Ask HN: Why do HN feel so negatively about Musk?
First, this is a serious post. I think a site like that could use some self-reflecting from time to time.
Every thread about something relating to him is filled with posts describing him negatively.
The top-rated comments are basically all bashing him.
An outsider might think he would be a hero to people around here. Like, he's a guy who is building rockets, says he wants to make human multi-planetary species, bootstrapped the electric car industry, and is involved in all sorts of nerdy stuff.
So, what is behind the attitude?
103 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadI like what he's done with Tesla and SpaceX.
His behavior around Twitter and around politics has been bizzare and erratic and (I think) endangers the good things he's done. It seems like trouble with Twitter could sidetrack Starship which would be a tragedy.
It's that level of evidence.
Now we are all told that the villain of the month is Elon Musk according to the reporters. Time to complain on Twitter!
These are not mutually exclusive things. The primary reason cited for the desire to become multi-planetary is to use other planets as a escape hatch in case something happens. And they are incentived to escape themselves and leave others here to rot. It's much more efficient than trying to save one planet from armageddon every time.
It's actually not. If we can't figure out how to live here, we aren't going to figure out how to live in a less hospitable environment.
Spoken like a true colonialist! ;-)
In the best case scenario, we go to mars and do the same thing again. That's disregarding all the actual problems it would take to get there, and live there. And also disregarding all the problems we actually HAVE to solve about living here (and living, in general).
As someone posting positively, this is due to brigading and downvoting of anything positive. They tend to go to your profile and downvote everything you ever said as well. Luckily they can only do a few pages.
Overall, Musk is brilliant and when he fixes twitter. It will be the place to be.
>So, what is behind the attitude?
Politics; there's a dying political movement which will soon no longer be represented in legislature. It's about to become a religion on the otherhand.
I don't think you can downvote things older than a day or two for what it's worth.
Also; downvoting expires pretty quickly. This isn’t Reddit, you can’t just go back and downvote every comment someone wrote. :/
edit: Changed wording
As I understand brigading, it involves calls from outside for people to come in, which I don't think it happening here at all.
This is an Ask HN. People are generally expected to upvote accurate answers and downvote inaccurate answers.
An answer which includes false accusations of brigading, praises Musk as brilliant, and suggests that all dissension is due to politics is unhelpful, inaccurate, and worth downvoting. As I said before, I'd have downvoted it myself, but it was already sufficiently downvoted.
Here's 3 pretty good definitions, so you can understand me better.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brigading
Basically, the anti-elon crowd is manipulating the discussion on HN through mass downvoting and flagging of anyone they disagree with. The goal is to leave the appearance everyone hates Musk.
In terms of the 'outside or off HN" organization, there is a separate word for that but I can't remember it. Something to do with 'raiding' but this doesn't matter.
You might be right.
Your comment is but a minute or two old, and it's already downvoted. On the other hand, there are already several other - quite immature - comments critical of Musk, not downvoted.
I'm not surprised, I already knew what I was saying was going to be shutdown. No hard feelings.
>You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.
lol as predicted, HN shadow banned me again today. Lets see how long until I can post this reply.
edit/ 1 hour shadow ban this time.
Here's 3 pretty good definitions of brigading, and these agree with me.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brigading
In terms of shadow ban, also proper usage when clearly I haven't been "posting too fast". It's an obvious shadow ban that lines up with the hour.
The discussion of definitions is silly however. You blame me for sloppy communication. I accept the criticism. Perhaps I am using terminology people don't know or understand. I didn't communicate my message as properly as could have been. This is a failing on my part.
Lets try without either term.
Overall, I find when you go against the echo chamber and get harassed and manipulated on HN and aren't allowed to post for hours because they don't like what you said. This is not conducive to have conversations or discussions. All HN seems to be is everyone agreeing with each other.
What's the point of HN if you cannot have conversations with others?
had same thing happening to me with brigading and downvoting whole history of my posts
don't dare to post anything slightly controversial for HN hivemind, you have better odds with diversity at Reddit than here and that's something to eat
I have thought about what Elon's next steps for twitter are.
Step 1 is ongoing. Eject all the political activists. Cant right the ship when they are actively bucketing water into the boat. From the current reports, looks like this very much matches up with reality.
Step 2 define what will be allowed and disallowed. Be transparent with what the rules really are. Fix the content moderation rules.
Step 3 start the process of unbanning political prisoners. Probably starting with babylon bee.
Step 4 deal with the fallout and consequences of these changes.
Twitter is probably not far from major improvements.
But looking at Twitter, this company was chronically losing money in the hundreds of millions and it seems that he knows that a headcount of 7500+, with extremely high operational costs nearing the billions is quite unsustainable as they doubled headcount very quickly recently.
Either way, the layoffs were going to happen regardless of the Twitter deal, which I don't care, since this is business as usual. I mostly critique Musks plans for FSD, since that is more concerning to the safety of drivers on the road than these layoffs at Twitter.
I guarantee that Twitter would already be run to the ground much quicker if it stayed as it is and adding more headcount. Now, with this reduction, they can save on costs, make more money and bring back Vine.
It's clear he's willing to lie and manipulate on a mass scale (and we let him). He's either immature, evil, or something in between.
Why is Elon Musk assumed to be admirable given the true nature of his "accomplishments?" It is quite true that he's been around and a part of many good and big things, Tesla, SpaceX, etc -- but there's increasing evidence that his "contribution" hasn't been much besides being born rich and following hobbies.
That's not inherently bad, of course. It's no ones fault that they were born rich, and it's great if you can leverage that to do good things.
But the facade is coming off of Musk, and he appears to be shifting from "hey cool science things" to being greedy for straight up power -- which is an absurdly predictable path. This sort of thing happens all the time in history.
Hence the friction.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/silicon-valley... [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Have you considered his social capital though?
- made various transphobic, fat shaming, and otherwise derogatory remarks against people
- spreads conspiracy theories
- accused rescuers of being pedos
- plays around with other people’s livelihoods like they don’t matter
- he’s been accused of sexual harassment
- he allies himself with other problematic people like Joe Rogan
- he routinely flouts local ordinances, especially around health care
- constantly tries to make it appear as if he’s being benevolent but either does nothing on onerous terms (cave rescue submarine, world hunger pledge), comes up drastically short (ventilator support) or renegs as soon as it’s slightly inconvenient (starlink)
- supports Russia invading and taking land. (Yes he donated starlink to Ukraine, but also overcharged both the US government and the people of Ukraine)
Then let’s look at the technical side, which provide other areas of criticism:
- solar roofs are incredibly behind schedule for many people who’ve signed on
- Tesla routinely fails to ship vehicles on schedule that he’ll still constantly hype up
- Tesla use full self driving as a sales term but are routinely behind schedule on things for years
- Tesla keep cutting parts from their vehicles reducing functionality , while raising prices
There’s a lot of fodder to dislike about him. Maybe people can dismiss one or the other, but they add up and have been adding up at an increasingly large rate recently.
Also I know this will likely result in a lot of sea-lioning responses. I won’t respond to any non-good faith discussion.
Let's look inside ourselves for leadership.
He what?! There should be a law against allying with problematic people (and, by problematic, I of course mean someone who does nothing more than ask questions that should never be allowed to be asked).
Tesla has dragged the car industry into electric. Space X has made access to space infinitely more affordable and to some extent got progress in space back on track after a big lull. These are good things.
As a person though, he seems quite out of touch with what the majority of humans on this planet experience. Also more outlets for "free speech" being under the control of the incredibly wealth (see Washington Post as well) is a very bad thing. They already wield too much power and influence enabling them to hold onto incredible wealth while people go hungry, and the need less not more.
We all can use some more nuance in our discussions (here's my blog post on this topic from a few days ago: https://canolcer.com/post/we-need-more-nuance/). And here's a great article about "Grey Thinking" by Farnam Street: https://fs.blog/value-grey-thinking/
Apart from that, where to start? He has pressured his employees to work under the risk of contracting covid in the early phases of the pandemic, and now as the latest thing he comes off as a Russia apologist, if not outright sympathiser of their war against Ukraine. Musk has an uncanny ability to fall lower with regards to moral standards when you didn't think it possible.
We tend to hero worship really successful people we admire. The trouble is that all humans are flawed. Worse, when people get very successful they lose the people around them that can call them on their bs. I am sure I have a bunch of dumb, poorly thought out opinions in my head. If everything I thought was broadcast before someone could point out the flaws in what I was saying I would sound callous, foolish, maybe even dangerous. Some people are very accomplished but no one is smart about all things all the time.
(I loved the re-imagining of Jameson as a vlogger in the latest Spider-man film. It's what the character has really wanted to be since the beginning.)
Musk is a sad, spiteful man, with more money than sense. Of course money can make things happen, but Musk isn't his engineers. He's a bad, bad man who is worshiped by legions of equally bad nerds who just go around making everyone's day worse.
More than that, he sells a story of an imaginary way to get out of the spiral of collapse created by many men, just like him, who came before him. He sells false hope, a road-side prophet. This false hope he sells has convinced enough people to effectively derail any possibility of fundamental societal change that would enable the population at large to live relatively comfortable lives.
If we just keep consuming, eventually we can consume on Mars!
Infinite growth is physically impossible, yet the world we live in keeps charging forward assuming infinite growth is mandatory and will never go away.
It's impossible to work towards stability when the only thing that keeps society running is a lie built on a jenga foundation.
Musk is simply the annoying talking statue that represents all of that, and he's really. Fucking. Annoying.
Now, I dislike him because I recognize in him the showman who makes a lot of claims that are exciting, but don't pan out. The massive delays in Tesla production, the complete failure of full self driving, the more or less completely nonexistent brain-computer interface he was going to sell, and on and on. For a while, I thought of him as an audacious and exciting douchebag who might, despite being personally distasteful, end up making great things and pushing humanity forward. Now, I still hold out hope, but I suspect that he may be just another asshole with money.