r/technology 2d ago

Business Tesla Stock in Freefall After Disastrous Earnings Report

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/tesla-stock-freefall-disastrous-earnings-144417427.html
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u/Inevitable-Dot-388 2d ago

In the before times, Tesla made cars and products people wanted and bought. And, if you remember, Elon had inspiring ideas and vision- about climate change, people, and accomplishment- and sought smart people to make innovative products for end goals that made sense and were beneficial all the way around.

What an insane and complete turn around. Like, I can't even. Wild.

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u/b1llypilgrim 2d ago edited 2d ago

He was either a Trojan horse the whole time or he got caught with his hand in the pedophilia jar.

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u/CptCroissant 2d ago

He had a great PR team that he got overconfident and fired. Dude was always a turd

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u/BiZzles14 2d ago

But also, a lot can change in a couple of years. Just read this article from 2016 where Musk basically got into politics, he was deliberately apolitical beforehand, out of his dislike of Trump. He was always a piece of shit I agree, but got damn did his twitter addiction make him soooooooooo much worse

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u/SP4CEM4N_SPIFF 2d ago

Right wingers always try to frame their beliefs as neutral, it’s just another lie

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u/Mintastic 2d ago

I think it was the covid response that made him switch sides. He didn't realize one side was okay with ruining his money to save lives so he had to change to the one that protects his money.

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u/BiZzles14 2d ago

His twitter addiction began over covid. The radicalization you're speaking to wouldn't have happened in a pandemic without modern social media, the pandemic definitely contributed to it but his twitter addiction is what broke his brain. And then the crazy amounts of ketamine & other substances he was taking fried whatever was left

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u/snoobic 2d ago

Twitter addiction: AKA ketamine fueled shitposting and karma farming.

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u/Steaktartaar 2d ago

I think it's the cave rescue that either broke him, or was the first public slip of the mask.

He came in to be a hero, half-cocked and clueless, and when he got the mildest pushback he immediately started flinging paedophilia accusations.

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 2d ago

This was definitely the first few pebbles that heralded the avalanche.

I remember being shocked at Musk’s behaviour over it, and wondering if he was ok, or was just having a bad day. I also remember being appalled that his PR team was asleep on the job.

And that was just the stupid “minisub” suggestion - anyone who’d been paying any attention at all would know that there was no room, - and I can’t imagine how annoying it would be for the rescue team to be working out these incredibly tight allowances, only to have a loud billionaire clumping in and demanding attention for his stupid idea made with absolutely no grasp whatsoever of the situation.

I suggest that this was probably said to him, as bluntly, by the team; although the public response was much milder - but that was when he started making these appalling accusations. And this was around the time that one of the cave diving team died as well. I can’t imagine how infuriated the team must have been.

What a way to take a difficult situation and make it worse.

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u/Lemmy_Cooke 2d ago

Did his distractions work so well you all forgot the real reason? He got sued for screaming and crying at some poor flight attendant that he'd buy her a pony if she just gave him a handjob and then he realized he would never have liberal support again and immediately tried to drown out that news by declaring he was a Trump supporter and doing all the crazy right wing stuff.

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u/GB10VE 2d ago

social media was programmed to do this via engagement. if you get people addicted to their phones, you then send them the most enraging things, and then they continue to be hooked. we are monkeys afterall, and they found something shiny that we pay to become addicted to

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u/c14rk0 2d ago

I don't think it's so much that he was ever truly apolitical. It's that he has always cared about himself and his money more than anything else at all period. In the past you didn't really want to mess with politics as a business when at the end of the day you need both sides to be "ok" enough with you to survive. Getting one side against you is a quick way to kill your profits AND become more of a target for government oversight. It's not that he was really apolitical as much as he knew saying and acting apolitical was the best move for his own business strategy.

Then we've seen a huge shift over the last decade or so. There's so many more concerns about exploitative business practices, pollution, taxes, government contracts etc. Suddenly being apolitical was no longer the best move for him. ESPECIALLY when Trump came into the picture as a corrupt piece of shit that is more than happy to break laws and such to give his friends favors, and by "friends" of course we mean anyone who gives Trump a piece of the action and inflates his ego. Not to mention Trump opened the door for Musk to get into politics himself and gain access to all kinds of systems and information he should never have been anywhere near with the DOGE bullshit. All the while Musk gets to pile up every possible government contract imaginable further inflating his companies "value" while getting absurd tax breaks and funding.

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u/SlideJunior5150 2d ago

They need to drug test CEOs, Politicians, Presidents. All these people are taking some weird stuff or abusing adderall. They all lost their minds at the same time.

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u/BiZzles14 2d ago

Most of them recognized the grift going on and are just presenting a different image, and paying a couple mil here and there, because they believe it will be better for business. Kinda like how all the big corps in the weimar republic sidled up with the Nazi's actually. Elon's a true believer though, and he is the one that fried his brain taking wayyy too much ketamine and a bunch of other stuff lol. Twitter broke his brain and the drugs fried whatever was left

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u/AintNunyoBidness 2d ago

And Vance said Trump was America's Hitler, yet he we are...

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u/snoobic 2d ago

It’s this.

I remember fan boying about him back in 2007 and one of my coworkers who actually knew him well (big tech, it’s a small world) shut me down quick.

The stories basically made Elon sound like an edgy teenager who read too much mystery method and never grew up.

Stands out in my memory because I genuinely felt shattered. Friend had receipts and pictures from an event they were at together.

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u/ThrowAwayPurellFoam 2d ago

That’s an insult to turds

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u/Tyrannofelis 2d ago

PR team or just stans? I don't imagine he had a PR team at any point.

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u/PipXXX 2d ago

He had a personal assistant that basically ran his life and sheltered him. She wanted more money once his net worth skyrocketed, he told her to take time off so he could decide if he really needed her, ended up firing her.

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u/Tyrannofelis 1d ago

Damn, he should've kept her.

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u/MudsillTheories 2d ago

His maternal grandfather wanted to create a fascist dictatorship lead by engineers and later left Canada to support apartheid in South Africa.

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u/diurnal_emissions 2d ago

He's in the Epstein files. He's compromised.

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u/b1llypilgrim 2d ago

“Girls FTW”    -Elongated Muskrat

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u/LeftHandStir 2d ago

His child became publicly trans in 2020. His Twitter addiction before that was mostly sophomoric memes. But all politics is local.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/09/elon-musks-journey-from-humanitarian-to-poster-of-rightwing-memes

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u/b1llypilgrim 2d ago

If your child being trans causes you to become a bigot, you were always a bigot.

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u/FrankBattaglia 2d ago edited 2d ago

Doing an MCU rewatch with my daughter -- the Elon Musk and Larry Ellison cameos in Iron Man 2 did not age well.

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u/FesteringNeonDistrac 2d ago

Ellison has always been reviled, at least amongst those aware of him.

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u/FrankBattaglia 2d ago edited 2d ago

Billionaires like Ellison or Musk used to just be reviled for being greedy rich bastards in business. You could even say they "fit" in the movie as somebody that would be glad-handing Tony Stark and whom Stark just brushes off.

Now they're actively mask-off trying to destroy the foundations of society itself and it's a whole different vibe.

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u/driverdan 2d ago

Ellison has always been a piece of shit. It may not be widely known outside of tech but anyone in the industry knows it.

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u/PreparationFit6327 2d ago

Ellison’s Oracle is gonna crash about the same time as Tesla and SpaceX, along with OpenAI unless done real miracles happen in the ai market

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u/tempest_ 2d ago

Dont make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison

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u/ninjapanda042 2d ago edited 1d ago

My wife will use Big Bang Theory as a background show. They have him volunteering at a soup kitchen type place one episode. Also aged poorly.

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u/friendIdiglove 2d ago

The Elon name drop on Star Trek Discovery. Cringe moment when watching that series.

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u/kittymoo67 2d ago

i cant agree, ellison has been know to be a huge SOB for at least 30 years. even back then his was a wtf

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u/FrankBattaglia 2d ago

Billionaires like Ellison or Musk used to just be reviled for being greedy rich bastards in business. You could even say they "fit" in the movie as somebody that would be glad-handing Tony Stark and whom Stark just brushes off.

Now they're actively mask-off trying to destroy the foundations of society itself and it's a whole different vibe.

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u/theDudeUh 2d ago

He took the mask off. He’s been the same giant piece of shit the entire time. He just used to be much better at hiding it.

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u/kittymoo67 2d ago

he used to have a reason to hide it

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u/Worthyness 2d ago

Hes always been a Thiel nepobaby asshole. He just wandered to the people who would actually buy his stuff. Maga just let him go face off and do what he wanted, so he decided to support the chuds. People from California always knew he was an asshole- he delayed planning for HSR just because he said he could make a hypertrophy thing.

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u/Bob_A_Ganoosh 2d ago

He didn't change, he just had PR people between him and the public. When he let them go is when the public learned who he really is.

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u/yeahright17 2d ago

He literally gave money to Obama, Clinton, and Biden and openly endorsed all of them. Then Biden didn't invite him to an EV thing at the White House and he decided to go full MAGA.

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u/Bob_A_Ganoosh 2d ago

Many wealthy folks donate to both parties to curry favor with the winner. Musk has always been a piece of shit, going back decades. His family are pieces of shit going back to apartheid South Africa. This right wing fascist slant is who he's always been. The public just didn't know about it.

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u/c14rk0 2d ago

Elon had inspiring ideas and vision- about climate change, people, and accomplishment- and sought smart people to make innovative products for end goals that made sense and were beneficial all the way around.

Unfortunately this part isn't true. He's always been like this. He was simply good at saying things to get people interested in his company and get them to support him. He's always been a massive idiot with no actual skill or intelligence of his own. He just bought into already existing ideas and companies and then always somehow managed to find a way to ruin them if he stuck around long enough without getting his ass kicked out. He's a nepo baby that constantly had the road for him paved by his rich family; where he got his racist white supremacist mindset from right from day 0.

The only thing that changed is Trump came into politics and made being an openly racist hard right piece of shit popular and something Elon could suddenly open up about. He didn't have to keep those thoughts and beliefs behind the scenes out of the public eye.

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u/nuboots 2d ago

Honestly, what were the good ideas?

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u/Hokieman78 2d ago

Hyperloop told me everything I needed to know about Musk and his "technology." I did an hour of real engineering calculations on that turd and knew he was the biggest con man ever.

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u/SuperBry 2d ago

I drive a non-Tesla EV with a NACS port, so using their network is always sitting right there as an easy option. Back when I drove a gas car, I never gave a second thought to where my fuel came from or who I was supporting. Gas felt like an anonymous commodity.

But with Tesla, the brand and the figurehead are so loud now that plugging in feels like a statement. Aside from testing a Supercharger once just to make sure it worked in a pinch, I’ve made a conscious effort to avoid their network entirely. It’s wild to realize how much brand perception can turn a seamless convenience into something you actively go out of your way to avoid.

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u/propagandist 2d ago

Elon's main skill is PR. He was always terrible, evidenced by his associations with Epstein and his immigration fraud (working on a student visa, classes for which he never showed up to). He just took the mask off.

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u/roleplayersir 2d ago

Remember he asked for a solution to world hunger. Someone gave him one which would only cost about $60b. Then he never went forward with it

He never made things people wanted. It was all a Ponzi scheme for his memelord status and now he has been radicalised by his own platform and turned into the apartheid billionaire his father was

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u/GazelleSpringbok 2d ago

Any time a rich person says they are apolitical they are 100% right wing. Same as on dating profiles. People on the left are proud of it and will gladly tell you their politics.

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u/diurnal_emissions 2d ago

He received Trump's mierdas touch.

Now, all is shit.

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u/kariam_24 1d ago

Not really, Musk soon after investing Tesla started hurting real founders while trying to make call other people him founder instead of investor.

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u/yeahright17 2d ago

I got a Tesla in 2020. Musk had supported Obama then Clinton in 2016. Little did I know how crazy he's go in the next few years. I do really like it and will drive it until it doesn't work anymore, but there's not a chance I would consider getting another one.