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Comment by madballster | Hacker News Reader

What I find interesting is nobody complained about Musk's social media antics when he proclaimed himself to be Technoking of Tesla or when he hyped dogecoins with diamond hands. Both evidence of bizarre behavior for a CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation. But only now - after the stock took the proverbial Acapulco cliff-dive - are investors condemning his 'erratic tweets hurting the stock'.

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That doesn't seem surprising. When it was still at a "quirky" level, it didn't bother investors or much of the tech community, because it was all excusable as someone blowing off steam in a way that wasn't directly interfering with his work. Some people didn't like it because he was an asshole, but mostly just in a "ugh, that guy" kind of way that didn't interfere with them later deciding to buy a Tesla.

Then he bought Twitter, and suddenly his behavior was actively hurting his companies -- Tesla because he had to sell stock which affected prices and because he's tarnishing the brand by going political, and Twitter because he was making erratic decisions that drove away users and advertisers. So investors started to care.

> What I find interesting is nobody complained about Musk’s social media antics when he proclaimed himself to be Technoking of Tesla or when he hyped dogecoins with diamond hands.

People have indeed criticized both of those and many of the other things Musk has tweeted before the recent Tesla stock decline, and even the SEC has taken legal action based on ]Musk’s past tweets.

Not enough to discourage him from doing it some more.

“People didn't complain beefore the recent stock decline”

and

“Musk didn't change his behavior in response to complaints (except, perhaps, to lean into the behavior complained about even harder)”

are fundamentally different claims.

But people did complain. And Musk did not change his behavior. And I suspect that as long as he isn't smacked down really hard he won't change it in the future either.

> nobody complained about Musk's social media antics

Source?

People complained. You just didn't hear it, for whatever reason. Musk has been a known idiot for years and years, but most people only heard the narrative he pushed and approved.

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