Elon Musk - the world's "greatest" spiv?

[SuspectUsual]

I don't know why but for some reason Musk annoys me more than Trump and Farage

I think so too. And I think it’s because the other two, whilst vile, are at least politicians. Musk is just a power hungry billionaire chucking his weight around in order to satisfy his narcissistic ego

 

[jon0844]

Our Foreign Secretary is on record as calling the President-elect a tyrant, a xenophobe, and "no friend of Britain".

Outrageous!

That he said it out loud that is.

 

[gingerheid]

I don't know why but for some reason Musk annoys me more than Trump and Farage.

[snip]
I've never even heard of a belief that Labour messed up our relations with the US. If anything I think Starmer has been reasonably diplomatic. All things considered I am quite content to be allies with the United States even despite some of our differences.

Trump and Farage are elected, which regardless of personal preference gives them the right to be there.

I'm aware they've been sniping at us a lot, in the way that they seem to reserve for their allies...

 

[Sorcerer]

Our Foreign Secretary is on record as calling the President-elect a tyrant, a xenophobe, and "no friend of Britain".

Oh right, I must admit that I forgot about that one. Since then though it seems Labour has been a bit more diplomatic even despite our divisions on different issues, but then Trump is still not yet President so it remains to be seen.

I think so too. And I think it’s because the other two, whilst vile, are at least politicians. Musk is just a power hungry billionaire chucking his weight around in order to satisfy his narcissistic ego

Trump and Farage are elected, which regardless of personal preference gives them the right to be there.

I think that's the crux of it for me. These are politicians who knew how to play the game and have people they have been elected to represent. Elon is just a rich kid in over his head, though sad to say, money can buy great power, and being the richest man in the United States, one of the incoming President's most influential allies, and owning one of the world's largest social media platforms, this particular rich kid is hard to ignore. The only thing that might stop him in his tirades is the inevitable fallout with President Trump.

 

[gingerheid]

The only thing that might stop him in his tirades is the inevitable fallout with President Trump.

I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. I wouldn't bet on it necessarily happening before the inauguration, but I'm certain it'll be complete within a month after it.

 

[takno]

Our Foreign Secretary is on record as calling the President-elect a tyrant, a xenophobe, and "no friend of Britain".

Somebody senior from virtually everybody's government has said something that bad about Trump. It's become increasingly clear over time that he quite likes being described that way, and it's a fairly common viewpoint in the wider US. Seems a stretch to suggest that it will cause problems

 

[Mogster]

Financial help which had to be repaid

There was no payment for lend lease support during WW2, in fact there was a reciprocal agreement as Britain supported US forces in Europe with supplies.

The repayments often mentioned were on post war loans from the US to Britain. Britain was effectively bankrupt in 1945 although seems to have been able to hide this fact from other nations.

 

[BingMan]

There was no payment for lend lease support during WW2, in fact there was a reciprocal agreement as Britain supported US forces in Europe with supplies.

The repayments often mentioned were on post war loans from the US to Britain. Britain was effectively bankrupt in 1945 although seems to have been able to hide this fact from other nations.

Collapse of stout party

 

[JohnMcL7]

I don't know why but for some reason Musk annoys me more than Trump and Farage. They could all say the exact same thing and I'd still get more wound up with him saying it. As many have pointed out, he is an actual Bond villain but without any of the charm and charisma, and not even his archenemy like Ernst Stavro Blofeld (that's Bezos, the bald white man with a lazy eye running a big powerful and influential organisation), but more like Hugo Drax and his rather disturbing obsession with colonising space, but only for the people he deems fit.

I fully agree with you there although I also can't put my finger on why. The Guardian had a good article that I think help partially explain it though:

I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers | Rebecca Shaw

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s desperation to be cool as they suck up to Donald Trump is so cringe it makes my skin crawl

www.theguardian.com

I watched a bit of Musk's streaming of the game and it's hard to watch because he's so pathetic, he's boasting about how high level his gear is and how hard the content is so even putting aside the fact he clearly doesn't know how to play the game why does he need to behave like a child trying to impress his parents?

 

[philthetube]

there is a programme about Elon Musk and his ambitions on channel 4 tomorrow, (Thursday) at 9pm.

"can Elon Musk rule the world".

 

[Peter Mugridge]

"can Elon Musk ruin the world".

Fixed it for them...

 

[DelW]

Well, here's a surprise (not) - Musk's commitment to being a "free speech absolutist" only works one way - when he's doing the attacking. When his faction comes under attack, all of a sudden the law must be invoked to prevent that happening.

Reddit community banned as user spat with Musk intensifies

The tech billionaire had complained that some Reddit users were advocating violence against his staff.

www.bbc.co.uk

The r/WhitePeopleTwitter subreddit, which typically invites people to share funny posts from X, has been banned for 72 hours after some users posted comments calling for violence against members of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).
(snip)
Musk - who frequently champions his commitment to free speech - shared a post on X containing the comments, and stated: "they have broken the law".

The subreddit was banned soon afterwards.

Nice to see he does hypocrisy just as well as his crony.

 

[JohnMcL7]

Given how quick he is to censor and ban people he doesn't like or are critical of him I think mainstream media shouldn't be referring to his 'free speech commitments' since it's blatantly a lie.

There's been a few articles this week about significant drops in Tesla car sales in Europe which is hopefully part of a longer term trend and Tesla's financial results show they are shockingly reliant on the sale of EV credits so I'm hoping there's a little light at the end of the tunnel in hoping Musk finally gets some payback.

 

[brad465]

Now decided Community Notes is "rigged" and will "fix" it:

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5155605-elon-musk-x-community-notes-feature/

Elon Musk on Thursday said he is going to “fix” his social media platform’s X Community Notes feature, claiming without evidence the feature is being “gamed” by governments and legacy media.”

“Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media,” Musk wrote on X. “Working to fix this …”


The tech billionaire’s remarks were included in a repost of a circulating poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) finding 57 percent of Ukrainians trust President Zelensky. The poll was referenced in a CNN fact check of President Trump, who claimed Wednesday that Zelensky has a 4 percent approval rating.

Musk reposted a user claiming KIIS was funded by the United States Agency for International Development — the agency that Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency panel is trying to eliminate. The user also claimed KIIS is run by a “VERY patriotic Ukrainian named Anton Hrushetskyi,” and suggested the polling is likely not credible.

Musk echoed this sentiment, writing, “It should be utterly obvious that a Zelensky-controlled poll about his OWN approval is not credible!!”

“If Zelensky was actually loved by the people of Ukraine, he would hold an election. He knows he would lose in a landslide, despite having seized control of ALL Ukrainian media, so he canceled the election,” he wrote. “In reality, he is despised by the people of Ukraine, which is why he has refused to hold an election. I challenge Zelensky to hold an election and refute this. He will not.”


Trump has ramped up his criticism of Zelensky in recent days and on Wednesday accused the Ukrainian president of taking advantage of the United States.

Trump said Zelensky has done a “terrible job” at leading Ukraine and claimed he “refuses” to have elections. Ukraine postponed its 2024 presidential elections because of martial law being in place amid the Russian invasion.


The Community Notes feature on X allows users to submit fact checks to potentially misleading or false posts. The feature was rolled out by Musk after he bought the social media platform, then known as Twitter, in 2021 and overhauled many of the safety and content moderation policies previously in place.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is also planning to roll out a community notes feature to replace its since-eliminated fact-checking system, which it said was “seen, by many, as biased.”

 

[JohnMcL7]

I'm actually surprised he's allowed the Community Notes to last as long as they have given they frequently have the correct information on them and highlight misinformation on the platform, exactly what Musk doesn't want.

 

[styles]

There's been a few articles this week about significant drops in Tesla car sales in Europe which is hopefully part of a longer term trend and Tesla's financial results show they are shockingly reliant on the sale of EV credits so I'm hoping there's a little light at the end of the tunnel in hoping Musk finally gets some payback.

Funnily enough, when I first started looking at buying an EV, Tesla was top of my list. I never actually went through with the EV purchase as I'd like the range to be just a big larger still, but there's no chance I would buy one now. And it's not even just a principled stand against Musk - it's that he has a massive amount of control in his companies and is clearly erratic, and I just honestly don't trust him not to rollout some software update to his cars which does something untoward. I know a lot of engineers would be involved along the way, but a lot of software engineers are involved along the way when he decides to change the feed algorithms on X, yet it happens anyway.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Now decided Community Notes is "rigged" and will "fix" it:

Which means that they'll probably be simply broken and dropped. Like a true right wing snowflake, he simply can't handle the truth.

 

[sor]

President Musk is now at the stage where he's arguing with an actual commander of the International Space Station, about the situation caused by the Boeing Starliner issues. You'd think he'd be happy to claim a PR win as his company is the one that gets to "rescue" them (actually, NASA's paying for it and they decided to send up the next capsule with empty seats) but that's too big brained for him. Bonus points for deciding to use a word that many people consider a slur.

https://xcancel.com/Astro_Andreas/status/1892517170384392664 (xcancel lets you view without registering, so I won't quote the posts here)

Musk then followed up by demanding that the ISS be deorbited earlier than planned. Of course, SpaceX was awarded a contract last year to do this.

As regards community notes - I assume none have appeared on this post because Musk seems to have them disabled on his own account, or his minions remove them very quickly

 

[AlterEgo]

High on the drugs again and being extraordinarily cringe at CPAC. Insufferable man.

In other news, he has shadowbanned Grimes, mother of three of his children, following her demanding that he contact her about one of the children's healthcare. Terrible parent too.

 

[JohnMcL7]

Funnily enough, when I first started looking at buying an EV, Tesla was top of my list. I never actually went through with the EV purchase as I'd like the range to be just a big larger still, but there's no chance I would buy one now. And it's not even just a principled stand against Musk - it's that he has a massive amount of control in his companies and is clearly erratic, and I just honestly don't trust him not to rollout some software update to his cars which does something untoward. I know a lot of engineers would be involved along the way, but a lot of software engineers are involved along the way when he decides to change the feed algorithms on X, yet it happens anyway.

I think that's a reasonable stance since it's clear Musk gets whatever he wants regardless of what anyone says or how bad an idea it is, I don't know if he was the one pushing for the design without stalks but the indicator controls together on the left side of the steering wheel of the model 3 facelift was initially offputting for a friend who was considering the car.

 

[brad465]

If you thought JR-M leaving notes on civil servants' desks about being the office was bad...

Document work or resign, Doge says to US federal workers in email

The weekend email comes as Elon Musk leads an effort to aggressively curtail the government workforce.

www.bbc.co.uk

Federal workers received an email Saturday afternoon asking them to list their accomplishments from the past week or resign - the latest development in the Trump administration's efforts targeting the federal workforce.

The emails came after billionaire and Trump confidante Elon Musk tweeted Saturday that workers would "shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week".
"Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation," he wrote.
Musk has been leading an outside effort to aggressively curtail government spending through aggressive funding cuts and firings.
The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government's human resources agency, confirmed the emails were legitimate in a statement to CBS, the BBC's US news partner.
"As part of the Trump Administration's commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce, OPM is asking employees to provide a brief summary of what they did last week by the end of Monday, CC'ing their manager. Agencies will determine any next steps."
Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump touted cuts and told a crowd of supporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) that the work of federal employees was inadequate because they did not come into the office.
Shortly after the speech, federal workers received the email with the subject line "What did you do last week?" from a sender listed as HR.
In a copy of the email obtained by the BBC, employees were asked to explain their accomplishments from the past week in five bullet points - without disclosing classified information - before Monday at midnight.
The Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) is not an official government department, but Musk's team has exacted wide-ranging changes to the US federal infrastructure with approval from the White House.
Thousands of government employees at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration, as well as other agencies, have been fired in recent weeks.
The email mirrors Musk's handling of employees after he acquired social media platform Twitter in 2022. As the staff there shrunk under his ownership, he issued ultimatums that included a now-infamous request to commit to being "extremely hardcore" at work or resign.
Trump has repeatedly applauded Musk's cost-cutting measures.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said that Musk is doing a "great job" in reducing the size of the federal government and that he would like to see him "get more aggressive" in the pursuit.

 

[dangie]

If you thought JR-M leaving notes on civil servants' desks about being the office was bad...

Document work or resign, Doge says to US federal workers in email

The weekend email comes as Elon Musk leads an effort to aggressively curtail the government workforce.

www.bbc.co.uk

It makes me wonder just how many people they are employing just to read through these emails?

 

[Tester]

It makes me wonder just how many people they are employing just to read through these emails?

Probably AI

 

[dgl]

Would trying to counteract Trump and Musk's disinformation count as proper work?

 

[brad465]

Today's been a bad day for Elon "Ratner" Musk, after Tesla shares have sunk 15%, on top of the significant decline from its peak after the US election result:

US stocks plunge as fears grow over impact of tariffs

The Nasdaq sank by 4.0% at the close of trading, and there were losses on other markets with tech stocks seeing the largest drops.

www.bbc.co.uk

US stocks plunged on Monday as fears grew over an economic slowdown, after President Donald Trump did not rule out his tariffs triggering a recession.

The Nasdaq sank by 4.0% at the close of trading, its largest single-day loss since 2022, and there were heavy losses on other markets with tech stocks seeing the largest drops.

Tesla shares fell about 15.4%, while chipmaker Nvidia was down more than 5%. Other major tech stocks including Meta, Amazon and Alphabet also sank.

The S&P 500 Index slid 2.7%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2.1%.

It followed Trump's comment that the US economy was in a period of transition, after he was asked about concerns over a potential recession.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Today's been a bad day for Elon "Ratner" Musk, after Tesla shares have sunk 15%, on top of the significant decline from its peak after the US election result:

Not to mention that he's now starting trouble with Senator Mark Kelly and calling him a traitor on top of everything else.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Not to mention that he's now starting trouble with Senator Mark Kelly and calling him a traitor on top of everything else.

...and a huge DDoS attack on Twitter earlier today.

I guess we can at least rule out that one being down to the Russians for a change...

 

[Cloud Strife]

...and a huge DDoS attack on Twitter earlier today.

And he immediately jumped to blame Ukraine, even though an IP address hardly proves anything and a DDoS attack is not going to be easily traced like that. Not to mention that in Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, there are some companies which announce their IP ranges as being in Ukraine, and other companies which announce their IP ranges as being in Russia. There's no universal rule for it, so someone in Donetsk can quite easily be using an IP address which appears to be Ukrainian, although they're living under the control of the Russian Federation.

Musk of course knows this.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

In this case, it's hardly likely that Russia would attack a website run by someone who, along with his boss, is going out of his way to support them?

 

[Cloud Strife]

In this case, it's hardly likely that Russia would attack a website run by someone who, along with his boss, is going out of his way to support them?

It seems that the origin of this group is really not clear, beyond having a pro-Palestine agenda.