Cristina Balan has a fundraiser page, at https://www.gofundme.com/f/a86fmm-fighting-tesla-for-defamin... and there is some text there from her, setting out some facts as she has seen them.
From seeing how the internet evolved from dial up days to what it is now, my initial reaction to any article written in a story-esque manner where the author tries to paint a certain bias with words like "unlighted, windowless room, draped in plastic, smelling of paint" is that its mostly just a very one sided account of things.
Its very popular to hate on rich moguls and big companies these days with the rise of online leftism rhetoric, and considering that most non subscription online media publication literally live or die by clicks, you should be suspect of them as much as you are of Tesla. Real factual stories with links are often very milquetoast and boring to read. Id imagine in this case it be something along the lines of "Tesla said this, Employee said this, we don't have proof of any of this stuff other than statements, so we don't know what really happened and likely never will"
For reference linked article here: http://deleter.net/index.php/news/5541/Business/September-11... paints a different picture of how the said employee acted.
It generally seems that the truth is most likely somewhere in between two extremes. Tesla is of course going to be corporate minded and not particularly care too much about employees, and its likely that the client in question is not fully guilt free either.
Elon has very good lawyers.
For me, the whole thing comes back to the news article. It is absolutely bonkers no matter the circumstance. Huffington Post should not have published anything without verifying that she was actually a criminal. Clearly Tesla thought they screwed up as well or they wouldn't have fired the guy responsible for it two days later.
I completely understand wanting to have her removed from the company and the way it was done. It's just that you cannot go around labelling someone a criminal for life if all they have done is make a few middle managers angry by going over their heads. If she truly is a "criminal" for secret recordings then it's on Tesla to take that to the proper authorities. Once the proper authorities (i.e. the justice system, jury of your peers, not power tripping middle managers) determines that you are a criminal, then feel free to share that for reference checks and write as many news articles as you want broadcasting it. But not until then, and if that kind of rule is broken, the penalty for those that do should be very severe.
What about the "1000 lawsuits" the article mentions? Unless it was done by collusion (ex: a union).
In terms of averages and probability, Balan's case does stand a point as a whistleblower, hinting a covert truth behind the company.
The floormats are stupid.
Each floormat has 4 round smooth patches about 3" in diameter underneath near each corner. Then 4 adhesive velcro patches 3" in diameter are stuck to them.
Then, there are 4 velcro hockey-puck things with screw threads that are screwed into the base carpet in the passenger footwell.
You put the removable carpet in place and the hockey puck velcro sticks to the under carpet velcro and it stays in place.
Except in a hot car the velcro to carpet adhesive gets soft and the carpet comes loose.
It will be nice if the article provided a reference to other specific employee defamation cases, by not lumping them altogether.
Ex: https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/11/news/companies/tesla-elon-m...
https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/19/21446587/judge-dismiss-de...
But who knows, in the US lawsuits are easy to make up, just expensive (lawyers getting the last laugh). Short sellers might just be doing that...The article could as well be fraud...or bad journalism (not checking sources), which sadly, happens more often than not.
Who is telling the truth? The short sellers and whistleblowers or Tesla and their fans/stockholders?
PS: this piece was initially flagged by HN users and since (thankfully) unflagged by moderator.