I can't believe we need to re-litigate this again. That guy verbally attacked Elon on TV first, Elon is simply return the favor, and he later apologized.
I was beat to it due to site maintenance yesterday, but I felt it still made sense to address your points:
The guy never verbally attacked Elon, he only dismissed Elon's plan. There's a difference between attacking a plan and attacking a person (a difference that comes up a lot on forums). Elon also double downed immediately after the claim.
Cave diver criticizes Musk's kid-sub rescue plan. Musk suggests he's a pedophile
The circumstances and way he "apologized" was begrudgingly and it seemed he never directly do so to the person.
Elon Musk kinda apologizes for calling Thai cave rescuer a 'pedo'
A month later he doubled down, which showed his apology was likely not sincere:
Elon Musk doubles down on 'pedo' claims against UK cave diver
The later leaked emails to journalists showed very clearly he was not sincere in any way and really meant he was pedo:
Elon Musk calls Thailand diver 'child rapist' in new baseless attack
Elon did eventually win the lawsuit seeking damages for the original pedo tweet, but from the articles I read, the jury said it was because the plantiff's lawyers focused too much on emotion aspects of the case and not on the actual evidence. Also I'm not sure Elon can be liable for the later things, especially the journalist emails given Elon intended those to be private (articles say the judge specifically instructed the jury that the trial was not about those, even though they were brought up). Generally the bar for defamation is quite high (have to prove malice and damages), so quite hard to win in the first place.
Again, recent trial shows he did have funding secured, and the juries agreed.
No it didn't. The trial established the tweets were untrue. In fact it was well established already when Elon was fined by the SEC. If Elon did have funding secured, SEC wouldn't have a case. All the trial was set out to determine was: "The central question in the lawsuit was whether Musk was liable for losses suffered by shareholders"
"The trial was not to determine whether those tweets were true. That question had already been answered. Edward M. Chen, the federal judge overseeing the case,
ruled that the tweets were untrue and Musk was reckless for posting them."
Elon Musk, Tesla found not liable in 'funding secured' tweet lawsuit
When he posted it it's not discredited, and when it's been proven false, he deleted it and apologized for posting it.
He did so in the most begrudging way possible (very similar to the "apology" done for "pedo guy"), responding to someone else who still continued to question it, but it was horrible in the first place that he even entertained it. It showed he was taking his news from bad sources. Like with pedo guy, he never actually apologized directly to the person it affected.
Elon Musk apologizes for tweeting a baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi
I haven't been tracking this drama, but last time I checked @Jxck_Sweeney and @ElonJetNextDay is still active on twitter.
Article here:
Twitter banned the @ElonJet account tracking Musk’s flights, reinstated it, then banned it again
This was widely reported.
Also didn't track this drama, but NPR themselves claimed that "Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public"
It started with Elon erroneously labeling them as "state-affiliated", which Twitter's own policy said NPR was not given it had editorial independence (even using NPR as an explicit counter example!) The whole "government-funded" label was only created when Elon got egg on his face.
Twitter Backpedaled On NPR 'State-Affiliated Media' Label
Again this was widely reported.
As others pointed out, how are you to make an argument that there were NO Twitter shenanigans if you have not even examined the most prominently reported ones?
And has any anti-Musk/anti-Tesla idiots apologized for their lies and FUDs about Musk and Tesla? Never. So who is the better angel here?
They aren't public figures though, so it hardly matters what their opinions are or if they apologize. Musk however is a huge public figure and what he says has way more influence (something he even actively makes to ensure by boosting his own account artificially).
Model 3 also had big increase in sales in 2018/2019 time frame, comparing to 2016/2017, so the sales # argument doesn't make sense.
Not in an absolute sense. It was still a relative trickle. Plus the more popular Model Y wasn't launched yet.
And there're many many explanations you can give product-wise, just look at all the FUDs main stream media created for Tesla: Mass recalls, fires, FSD delay/accidents (Dan O'Dowd paid for anti-Tesla ads), "brake doesn't work", price hike, price drop, etc etc.
I'm not claiming it has no effect whatsoever, I'm saying there's no evidence to show it has any effect.
Of course there is never going to be a fully conclusive causal link outside of a very detailed and comprehensive survey that would not make sense for companies to do, but there's plenty of anecdotal and correlative evidence that it played at least some role. This isn't a matter that needs to be established "beyond reasonable doubt," in my book as it seems to be in yours, but it's pretty clear we are at a point of agree to disagree.
