Elon Musk's social media conduct may be bad for his company

COMMENTARY:

Whether investors betting on his stock or journalists or analysts asking tough questions, Elon Musk fought back, often 24 hours a day.

In recent months, Tesla and SpaceX The CEO has become a bigger and more aggressive presence on social media.

But when Musk called a British diver involved in the Thai cave to save a pedophile in front of 22.2 million Twitter followers on Sunday, he may have a tweet too far. 19659005] The tweet, later deleted, sent investors away from Tesla's action and could expose the scholar rocket temper to a libel suit. In the tweets, Musk was moving away from a vigorous defense of his companies into personal insult, without any facts to support.

"This has nothing to do with Tesla's defense," said Erik Gordon, a professor of business and law at the university. University of Michigan. "It's going on a line where he can not claim" Well, my big sin is that I'm going too far in defense of the company.

In a televised interview, British diver Vern Unsworth criticized the engineers of Musk and SpaceX for a small submarine to help divers save the 12 Thai football players and their trainer from a flooded cave. The submarine was not used.Sunsworth called it a "PR coup" and said it would not have worked anyway.

Musk has replied with a tweet marking Unsworth a "pedo." In a second tweet, Musk said he was betting that the claim was true.Sonworth told CNN that he was considering a lawsuit.

A Tesla spokesperson did not want to comment on the tweets.

For the first four months of the year, Musk averaged 100 tweets a month, but the tweets climbed to 400 per month from May, while Musk was under pressure to increase the production of the Model 3 low-cost electric car, starting at $ 35,000 ($ 51,266)

. Twitter subscribers. He has almost half of President Donald Trump, who also attacks his critics with pleasure on Twitter.

Mark Spiegel, a hedge fund manager who has been betting on Tesla shares for years, said the tweets showed Musk fans. His true personality

The company, which has had only two profitable quarters, is deeply in debt and will struggle to meet Musk's profit forecast in the second half of this year, Spiegel said. around this base of raging Elon Musk fans.Once this fan base starts to see what kind of person they loved, they will turn on you on a dime, "he said. an incredible amount of personality flaws in common. "

Previous comparisons with Trump have irritated Musk. This spring, critic Andrew J. Hawkins tweeted that Musk was turning into a" media trump figure who was irrationally shouting about fake news. "

Musk responded by criticizing the media for trump comparisons, writing: In his defense, Musk posted on Twitter that the leaders of the Thai rescue, in which all the boys and their coach had been safely extracted , asked Monday, the Tesla stock fell nearly 3% to $ 310.10 US, even though the general market was up slightly.

Robert Drechsel, who taught the law of media at the University of Wisconsin, said Tesla's lawyer advised the CEO to stop tweeting.

"You can not do yourself any favors by creating this kind of distraction, and at worst by asking questions about your credibility," he said. "I'm certain that they would like it to be a more cautious tweeter."

Big investors are in a difficult position with Tesla, just as they were with Uber and ousted CEO Travis Kalanick, Gordon said. Like Uber, Tesla and SpaceX were built on the larger-than-life personality of their founder. Tesla is worth more than $ 52 billion, largely thanks to the promise of Musk's genius.

Until recently, the personality of Twitter and Musk worked well for Tesla. The company said in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it did not need to advertise because it was receiving so much attention from the media

] but Musk's comments and clashes with analysts, journalists and others Investors are wary, says Gordon.

"It's very dangerous if you just scramble the cards," he says.

– AP