Category Archives: Elon Musk

Elon Musk says BBC’s ‘government-funded media’ Twitter tag will be changed

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Billionaire also says pain level from owning site is ‘extremely high’ but the business is ‘breaking even’

Elon Musk, Twitter’s billionaire owner, has said the social media platform will change the BBC’s label of “government-funded media” after the broadcaster objected to the tag.

The Tesla chief executive made the announcement during a wide-ranging interview with the corporation in which he also said his pain level from running the site had been “extremely high” but claimed the business was now “roughly breaking even”.

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Row between Twitter and Substack ends with uneasy truce

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Social media site stops censoring links and searches for newsletter platform after launch of rival microblogging service

A six-day row between Twitter and Substack has come to an uneasy truce after the social media site stopped censoring links and searches for the newsletter platform following the latter’s decision to launch a rival microblogging service.

However, the spat appears to have put an end to Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” project, after he tweeted then deleted screenshots of a conversation between himself and one of its writers, Matt Taibbi, in which the pair sparred over the censorship.

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Black former worker awarded $3.2m in Tesla factory racial-harassment suit

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Originally awarded $130m, which a judge reduced to $15m, plaintiff opted for new trial against the electric vehicle maker

Tesla will pay about $3.2m to a Black former employee after a federal jury in San Francisco ruled the electric-vehicle maker failed to prevent severe racial harassment at its flagship assembly plant in California.

The amount is far less than the $15m that the plaintiff, Owen Diaz, rejected last year in opting for a new trial. Diaz asked for a new trial on damages after the judge reduced the amount he was awarded in a 2021 ruling from $137m to $15m. Diaz accused Tesla of failing to act when he repeatedly complained to managers that employees at the Fremont factory frequently used racist slurs and scrawled swastikas, racist caricatures and epithets on walls and work areas.

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Letter signed by Elon Musk demanding AI research pause sparks controversy

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The statement has been revealed to have false signatures and researchers have condemned its use of their work

A letter co-signed by Elon Musk and thousands of others demanding a pause in artificial intelligence research has created a firestorm, after the researchers cited in the letter condemned its use of their work, some signatories were revealed to be fake, and others backed out on their support.

On 22 March more than 1,800 signatories – including Musk, the cognitive scientist Gary Marcus, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak – called for a six-month pause on the development of systems “more powerful” than that of GPT-4. Engineers from Amazon, DeepMind, Google, Meta and Microsoft also lent their support.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Elon Musk broke law with threat to Tesla workers’ stock options, court rules

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Appeal judges uphold previous ruling, citing ‘implied threat’ in CEO’s tweet directed at Fremont employees who wanted to join union

A US appeals court has ruled that Elon Musk violated federal labour law by tweeting that employees of Tesla would lose stock options if they joined a union.

The New Orleans-based 5th US circuit court of appeals upheld a decision by the US National Labor Relations Board that said the 2018 tweet amounted to an unlawful threat that could discourage unionising and ordered Musk to delete it.

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Elon Musk memo suggests Twitter worth less than half of what he paid for it

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Calculation based on leaked offer to staff that implies firm valued at $20bn compared with $44bn he bought it for

Twitter is worth less than half of what Elon Musk paid for it six months ago having lost more than $20bn (£16.4bn) in value, according to calculations based on a leaked memo from the billionaire.

Musk suggested in memo to the social media company’s staff that it is now valued at less than $20bn. This compares with the $44bn he paid for it in October 2022.

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Elon Musk backpedals after mocking disabled Twitter worker in tweet ‘storm’

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Haraldur Thorleifsson was locked out of his computer, but after nine days of no answer from the company, decided to tweet the CEO

If you’re not told you are fired, are you really fired? At Twitter, probably.

Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until recently was employed at Twitter, logged in to his computer last Sunday to do some work – only to find himself locked out, along with 200 others.

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Alex Gibney in the process of making ‘unvarnished’ Elon Musk documentary

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The Oscar-winning film-maker has announced he is months into making Musk, which will examine the controversial entrepreneur

Oscar-winning film-maker Alex Gibney has announced that he is in the process of making a documentary about Elon Musk.

The documentarian behind films such as Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is months into the making of Musk, “a definitive and unvarnished examination” of the provocative tech entrepreneur.

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Elon Musk fires additional 200 people at Twitter, report says

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According to the New York Times, the executive behind paid-for premium service revamp is among those affected

Elon Musk has fired another 200 staff at Twitter including the executive behind the revamp of its paid-for premium service, according to a report.

The latest round of job cuts equates to about 10% of Twitter’s vastly reduced workforce, which stood at 7,500 people before Musk bought the company in October.

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Facebook and Instagram to get paid verification as Twitter charges for two-factor SMS authentication

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Mark Zuckerberg follows Elon Musk’s lead in introducing fee for blue ticks, as Twitter gets set to charge for 2FA via SMS

Facebook and Instagram users will soon need to pay to be verified on the social media platforms, as Meta follows in the footsteps of rival platform Twitter.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, announced in a Facebook post on Sunday that the service would first roll out in Australia and New Zealand later this week.

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Twitter data appears to support claims new algorithm inflated reach of Elon Musk’s tweets, Australian researcher says

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Dr Timothy Graham says his analysis shows that after the algorithm change was reported to have occurred, impressions of billionaire owner’s tweets went up 737%

Data collected by an Australian researcher via Twitter’s API appears to support media claims that the reach of the tweets of the platform’s billionaire owner Elon Musk have been artificially inflated.

On Wednesday, the tech news site Platformer reported 80 Twitter engineers had been engaged to tweak the platform’s algorithm after Musk noticed a tweet from the US president, Joe Biden, about the Super Bowl outperformed his own, despite Musk having more than three times the number of followers.

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Fury in Ukraine as Elon Musk’s SpaceX limits Starlink use for drones

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SpaceX says satellite communications service ‘never, never meant to be weaponised’

A senior Ukrainian presidential aide has reacted with anger after Elon Musk’s SpaceX said it had taken steps to prevent its Starlink satellite communications service from controlling drones, which are critical to Kyiv’s forces in fighting off the Russian invasion.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s chief operating officer, said at a conference in the US that the surprise decision had been taken because it had never been the company’s intention to allow Starlink to be used “for offensive purposes”.

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Ex-Twitter exec details ‘homophobic and antisemitic’ abuse over handling of Hunter Biden story

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Yoel Roth testifies before congressional committee that Elon Musk’s release of company’s internal records led to harassment

A former Twitter executive testified on Wednesday that he was forced to leave and sell his home following a campaign of “homophobic and antisemitic” harassment over the company’s handling of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

Yoel Roth, the former head of safety at Twitter, made the comments while speaking to a committee in the newly Republican-controlled House of Representatives, at a hearing convened to scrutinize the social network’s handling of a 2020 report on Joe Biden’s son.

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Musk tells court he lacked ‘specific’ funding to take Tesla private

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CEO of electric carmaker says finance was ‘not an issue’ but he did not have binding commitments from investors

Elon Musk expected strong financial support when he tweeted that he would take Tesla private in 2018, but lacked specific commitments from potential backers, according to testimony he gave on his third day of questioning in a San Francisco federal court.

Musk is accused of defrauding investors by driving up the price of Tesla stock by tweeting on 7 August 2018 that he had “funding secured” to take the electric carmaker private.

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Musk tells Tesla trial: ‘Just because I tweet doesn’t mean people believe it’

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The carmaker founder said Twitter was the most democratic way to communicate but tweets didn’t affect stock as he expected

Elon Musk testified on Friday as part of a trial over a 2018 tweet in which he claimed to have “funding secured” to take Tesla private, a tweet that shareholders allege cost them millions in trading losses.

The Tesla CEO appeared in a San Francisco federal courtroom and defended himself by saying that “just because I tweet something does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly”.

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‘A little off his rocker’: jurors grilled over views of Elon Musk for shareholder trial

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Despite Musk’s claim he can’t get a fair trial in Twitter’s hometown, judge sits San Francisco jury for Tesla suit

The shareholder case against Tesla CEO Elon Musk got off to a slow start on Tuesday, as potential jurors who variously described the controversial tech billionaire as “narcissistic”, “unpredictable”, “a little off his rocker”, “a genius” and “another arrogant rich guy” were questioned about their impartiality by the judge.

But, by the end of the day, nine jurors had been selected to sit on the jury for the San Francisco trial, which hinges on whether Musk cheated investors of “billions” by asserting in 2018 tweets that he had “secured” financing to take the electric automaker private.

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Elon Musk seeks to move trial out of San Francisco, claiming he can’t get fair trial

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Musk says negative local media coverage of shareholder lawsuit over 2018 Tesla tweet has biased jurors against him

Elon Musk has urged a federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.

Instead, in a filing submitted late Friday – less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin on 17 January – Musk’s lawyers argue it should be moved to the federal court in the western district of Texas. That district includes the state capital of Austin, which is where Musk relocated his electric car company, Tesla, in late 2021.

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Twitter restores suicide-prevention hotline feature after outcry

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Top official confirms feature was removed but only temporarily, following Reuters report that prompted criticism of Elon Musk

Twitter has restored a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content, after coming under pressure from users and consumer safety groups.

The feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, placed a banner at the top of search results for certain topics, listing contacts for support organizations in many countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, Covid-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org

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Tesla behind eight-vehicle crash was in ‘full self-driving’ mode, says driver

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San Francisco crash is the latest in a series of accidents blamed on Tesla technology, which is facing regulatory scrutiny

The driver of a 2021 Tesla Model S told California authorities the vehicle was in “full self-driving mode” when the technology malfunctioned, causing an eight-vehicle crash on the San Francisco Bay bridge last month.

The crash on Thanksgiving Day resulted in two juveniles being transported to hospital and led to lengthy delays on the bridge. The incident was made public in a police report on Wednesday.

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Investigation of Musk’s Neuralink targets federal oversight of animal testing

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Sources tell Reuters law enforcement authorities are concerned about USDA’s record on animal welfare violations

Law enforcement officials investigating Elon Musk’s Neuralink over its animal trial program are also scrutinizing the US Department of Agriculture’s oversight of the company’s operations, after the agency failed to act on violations at other research organizations, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Reuters reported on 5 December that the USDA’s watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General, is investigating Neuralink, a medical device company that is developing brain implants, over potential animal-welfare violations. A federal prosecutor in the civil division at the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California requested the investigation, people familiar with the matter said.

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