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Let’s celebrate the bad week Elon Musk’s businesses are having



As a general rule, celebrating the misfortunes of someone is unseemly. But
when that person is billionaire Elon Musk, let’s do this. The past week has not
been terrific for both Tesla and X, and it couldn’t happen to a worse dude.

Last Friday, a Florida jury slapped Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, with a
$243 million verdict in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of a
woman killed due partly to Tesla’s glitchy Autopilot self-driving software. The
Tesla driver dropped his cell phone and reached down to grab it, letting
Autopilot take over. The Tesla promptly blew through an intersection at over 60
miles per hour and crashed into an SUV, killing Naibel Benavides and severely
injuring her boyfriend.

Of course, Tesla is being exceedingly dramatic about the verdict, saying that
it “works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla’s and the entire
industry’s efforts to develop and implement lifesaving technology.” Of course,
that’s a weird statement to make when your “lifesaving technology” appears to
have been involved in someone’s death.




 



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Normally, the government plays a regulatory role here, investigating the
safety of cars. However, once Trump took office and Musk burrowed in as the
head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, most of those
investigations were expected to just go away.

Though who knows what will happen now that Musk and Trump have fallen out.
Last month, Trump said he wanted Musk’s businesses to “thrive.” However,
Tesla’s launch of self-driving taxis in Austin, Texas, went so poorly that the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking into the taxis’
myriad problems, including a penchant for reportedly veering into oncoming
traffic. Seems bad!

Generally, Tesla has dodged these sorts of lawsuits or prevailed in court.
But now there’s a template for future settlements to be more expensive. In
other words, the company may have to up the amount it is willing to pay to
settle or face a nine-figure jury verdict.

Unfortunately, while this hurts Tesla, the board still wants to shower Musk
with money for … what exactly? He just got 96 million new shares, worth roughly
$29 billion.

It’s not just Tesla having a dark day, though let’s all take a moment to
engage in some pointing and laughing about how the jury verdict caused Tesla’s
stock to fall. Meanwhile, over at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, things
are not going great for Musk’s social media platform, X. The court ruled that
while X cannot be held liable if it fails to remove child sex abuse material
immediately, the company could face negligence claims going forward for not
reporting such material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children and for not having an easy way for users to flag posts. Basically,
once X is aware of that material on the platform, it has a legal duty to report
it to NCMEC, not that Musk is really into following laws.

This has been a problem since Musk took over X in October 2022.





 



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In 2023, the Stanford Internet Observatory reported that Twitter (as X was
then known) failed to address 40 CSAM items over two months. For Musk, though,
posting CSAM isn’t really a dealbreaker. He reinstated the account of
right-wing conspiracy theorist Dominick McGee after McGee’s account had posted
an image taken from one of the worst, most violent child abuse videos out
there. But hey, McGee claims he did it to raise awareness! Musk tried to wave
this away by saying only people on X’s safety team saw McGee’s post, but it
actually got 3 million views and 8,000 reposts, according to The Washington
Post.

Of course, McGee now gets to go to White House press briefings, and we can all
thank Musk for that.

There should be consequences for turning X into a Nazi bar that aids the
exploitation of children, and the 9th Circuit gave a roadmap on how to do that.
There should also be consequences for Tesla’s apparent refusal to make its cars
safer. That Florida jury verdict might get reduced on appeal, but it still puts
Tesla on notice that going to trial may not be the greatest idea.

And anything that makes Musk’s life harder and more expensive, we’re here for
it.



Click here to check out this story on DailyKos.com.
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