Musk Admits He Doesn't Fact-Check Himself and Has Two Burner Accounts on Twitter
rollingstone.com
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.
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.
I guarantee you that at least one of those burners has at least once instance of the N-word on it.
Guarentee you he calls himself African American on that hidden burner.
Another old rich white guy identifying as a gay black man online?.... curious...🤣💯... interesting....true.... concerning...WE MUST RECLAIM RHODESIA'S INDEPENDENCE....uhh sorry that was the AI making a post on my account, now as I was saying about population collapse....
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
He is an actual idiot.
When his name first became popular, I was like others thinking, hey, this guy sounds like a genius, maybe I should pay attention. Then I did pay attention and he ventured into my industry: comp sci and user experience. That’s when I realised he was an utter moron. When you know more about what he’s talking about than he does, it becomes obvious.
The fact that people think that he didn't buy twitter because he thought he could print more money is frightening
Umm, some things are more important than money, namely, power. He bought twitter because it allows him to silence critics and break up a social media platform that was allowing citizens globally to communicate and take stands against governments.
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.
It does seem like he's ignorant on many subjects, but if he is a complete idiot, how did he manage to make the right investments to become among the richest of the world?
Because of dad's money (it seems there's no clear information about the money from the mine https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/)? That's a good start, sure, but many smart people, with a similar good start or more, try to become richer and don't reach this level. So what's the additional element?
Is it really not an acceptable explanation that he had good guts at detecting the bubbles and did multiple smart investments at the right times (early internet website, internet payment, electric cars, low cost space)?
Let's try to have an opinion of a higher quality than what Musk usually writes on his media, that is to say, not solely based on some strong feelings.
I believe a combination of inertia and "throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks" may be applicable here.
If his recent ventures are anything to go by, he's an "idea guy" that makes a convincing case of sounding smart enough to succeed. He makes big promises about revolutionizing something, and because of his persona as a successful inventor, investors and fans buy into those ideas.
With support behind him, he's free to burn other people's money in the hopes that one of his fantastical projects actually succeeds. And if it doesn't, just sweep it under the rug like the Hyperloop.
Or, you know, he could always use his capital to fund others' ideas and then take credit as though they were his original idea, like with Tesla.
Seems like a good explanation, can a complete idiot do that?
Yes. Cunning =/= intelligence. A rat can reach the center of the maze off the smell of the cheese, not an understanding of geometry or topography.
Aren't there thousands of rich born cunning "rats" that didn't make as much?
Did I fucking stutter? It's a function of mass of capital + opportunity (Peter Thiel wants your booty hole) = Inertia which breeds either people like you spending time on the defense of the morally reprehensible. Assuming you're not the man himself, fucker has the right amount of time.
One again, mass of capital + opportunity (luck) = Inertia persistent enough for fucks like you to eat off perpetuity in the hope of scraps.
Please refrain from personal attacks. I understand your point otherwise.
I'm not defending him, I even negatively criticized him two times in my initial comment. I'm defending having a rational opinion about him, but it's very hard, as you can observe by your own reaction to my questioning.
The fact that not all rats are given a maze with cheese in the middle to run to, should not require explanation to any moderately affected by the human condition person. You are owed basic respect in the form of your thoughts being listened to and your place as a person respected.
You are however, owed nothing, when it comes to civility.
That is a social contract.
One which you strain by repeatedly being contrarian to the point it's either a sign of extreme neurodivergence (fine, my attitude isn't normal either), or just disingenuous.
In the case of the later, pound sand. If the former, do you have any actual doubts left as to why people feel this way? Or can I ask you to get the fuck off my sunlight yet, Elon?
Read the first rule of this community.
Although I don't think I am owed it, I think it's a pretty common minimal rule for discussion. So, if it's not respected, I will just consider we cannot discuss and ignore you in the future.
I either agree with you or I am neurodivergent/disingenuous/Musk? What kind of thoughts dictatorship is that?
I think I understand why they feel this way: it's psychological more tolerable to demonize (or call a complete idiot in this case) someone you hate, especially when you are powerless against his misconducts such as destroying a valuable communication platform.
But I still think demonizing him now is as stupid as idolizing him a couple of years ago, which many people here did.
I prefer to fight the hate he uses for his personal marketing with rationality rather than more hate, I think this kind of person just feeds on your hate, even if it's against him.
Listen Plato. You're not in the same universe as my point, yet you illustrate yours greatly. I'm the neurodivergent and you're just being a pedant was the other option in my message.
Ignore me, I have no desire to keep putting plucked chickens before you in the hopes you stop repeating the incompleteness that makes a man.
I don't mind learning to go around whatever condition you may have, just let me know, so I can try to include it in my understanding of what you are saying.
My goal is not to be pedant, my goal is to trigger discussion where I feel there's some room for progress, either mine or others', and see if it happens.
Failing upward is a thing.
that feels like my entire career
Obviously
Clearly!
He frequently picked markets where he was bought out for hefty sums and the rest is government contracts. Tesla was the first thing bought that shipped a somewhat usable product and you can see what he's done to it.
He could have ruled the EV market but he had to ship inferior products, waste money crushing unions, overstate its capabilities, and now Tesla has a bunch of cars they can't sell.
What right investments? He was born into money and failed into getting anything from his X.com (banking!) website which was bought out by PayPal long after he was fired. The only reason he got anything out of that at all was he'd kept the stocks around.
He "invested" in Tesla so that he could get a cool car (he royally fucked over the actual founders in the process).
Low cost space? Low cost space? Do you live on Mars or some shit? Every one of those "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly" events cost over one Billion. That ain't cheap buddy.
So why aren't the other tens of thousands of people borned in comparable money not becoming as rich?
Yes, low cost compared to what NASA or Ariane, for exemple, had been doing until then.
most people born into wealth do not flaunt it like Musk or Trump do. They are the exception not the rule.
they do so because of ego. They NEED the attention. Meanwhile, most billionaires don't go around publicly buying things like that. They do have investments similar, but they do so without appointing themselves as god emperor of the company.
The fact that Musk insists he must be the public face for any company he puts money into evidences extreme narcissism and the belief he is a genius.
Meanwhile. Other than seeing money and being a part time engineer for Space X. He doesn't have any real direct success for actual labour / work he's done. It's his inherited money that seems to have done the bulk of work. Buying in to banking, buying into space x, buying into tesla, buying into X. All essentially ideas by other people who just needed seed money.
You've moved to points about flaunting, having an egocentric media presence, and the absence of personal engineering success. I think I agree with those, but those are different points. My point was about how he became that rich, compared to other people with similar parents money, if he is a complete idiot.
But you're still wrong. Lots of people who inherited money grew their wealth, without the need to have their face in the media constantly.
the reason we see so much of Musk is because he purposely puts himself in the public. There are more billionaires than just Musk who have grown their wealth without you ever knowing their names. Arguably, there are far FAR more of these no-name billionaires than the Musk type.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/25-richest-billionaires-inherited-fortunes-010158127.html
some examples.
As other's have said, He has used his inheritance to create momentum and a cult of personality around himself, which has helped him make money despite being proven time and time again to be a business idiot.
So Far, He has been removed from Paypal by the board for bad leadership. He was removed from chairman of Tesla for illegal leadership and bad leadership. And all evidence has shown that he has also tanked the value of Twitter.
he has definitely convinced you through his cult of personality that he's some business genius. Rather than just a loud asshole with lots of money to burn.
That's still your point not mine, you're arguing against a point I didn make. I even told you I agree with this one.
You're using a straw man argument, I never said I consider him a business genius. Just reread what I said, there's nothing else to over interpret about it to make it easier to shut down.
You're lack of understanding about this doesn't constitute others arguing in a fallacious matter. We are not arguing a strawman but explaining to you HOW Musk got to where he was. Which is in SPITE of his intelligence, not because of it.
You're arguing your own fallacy based on your own lack of ability to grasp concepts. Congradulations, you're guilty of Personal Incredulity fallacy:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/personal-incredulity
I assume you think Trump is a very stable genius.
That's quite the opposite of the nuanced discussion I stupidly tried to have, but I guess your comment was not serious.
You sounded like you were arguing that rich means smart.
My point is becoming that rich does mean some skills and cannot be achieved by a total idiot as stated in the top comment.
Trump is that rich. What are his skills?
I think mostly communication, since his multiple frauds cases show he's not actually good at business, and having some instinctive understanding of what he should say to appeal to the poor uneducated white people who are afraid of falling lower. I feel like in the case of Trump, it's even more important to not use his populist and hate based tactics.
Oh yes, those excellent communication skills.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-sentence/
Link it to the second part of my comment, it does sound like crazy to educated or non-indoctrinated people, but it worked incredibly well with his base, as well as almost half of voters. There some kind of skill there, how would you call it?
I would call it a combination of a very well-funded, well-crafted campaign, well-funded and well-crafted by people other than Donald Trump, combined with the momentum that drew and the very American idea that if you worship a rich and famous person, you could get rich and famous yourself.
Donald Trump's wealth was earned by his racist father and the rest of it was failing upward and being used by everyone from the Mafia to the Republican Party.
Any reputable sources about this point?
"Not fact checking" and "spewing objectively dumb shit" are not the same thing.
True, but this was a legal admission. He said it under oath.
The whole article is pretty wild.
Elmo never misses an opportunity to demonstrate what an utter moron he is.
Hilarious.
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.
Twisting the definition of truth to lick the boot of musk. What a tool.
So you are basically saying to mute the opposition to the agenda of power?
No, I don’t accept the proposition. There is plenty of false and unverifiable content on FB, reddit, IG and so on.
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.
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).
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.
Do you have sources that show he intentionally censored voices? He would be a huge hypocrite depending on how that was done.
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
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.
“incentivizing and feeding information for possible murder of an individual” is the dramatic excuse musk used, correct. “Assassination coordinates”. I’m not sure where you got incentivized from though. They were accounts that discussed the elonjet account which republished freely available public flight information. Note that musk reinstated these accounts:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/17/elon-musk-reinstates-twitter-accounts-of-suspended-journalists
As the platform owner, there are also other ways he could reduce the reach of accounts, which would be difficult to independently prove.
No I'm pretty sure truth is just information that maps to material reality.
Like, it's more complex than that, and if anyone wanted to have a serious discussion we should probably lay down sonevprimers and talk about thought and models and standardized abstractions like language, but without getting about 5000 pages deep; truth is just that; information that maps to material reality. It remains true if it is not known, and a lie is not made truth if everybody fails to call it bullshit.
Bad bot
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.
What he said as that account is the extra weird part. Some rather inappropriate things.
I'm gonna guess he has way more than two burners. The dude is an addict, tweeting is all he has.
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.
I liked it so much, I bought the company!
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
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".
Hey now, this is Lemmy. There's no room for nuance, just unbridled pedantry.
Yeah, he's clearly too far down the reddit rabbithole.
Has to "uhm ackshually" about everything.
For a plug thats not a "burner", its the trap phone. Hearing lemmy nerds talk about this stuff is amusing
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.
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.
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.
He’s the rightest guy in the room.
That’s just a corollary to Worthington’s Law
Classic & relevant Mr. Show sketch
One flew over the Twitter’s nest
I want to know if one of his burner accounts is Adrian Dittmann.
Alex Jones thinks it's Elon. Maybe. I don't know.
Dittman has come up on Knowledge Fight a couple of times.
https://knowledgefight.com/
Exactly what made me think that. If Dan's still not sure...
Oh god same! It's uncanny how similar their voices and speaking manners are.
When you're rich enough, you can fight and settle all of the slander cases you want.
Only 2?
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.
He's one of those CEOs that teams have two meetings for: one where the CEO joins and they only say things the CEO wants to hear, and a second to actually discuss the relevant issues.
Not far off from the truth and a big part of the reason SpaceX actually gets some cool stuff done.
More like two million bot accounts
At this point, he doesn't need those burner accounts. Go ahead and say what's on your mind, Elon.
So @emonlusk and @loneskum are not real user??
What about @melonhusk and @skulnemo?
So disinfo is the currency of X now. Their gas bill is gonna be outrageous
Why bother trying to tell the truth when there are no consequences for lying.
Is this news been checked?
So what?
He says what he feels and its not always factually correct. Sounds like a human to me. If people believe everything he says thats on them.
It’s a problem when it’s defaming someone.
He owns the platform and actively dismantled fact checking and moderation. Your point is shit.
Wait, you're saying its not possible for people to call him out for being wrong on X?
Found your alt account, Elon, nice try.
He is deliberately using his celebrity status as an avenue to spread disinformation and promote his personal agenda in a public forum. The public that he is attempting to manipulate that occupy said forum have every right to ridicule and criticize his attempts.
Not everyone is able to purchase a popular social media platform in an effort to enhance the visibility and normalization of their beliefs.
If his questionable opinions "sound human to you," then so should the public response that they create.
What makes you think he is deliberately spreading disinformation?
He says what he feels. It is a responsibility for the people to not take everything he says as fact. Its like talking to a friend who says some wild shit to get it off their chest. Doesn't mean you need to change your opinion because of it.
I see the theoretical idea of him intentionally trying to shape the opinion of his sheep enough to do what he wants for him. But I don't personally buy it. Albeit it is good to be aware of the possibility.
OK pedo guy.
We call people like this with zero filter who constantly attack and insult others "Assholes"
Most people don't behave like this. And it's really no excuse for him spewing shit unfiltered. this is a terrible defense.
Telling his advertisers that if they don't like that he allows antisemitism and hatred on X, to fuck off, in person in an auditorium is not "human". it's disgusting and evidences that He himself believes in spreading hatred as long as it makes him rich/powerful
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/elon-musk-bob-iger-should-be-fired-immediately
this isn't how you run a business. (unless you're perfectly fine with spreading hatred)
Lolol neither do any of you. And none of you are posting your public information either.
I regularly check my facts. And I admit it when I get them wrong.
I wish more people would do both.
I have a feeling that even if you do the former, you rarely do the latter.
I have no idea if we have a murderedbywords community here, but let's pretend this reply contains a link to one.
You're definitely not an AI, @IsThisAnAI, because an AI wouldn't be stupid enough to defend Musk. Even Grok wouldn't do that.
On the other hand, if it is an AI, then we've finally discovered an AI with sentience, because only something like a human could be this stupid.
He's been allover the site posting the most inane oppositional comments to verything. Either a bot or paid account.
We're also not calling ourselves "Free Speech Absolutionists" or claim Lemmy is “the most accurate, timely and truthful place on the internet,”
what compels people to be defensive about one of the worlds richest oligarchs? If he wants to addresss this he has the platforms and money to do so. He's not some baby who needs to be defended online.