Elon Goes Off Even Further Off The Rails – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

It started when Elon Musk ponied up $44 billion to buy Twitter, which he renamed X. He likes the letter X. He owns SpaceX and xAI. One of his children is known as X, and of course instead for building more electric cars for the mass market — something he claimed was a key objective for Tesla — he diddled and dithered for two years over the Model X, trying to get the falcon-wing doors to work and secure enough of the giant glass windshields from suppliers.

Musk loudly proclaims to anyone who will listen that he is a “free speech absolutist,” whatever that means. Based on his behavior, it seems he believes it really is okay for people to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Just don’t try to spread any progressive messages, though. If you do, the Musk Man will hover down from the top floor at X to put the kibosh on such woke claptrap. The Washington Post tonight is reporting that prominent X accounts advocating for Vice President Kamala Harris have been labeled as spam or restricted in recent weeks, triggering alarm among some Democrats that Elon Musk’s social media platform is tilted in favor of his chosen candidate, former president Donald Trump.

Did Elon Censor “White Dudes For Harris?”

Only a handful of pro-Harris accounts, including one called “White Dudes for Harris,” appear to have been affected. But the recurring issues are raising questions about whether Musk’s platform is intentionally censoring the pages or if the deep staff cuts he made after buying the company in 2022 have left the platform ill-equipped for the surge in political speech ahead of the November 5 election.

“It’s curious,” Ross Morales Rocketto, an organizer of “White Dudes for Harris” said. He reported the group’s account on X was affected twice in the course of a week. “Clearly we’re political, so it just continues to feel like another iteration of Musk Twitter impacting people’s political speech when it not does not align with him.” “White Dudes for Harris” drew more than 200,000 people to an online fundraiser last week that raised more than $4 million, but shortly after the event had its X account suspended. It was reinstated several hours later.

On Tuesday, the group was told by X that its reach on the platform could be restricted because the group’s page “may contain spam or be engaging in other types of platform manipulation,” according to a screenshot shared by organizers. Another account, “Progressives for Harris,” was temporarily suspended and labeled as spam on Friday shortly after the group announced prominent politicians such as Sen. Bernie Sanders would headline an upcoming online rally.

“We’re talking about (a few) episodes out of a lot of Harris content on X,” said Daniel Kreiss, a principal researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina. “But without transparency into why enforcement decisions are being made, given the very strong political activism of the owner, people are going to raise questions.” Damn right they are, especially now that Musk has sued several international corporations he says have conspired together to not advertise on X. Musk says doing so is an antitrust violation, proving once and for all that he may know how to make a rocket fly backwards but lacks the grasp of antitrust law of a first year law student.

Strange Sales Tactics By Elon

“No small group of people should be able to monopolize what gets monetized,” argued X’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino. In an op-ed, the financial editor for The Guardian, Nils Pratley, wonders why companies should be compelled to advertise on certain media outlets. “Come on, you’re running a profit-seeking business, like most of the rest of the media world. If you can’t make the revenues stack up, that’s your problem. If anyone is guilty of showing monopolistic tendencies here, it is X in believing it deserves to be protected from everyday commercial pressures.”

Is it possible that X is floundering and Musk is staring down the barrel of a massive financial implosion? Could Musk actually lose control of his $44 billion bauble? None of us on the outside can know for sure, but his behavior is getting more and more erratic. Losing $44 billion undoubtedly would have an effect on my state of mind, but maybe His Muskness is made of sterner stuff. We shall see, eh?

“No Teslas For Us!” Says German Drug Store Chain

Here’s an interesting news item. Bloomberg is reporting today that German drugstore chain Dirk Rossmann GmbH will no longer purchase Tesla vehicles for its fleet because of Elon’s support for Donald Trump. Rossmann, which has more than 62,000 employees and over 4,700 branches across Europe, announced the decision in a statement Tuesday. The closely held company said that while it will continue to use Teslas already in its fleet for sustainability purposes, it will turn to other manufacturers and models for future vehicle orders.

“Elon Musk makes no secret of his support for Donald Trump. Trump has repeatedly described climate change as a hoax,” Raoul Rossmann, the son of the company’s billionaire founder Dirk Rossmann, said in the statement. “This attitude is in stark contrast to Tesla’s mission to contribute to environmental protection through the production of electric cars.”

Musk endorsed Trump last month on X, minutes after the former president survived an assassination attempt. Musk later confirmed that he was donating to a super political action committee supporting the Republican nominee. Rossmann currently owns 34 Teslas in its fleet of 800 company vehicles, according to a spokesperson. The company buys roughly 180 new cars a year. Germany’s SAP announced earlier this year that it would stop offering Teslas to its employees, citing fluctuating prices that complicated the software company’s fleet management. Car rental firm Sixt said months earlier that it was phasing Teslas out of its fleet for similar reasons.

Perhaps Musk will sue all of them and claim they are in cahoots in a plot to damage Tesla. If he thinks he can compel advertisers to use X, why not compel private corporations to buy your products? One makes about as much sense as the other.

The Takeaway

Actions have consequences, a fact that Elon seems oblivious too. In the world of commerce, corporations are keenly aware of their public image. If someone is promoting a deranged lunatic with an absurd comb-over to be the Grand Imperial Wizard of a zombie government, that person should be aware that his actions may not sit well with some customers. Musk couldn’t care less, of course. He is in his own little world where reality is seldom part of the scene. There is a good chance he has lost his faculties and may be headed for a ride on the disoriented express.

It is getting to the point where his bizarro behavior can no longer be excused by saying, “Oh, Elon is on the spectrum.” It’s more than that. He is now in his own little world and getting nuttier every day. They say the line between genius and insanity is defined by the number of zeros in a person’s bank account, but there may not be enough zeros in the entire world to disguise that Elon has gone over the edge and around the bend. Elon, we hardly know you any more.