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Comment by _2z1p | Hacker News Reader

Honest question, why do so many on HN have such a raging hatred for Elon Musk?

I get freelance work through Twitter, as do many other people. The other day Musk silently changed users' DM settings from "allow message requests from everyone" to "allow message requests from verified users only". This meant that if any potential clients went to message me while this was in place, they would have received a notification saying "Get verified to message this user. Only verified users can send Direct Message requests to people that don’t follow them. Sign up for Twitter Blue to continue."

He also made it so that if you changed the setting back to "allow message requests from everyone", and left the page, it would reset back to "verified users only". You had to select the third option, "allow message request only from people you follow", refresh the page, and then select "allow message requests from everyone" again, to make it stick.

This might sound like I'm making things up up, or misrepresenting a bug, but I'm not. Everyone in my feed has been talking about this for weeks. Most people are still unaware this has even happened, so if you try to DM almost anyone, you'll get the popup saying you need to sign up for Twitter Blue.

What I'm saying is: he's a scummy businessman.

https://elonmusk.today/

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/elon-musk-twitter-te...

https://www.adalo.com/posts/the-evolution-of-elon-musk-the-g...

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-14/elon-musk-... (Choice quote: "A pattern: If Musk perceives he’s been crossed, he does more than seethe — he seeks retribution.")

Obviously not exhaustive. Being both successful and a terrible human being can have some overlap.

"can have some overlap."

I would argue in an economic system that rewards the most ruthless competitor "can" is a very nice word here.

> Tesla is building a hardcore litigation department

Oh, wow, forgot about this one. Whatever happened to the Extremely Hardcore Super-Lawyers?

It's payback from years and years of idolizing the man and how big a genius he's been for single handedly designing all these rockets and cars. Now it's become acceptable to criticize him, at a time where he's also publicly demonstrating that he's not quite a tech genius (unless his goal was to destroy twitter) and that he's an asshole (see the way he fired thousands of people).

I don't think anyone believes that he designed the rockets and cars himself, but by creating and managing these companies, he is directly responsible for the technological advancements that have occurred.

A lot of people are assholes that get written about here, but I don't see this level of hatred for many people other than Elon Musk.

> he is directly responsible for the technological advancements that have occurred.

I mean, if that's the case, then he is also directly responsible for, well, Twitter. Can't have it both ways.

I wasn't arguing to the contrary here.

Unlike Larry Ellison, Zuckerberg, or Dick Cheney, he tweets often, loudly, and enjoys edgy memes and direct confrontations. I think that's also why he's attracting so much flak: he's actively looking for it.

Musk trolls on Twitter like a thirteen year old edgelord and promotes awful stuff either because he actually believes it or is trying to provoke controversy. There’s so much negativity toward him because he invites it upon himself. It’s entirely his choice and his doing.

The moment I personally really started to dislike him, was when he gleefully destroyed the dreams and hopes of people by pumping and dumping his favorite shitcoin. I don't want to know how many people in dire conditions lost their life savings while he was mocking them.

I mean, previously it was mostly just because I found him extremely, absurdly, irritating, but he's really gone beyond the pale lately.

start off with the Thailand sub incident and go from there

What specifically has he said or done that has people so riled up?

Find the quote from the sub incident, someone literally just handed that to you, and you're already dissatisfied and asking the same thing again?

So it's just that he's an asshole and tweets childish adolescent insults to liberals or am I missing something more?

Wat den Eenen sin Uhl, is den Annern sin Nachtigall

For those curious, according to Google Translate this means:

"What is one's owl, is another's nightingale"

I actually tend to enjoy his controversial content, but it's a laughing matter for you to pretend you don't understand why people call him an asshole.

Oh, he's absolutely an asshole, but I wouldn't say that he's any more of one than several other people that are discussed on this site without all the hatred and vitriol.

Honest question: You know where the term "asshole" comes from, right? :D

You really don't understand why a billionaire who throws around his vast wealth for the specific purpose of being an internet troll - laying waste to useful platforms in the process - gets people "riled up" as you put it?

People think he’s an oaf and they’re tiring of his actions. I see plenty of jokes about him, and comments dismissing him or forecasting a decline in Twitter/X but I don’t see “raging hatred” here

The US online community turns on rich people like nothing I've ever seen

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