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SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such designations already exist. Tesla designated Musk's twitter account several years ago.

Where can I read more about this?

Tesla's filed a SEC form 8-K[0] on 2013-11-05 that elevated both Musk’s and Tesla’s Twitter accounts to Disclosure Channels:

>Tesla Disclosure Channels To Disseminate Information

>Tesla investors and others should note that we announce material information to the public about our company, products and services and other issues through a variety of means, including Tesla’s website, press releases, SEC filings, blogs and social media, in order to achieve broad, non-exclusionary distribution of information to the public. We encourage our investors and others to review the information we make public in the locations below as such information could be deemed to be material information. Please note that this list may be updated from time to time.

>Interested in keeping up with Tesla?

>For more information on Tesla and its products, please visit: teslamotors.com

>For more information for Tesla investors, please visit: ir.teslamotors.com

>For the latest information from Tesla, including press releases and the Tesla blog, please visit: teslamotors.com/press

>For additional information, please follow Elon Musk’s and Tesla’s Twitter accounts: twitter.com/elonmusk and twitter.com/TeslaMotors

[0] http://ir.tesla.com/node/13651/html

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

#262

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,…

So apparently, Elon's twitter account is seen as source of official news about Tesla by investors [0]. Given that, it is reasonable for SEC to take this position.

But on a bigger scheme, it is sad to see this happening while "puffery" is legal and the damage it is causing is far bigger than anything elon's tweets have caused. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0CyBv18A5k

0. This line is in the 2013 8-K filing by Tesla: "For additional information, please follow Elon Musk’s and Tesla’s Twitter accounts: twitter.com/elonmusk and twitter.com/TeslaMotors "

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

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claims about production numbers are 'information'.

Not if they are already known.

Original statement from the annual report was "Barring unexpected challenges with Gigafactory Shanghai, we are targeting annualized Model 3 output in excess of 500,000 units sometime between Q4 of 2019 and Q2 of 2020."

So saying "we'll produce 500k cars in 2019" is a lot of new information:

- it's now definitely 2019, not Q2 2020

- it's 500k total, not just "annualized output"

- risk of "unexpected challeges" in Shanghai disappeared.

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

#264
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I knew about every trade during the run up to today's 3pm NHL trade deadline many minutes and sometimes hours before the stories appeared on nhl.com or sportsnet, etc. Is that just for entertainment or did you use that information in some way? It's similar to papers or tv stations crowing how they broke a story. So what? Do I really need (or do most people) to know that there is a mass tragedy (only one example) th…

> Is that just for entertainment "just" is just your opinion > Do I really need (or do most people) to know I do.

> "just" is just your opinion

Reading the entire sentence makes it clear that "just" refers to whether or not they "use that information in some way", and that is not an opinion.

> I do.

You cut off "the minute it happens". It's not about whether you learn it, but how rapidly.

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year Elon made a series of deliberately false statements made with the sole purpose of artificially inflating the stock price of his crime. CEOs have gone to jail for years over misrepresentations less outrageous than Elons'. He was able to avoid prison time and hundreds of millions in fines by agreeing to a slap-on-the-wrist settlement with the SEC that required a small fine and, crucially, that his tweets be r…

He did no such thing. You are probably referencing a series of tweets where Elon was openly contemplating what would be required to buy back Tesla shares. The settlement with SEC clearly stated that no fault was found and no guilt admitted. Why people get so excited about Musk spewing numbers over Twitter is beyond me, when the responsible course of action is to verify claims against other better vetted sources. The…

> The settlement with SEC clearly stated that no fault was found and no guilt admitted.

Who says that no fault was found? Surely not Musk. He didn’t admit or deny the allegations of the complaint. And:

Defendant understands and agrees to comply with the terms of 17 C.F.R. § 202.5(e), which provides in part that it is the Commission’s policy “not to permit a defendant or respondent to consent to a judgment or order that imposes a sanction while denying the allegations in the complaint or order for proceedings,” and “a refusal to admit the allegations is equivalent to a denial, unless the defendant or respondent states that he neither admits nor denies the allegations.” As part of Defendant’s agreement to comply with the terms of Section 202.5(e), Defendant: (i) will not take any action or make or permit to be made any public statement denying, directly or indirectly, any allegation in the complaint or creating the impression that the complaint is without factual basis; (ii) will not make or permit to be made any public statement to the effect that Defendant does not admit the allegations of the complaint, or that this Consent contains no admission of the allegations, without also stating that Defendant does not deny the allegations; ...

https://www.heise.de/downloads/18/2/5/1/1/4/0/4/SEC_Vergleic...

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

#266
post #25

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.

Relevant, Jack Dorsey was on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast recently, and in the first handful of minutes he talks about Twitter and its value[1], bad behavior on Twitter, misinformation, and echo chambers.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mP9OmOFxc4

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

#267
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.

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.

Except that many reporters and journalist do the same (obviously there are good ones, not claiming yours do) and they end up being in the same bubble. To this add that journalist and media are twitter lifeline, so essentially they can bully the platform as they like.

A great example was the learn to code meme.

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

#268
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ This I recently read a group of high profile journalists (mainstream media) stating that "Twitter is where we get the news from"... Twitter has become a sort of real-time news agency. If you follow the correct profiles in your niche/sector not even Reuters can beat the speed of 95% of the events. If there's a newsworthy event, chances are it's first on twitter than in any other media outlet.

> high profile journalists (mainstream media) stating that "Twitter is where we get the news from"... Wow. This is unbelievably scary. Imho news should be curated & not first to the wires. News should involve individual fact checking and less web of trust. I understand how we consumers might want to listen to a journalist's feed, but journalists using it as a source too? It's nothing but a self referential feedback l…

This is the inevitable long term consequence of click-based revenue. It does not matter if you get the story wrong, if you are the first to publish you still get the money.

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

#269
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying for years that Twitter ought to be offering that as a paid-for feature. They don't even have to charge much for it. Even something as simple as "All tweets have a 120 second delay during which time the following users will be pinged, shown the tweet, and given veto powers on it". I'd pay for it just to have my wife be able to say "Really? You want to tweet another picture of the cat? No."

I could see from an ideological perspective Twitter's entire mission being to delete the middleman and the moderating PR managers and public statement lawyer sanitation of everything public figures ever say, which was the only way laypeople heard anything a famous person ever said (that or tabloid gossip "overheard"s). I can respect that ideology, but it of course comes with its own set of problems. Personally I'm am…

> which was the only way laypeople heard anything a famous person ever said (that or tabloid gossip "overheard"s).

I get that twitter main usage is this, but you can accomplish that with literally any social media/personal website.

What twitter really facilitates is seeing feeds from random people and famous people responses to other (famous or not) people.

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

#270
post #23

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,…

How about, "helped every piece of news break faster." I knew about every trade during the run up to today's 3pm NHL trade deadline many minutes and sometimes hours before the stories appeared on nhl.com or sportsnet, etc.

>helped every piece of news break faster

How is that a good thing? Without proper fact-checking it's just rumors. And there are a lot of instances of fake news spreading on Twitter before full information is available.

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