Thread by @SethAbramson

(THREAD) There’s so much Elongelical copium today in my comments I figure it’s time for a thread on Musk that’s exclusively made up of major-media reports on him. Want the truth about Elon? RT this. (Be aware he’ll sic his Community Notes stormtroopers on any words he dislikes.)

1/ On the 5 Cybertruck delays since it was announced and Musk began tweeting on it obsessively in 2019. It won’t come out until 2024 at the earliest—half a decade after its reveal. Problems have plagued it at every turn, from design to aesthetics to build: tfltruck.com/2023/01/tesla-…

2/ Musk was humiliated at the Cybertruck reveal when its “unbreakable” glass immediately broke. Many wonder why Musk would plan a) such an ugly vehicle, and b) one made of stainless steel—which is hard to work with and was only used in the failed DeLorean.

3/ The reason Elongelicals so frequently write about what a great dad Elon is is because they know he’s a terrible—truly awful—parent. His daughter even went to court to disown him. That embarrassment has turned him into a very public—very ugly—transphobe. thedailybeast.com/elon-musks-dau…

4/ Musk was accused by an employee of offering her a horse—that is not a typo—for a handjob. businessinsider.com/elon-musk-sexu…

5/ Musk’s own father has repeatedly accused him of lying about the apartheid-era emerald mine that Musk well knows fueled his immigration to America for school—indeed, it made it financially possible. Musk’s father says that Musk visited the mine himself. businesstoday.in/technology/new….

6/ Musk, whose record on promoting nonwhite employees is abysmal, has been accused of allowing a “culture of racism” inside Tesla. latimes.com/business/story…

7/ Tesla was even sued by California—one of the few places Tesla cars are bestsellers—for rampant racial discrimination. Musk responded by savagely attacking the state near-daily and seeking to move operations out of California instead of fixing the issue. npr.org/2022/02/11/108…

8/ There’s general consensus in the automotive industry that Musk allowed Tesla’s aesthetic to get stale—and has done nothing to fix the problem despite knowing about it for years now. Tesla has been passed by many companies in terms of aesthetics.

Link: autoblog.com/2023/03/31/tes…

9/ Musk is infamous for mistreating his employees—indeed, many industry observers indicate that the key to his success is simply abusing and discarding workers en masse to get a level of productivity out of them that is unsustainable and inhumane.

Some articles on this follow.

10/ Article #1: pbs.org/newshour/econo…

11/ Article #2: nytimes.com/2022/11/15/tec…

12/ Article #3: latimes.com/business/story…

13/ Aside: Musk’s war on professional media—here on Twitter and everywhere else, to the point he is trying to abolish media as a fulltime profession—has *nothing* to do with the accuracy of reporting and everything to do with a) his anti-1st Am. bent and b) revenge for bad press.

14/ Article #4: theguardian.com/technology/201…

15/ Article #5: Even Fox News understands that Musk gets results only by abusing employees. foxnews.com/media/elon-mus…

16/ Article #6: Musk’s treatment of employees is almost tragicomically horrifying—as evidenced by his now-infamous email about "extremely hardcore" work conditions being mandatory at Twitter. Those unwilling to accept their own abuse beforehand were fired. cnn.com/2022/11/16/tec…

17/ Article #7: It goes without saying that Musk is a union-buster who hates workers’ rights. nytimes.com/2023/03/31/bus…

18/ Article #8: He has been accused of retaliatory firings against workers who simply want humane working conditions in Musk plants. cnbc.com/2023/02/16/tes…

19/ Sorry, did you think Musk founded Tesla? Nope. Did you think he originated its proprietary tech? Nope. Here is the truth: cnbc.com/2021/02/06/tes…

20/ The Boring Company has achieved nothing, industry observers now admit.

Sorry, strike that: it sold an extremely dangerous commercial flamethrower that it mischaracterized as a different sort of product to get around safety regulations.

Link: forbes.com/sites/johnbbra…

21/ But surely after all his years of promises, the Hyperloop the Boring Company promised will happen? Nope. nytimes.com/2022/09/22/bus…

22/ But Teslas are safe, right? Well, there are two answers to that: the one Musk would prefer (one supposes) is that no one knows. The one he dislikes is that—despite him saying Teslas are the safest cars across the board—only one Tesla makes the Top 50. nytimes.com/2022/06/08/tec…

23/ Tesla investors are happy with him, though, right? I mean, so much of his Twitter content is about how happy everyone is about how Tesla is going. The next few articles will consider that.

Article #1: businessinsider.com/tesla-investor…

24/ Article #2: gizmodo.com/tesla-investor…

25/ Article #3: cnn.com/2023/04/21/bus…

26/ Article #4: cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk…

27/ Article #5: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

28/ Article #6: forbes.com/sites/petercoh…

29/ Article #7: thestreet.com/technology/elo…

30/ No wonder the shareholders are angry: nytimes.com/2022/12/30/bus…

31/ SpaceX has been plagued with too many problems to count. It starts with the toilets.

Link: tmz.com/2021/11/06/spa…

32/ But that is just the tip of the iceberg. theverge.com/2022/6/24/2318…

33/ SpaceX was supposed to be on Mars by now.

The reality is this (the launch described here ultimately saw a quick explosion, damage to the launchpad and apparent significant environmental harm, all because Musk skipped basic launchpad-protection steps): space.com/spacex-starshi…

34/ Musk predictions *so frequently turn out to be absolute nonsense* that there is actually now a *whole website* to track the massive gulf between what the man says and what he can actually *do*—even *with* his apparent abuse of his employees.

Link: futurism.com/timeline-elon-…

35/ Here is Elon Musk falsely promising to put a man on Mars...by 2021.

His new estimate? 2029 at the *very earliest*.

But what’s eight years among friends, when investors’ money is at stake and Elon knows everything he says is a market-moving statement?

36/ Well at least *Neuralink* isn’t an absolute disaster. futurism.com/the-byte/elon-…

37/ Wait... it *is* a disaster?

Link: medium.com/predict/neural…

38/ But surely the NYT disagrees, right?

39/ No—it said he has an “appetite for destruction.” And:

“Reuters reported Neuralink had caused the needless deaths of dozens of laboratory animals through rushed experiments. Internal messages from Musk made it clear that the urgency came from the top.” nytimes.com/2023/01/17/mag…

40/ So what do the top medical ethicists alive say? Do they call Neuralink as unethical as basically every other expert and observer does?

Yes.

In fact, they want him investigated. fortune.com/2022/12/13/elo…

41/ Investigating Musk? Not a new thing. He is under constant federal investigation for his conduct. A few examples follow.

Article #1: reuters.com/markets/deals/…

42/ Article #2: The Brookings Institution on “the national security grounds for investigating Musk’s Twitter acquisition.”

brookings.edu/research/the-n…

43/ Article #3: nytimes.com/2022/07/14/tec…

44/ Article #4: Elon was ultimately held not liable in the case below—but not before some absolutely brutal pretrial findings by the court about his conduct.

Link: sec.gov/news/press-rel…

45/ Article #5: techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/elo…

46/ Article #6: Jesus! economist.com/business/2018/…

47/ How big a liar do you have to be for even *Steve Bannon* to call you a “stone-cold liar”? newsweek.com/steve-bannon-b…

48/ Putting aside Musk being squirrelly about what his undergrad degree is in—not Engineering—and his doctoral study at Stanford, what about him a) lambasting OpenAI even as he seed-funded it, but also b) apparently not being honest about how much he gave? latestly.com/technology/elo…

49/ And where do we draw the line between lying and spreading homophobic, QAnonist conspiracy theories about a brutal, botched assassination of the Speaker of the House at her California home? What sort of media-illiterate fake-news junkie would do this? cnn.com/2022/10/30/bus…

50/ This is just the first half of this thread. Stay tuned for more.

51/ So is Musk a fraud? fortune.com/2023/02/28/elo…

52/ theintercept.com/2020/05/14/is-…

53/ And the far-right New York Post published this: nypost.com/2018/07/21/elo…

54/ I mean, this was objectively a super-f*cked up thing to say just to get revenge on someone—and a hero, no less. nypost.com/2018/07/15/fur…

55/ Is he racist? nytimes.com/2023/04/03/bus…

56/ nytimes.com/2018/11/30/bus…

57/ The Guardian calls his views on race “dangerous.” theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

58/ Twitter advertisers certainly think so. fortune.com/2023/04/07/mus…

59/ Would a non-racist use “racist rhetoric”? sfgate.com/tech/article/e…

60/ But that was a San Francisco outlet, you say! Okay, here is the New York Post: nypost.com/2023/04/07/ad-…

61/ More on the same topic: semafor.com/article/04/06/…

62/ Yikes. motherjones.com/politics/2023/…

63/ When you lose McDonald’s... businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twit…

64/ Imagine allowing hate speech to thrive on Twitter because you switched to automated moderation protocols to save money and then when called on it falsely claiming hate speech has gone down instead of just spending a little money to fix the problem. brookings.edu/blog/how-we-ri…

65/ More on this (hey, remember when Musk spent days harassing and encouraging harassment of a BBC interviewer for simply saying out loud what every single major-media assessment of Twitter post-Musk has said—with data)? axios.com/2022/11/12/elo…

66/ Surely the man wouldn’t be sued *twice* for allegedly doing the same racism a second time, right? bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

67/ I mean Jesus, this is ROAD & TRACK titling an article “Elon Musk Is Trying to Figure Out How Racist He Can Be.” How racist an apartheid-born South African “nepo baby” raised on emerald mine riches do you have to be for ROAD & TRACK to run this feature? roadandtrack.com/news/a40091585…

68/ At least he’s great for Tesla! Article #1: cnet.com/tech/tesla-is-…

69/ Article #2: bloomberg.com/news/features/…

70/ Article #3: Of course, maybe the company is not so sound on its own. nytimes.com/2022/12/21/bus…

71/ Article #4: nytimes.com/2022/12/23/opi…

72/ Article #5: forbes.com/sites/alanohns…

73/ Okay, but at least a leading car website didn’t report that Musk’s apparently-just-for-the-lulz Boring Company has “left a cross-country trail of broken promises and undug tunnels,” right?

Oh. carscoops.com/2022/11/elon-m….

74/ But at least he always has a *plan*.

Imagine how horrifying it would be if he admitted that he’s never had a business plan, and like a con man just one step ahead of the law he’s always just winging i—

Oh. nytimes.com/2022/05/03/tec…

75/ But look, at least Zip2, his very first company, was a wonderful bootstrapping story. Pure rags to riches! Pure determination! He did it all himself! He wasn’t yelling at employees if they left work at 9P—

Oh. carscoops.com/2022/10/elon-m…

76/ Well, I guess he *did* lose in court for threatening his own workers. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

77/ I guess he *was* sued for allegedly promoting a toxic workplace. forbes.com/sites/madeline…

78/ I mean, the reporting doesn’t pull any punches.

Is this why his fanboys are so obsessed with painting him as a great person who cares about people, when every single report I’ve ever seen on him says *exactly* the opposite—and at great length?

Link: therealnews.com/from-tesla-to-…

79/ But at least he gets results—and *fast*! cnbc.com/2021/08/18/mon…

80/ He’s a logistics mastermind! (It’s not like people have been selling cars for 120 years!) reuters.com/business/autos…

81/ Well, at least we have the *myth* of the man to keep us warm. Or... theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

82/ All right, searching for a silver lining here. At least, uh... *Neuralink* isn’t *also* under federal investigation? reuters.com/technology/mus…

83/ I think the important thing here is that Musk takes responsibility for his own failures. He is not one to blame others... every. single. time.

Article #1: bbc.com/news/business-…

84/ Article #2: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

85/ Article #3: foxbusiness.com/technology/elo…

86/ Article #4: And his blame-others-first policy never leads to false accusations, either! washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

87/ Article #5: It never leads to him banning journalists from Twitter days after calling himself a free-speech champion! (And he didn’t then secretly keep doing that for *months*!) vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/e….

88/ Article #6: Jesus H. Christ. He even blamed *other people* for his daughter disowning *him*. businessinsider.com/elon-musk-blam…

89/ Article #7: The Boy Who Cried Activists cries on. rollingstone.com/politics/polit…

90/ Article #8: No, wait—the issue is that the entirety of the corporate media hates... all White people! (You mean its core profit-making audience? Uh...) nytimes.com/2023/02/27/bus…

91/ But he is beloved, at least! Just look at the *dozens* of blue-checks in his comments! nypost.com/2022/12/12/unh…

92/

93/ You might think both left and right policing policy has failed for decades—only scattered programs (often rehabilitation-oriented) show results; they never get enough funding or a national stage—but *really* it’s a “virus” Musk made up that’s to blame. kron4.com/news/bay-area/…

94/ Incidentally, that same made-up rhetorical device explains why Musk’s daughter disowned him.

Says Musk.

Imagine blaming your sh*tty parenting on a made-up “mind virus.”

But then insisting workers stay past 9PM unpaid because they need to take responsibility for their work.

95/ Wait—was it a “mind virus” or *Communism* that caused a transphobe to be mysteriously disowned by his {checks notes} trans daughter?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, at least he didn't shrug and say “Can’t win them all” about losing a kid. He’d have to be a monster.
sports.yahoo.com/elon-musk-blam…

96/ The point is, folks, he is *definitely* not super creepy. vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/e…

97/ OMG... he even has a creepy alt account. 🤦 themarysue.com/elon-musk-reve…

98/ Uhh... oh my. nymag.com/intelligencer/…

99/ All right, my point is just that Musk does *not* have any secret childr—

I mean, at least it wasn’t with an employe—

Oh *Christ*. theverge.com/2022/7/7/23198…

100/ Oh good lord, the creepiness is familial.

THE NEW YORK POST: Elon Musk’s Dad, 76, Confirms Secret Second Child—with His Stepdaughter nypost.com/2022/07/14/elo…

101/ I guess I’m wondering two things here:

(1) Folks realize I could do this all day, right? Like, that I could take this thread to 500 tweets and beyond? That I’d never run out of material? You do all know that, right? Even you Elongelicals?

(2) How high do you want me to go?

102/ I’ve so far avoided the silly stuff, here: him irresponsibly smoking weed live on-air as a CEO; him naming his poor children things that will get them bullied for their entire lives; the multiple divorces and never-proven allegations of infidelity... usmagazine.com/celebrity-news…

103/ But what do we do with international sex trafficker and serial child rapist Jeffrey Epstein telling journalists he was a Musk adviser? nytimes.com/2019/08/12/bus…

104/ Why did Musk lie about knowing Ghislaine Maxwell, saying she was just randomly standing near him at a party when in fact eyewitnesses say they were deep in conversation? Why lie about that? Was there something being hidden there (as Epstein claimed)? nypost.com/2020/07/03/elo…

105/ Like, what do we say here? “Oops?” graziadaily.co.uk/life/in-the-ne…

106/ Personally, I’m *far* more concerned about him pushing the agenda of—and carrying water for—that homicidal butcher at the Kremlin, Putin. Pushing a so-called “peace deal” that merely repeated Kremlin talking points? Like what the actual hell was that? businessinsider.com/russia-kremlin…

107/ Musk seems committed to propping up butchers globally. Erdogan is an anti-American/pro-Kremlin autocrat who *literally* ordered his forces to shell U.S. troops and ordered his bodyguards to beat up U.S. citizens when he was in DC.

But Musk tried to help him win re-election.

108/ More on this: cbsnews.com/news/twitter-c…

109/ Musk says he has no choice but to follow the “minimum” legal requirements in every nation Twitter operates in...

...but then we learned he complies with *30% more foreign demands for censorship* than his allegedly pro-censorship Twitter predecessors! businessinsider.com/free-speech-ce…

110/ Maybe this is the reason so many analysts call him a sociopath? Maybe it’s not a question of his ideology but exactly the opposite—that he has *no moral or ethical compass at all*? foxnews.com/media/msnbc-an…

111/ What sort of man announces a rolling trash compactor made of the same material as the infamously failed DeLorean in 2019, tweets about it orgasmically for years, keeps pushing it back for unknown reasons, then *trolls* the market over his own failure? finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-cyb…

112/ When he fails, he gives tissue-thin excuses to avoid admitting he lied and/or failed. Consider his preposterous claim for why a supposedly unbreakable Cybertruck window broke—and note how he cannot explain the *back-window* breakage with the same lie. theverge.com/2019/11/25/209…

113/ Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned PayPal yet. It must be because there’s nothing to say about it!

Except that Snopes rates as MOSTLY TRUE the claim that Musk was *fired* from PayPal—supposedly one of his biggest success stories. snopes.com/fact-check/was…

114/ What if we look at the *beginning* of his time at PayPal instead of the *end*. Did he found PayPal?

Not exactly.

In 1999, he founded an online bank—X[.]com—and months later it merged with an online payment system *others* had built to become PayPal. marketrealist.com/p/did-elon-mus…

115/ Before PayPal let him go, Musk did coding for them—but the online payment system predated his involvement with Confinity (which became PayPal).

Musk accrued a bit more credit to himself than he deserved via marketing, making himself one of the self-described “PayPal Mafia.”

116/ Keep in mind that everything in this thread is taken from public, major-media reporting. In have no private or secret knowledge of Elon Musk, nor have I ever claimed any (frankly, about him or anyone).

117/ On the topic of how Musk enters/leaves projects he’s overcredited for—often by him—did Musk lie about his precise role in founding OpenAI? The answer seems to be yes, but we don’t know *why* he self-shrinks his role the more he wants to attack OpenAI. techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/elo…

118/ After all, this is a man who has been portrayed as a compulsive liar in open court. Here is PBS on that very subject (perhaps explaining why he hates PBS so much): pbs.org/newshour/natio…

119/ BUSINESS INSIDER has explained that the only reason Musk is still allowed to run *any* company is (a) “his cultlike fandom,” and (b) his tendency to “always lead with bravado.”

These are the two things we say of successful *con men*, not businessmen. businessinsider.com/elon-musk-scan…

120/ Incredibly, he doesn’t even need to *run* something to be sued for tortious misconduct relating to it—which is quite a feat, even as it underscores how dangerous Musk chooses to make himself to the markets and to investors. reuters.com/legal/transact….

121/ Even well after you’ve bought something from Musk, you may find yourself hating him. For all that Musk highlights dozens—dozens!—of happy Tesla owners in his retweets and likes, the story of Tesla ownership is far, *far* more complicated.

Article #1: theautopian.com/tesla-owners-a…

122/ Article #2: usatoday.com/story/news/nat…

123/ Article #3: vox.com/the-highlight/…

124/ Article #4: fox13news.com/news/tesla-red…

125/ Article #5: futurism.com/the-byte/man-s…

126/ Article #6: dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…

127/ Article #7: theregister.com/2023/02/17/tes…

128/ Article #8: Is Musk to blame for Teslas so often being apparently less safe than advertised? Well, there is some reason, at least, to think yes. carexpert.com.au/car-news/poor-…

129/ And oh, the recalls! arstechnica.com/cars/2023/02/t…

130/ The failures at Tesla have been so frequently laid at the feet of Musk and Musk alone—apparently, in the view of major media, *rightly*—that SLATE had to write a report observing that he is not the *only* one at fault.

Think about that for a second. slate.com/technology/202…

131/ Keep in mind that this legacy of failure is not limited to Tesla.

FORTUNE describes the over-hyped, over-promising Boring Company in three words: “years of failure.” fortune.com/2022/04/25/elo…

132/ Maybe this is why those who have been around him write op-eds telling people not to trust him. nytimes.com/2022/11/18/opi…

133/ TIME MAGAZINE says the world needs to move “beyond” Musk—while noting that his modest achievements, such as they are, have been backed by BILLIONS—not millions, but BILLIONS—in federal subsidies paid by you and me, not the world’s (once-)richest man. time.com/6203815/elon-m…

134/ I mean, Musk has *really* hurt taxpayers and governments across the United States. jalopnik.com/elon-musks-bor…

135/ Sometimes those taxpayers and governments were fooled by Musk ideas now almost universally deemed “terrible.”

Honestly, what’s his lifetime swing-and-miss rate? 90%? Did he just luck into a few solid situations and yadda-yadda-yadda through the rest? curbed.com/2022/01/elon-m…

136/ “Tunnels to nowhere”? Is this what passes for a *visionary* in this spiritually degraded, sometimes hopeless decade? vox.com/recode/2022/12…

137/ Folks... there is *literally* an *exhibit* on Elon Musk in the Museum of Failure.

Yes, this is an actual museum—and it chronicles the most spectacular failures anywhere. businessinsider.com/elon-musk-earn…

138/ This report reveals that Elon Musk’s corporate portfolio is “overflowing” with “failures”, and that there is a dramatic “unbalance” between his failures and his successes (with the imbalance favoring *failure*, in case you couldn’t guess that by now). dell.com/en-us/perspect…

139/ And those failures have consequences.

TECHDIRT: “Elon Musk’s Vision Of Trust & Safety: Neither Safe Nor Trustworthy” techdirt.com/2023/03/07/elo…

140/ And some of those failures—and this is *really* sick—might even be deliberate. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

141/ Certainly, the trail of broken promises Musk leaves in his wake is miles long. Consider just Twitter: cnn.com/2023/03/29/med…

142/ GIZMODO deems all the broken promises Musk leaves behind him *so* embarrassing—to *him*—that it calls him a “humiliation machine.” But it also notes that he often has no intention whatsoever of fulfilling even his most public promises. gizmodo.com/elon-musk-tesl…

143/ Could the major-media reporting on this be any clearer? Not only does Musk leave broken promises and shattered dreams behind him, but he somehow manages, per The Washington Post, to walk on a road *paved* by his own broken promises: washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

144/ And you wonder if Musk trying to destroy journalism on Twitter as a) a principled position, or b) a combination of vengeance and self-preservation? Jesus—could it be any more obvious?

He wants to clear a space where he can say anything and be feted. theverge.com/2022/12/15/235…

145/ No wonder he’s been called “the world's worst businessman.”

Instead of just *succeeding*, he either a) fails and blames others or b) tilts the playing field to make losses look like wins.

Then he gets sued by all the people he’s hurt along the way. freepress.net/blog/elon-musk…

146/ He was even once named “Worst Person of the Year”—that’s *in the world*, in case you’re wondering. exberliner.com/politics/elon-…

147/ Think of it: international journalists have to make *listicles* of all the petty things Musk has done, just to keep them straight.

Link: theface.com/society/the-5-…

148/ And journalists even have to make *listicles* of all Musk’s stupidest pronouncements, because, again, there are just *so many* that there needs to be a public archive just to account for a tiny percentage of them. inc.com/business-insid…

149/ I’ve tried to do my part—including via the free report below at PROOF—to itemize the dangerous voices Musk is not just platforming and amplifying but openly and repeatedly encouraging.

🔗: sethabramson.substack.com/p/proof-exclus…

And since this report Musk has doubled down on *everything*.

150/ And now all this is headed in a much more dangerous direction than ever before, as Musk sidles up to the worst humans on Earth: including Putin, Erdogan, MBS, and U.S. neo-Nazis.

I fear for what this disreputable man may do next.

That’s all for now. newrepublic.com/post/170176/tw…

(PS) And never forget that Musk lied to America about internal Twitter data—which reveals a *far-right* bias in the Twitter algorithm—so that he and his Saudi co-owners could justify a wild lurch toward authoritarianism, QAnonism, and extremism on Twitter. theguardian.com/technology/202…

(PS2) Here is some further light reading to close a thread that literally could go on forever, so awful are the actions and legacy of this man. theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

(PS3) When and as readers send in additional relevant articles—again, there are literally thousands of possible entries for this thread on Elon Musk and his legacy—I may add them here. This one is *particularly* disturbing. texasobserver.org/tesla-texas-wo…

(PS4) So Trump-like. *So* Trump-like. Always screwing the vulnerable. theregister.com/2023/05/18/twi…

(PS5) How did I miss all the creepy CCP stuff? theatlantic.com/international/…

(PS6) And how did I miss his historically wonky record on the environment? Tesla is not the pro-environment op you might think. carboncredits.com/tesla-carbon-c…