Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical Crossroads, The Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company and Neuralink. And I'm your host, Will Walden. Back in December 17th of 2020, two reported on Elon Musk banning numerous accounts suspending journalists and the third largest Tesla shareholder wants Musk to step down as CEO from Tesla.
We're going to do a rewind and look at this episode from back then a couple years ago, see where we're at now compared to where we were. Let's talk about a little bit of Elon Musk controversy going on. There's been a lot going on with Elon lately, especially on the Twitter front, and there's some technical things we should talk about. There's some business stuff we need to talk about, and there's
also some personal things. And one of the most prominent users that has been tracking Elon Musk throughout the time that they've had their account on Twitter has just been banned for doxing. And if you're not familiar what doxing is, it's basically sharing the location or other details of a person with a malicious intent.
The account in question is at Elon Jet, and I used to use this Twitter account to track and see when Elon Musk was coming to Brownsville, TX. Because when you know Elon is showing up in Brownsville, TX, it's probably something along the lines of a very important test that they were doing with Starship or maybe he was going there for some other reason. That's important deal for SpaceX. So I would use the account every once in a while.
I'd say, hey, Elon's coming down to Brownsville and like it didn't really give you real time tracking information to give you an approximate time when Elon would show up. It says it's banned. Now you can't see a lot of the older tweets that they had, but basically what they would show you is a time when Elon would leave in approximate time when Elon would show up in Brownsville. So I would deduce from that that Elon was going to be, say, if he's going to show up on a Tuesday.
And I'd be like, oh, Elon's going to be here on the in the afternoon on Tuesday. So by the time Elon is here in the afternoon on Tuesday, I'll have some news to report probably the next day. So I would use it as a tool. Now something else happened recently in Elon's life that was a little bit more malicious according to Elon, and this is his tweet ex pressing that he was stalked and somebody was malicious towards him due to doxing.
According to the rules on Twitter, you are not allowed to dox people. You aren't supposed to show their exact location or their nearby location if they aren't aware of it. So the account was banned, but also Not only that, not only was the Elon Jet account banned, there were several reporters and journalists accounts banned due
to reporting on this issue. The silencing of these prominent voices raises regulatory heat on Twitter with the EU and possibly Elon's other companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, which is a big recipient of government funding through the Department of Defense for SpaceX and Tesla for subsidies for E VS. And there were online protest news organization the Times, CNN, various other publications,
and online outlets. They all demanded Elon to explain why he did this, and supporters of these journalists argued on Twitter that the move was punitive at best because Elon hasn't provided any proof that these tracking systems that Elon Jett was using were harming him in any way, or anybody else for that matter. And to top it all off, lawmakers in the European Union may go offensive on this. Vier Dorova, vice president of the European Commission, said.
This may have violated the E US Digital Services Act in its freedom. Its Media Freedom Act, she tweeted. News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying. This is reinforced under our Media Freedom Act. Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines and sanctions soon. The Digital Services Act serves as kind of a rule book for platforms like Twitter servicing the The block the EU.
It goes into effect next year and it carries a fine of about 6% of global revenue for companies that break the rules. Musk also suspended several other flight tracker accounts at this time, which are dedicated to planes owned by Russian oligarchs or the US government, and in a group voice chat on Twitter Thursday night on a Spaces chat, what if the band reporters defended the work to Elon Musk? This is where it gets really interesting.
And they insisted he didn't publish the Twitter boss's address, didn't say anything about where Elon was. Musk got upset and said no, that's not true at all. But then Musk left. The chat just left. And I want you to hear this because I think you're gonna get something out of this. You're gonna see how Elon acts when he's confronted by these journalists.
Elon, thank you for joining. I am hoping that you can give a little more context about what has happened in the last few hours with a handful of journalists being banned. Yeah. Well. As I'm sure everyone of you who's been Dachshund would agree, you know, showing real time information about somebody's location is inappropriate.
And I think everyone on this poll would not like that to be done for to them and and, but there is not going to be any distinction in the future between journalists or both journalists and and regular people. Everyone's going to be treated the same. They're not special because you're a journalist. You're just. You're you're just. You're you're a Twitter. You're just you're a citizen, so no. Especially your docs. Your docs. You get suspended in a story.
So and and and and and and Ban evasion. Ban evasion. Or like or or trying to be clever about it like. Oh, I posted a link to the real time information. It's obviously that is obviously simply trying to evade the the the meaning. That is, there's no different from hidden paste than actually
showing real time. So when you're saying posting a link to it, I mean some of the people like Drew and and Ryan Mack from the New York Times who were were banned were were, you know, they were reporting on it in the course of sort of pretty normal journalistic endeavors. You consider that like a tricky attempt at ban evasion. You show the link to the real time information ban evasion, obviously. I I drew I don't think you were posting the real time
information right? I mean, well you're you're suggesting that we're sharing your address, which is not not true. And you're suggesting that we're we're posting we never I I never posted your address. You posted a link to the address.
We posted a link we in in the course of reporting about Elon Jet. We posted links to Elon Jet which are now not online and now banned on on Twitter and and Twitter also of course marks even the Instagram and Macedon accounts of Elon Jet as as harmful using you know, we have to admit acknowledge using the same exact link blocking technique that you have criticized as part of the Hunter Biden New York Post story in 2020. So what is different here and there for me?
It's it's no more acceptable for me, For you, that is. For me, same thing so. Anyway, so it's unacceptable what you're doing. No. What? Your your docs. You get suspended and the story. That's it. Elon, I have to ask. I mean, I think what everyone's wondering is it, it's highly unusual for journalists at the Washington Post and the New York Times to be how their Twitter accounts suspended. And it just so happens that it's, you know, the the boss in charge, you know.
So, you know, what's the deal there? Oh, I think. I think Elon has has left. The show is brought to you by Backblaze. I use Backblaze to back up my podcast, my video files, all of my writing stuff and all my photos. And you get unlimited computer backup for Macs and PCs. For just $7.00 a month. You can back up your own documents, photos, videos, drawings, projects, all of your data and access your backed up data from anywhere in the world
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really easy to use. So go to backplays.com/elon, backblaze.com/elon, backblaze.com/elon. I guess that's unfortunate, because yeah, I mean. Yes, what the difference is? There, you know not. Trying to I was raring though guys, and some of the suspected accounts belong to reporters who recently covered or tweeted about the dispute between Musk and Elon Jet.
Now, Elon Jet, His real name is Jack Sweeney, and he's a freshman in Florida. And he was tweeting about Elon's private jet, the approximate location of it. There's public flight data for his jet, and it's out there for anybody else to find and to use and post anywhere they want to. But Elon doesn't want it on Twitter. So think about this for a second. It's a private company, and private companies can make their own rules as long as they follow the rule of the land.
So like we were saying before the EU, the Block, they have some laws coming into the books early next year that will find people and find organizations for this kind of behavior. But also it's a private company in the United States.
So Elon can do whatever he wants to do to make the platform however he wants to make it. And if he says the doxing and real time data isn't a good thing on the platform, then sure, he can ban those people and he can make a rule that shows that that's not an acceptable use case for the platform. And Musk also said that the suspension of these accounts for the journalist had been lifted. OK, so they've been appealed. Elon has lifted the suspensions.
But also Elon said they posted my exact real time location, basically assassination coordinates, in direct violation of Twitter terms of service. Seven day suspension for doxing some time away from Twitter is good for the soul, Musk said in a later tweet. But assassination coordinates, because a jet was being tracked, I don't know if he was going a little bit above in that, if you know what I'm saying.
If he's talking about, you know, he was afraid for his life, you know, somebody literally jumped on the car of his child during this whole fiasco That was the Elan jet fiasco. And they rattled around a little bit. And then Elon, which is a funnier thing, not even funny. This is kind of a, it's a, it's a it's a horrible thing to do to somebody. He basically doxed a person, his own Twitter account with 150 million followers. But Elon posted a video on his Twitter account of somebody
sitting in their car. They had a mask on. They had a, you know, they had a hat and a mask on. They were dressed in black. He didn't have any proof that this person was doing anything wrong, but he posted this person's likeness, and not only that, their license plate number on his Twitter account and said and asked if anybody had information about this person. So he's basically asking somebody else to dox this person for him. Hey, do you have any information about this person?
And if you do send it over to me, if that's not something that we should be informed about and aware about and think about in a little bit broader context, I don't know what is. So the little bit more context about the the rattling of Elon and his child. I'll get into that in one second. And in order to unsuspended all of these accounts, Elon posted a poll on Twitter. Now this is where it gets a little bit more interesting too. Posted a poll on Twitter to his 141 million followers.
The poll was unsuspended. Accounts who doxed my exact location in real time now there's 4 answers here, now, tomorrow, seven days from now and longer. 43% voted for now, 4% voted for tomorrow, 14% voted for seven days from now, and 39% voted for longer. So seven days from now and longer got the most amount of votes together and now and tomorrow equaled 47%. So seven days from now and
longer have more than 50%. So people thought that maybe people should be banned for a little bit longer than a day or two, you know, So Elon posted that and he apparently didn't like the way that that turned out. He, I guess he didn't like the way that the poll ran and it wasn't. You know we don't really have any back end information to see what Elon was thinking with this poll if he should have made it easier, but he did.
He made it easier. He made it easier into a a poll with just two question or two answers here. So as opposed to the four he did 2 answers, one was now and one was in seven days and the tweet said unsuspended accounts. Who docks my exact location in real time. The first answer is now and the 2nd is in seven days now got 58 percent, 58.7% of the votes and in seven days he's got 41.3% of the votes. So now one easily with 58.7% of
the votes. So and that was December 15th 2022 at 11:34 PM and we have a verdict for this. Everybody has been unbanned that has been suspended for doxing his exact location in real time. As Elon puts it, he he didn't put it in quotes, he just put it as my exact location in real time and remember these his assassination coordinates as he put them and he wants to unsuspend them now. Does that seem safe to you? Just think about that for a second. If these people are going to
really dox you. If Elon thinks that there's a harm being done by these people, would he unsuspend them? Critical. Think that for a second. If you know people are out to get you, would you unsuspend them now or in seven days or ever? So he left it up to the voting on Twitter, which I don't know if you trust that there were 3.690639 votes, 3.69 million votes on this, and 58.7% said yes, now do it. So Elon said, OK, we're going to do it.
So he unbanned those accounts, those people that were tweeting his exact assassination coordinates. So, and and I I see this as somebody who likes to think of both sides of things, you know, even something like this, you have to be journalistic about it. You have to think of both sides of it. Were these journalists thinking, look, we're just reporting out a story, You know, this is going to grab headlines, This is going
to make us some money. This is going to drive people to our article, which is going to bump up our numbers. We can keep our jobs for a little bit, you know. That's kind of how journalism has always gone. There are journalistic in integral parts of our communities, right? So we have people that just report the news. No spin, no catchy headlines, Just a picture of the thing that's going on or a video of the thing that's going on and facts, right?
Or you can write about some stuff with some crazy headlines and a crazy content that'll get a bunch of clicks. And these people were reporting on the Elon Jet account and saying, yeah, OK, he's following. He's been following Elon for the longest time. But also in an earlier tweet about three months ago, Elon posted that when he takes control of Twitter, he's not going to or is 34 days ago, I believe less.
It was about a month ago. He's not going to ban the Elon jet account because why would he? It's free speech, right? Elon is a proponent of all free speech. Everything should be allowed. And if this data is public data that anybody can go out and get, it's literally transmitted over the airwaves for pilots and for airports. Anybody can tap into this. It's just data, you know. Do you suppress that free speech by suspending that account, by doxing a location?
That's what Elon says. It's a it's a dox of a location. Do you suppress that as free speech? If it's free and open data, is that free to use? Is it, you know, it's out there in the airwaves. Anybody can get it. Think about it for a second. What would you do in this situation? Elon says it's a it's a security risk for him and his family. And I totally understand that. And I'm I'm not trying to invoke
any emotions with anybody here. But if if it's going to harm you and your family or anybody else's family or anybody else's children, anybody's, parents, grandparents, friends, anything, should there be limitations on this sort of speech? Is that sort of the going into a a movie theater or a public place in yelling fire? Is that the same thing? I want to think about that for a moment because I'm doing reporting on the incidents that happened.
But also this is a broader sort of conversation that people should be having about a social media at this time. Because somebody just took over one of the biggest social media platforms on earth and now has the reins to it and it has all of the power over and can make kind of arbitrary choices what the rules are. So is this OK to track somebody's plane? Due to public information, you know, can you use public information information for that? So that's where Elon is at right
now. He believes it's doxing and he unsuspended the accounts who doxed his exact location in real time. He unsuspended all of them. So he was true to his word in that sense, suspended them, gave him a little warning and said, hey, don't do this again. And those accounts have been published again. They can publish things in their past tweets. If they are doxing, they've been removed.
But also if you try to post links to other websites or other apps that track Elon Jet, there's a new Reddit, there's a new subreddit about Elon Jet, and it tracks Elon's real time in his jet. And you cannot post to that anymore because of Twitter's new rules banning any sort of real time exact location data that you post to Twitter. So just something to think about. And on November 9th Elon Musk tweeted, Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.
We will keep what works and change what doesn't. So you have it right there from Elon that he said we're going to make mistakes. And if you see the banning of Elon Jet or those journalists as a mistake, that's a possibility. Investors in Tesla that are worried about what Elon's doing. Over at Twitter, Elon has promised that Tesla would
benefit from his Twitter buyout. But Wall Street is thinking the other way and he's some people at Wall Street are thinking that he's using Tesla as sort of a bank account for Twitter. SEC filings revealed Elon sold $3.6 billion in Tesla stock. So analysts have been speculating that this money will help cover Twitter's deficits. And that's kind of a concerning
thing for a lot of investors. You don't want the head of the company to draw money out of that company and put it into something else that you don't know what this $3.6 billion or how this $3.6 billion is going to make you money. That's what you're in it for, right? So you buy stocks in a company because you want to make money. You want to support their company.
Of course you know you want to support Tesla in whatever they do. But also you put money into this company because you want to see a return on your investment. If you put $100 in Disney in the beginning, you are rich beyond compare. I don't know if you're rich, I don't know what the numbers are to be honest with you, but you have you have a good a good amount of money. Now if you put 1000 dollars, 2000 dollars, $3000, $20,000 into Disney at the at the beginning, you have a pretty
good chunk of change. And you know there's there's a bunch of people at these at these meetings and these investor meetings that are saying we don't really like this. We don't understand why you're taking 3.6 billion dollars of your stocks and trading them out, selling them all and then taking this money and putting into Twitter, which that doesn't have anything to do with Tesla. Why you? Why you spending $3.6 billion of
your stock? And mind you This is Money that Elon has earned through his his options through the company. So it's his money. But also these stocks are going out to other people and not being held by Elon at this point. So this brings the total of Tesla stock that Musk sold this year to $23 billion. People thinks this is kind of a shake up, because if you take $23 billion away from Tesla and you give it to other people, you know, sell it to other people, of course you're gonna make the
money. Elon's gonna use that money for things like SpaceX. He's gonna use that money for things like Twitter, Boring Company and his charitable endeavors, but also this recent $3.6 billion. It was in the same time frame that Elon took over Twitter. So Elon promised that in the long haul, Tesla would benefit from his ownership of Twitter, though, and analysts aren't
really on board with that. Dan Ives at Wedbush wrote in a report Thursday that Twitter remains a nightmare for investors because Musk has been using, quote, Tesla as his own ATM machine to keep funding. End Quote. So ATM machine. I've always had a problem with that because ATM means automated automated teller machine. But if you do ATM machine, automated teller machine machine, it's always silly. But I I digress. Twitter's you know their their stock's down a little bit too.
There's some shareholders that are not really happy. The third largest individual shareholder calls for a new CEO as Twitter continues to take the money away from Tesla. So patience and Tesla is wearing thin and Elon is spending a lot of his time running Twitter at this point. But Elon tweeted not so long ago that he is not really in the day-to-day operations of both SpaceX and Tesla at this point. He does help out, he does his thing.
Now Elon has people in charge to do the day-to-day operations for Tesla and SpaceX, Boring Company and Neuralink as well. Those companies aren't small, fast, nimble startups anymore. They're legit companies, and they're making millions and billions of dollars hand over fist. So he doesn't need to be there every day, sleeping on the floor like he used to, because that's something you would do at a startup. You'd spend all of your time there because you need to make this thing work.
Tesla's third largest individual shareholder, Kogiyang Lio is calling for a new CEO of Tesla, which would allow Musk to focus on his other ventures like SpaceX and Twitter. Aleo said Elon abandoned Tesla and Tesla has no working CEO. Tesla needs and deserves to have working full time CEO. That's what they tweeted on Wednesday, and they have a 22.7 million share position in Tesla as of September and it's worth
$3.57 billion. They built their stake in Tesla during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the stock traded at a split and adjusted price of about $40 compared to today's 150. Some odd dollars and it fluctuates a little bit. It was $155 at the time of this recording. It's been going down a little bit and Tesla shares are down 55% Year to date. In The stock has erased about $225 billion in market value
since Musk close. His deal to buy Twitter in late October raised about $225 billion in market value, and the decline came at the time when the S&P 500 climbed more than 3% up. So investor concerns are real. Wedbush Dan Ives called Musk's Twitter venture circus and quote the Twilight Zone. So Elon is in charge of Twitter, taking time away from his time at Tesla and $3.5 billion Stake investor wants more time with Elon or wants a new CEO.
If Elon doesn't want to leave Tesla, he could have another role in the company. Still get his shares, Still get his money and use that money for Twitter. Use that money for SpaceX. Every year he takes up money for his ventures on the side. He's an employee, according to, you know, some people in the company, you know, some higher ups. The stock holders there, they're the people in charge. They're the people that have all the money invested in Tesla. So if they call for a new CEO,
they could get a new CEO. They could, they could force a new CEO. You know, Tesla's grown up. Tesla is a big company now. They're a corporation. They, they make vehicles. E VS for millions of people now. And it's a thing to be in the business and to be in charge of the business and be there in day-to-day operations or to have five other things going on like Elon does. And if you can take care of those five other things, that's great. Most people can't.
If I have 5 things to do, I would go crazy, especially on the scale that Elon has. I mean, I don't think anybody could really take care of that in such a way that it would be beneficial to everybody involved in every single one of those companies. If I were in charge, all the one, all of those companies wouldn't make it, to be honest with you. But Elon has a way about him that he can do multiple tasks in a very, very high level that most people can't even think about doing.
So is it OK for him to be let go as the CEO and take another role in the company, maybe head engineer, you know, something like that? Who knows? We'll see you in the next few weeks, maybe a month or so to see what the shares do at Tesla and if the stockholders, if the shareholders are going to put Elon's feet to the fire and either have him spend more time on Tesla or get rid of him and put somebody in his place. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your
support. If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly appreciate it. It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never miss an episode. And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you want to support the show even more, go to patreon.com/stage Zero and please take care of yourselves and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.