Also, short sellers do other shady stuff. Like intimidating friends and family of people who work at the companies they are shorting.
Look at what happened to Fairfax Financial and their CEO Prem Watsa. Short sellers mailed the pastor at Watsa's church, with a fake return address, claiming that he was a pervert and a fraud. They impersonated journalists, impersonated government investigators, and even harassed the dean of the business school at the University of Toronto.
They filed a lawsuit against the short sellers in 2006 detailing all these activities, and that's what caused the attacks to stop. Elon was correct to call out the short sellers spreading FUD at every opportunity.