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Comment by iooi | Hacker News Reader

While I don't normally give much weight to Business Insider, they have an interesting theory [1] that this is related to Zuckerberg's nasty comments about SpaceX after the rocket carrying Facebook's 85M satellite blew up.

Must feel pretty good for Elon considering how much press this is getting.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-deletes-tesla-space...

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Sounds overblown to me. Zuck's statement was: “As I’m here in Africa, I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent.”

I don't see anything nasty about that. It was SpaceX's failure.

And #deleteFacebook is Facebook’s fault. MZ could have phrased his statement more charitably — if he had, Musk may have responded differently.

Basically - Musk Is the MAN!

OT: do/did you work at a Domino's in the Hudson Valley?

whats wrong with working at Domino's in the Hudson valley? I don't think you need to work at Domino's to think the man is a man of his word and a bias towards action.

He didn't indicate there was.

He's just asking. Strikes me that he somehow recognizes you from there. "OT" = Off Topic, so the question wasn't about "the man".

His handle was the store number of the Domino's in Poughkeepsie.

It's passive-aggressive. A bit like deleting one's facebook profile I guess.

A bit of a different though. Elon did not intentionally destroy the Falcon 9 in question, and SpaceX worked very hard to determine what caused the issue and rectify it for future flights. Zuckerberg knew for years what was going on with user data, and gave zero f*s until they were caught.

Substantially easier to throw shade (passive aggressively even) from the moral high ground.

inb4 the conspiracy theories that the rocket blowing up was to set back a competitor to StarLink

I'm afraid that ship has already sailed...

Elon cares tremendously about bad press. He's specifically banned all reporters from filming launch or recovery attempts in case there are failures.

You'll notice that there are NO social media posts whenever there's a accident (of which there have been many).

Zuck drawing attention to it must have really pissed Elon off.

Um, except when Elon posts video compilations of their failures... (seems to me they're pretty open)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2PWKdQzuU8

They do that in a carefully controlled way, well after the event is too cold for the news cycle. And even then, some events that are too dicey-looking are never seen.

Mark, this is not a criticism. Given the way the media handles such things (i.e. sensationally and with minimal or just plain wrong context) it's really for the best.

I don't understand why this is downvoted. This is exactly how a PR firm or department will handle those things.

I'm confused--aren't the launches broadcast live via webstream?

I'm sure they have a delay.

Yes, but landings at sea tend to cause the video feed to go away, and it doesn't come back if anything goes wrong.

What? The general public films all SpaceX launches and all landings on land, not to mention reporters.

Source? Anecdotally speaking, it seems that there's been about as much coverage for each failed launch as there has been for each successful one.

>NO social media posts whenever there's a accident

Sometimes there are - in fact its a running joke that he calls them "rapid unscheduled disassemblies" (or something like that).

Well, no. Doing so openly and not only your own, but also publicly from your companys ... is much more agressive.

So if he would have done it, only because of that statement, I would say clearly overreaction. But deleting Facebook because it is Facebook ... makes still sense.

How is deleting a profile on a website "passive aggressive?"

It is when you do it publicly and announce it to the world.

Where is the passive part?

Do you know what passive aggressive means?

I think you’d at least passive aggressively be mad too if a moving company blew up the truck with your stuff on it, accidentally or not.

If you only had that furniture, yes; if you had no money left to replace it, definitely.

Not when you have enough wealth to replace it. Shit happens, and getting furniture into space is an intrinsic risky affair.

Plus a satellite doesn't have intrinsic value. If a moving truck lost all my stuff I didn't intrinsically value I'd just contact my insurance company and buy a new one. Obviously it takes time to build a satellite, but it's not like it was personal.

Are you seriously comparing a 85M satellite's destruction to deleting a Facebook page?

> It was SpaceX's failure.

In an extremely high-risk endeavor where all parties knew all possible outcomes

The CEO of a huge company throwing public shade at a business partner for a scenario that was known to be a possibility.

That statement works equally well for both CEOs.

Though Musk knowing how Facebook would treat data seems more of the "I'm a scorpion .... it's what I do" variety

As if this rocket blowing up was just peachy for Elon Musk? He was probably as disappointed in the launch failure as Zuckerberg was, if not moreso because it's his entire business. The satellite was a side project for Facebook.

It's not a contest, though. Two people can be disappointed by the same thing.

Does anyone know if the connectivity was to be "free basics"? (provide internet but only to fb properties and select others, but not Google, or the open internet)

Facebook didnt own the satellite, msm would lead you to believe they did. Facebook had just leased all the capacity of the satellite from Spacecom. Facebook lost nothing, there was no feaud.

> msm would lead you to believe they did

Yes, blame the media. A faceless abstraction to take your frustrations out on.

The reason people believe Facebook owned the satellite is because of Zuck's own words: "SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite."

Note he said "our," not "the bird we were going to lease time on."

Not that much different from people saying "my car" when they're still making payments to a bank.

Pocketstar is right. Media is supposed to do the checks for any statements and provide the correct info, not just reprint tweets and dramatize them.

99% of "media" reporters are general assignment. That means today they're reporting on rockets. Tomorrow on cats. Nobody can be an expert in everything, which is why there is niche media.

In mass media, there's a spectrum between fast and accurate. The internet age prioritizes fast over accurate.

Yeah actually I think that's the way almost anyone would have described it. Just like you say "my office" for the space your company leases and you work in. But I also agree that it is part of what the news media is supposed to do to point out that the satellite wasn't actually owned by Facebook.

Don't forget another instance of back and forth between MZ and EM on twitter about "Dangers of Artificial Intelligence."

>Musk's negative feelings torwards Facebook may be related to a 2016 dispute where Zuckerberg implied that he blamed SpaceX for a failed launch which destroyed a Facebook satellite.

And today is a what year? I had a better opinion about Business Insider.

If that was the reason then why did he not delete the accounts on 2016? I think that the journalist is trying to mislead the public opinion.

Why? Business Insider is an SEO operation run by someone who is permanently banned from the securities industry due to fraud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Blodget

Well you certainly get a lot more press for dissing Facebook right now than back then. It's the scapegoat of the moment, may as well take advantage and get on board if it suits you.

I think Occam's razor applies.

Several days ago, Musk posted about his brand new "media empire" called Thud! [0] — "That’s the name of my new intergalactic media empire, exclamation point optional" [1].

Not implying that he is building a FB competitor but I'd rather we wait and see, rather than speculate as to his motives for deleting those accounts/pages.

EDIT: Thinking about it a little more, he hasn't deleted his Instagram yet although he acknowledges "FB influence is slowly creeping in".

I think the influence he is referring to is the unintended consequences of the AI powering "The Algorithm" used by Facebook, which no one seems to fully understand. IOW his fears about an all encompassing AI may have something to do with his decision. He has publicly criticized Zuck for being naive [2] about the risks that careless application of AI portends to everyone.

“AI is a rare case where we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive because if we’re reactive in AI regulation it’s too late,”

[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/973857445683462145

[11 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/973972643190792193

[2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/889743782387761152

Not too long ago there was also some beef on Twitter between Elon and Zuck about AI [1]. Guess that made the decision a bit easier for Elon.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/25/16024444/ai-safety-threat...

So glad that facebook satelite blew up.

That was one of the few times that a rocket blowing up put a smile on my face. The last thing the world needs is Facebook satellites constantly orbiting overhead.

The satellite was headed to geostationary orbit over africa, 4Deg west. Unless you live in northern africa the satellite would never be overhead.

Being pedantic: In GEO, with an orbital radius of about 42Mm, and earth having a radius of 7Mm, that gives a radius of 7Mm * acos( 7Mm / 42Mm ) ~ 9800km around 4°W (almost a hemisphere), for which it would be overhead.

But admittedly it would only give service to a portion of that.

Props for Mm, instead of 'thousand km'.

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