New defamation suit against Elon Musk over tweets reveals how the billionaire spreads misinformation and lurks on secret Twitter accounts.

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.

    • oce 🐆
      -1•8 months ago

      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.

      • Flying Squid
        1•8 months ago

        I think mostly communication,

        Oh yes, those excellent communication skills.

        Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.

        https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-sentence/

        • oce 🐆
          -1•8 months ago

          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?

          • Flying Squid
            1•8 months ago

            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.

            • oce 🐆
              -2•8 months ago

              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,

              Any reputable sources about this point?

              • Flying Squid
                2•8 months ago

                That Donald Trump didn’t fund his own campaign and that it was well-crafted by Republican campaign operatives? You really need sources for that? Because that’s true for pretty much every presidential campaign.

                • oce 🐆
                  -2•8 months ago

                  Not the funding, but rather that he is not the real leader of his campaigns and political objectives, as I think you imply there’s some people in the shadow using him as a front. I’m talking more than some influence or lobbies. I prefer to read reputable new sources about it.