he said, fine, I’ll make my own rocket program, with blackjack and hookers… But he didn’t actually do any of the lifting, other than lifting the pen to sign the checks. Other, brilliant, people did the real work.

            • jaspersgroove@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              Spacex owes its success to Gwynne Shotwell if anyone, that woman is a powerhouse.

            • adhdplantdev@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              I mean having money and connections to cut through red tape is helpful even if it’s only from his privileged life.

              • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                Sure, I don’t deny that, but I don’t think he has ever done something great on purpose. It’s like if I give all of my friends 5 bucks and one of them saves a child from getting hit by a car on their way to 7-11 to buy a Slurpee with that fiver, I don’t get to take credit. Elon has enough money that he can throw a lot of shit at the wall. Some of it sticks. If the Boring company had taken off, he’d still be the same small dick white supremacist he is today, he’d just have exchanged one phallic symbol for another.

              • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                9 months ago

                I’d say that, other than the money, those companies succeeded in spite of musk rather than because of him. If your only positive contribution is to sign the checkbook to keep it running, that’s not much to give praise over.

                • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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                  9 months ago

                  I think musk is dumb but he’s engineer dumb, when you hear him talk about rockets with other rocket nerds he does actually know what he’s talking about - he’s not like rocket scientist level understanding but having someone in charge of the money that actually understands and is interested in the principles and practicalities of the task at hand is kinda huge in today’s corporate world.

                  His problem in Tesla comes from his ability to understand more of the technical situation than most the money people he knows as that’s led him into making some exaggerated claims and pushing through some half baked ideas. The business model for the gigafactory was fantastic, the initial development seemed promising but when he had problems with automation and flow rate that caused so many delays he wasn’t really accounting for that - he could design a great science fiction factory but it got to the point he couldn’t pay people to make his ideas work because they’re not problems you can just brush under the rug - the cybertruck one piece press seems to be an attempt at circumventing problems he already faced with more wishful thinking ‘theoretically we can just…’ classic engineer bravardo, it’s not a bad idea but it’s going to result in tradeoffs and I think we can already see that in how shitty the production version looks compared to the original design.

                  Elons biggest mistake of course is another classic engineering student error ‘I’m much better at engineering than other people who don’t study engineering, that must mean I’m better than them at the things they study too…’ I think he genuinely thought that rubbing a social network would be really easy for him, he had this idea that the evil fun police were artificially limiting his engagement and all he needed to do is get rid of the bias against him and everyone would see how great he is at reposting ten year old memes and hail him as a hero of the world…

                  What I’m getting at is you can’t be as dumb as Elon by actually just being dumb, it takes intelligence misdirected to be such an idiot.

        • skyspydude1@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I can tell you right now, personally knowing people who worked with him way back on the first Model S, he has always been an absolutely unhinged shithead of the highest degree. He loved going into an absolute berserk rage dropping tons of F-bombs in conference calls, all because someone gave him an answer he didn’t like.

          otherwise your initial employees and partners are going to walk out the door and leave you with nothing.

          Yeah, there’s a reason the original people at Tesla all left, and he was kicked out of PayPal. Literally the only reason anyone tolerates him in any way is for the financial incentive, and that’s the only way he’s kept people around.

        • emogu@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Not saying you’re wrong. There certainly could have been mental degradation over the years. Or he could have gotten investors lined up by being a really rich kid from a rich family. Money can do a lot of heavy lifting for a piece of shit.

          I think it’s a bit of both. To me the coolest thing he ever did was make Tesla tech open source. I have a hard time seeing that Musk in this dude anymore. I used to think he did it altruistically but lately I’m thinking it was probably an ego thing after all. And now that all his ventures are starting to sink he probably regrets the move.

          • skyspydude1@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            FYI, he didn’t make it “open source”. It was a joke of a sharing agreement that basically said they could use your patents if you used theirs. It was purely so they could steal IP from anyone dumb enough to think that Tesla had some magic “secret sauce”, and took them up on the agreement.

    • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      What is wrong with him? I think he legit needs psychiatric help.

      He is a Narcissist. Yes, that is a medical condition. He is thoroughly unable to recognize other people as equal. They are mere nuisances.

          • remotelove@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            I thought “narcissist” was legitimately confused with “sociopath” in this thread for a second.

            After looking over the definitions again for the distinctions, my immediate thought was “why not both?”

              • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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                9 months ago

                It’s also in the DSM, but there’s probably ranges of both and I don’t think either one precludes or excludes the other. Narcissism also shares a lot of symptoms with bipolar disorder, which the recent interviews with the biographer Walter Isaacson about Musk seems pretty clearly to be a problem. (See ‘demon mode’)

    • randomthin2332@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Eh you spend your whole life getting away with anything because you have the money, you end up starting to believe your own bullshit.

      One of the reasons so many people are rich is because they make money off the smart or the hard working. You never do the work yourself because you legitimately aren’t the best person for the job.

      I think Elon bought in too much during the wave of “I’m a tech genius who put a car in space, make electric cars and spaceships” and I think he actually believes he did that instead of the countless and thankless hours of all the real professionals.

      The problem with this thinking, is now he feels like he ^needs to do something. Just like that micromanaging boss who doesn’t help at all and just spouts random nonsense thinking it will magically make it go faster. But instead he’s just self sabotaging the process.

      This is what happens when you start to believe your own bullshit. If he was smart, he should walk away and let the professionals handle it.

    • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      He’s more and more turning into Trump minus the dementia. In Germany we have the term “Cäsarenwahn”, for when someone loses touch with reality from having too much unchallenged power. Haven’t found any English equivalent so maybe it’s time for another loan word.

    • alvvayson@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Excessive wealth definitely leads to bad mental health outcomes for the wealthy.

      The wealth and power leads to their becoming detached from the rest of humanity. They start seeing others as objects instead of people.

    • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 months ago

      They get this way partly because they’re surrounded by yes men.

      To take an example of someone like Harvey Weinstein. They don’t typically come out of the gate asking people to get naked for a movie role.

      But they might first just be handsy with people and nobody says anything so it becomes normal, then they start caressing people and this becomes the new normal. Before you know it you’re fucking insane.

      To put it simply, people don’t normally notice incremental changes in people and over time these can become pretty outlandish.

      With Elon it’s that nobody ever tells him he’s wrong and before you know it you think you know everything.

    • eronth@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I think he’s just stupid and never actually had to run a company. Make insane demands and people had to figure it out

      • Octavio@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I want him to get the help that he needs. Not because I sympathize with him to any degree (I don’t). But because I want him to stop ruining everything.

        • XTL@sopuli.xyz
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          9 months ago

          Well, maybe hold off until he’s killed the failwhale.

          For greater good.

      • antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        Trying to explain one’s behaviour as a psychological issue isn’t automatically sympathy towards the person.

        Who is “we”?

    • daltotron@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Maybe the people who get this rich due so at the cost of their mental health.

      It is not that power corrupts, but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Even the extremely rich tend to not wield power with such a kind of wild abandon as elon, they tend to offset as much responsibility as possible and ride the wave, because the level of delusional self-importance you need in order to believe yourself smarter than literally everyone under you is even too astounding to the leeches of society.

    • 4lan@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      He is sinking the ship on purpose.

      Bankruptcy frees him from paying back the 44 billion he borrowed to buy Twitter.

      That is his only option.

      Stop underestimating him, just because he is evil does not mean he is dumb.

      • darkpanda@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        How would that work? If X goes bankrupt, he’s still on the hook for buying it? He’s not the one going bankrupt, the business he bought would be. That would be like if I bought a car and crashed it and wrote it off. I still bought the car, I just drove it into a telephone pole. I still owe the money for the wreckage.

  • Additional_Prune@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    It’s not just a lawsuit, it’s thermonuclear lawsuit! His lawyers better handle it carefully, lest they be blown into itty bitty pieces. Elon stopped maturing at about the age of fourteen.

  • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    You can’t sue people for deciding NOT to patronize the service you sell, idiot

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      He’s not suing the advertisers, he’s suing a watchdog who’s pointing out all the antisemitism and whatnot, which causes the advertisers to flee because in his world, none of it is bad.

      • profdc9@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Unless Musk gets a hearing in front of a judge who exposes his own sympathy to fascism, I can’t see this case going anywhere. The truth is an absolute defense to libel.

      • olosta@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Yes advertisers are only publicly insulted not sued : “Many of the largest advertisers are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech.”

        I suppose that’s meant to inspire confidence they will not be sued, only slightly bullied if they come back.

  • eluvatar@programming.dev
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    9 months ago

    This is one of those cases where even if he wins he loses. Who would want to sell ads anymore?

    • Ook the Librarian@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Well, even if he has no intention of winning, the simple act of filing will cost any named watchdog media group money. I doubt too many are swimming in it.

      • knotthatone@lemmy.one
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        9 months ago

        That’s why there are SLAPP-back laws.

        He’s also got a habit of ignoring legal advice and running his mouth in public, so he’s likely going to end up writing another big check for that misadventure if his lawyers can’t talk him out of going through with it

        • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          All he has to do is file in a state without SLAPP protections. There’s no federal SLAPP statute.

        • 4lan@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Planned bankruptcy. How is it that we all think he is a genius but also think he is dumb at the same time? This is all according to plan

          • usernamefactory@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            There must be a better way to bankrupt a company than flushing your personal reputation down the toilet. He’s just dumb. No contradiction.

  • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    This isn’t technology news… It’s business news, and Elon spam.

    Just look at the comment section how many comments are actually related to technology?

    Can we not put the bar on the floor?

    • Marxism-Fennekinism@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Musk is definitely the type to say “the customer is always right” when he’s the customer yet apparently didn’t realize that same thing applies to his customers.

      • don@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Musk: The customer is always right!

        [Ad buyers stop buying ads]

        Musk: WAIT NO NOT LIKE THAT

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Nothing to see here. He definitely isn’t suing them because he wants large advertisers like Dosney on the platform and to be able to say the worst shit imaginable at the same time. Clearly nothing to see, obviously. /s

  • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    I’d imagine it would be rather easy to to prove wether that claim is true or not; show screenshots of said posts with these advertisements next to them.

        • fiah@discuss.tchncs.de
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          9 months ago

          screenshots from a single source don’t prove much though, they can be easily doctored. Not saying that they are, but twitter could use that angle to make the case. That’s why services like archive.org are so important IMO, having an unbiased third party take a snapshot of a site that corroborates with what you’re seeing is gold. It’s a shame though that I don’t think archive.org can actually do this with twitter in this way?

          • LinusOnLemmyWld@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            screenshots from a single source don’t prove much though

            if the source doesn’t lie they very much prove it. the number of sources doesn’t mean anything because a doctored screenshot can easily be spread by many, it’s the quality of source that matters.

          • scarabic@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Twitter is heavily heavily heavily monitored by bots day in and out. This is how we have news articles about the latest Boebert tweet that she deleted minutes after drunk posting it. These shots could be corroborated a million different ways.

      • Takatakatakatakatak@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        To be clear, is he in hot water over what he said about the ADL? Or the fact that Nazi’s are proliferating on his platform and advertisers don’t like it?

        • breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          Short answer: yes.

          Longer answer: he’s in slightly-higher-than-warm water over his interactions with the ADL and Nazis/antisemitism on the site. He’s in hot water over his personal promotion and espousal of antisemitism and ads being displayed next to Nazi content.

    • 4lan@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This is all a part of his plan to bankrupt the Twitter.

      He has to pretend he is trying to make the business profitable, while sinking the ship in the process.

      He owes more in interest than Twitter makes in profit.

      The company is worth less than a half of what it he bought it for. He can’t even sell it and break even, there would be a 20 billion dollar loss

      Yet again he is going to be bailed out on the back of the taxpayer. You and I

      • nicetomeetyouIMVEGAN@lemmings.world
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        9 months ago

        That’s just you, with intelligence, trying to explain what he, without intelligence, is doing. You’re projecting intelligence on him because he won capitalism, and Capitalism wants you to think it’s because of merit. It isn’t, he’s an idiot. Look at the name of his child… Do you think this is a person with foresight?

      • Kainsley@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by neglect, ignorance or incompetence

        • reksas@lemmings.world
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          9 months ago

          And what do you do when someone is actually doing something malicious?

          clarification edit: malicious people can easily pretend to be stupid and claim they have made a mistake when they do bad shit.

      • angrystego@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I agree with you. I think twitter was as good for progressives as it was for nazis and Elon and others couldn’t have that. The fact that we’re not discussing this on Twitter and not even on Reddit, but on this beautiful but obscure platform, showd it all works well for the nazis.

  • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    There is absolutely nothing related to technology with this. Twitter is not a tech company. They produce no tech. They’re a social media company.

    • Jakdracula@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      No, they’re an advertising company.

      You (users) pay musk to display your original created content on his platform, your content is then used to attract companies that pay musk so they can display adverts to people reading your original content.

    • theherk@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I don’t know what their current level of public contribution is, but there was a time where they put out some pretty popular OSS like pants / pex and bootstrap. In any case I think it is pretty common to consider social media platforms themselves to be technology. I get your meaning though, but there are many posts much further over the obviously-not-tech line then this.

    • 4lan@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Seriously, My entire feed is just Musk, Trump and Biden.

      We have a politics sub for this

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      How else are you going to fight against people like Elon except by talking about them constantly and making sure not a day goes by that they’re not on the front page of every social media site and news outlet? Worked so great with Trump too.

      • StarManta@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Is the implication that any business you access via a web browser or app is a tech company? Boy do I have news for you about literally every business

        • Still@programming.dev
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          9 months ago

          yes, pretty much every company is a tech company at this point, very few contract out all of that stuff

          • StarManta@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            So a plumbing business which books appointments via their nothing-customized Squarespace page, that’s a tech company? And you would think it appropriate if a news story about that plumber causing a water main break being posted to a technology news feed?

            Having a website does not make a company a tech company and you are objectively wrong if you think it does.

          • Otter@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            This is one of those cases where something might TECHNICALLY be true, but it doesn’t make sense in the context of what we’re discussing