A whole company going after one person. Whether they are right or wrong makes is irrelevant compared to the door to company bullying it opens: if a customer speaks against a company right or wrongfully the arsenal of legal retaliation a company has against him/her is disproportionate (libeling, doxing, mass PR/reputation, secrecy of affair new laws), resulting in de facto possibility for companies to control public space communication.
Government are just giving the key of censorship to corporation. Private owned interests that do not represent the people.
> Whether they are right or wrong makes is irrelevant compared to the door to ...
I vehemently disagree. Being wrong or right is probably the most relevant part of this.
> ... company bullying it opens: if a customer speaks against a company right or wrongfully the arsenal of legal retaliation a company has against him/her is disproportionate (libeling, doxing, mass PR/reputation, secrecy of affair new laws)
As far as I know, Tesla has not filed suit, or in any other way bullied Mr. Niedermayer.
> resulting in de facto possibility for companies to control public space communication.
Again, I see nothing here that indicates Tesla controls the public space. Quite the opposite. They have to publish on the same playing field as their detractors. The field has never been so level as it is now on the Internet.
> Government are just giving the key of censorship to corporation. Private owned interests that do not represent the people.
Tesla and its owner's arrogance are creepy.
That may or may not be true, but this blog post is hardly the hook to hang your point on. It sounds more like you have an axe to grind here with that last sentence. But that's just my personal reading of it.
I have a hard time imagining how you got all that from the article. Bullying? Legal Retaliation? Doxing? Companies "controlling public space communication"? Censorship?
Not a single one of those things have come close to happening here.
well, there is an asymmetry that is obvious to me: it is easier for the PR of tesla to make its voice overpower the voice of a consumer (promoted links, using the crowd of the company to upvote on HN or /., paying community manager to do damage control).
And random rightful consumers may just remember that before daring to voice a concern.
I call it bullying because like in school, it it the tallest and strongest against the isolated weak ones.
And yes Tesla so far has used yet no legal means, but they have a better arsenal to harm a consumer than a consumer has to fight the company, especially if you have NO lawyer to support you.
So, it is a new prototype of censorship by bullying resulting in people potentially shutting their mouth in fear of the harm for their cyber reputation or liability.
Most people think we should fear government and need more secrecy, I say we should begin to fear corporations and need more transparency from these legal entities.
I don't know if the consumer is a fraud (maybe he is) but I find the tesla PR pretty disproportionate.
We should certainly be watching for abuses of power like you describe, no question. But let's be careful not to cry wolf lest we hurt our own cause. Let us save our outrage for when a real abuse has occurred.
In this particular case, we now have both sides of the story and are able to form our own opinions based on the presented information. I think that's as close to an ideal situation as you're ever going to get. Were this to happen in the 1980's (or earlier) we wouldn't even be discussing it.
What a great time to be alive :-) And yes, we should definitely remain vigilant against corporate/government abuse and control.
And this should also be read in the context of a whole industry going after one company... Tesla's PR often seems slightly combative, but that's because the company is engaged in a never-ending fight for its life against an array of deep pocketed interests that are not at all afraid to play dirty.
To be honest it feels like a lot of this stuff is their method of resolving difficult issues with customers. If somebody makes a serious complaint about their Tesla and Tesla disagrees with them about it then it has become standard for the customer to be personally attacked in the media by Musk.
It doesn't make me want to buy a Tesla. I'm sure we've all experienced situations where we had to argue strongly with a company to get a repair or refund over something. I wouldn't want to buy a product where arguing with the company ends up with me getting attacked in the media.
Isn't that exactly what this is about though? They don't take these issues to the media, the customers/reviewers etc do. And when that happens, Tesla simply can't afford to take it lying down.
Where it jars for me is that if I publicly complained about treatment from a doctor or a hospital I'm fairly confident they wouldn't just produce my medical records and splash details that support their position all over the web. Tesla's approach is a little too close to doing this for me.
Government are just giving the key of censorship to corporation. Private owned interests that do not represent the people.
Tesla and its owner's arrogance are creepy.