Um. Two things, and then I'll stop.
First: If you read
@Papafox's postings, it's
very clear that there are forces inimical to Tesla.
@Papafox's usual diatribes are about market makers and hedge funds who do naked shorting for a living.
The interesting bit about that is that, over time, it's been reported over and over again that the shortsellers have
lost money. Ridiculous amounts of same. If that's true.. then where is the money coming from? Hold that thought for a bit.
Second: I'm a refugee from the tesla.com forums, which closed down in 2019 or so. And the
way it closed down was more than a bit instructive. There were posters who were clearly pump-and-dump short sellers, who would come in, say something utterly horrid about Tesla, then Never Be Seen Again. It got to be that they were almost always recognizable.
And then, there were the trolls. They had an M.O.. Some innocent would show up with a new Tesla and some basic questions. If said innocent was lucky, said questions would be answered by the regulars. But if one of the trolls answered, said troll would answer with correct answers. And engage that innocent and others. And, after a bit, the troll would start spouting falsehoods. One in particular I remember: That person (?) would conflate energy and power at every opportunity; would claim preconditioning would empty out half the battery; and make it seem that the innocent had made a Bad Choice.
Interestingly, the troll would post at, literally, all hours. And at semi-regular intervals during these hours, the writing style would change. And it wasn't just this one troll - there was a gang of them, at least by the poster names, maybe a total of 20 "people".
I'm putting quote marks on that "people" because a number of us became convinced that this was a paid-for-by-somebody outfit, or outfits, whose purpose was to pollute Google Search and the like with bad information about Teslas. At the time, and even now, Teslas get sold by word-of-mouth and people doing research about the cars on-line. Do a search about Tesla reliability? One or more of the trolls' posts would be near the top of the search reports.
It got worse. The trolls started running false accusations against the reliable regulars; one of whom, if memory serves, was accused of sexual innuendo. This got the regular banned by
Tesla for a bit, until some back-and-forth got the regular reinstated.
Tesla, clearly, did not want to invest serious money into moderating the forum. They made several attempts at making the forum self-moderating (one could vote a post out of existence, for a bit), which the trolls promptly used to ban posts by regulars. After several attempts by Tesla to clean things up, and actual staff-hours obviously becoming required in order to continue, Tesla decided to pull the plug. I believe the forums are still all there, frozen, but that was that.
So, coming back to this bit about money. One clue was that at least two of the trollish types weren't just posting on the Tesla forums; there was a forum being run by Ford for their upcoming electric Mustang, and post graphics and other convincing material from a particular poster on both Tesla and Ford was showing on both places. Interestingly, the troll would badmouth Tesla on the Tesla forum, pointing out how superior the Ford was, and vice-versa on the Ford forums. And this was that 24-hours-a-day entity.
So, analyses on Oil Companies, world-wide, show that they make, in profits, roughly $3B a day. Um. A bit of spare change to throw some FUD might do something. And then there's traditional auto companies. One might think that individuals-who-are-not-dumb-as-rocks in those companies might realize what a steamroller Tesla was becoming. And would Do Something to, well, slow down the steamroller. It's not just me who've been saying things like this: Sandy Munroe, for one, has pointed this out, too.
So, do we have those kinds of trolls around here? Good question. On the one hand, we've got, thank $DIETY, actual human moderators who don't, typically, take any *Sugar*. I don't know if there's a thread around here where the moderators have competitions on just how far they've booted obvious trolls, but wouldn't be surprised if there was.
But the operative word here is, 'obviously'. Just because the free-ranging tesla.com forums have closed, doesn't mean that the individuals who brought that about have gone away. I would imagine that they're still out there. Sure, Facebook, that's almost traditional. But I'd be highly surprised if we didn't have at least some, well, paid-for trolls wandering around here. If they get obvious, they get booted.
Ha. It's kind of like reading the Screwtape Letters, where a higher-up demon is remonstrating with a less experienced demon about what, and what not, to do. Actually
killing somebody isn't exactly good for the Demon side if a bunch of angels show up and take the soul to heaven; the idea is to
corrupt the souls, starting off slow and working one's way up.
So, do we have paid-for trolls around? Probably. Is any trollish poster paid-for? Probably not, there are people with negative opinions. But when repetitive negativity and falsehoods from particular posters gets a bit thick, then that's what the Ignore button is for.
