Elon Musk‘s erratic posting on X, formerly Twitter, has come back to haunt him once again as a 22-year-old Jewish man pursues a defamation case over tweets in which the tech mogul baselessly suggested the recent college graduate was an undercover federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi during a street fight between far-right groups. Musk’s excruciating March 27 deposition in the matter, which a judge ordered released to the public over the objections of the CEO’s lawyer, reveals the extent to which he has continually sabotaged both himself and the social media platform he owns.

  • Ragdoll X@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    An entertaining read that further cements Musk as an honest-to-god unhinged idiot. I’ve seen a lot of people speculate that him buying Twitter and tanking its value was some kind of genius plot, but the simpler explanation is that he’s just unironically stupid and a bad businessman.

    The fact that he has another burner account which he uses to get around blocks and hurl insults at others is both really funny and completely expected. I’m willing to bet a signed dollar that he has yet another alt that he uses to lean even further right and say the N-word on a regular basis.

    • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      There’s a third explanation: He’s a fairly bad businessman but Twitter was always expected to lose money, and the purpose of owning it is to use it as a cost center for massive political influence.

      I’m not necessarily espousing this theory, I have no real evidence either way, but lots of billionaires buy media outlets so they can direct public sentiment. Twitter, managed correctly, could have been a pretty good way to do that, but even within that lens it has been managed very badly, so IDK

    • Sprawlie@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      His incompetence as a business runner should have been blatantly clear when the SEC had to step into Tesla due to his comments and have him removed from all financial decision making for the company.

      https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226

      He straight up has no idea how to run a business itself and always acts like he’s the full blown god of the companies he claims to run.

      Fun story: He didn’t found Tesla as he claimed. He bought in and part of the deal was he could claim as a founder. (founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning)

      Also fun Fact: He only started Space X because he was ousted from PayPal for being a shitty CEO by the board.

    • pissedatyall@lemmynsfw.com
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      8 months ago

      …the simpler explanation is that he’s just unironically stupid and a bad businessman.

      Occam’s Razor.

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Having private accounts isn’t that unusual for public figures, sometimes people just want to soapbox and vent in public a little but not attract too much attention to themselves.

    Roleplaying your own infant son on one of your private account, however, is super, super weird.

    • zeppo@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      What he said as that account is the extra weird part. Some rather inappropriate things.

  • Bizzle@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    X is “the most accurate, timely, and truthful place on the internet,” Musk said during his questioning about a false statement he made on the site that has been viewed by over a million users and has yet to be retracted or deleted almost a year later.

    Hilarious.

    • Zimited@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Truth in this case, comes from the ability to be proven wrong. If they removed it, the truth wouldn’t have a chance to be relevant and challenge the wrong statement. I assume that is what Elon has in mind when he considers his site to be more truthful. Much on the common internet these days gets shut down and removed before even being able to be challenged. Like on Reddit. Which ironically leads to less truth, since less people have their opinions challenged and are instead removed, or the challenge is removed.

      • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Give an example of where it’s led to less truth. When X perpetuates lies, truth and the world’s welfare is harmed. Look at the number of people that died thinking covid was a lie and people that think vaccines are somebkind of conspiracy to harm them.

        • Zimited@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          If X perpetuates a lie and doesn’t have the facilitation to allow a variety of perspectives and opinions to hold the lie accountable, that is an echo chamber and I’d agree it would be a huge problem. Elon said every person should be allowed to speak for the most part on X. If that saying holds any merit, I assume X lives up to that eventually. If it doesn’t I’m on you guys’ side about X.

          I feel if Elon Musk said covid was a lie and people took only his word for it, that is on them. Its another story entirely if there was no other trustworthy source of information or data. USA seems to struggle with that these days, so I understand how it went so wrong with Covid in some places. But yeah, a person in this case would win the game of natural selection by not only going off of what one dude/source says (probably in a casual, low effort manner at that).

          • zeppo@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Musk allows extreme right wing to flourish and boosts their falsehoods himself, but has personally censored many left voices. What he claims about “free speech” and what he does are not the same.

            • Zimited@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Do you have sources that show he intentionally censored voices? He would be a huge hypocrite depending on how that was done.

              • zeppo@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                There are numerous examples available to anyone who looks for it. Here’s one where he banned a bunch of journalists who had been critical of him, using an excuse about “doxxing”:

                https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/twitter-journalist-suspend-1.6688110

                There’s another where he suspended the account of a prominent Tesla critic:

                https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/15/elon-musk-led-twitter-suspended-plainsite-a-prominent-tesla-critic.html

                • Zimited@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Thank you for sharing.

                  Hm, in the first link, the journalist seems to have contributed to the incentivization of giving people the power to find and try to harm/kill Elon. I personally feel that directly incentivizing and feeding information for possible murder of an individual is one of the few things I would agree with keeping away from the app myself.

                  As for the second link it reads like a red flag for me. The reasoning to the ban is not there. And any estimates of why fall short with obscurity. At least within’ the article. Generally when something is obscure I assume the worst. But part of me wonders if details were left out from the article. I’d need to do more research. Looks bad for Elon though.

  • HeavyDogFeet@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I’m gonna guess he has way more than two burners. The dude is an addict, tweeting is all he has.

    • zeppo@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      There was that bizarre scenario with “Adrian Dittman” recently, where Musk - I mean uh, Dittman - called into Alex Jones’ show and was immediately called out for being Musk because he sounded almost identical. However, the caller denied it. Then Musk started doing little podcasts with “Dittman” apparently because it was so neat they just happened to talk almost exactly alike. Hmm.

      Then, there’s “Doge Designer”, who is supposedly an Indian engineer at some Dogecoin focused company, but often says precisely what Musk would say about things, frequently gets replied to by Musk, and has somehow come up with TwitX stats and yet unseen personal photos of Elron with no explanation.

  • Jimmycakes@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    What a sad pathetic little man. Proof that money is no substitution for a parents love if you want your kids to grow up normal.

    • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I’m sure he had a relatively normal upbringing. After all his father’s current wife is his step sister. Who among us has not lived through something like that.

  • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Are we just going to ignore the fact that an account can’t be a “burner” account if you keep reusing it? This abuse of language doesn’t fly with me

    • BreakDecks@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      Just like how a drug dealer throws away their burner phone after every drug deal. /s

      Or maybe you’re not thinking about what this word means in context. Burner doesn’t mean “use once and abandon”, it means “use anonymously and abandon if needed”.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    You don’t need to fact check yourself when you’re always right.

    And the richer you are, the smarter you are, so he is always right.

  • arefx@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    So busy working all day yet he runs two burner Twitter accounts.

    This asshole doesn’t do shit but play Diablo 4 (which sucks ass), tweet, and boss around the people who actually make his companies successful.

  • profdc9@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    When you’re rich enough, you can fight and settle all of the slander cases you want.