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SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

wsj.com

221–230 of 314 posts

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

#221
To me, the real shame is that he wasn’t able to actually take Tesla private last year. He loves being the public mouth of his companies and clearly can’t restrain himself from tweeting material information. Would be fine if Tesla weren’t public :/

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently we live in a country where the government can murder thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, deny that it ever happened, and profit off of the destruction. But god help you if you make a tweet that is subjectively incorrect.

You can use this argument for literally anything, it means nothing. > Apparently we live in a country where the government can murder thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, deny that it ever happened, and profit off of the destruction. > But god help you if you brutally beat someone to death

To be honest one of the reasons that government malfeasance of the kind that got us into Iraq is so dangerous is that it promotes exactly this kind of cynicism.

We’ll be hearing exactly this kind of argument for decades because of the shit trump is getting away with now, and he’s arguing he should get away with it because of the shit Clinton and Bush got away with.

It’s off topic, but a culture of law breaking at the top promotes law breaking at all levels of society.

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

#223
post #98
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.

> Twitter's value is providing a direct connection from people of note to the masses, bypassing newspaper/TV/radio gatekeepers of yesteryear. Press releases still exist. Although even then I'd wager the copy writers do a better job of legal due diligence than Musk.

It's not the same thing, however I do think CEOs having a direct link to communicate with the public is incredibly irresponsible; unless you keep everything extremely trivial, light, and unoffensive. Otherwise everything should be vetted and / or double checked by at least one even headed, conservative person (in terms of risk, not politics), who has some understanding of PR.

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

#224
post #92

Guidance for this year was 350k - 500k. Elon said several times on the call that he thought they could beat the 500k. This is a technicality on not getting approval for a tweet that could unreasonably be interpreted as saying they are definitely hitting 500k 8 months from now. This is stupid. https://twitter.com/_jameshatfield_/status/11001772987230945...

It's now worth noting that this is Elon Musk's defense: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1100215984713957376

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

#225

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,…

I don't think he needs to stop tweeting. He just needs to make sure all the tweets that contain information material to Tesla are reviewed prior to publication, like he agreed to in the judgement.

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

#226

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,…

...Can a corporation demand an employee waive their right to speech as a private citizen? I think even if so, that's a terrible idea.

Yes. You can get fired for the things you say off the clock, especially publicly. I don't love it, but what do you expect the company to do if an employee gets outed as a psychopathic troll?

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

#227

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,…

...Can a corporation demand an employee waive their right to speech as a private citizen? I think even if so, that's a terrible idea.

1) Yes, unless it somehow implements protected class discrimination, whistle blower retaliation, etc. And you waive this every time you sign an NDA, discuss company internal info, read one of those "this email is intended only for its intended recipient" emails, contribute to FOSS with a Code of Conduct, etc.

2) I don't see how it's a terrible. Musk is breaking federal laws as CEO and putting the whole company in jeopardy. It's no different than a rogue firstline worker speeding down the road drunk in a company vehicle.

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...Can a corporation demand an employee waive their right to speech as a private citizen? I think even if so, that's a terrible idea.

Yes. You can get fired for the things you say off the clock, especially publicly. I don't love it, but what do you expect the company to do if an employee gets outed as a psychopathic troll?

Musk is salaried. There is no "off the clock," and that's inapplicable because he isn't being asked to do work or constrain his personal life. He can call people pedos and all that all he wants as far as the board is concerned. He just can't commit federal crimes in such a way that the company is liable, by voluntarily making false material statements about it.

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

#229
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why follow reporters instead of subjects they report on, collaboratively edited by many people?

Because your suggestion is theoretical while Twitter exists today.

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

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the time between Elon's two tweets, enough trades could have occurred based on the misrepresentation that investors were financially harmed. The point of the SEC is to prevent harms like that. The point of the SEC's 2018 settlement with Elon was to prevent him from investor-harming tweets like the one he made by requiring tweets about Tesla to be reviewed for accuracy and correctness before posting.

> In the time between Elon's two tweets, enough trades could have occurred based on the misrepresentation that investors were financially harmed. Does it matter that it was outside of trading hours?

After hours trading is a thing, money can still be made or lost outside of trading hours.
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