Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 314 posts

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#171

Post by astrodust »

mLuby wrote: post #25
spectramax wrote: post #3

At this point, the board of directors should just demand deletion of his Twitter account. I admire Elon for his vision, and actually also admire his radical style despite of its unpopular image - I watched the video where he smoked pot on the radio show. It was a really amazing conversation about future of humanity. He just needs to stop tweeting. You may say it’s fixing the symptom, but here if we take Twitter away,…

Twitter's value is providing a direct connection from people of note to the masses, bypassing newspaper/TV/radio gatekeepers of yesteryear. You could argue whether that itself is good for society, but it is clear from Twitter's usage that people find it valuable.

I find it valuable in that you can follow reporters directly, both professional and amateur, and curate your feed very precisely, especially because a large amount of commentary comes across as Tweet-sized asides, not full articles.

As a micro-publishing platform, it's hard to beat.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#172

Post by matz1 »

privateSFacct wrote: post #36
spectramax wrote: post #3

At this point, the board of directors should just demand deletion of his Twitter account. I admire Elon for his vision, and actually also admire his radical style despite of its unpopular image - I watched the video where he smoked pot on the radio show. It was a really amazing conversation about future of humanity. He just needs to stop tweeting. You may say it’s fixing the symptom, but here if we take Twitter away,…

He doesn't need to delete it, but if he is going to post market moving information (like production for 2019 is not 400K but 500K) he'd get the approved by someone else like Tesla's GC.

Then couldn't someone at Tesla council just say, yes we review and approved this tweet ?

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#173

Post by Dylan16807 »

ikeboy wrote: post #109
jaimex2 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. It was in the outlook of the last quarterly: http://ir.tesla.com/static-files/0b913415-467d-4c0d-be4c-922...

That says 500k annualized, not 500k for the year

And 500k annualized is what he claims the meaning of the tweet to be.

Unless Tesla updates their projections soon, that's probably not a lie.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#174

Post by astrodust »

blhack wrote: post #68
mLuby wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's value is providing a direct connection from people of note to the masses, bypassing newspaper/TV/radio gatekeepers of yesteryear. You could argue whether that itself is good for society, but it is clear from Twitter's usage that people find it valuable.

There are lots of ways of accomplishing that without the things that causes twitter to be particularly toxic.

Twitter's toxic because they never clean the place up. It's like a hotel where they clean the rooms only when it gets so bad that the EPA or CDC issues a citation.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#176

Post by roenxi »

xiphias2 wrote: post #142
spectramax wrote: post #3

At this point, the board of directors should just demand deletion of his Twitter account. I admire Elon for his vision, and actually also admire his radical style despite of its unpopular image - I watched the video where he smoked pot on the radio show. It was a really amazing conversation about future of humanity. He just needs to stop tweeting. You may say it’s fixing the symptom, but here if we take Twitter away,…

A part of the development of new Tesla car features, and the deal with Australian battery plant were happening on Twitter with his account. Closing it down would hurt Tesla. The solution is having a reviewer for each tweet, just how Elon and SEC agreed.

Odds are great that the battery thing on twitter was a PR stunt for public consumption, not substantive decision making. People don't negotiate infrastructure deals on twitter and email is just as good for actually doing business deals.

In the event that anything actually happened on twitter, someone was probably being negligent in terms of tendering and governance. It doesn't make sense for a few tweets to be critical, so they probably weren't.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#177

Post by jacques_chester »

eduah wrote: post #162
jacques_chester wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a technicality It's the law. That's how it works. Especially if you agreed to it .

That is the point. He only violated it if you take the obviously wrong interpretation that the 500k was a new material statement. It was not. The agreement only covered new, material information, not repeating a previously given the high-end estimate. Also, note that the market was closed at the time of the tweet and the second tweet clearing up any possible confusion, thus, having no impact on the stock.

> Written Communications that contain, or reasonably could contain, information material to Tesla or its stockholders must, prior to posting or other publication, be submitted to Tesla’s General Counsel and Disclosure Counsel (or in the event of the General Counsel’s unavailability, Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer and Disclosure Counsel) for pre‐approval. Authorized Executives are not authorized to post or publish Written Communications that contain, or reasonably could contain, information material to Tesla or its stockholders without obtaining pre‐approval.

Whether it's new information or not, he was supposed to get approval first.

> Also, note that the market was closed at the time of the tweet and the second tweet clearing up any possible confusion, thus, having no impact on the stock.

Feel free to argue to a judge that the law knocks off overnight.

In any case: the judgement sought by the SEC is for civil contempt for breaking his agreement. It matters that he didn't follow the procedure that he had promised to follow.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#178

Post by jacques_chester »

eduah wrote: post #149
cat199 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as stupid as tweeting incorrectly and without legal review when tweeting correctly and with review is essentially your simple, easy to observe, 'terms of parole'?

Actual government legal agency going after someone on a stupid immaterial technicality about requiring approval for disclosing material information that might affect stock: The tweet didn't have material information. The 500k number was public and discussed on a public investor call. vs. Crazy guy that bankrupted himself trying to build a rocket company and a car company simultaneously is less than overly cautious ab…

He publicly bragged. That's not "less than overly cautious" behaviour. That's flat out arrogance.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#179

Post by ikeboy »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #173
ikeboy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That says 500k annualized, not 500k for the year

And 500k annualized is what he claims the meaning of the tweet to be. Unless Tesla updates their projections soon, that's probably not a lie.

Nobody's claiming the annualized number is a lie. The claim is the original post is wrongly saying 500k total for the year and wasn't run past someone else like Musk promised he would for all Tesla related statements.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#180

Post by Rebelgecko »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #128
darkpuma wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was that particular tweet the offender, or the two subsequent tweets? > "Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019" > "Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week. Deliveries for year still estimated to be about 400k." The article seems to suggest it was tweets about projected numbers. Edit: From the filing: > "On February 19, 2019, Musk tweeted, “T…

So all he has to do is find a fall guy to say he approved it, and it will be thrown out?

Tesla's legal already said they didn't approve the first tweet, but they worked with him on the correction that was posted 4 hours later. Wonder if that's why their general counsel quit again...
Post reply on HN