Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Curious thing I heard which highlights musks known sympathies....
He was ranting about the EU fining vichy 150 million for breaking the law. Despite the fact they did. And this is pocket change for him.
Someone added a note on this that Russia, Belarus, and many other countries had blocked Twitter....
He personally removed it.

Hopefully someone put it back, and keeps doing so each time Elon nuts removes it

Sure but there is no point. Thanks to Trump's regime the last faint coatings of the fake concerns about free speech are coming off. Far-right people don't want everyone to be able to say what they want. They want themselves to be able to do so.

Not unlike the far-left. But then authoritarian are the same all over.

[HisMajestyBOB]

I'm not worried about the far left. First, their numbers are much smaller. Second, as soon as more than a dozen of them gather together, they collapse into infighting. Just look at Your Party in the UK.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I'm not worried about the far left. First, their numbers are much smaller. Second, as soon as more than a dozen of them gather together, they collapse into infighting. Just look at Your Party in the UK.

The far left is more than political parties. Lots embedded in the cultural institutions, administration, education and media.
Their influence is significant enough to be bothersome negative in western Europe. And has been for decades .

But again: it's the authoritarianism that's the real problem since that mindset means that once power has been acquired, of any type, the ones holding it will try to remove any and all opposition from the conquered space.

[HVC]

Heard that the French are raiding X offices?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Heard that the French are raiding X offices?

Yep

Already in the digital newspaper

[Duque de Bragança]

Heard that the French are raiding X offices?

Yep

Already in the digital newspaper

Telegram founder is ranting about it, as well.

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has criticised the French government after the Paris prosecutor's cyber-crime unit conducted a raid on the local offices of Elon Musk-owned social media platform, X (formerly Twitter). The raids are a part of an investigation which the government launched into suspected offences including unlawful data extraction and alleged child pornography.

"French police is currently raiding X's office in Paris. France is the only country in the world that is criminally persecuting all social networks that give people some degree of freedom (Telegram, X, TikTok...)," said Durov, who was himself detained by French authorities in 2024.

"Don't be mistaken: this is not a free country," he added.

[Jacob]

My instinctual reaction is "good, fuck 'em" - but my rational side is going to wait for more information.

[Valmy]

X and TikTok give people freedom?  Not with their current ownership.

But fair enough.

But France has always been on the authoritarian side of this. Especially for religion you have France banning tons of sketchy cults and demanding people not wear Burkas. Whereas here in the US we just allow you to run your culty brainwashing compound in peace. I am sure there is a middle ground someplace.

[Zanza]

Musk is merging his AI/social network company with his rocket company. The given narrative is to build AI data centers in space.

AI data centers produce lots of heat. And it is very hard to dissipate heat from a space ship in vacuum. But maybe they found a solution.

There is supposed to be an IPO for the space company at a price that suggests a P/E ratio of like 300. Ambitious.

So maybe it is more like Solarcity which was bailed out by Tesla a decade or so ago.

Tesla is also moving away from making cars to making robots and autonomous taxis. Their main cashflow is now selling emissions certificates to other car companies. Let's see how long Trump pays that.

[Valmy]

Musk is merging his AI/social network company with his rocket company. The given narrative is to build AI data centers in space.

AI data centers produce lots of heat. And it is very hard to dissipate heat from a space ship in vacuum. But maybe they found a solution.

They will not. Because they do not even care about this. It is all bullshit, it is how he makes his money. He says something ridiculous and obviously never going to happen and the cultists hand him all of their money, along with investors taking advantage of said cultists driving up the stock.

It is frustrating to me that people like you even give him the benefit of the doubt in anything. If he gave a shit about doing anything, much less the ridiculous empty promises he makes, he wouldn't have looted 1 trillion dollars from Tesla. A company who has only ever made less than 50 billion in profit in its entire history.

[Zanza]

We had this discussion before. For about a decade between say 2011 and 2021, Tesla was the most innovative car company in the world. SpaceX also seems very innovative in the last decade or so. Not sure how much is due to Musk, but him being the CEO during that time suggests he had at least a role in it.

Does that make his compensation appropriate? I feel no. Should the SEC have sued him for securities fraud? I feel yes. Is he a fascist and asshole? Obviously. But I think his stock pumps and broken promises only work because he has real success as an entrepreneur to his name too.

[Valmy]

We had this discussion before. For about a decade between say 2011 and 2021, Tesla was the most innovative car company in the world. SpaceX also seems very innovative in the last decade or so. Not sure how much is due to Musk, but him being the CEO during that time suggests he had at least a role in it.

My position from the original discussion is that he had barely anything to do with it. He used other people's ideas and when he ran out of those he has floundered.

I haven't seen anything to disuade me of that position.

Does that make his compensation appropriate? I feel no. Should the SEC have sued him for securities fraud? I feel yes. Is he a fascist and asshole? Obviously. But I think his stock pumps and broken promises only work because he has real success as an entrepreneur to his name too.

He was born on third base and dragged across home plate due to signing on to the winning team at paypal. The second he was given control of Paypal, his ideas were so bad he was kicked out.

He is a failed his way up nepo baby with a great talent for bullshit. And today bullshit wins and talent sits in the corner.

[Sophie Scholl]

So... he's the Benioff and Weiss (GoT show runners) of tech?