I’ve been following Musk on Twitter for a few months and I haven’t seen anything worth condemning. His tweets often seem like thoughts off the top of his head, ie not written by a PR employee. It feels like the issue people have is with his tone. Perhaps people aren’t used to seeing public figures who doesn’t meticulously manage their image.<p>Almost everyone is beholden to an employer, a committee, or an oversight board of some kind so we all have to censor our public thoughts to a huge extent. I think some people are upset that Elon doesn’t have to, and they’re upset that he’s “above the law”.<p>Woke culture truly is the new church.
At best, Musk has responsibilities to the company, its shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders, and Musk is choosing public behavior that risks, rather than serves those responsibilities. The behavior is clearly not chosen to help those parties, and that's Musk's job.<p>The subtext is the unspoken 'culture war' - everyone sees it, so it's a bit bizarre to me that it's unspoken - between, on one hand, a subculture in society (including on the Internet and in business) that celebrates power (including its abuse and corruption) and disruption; and on the other hand, one that advocates responsibility, basic human dignity, productivity, and innovation.<p>IMHO, the former subculture, of power and disruption, is indefensible. Maybe that's why the contest is unspoken, and instead we debate Musk's behavior as a proxy.
A better link is the Verge story, which includes more reporting and the entire letter. The Register story might be based on The Verge:<p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk-internal-open-letter-behavior" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk...</a>
> While it's unknown how many of SpaceX's 12,000 employees have signed the letter<p>If prior letters like this are any indication, it's on the order of 12 out of 12,000.
“every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company.”<p>Which company? All of them? Elon has no individual identity or voice any more?<p>Elon on twitter is obviously speaking as and for Elon, not representing a specific company.
Maybe they could get him to stop lying about colonizing Mars, while they're at it.<p>(Starship is wholly inadequate to even start colonizing Mars. It <i>might</i> be just barely adequate to start an outpost with a half-dozen staff. It probably could support an active moon base.)<p>He has anyway not lied about the possibility of suborbital passenger or freight service <i>lately</i>, to my knowledge. BTW, Shotwell has, too.
All I have to say about this is thank goodness for Gwynne Shotwell and JB Straubel. They adult so that Ol' Musky doesn't have to.<p>Like, thank you Musk for backing smart people like Gwynne and JB and giving the powder that they need to fire their flintlocks of excellence.<p>Dislike, no thank you Musk for your distracting and pointless pre-occupation with meme currencies and "I am 14 and I just read Heinlein and this is deep"-tier libertarian twitterings.
It's his company and they chose to work there. It's like repeatedly patronizing a restaurant then loudly complaining how much the chef sucks. You're free to eat elsewhere or build your own spaceship company.