Has Elon Musk lost control of his hype machine?

Elon Musk works hard to disrupt industries, such as transportation and energy, and plans to go to Mars to save the humanity of extinction. But even with these ambitions, the billionaire entrepreneur still finds time to silence an anonymous blogger.

The latest example of Musk's interest in protecting the image of his businesses – and himself – came this week when a critical Tesla blogger closed its doors. own Twitter account and stopped writing for the Seeking Alpha financial website.

According to the author, who used the pseudonym "Montana Skeptic", Musk called his boss and threatened to sue if he continued to write for Seeking Alpha, which allows anyone to post stories, including with nicknames. (Montana Skeptic bypasses Tesla, which means that he bet that the course of action would fall and if Tesla succeeds, he would lose.)

To not drag his boss into a potential litigation, Montana Skeptic chose not to publish any more content. Alpha.

George Moriarty, the editor of Alpha, responded to the news on Wednesday, stating that his platform would continue to adopt the pseudonym and give a voice to all investors.

Montana Skeptic stated that he believed that Musk had learned his identity and place of work after being revealed by social network users. When asked when he called Montana Skeptic, Musk replied on Twitter that he had "never heard of this girl". He later tweeted an image of Miley Cyrus, the actor who once played a character named Hannah Montana, with the words "they grow up so fast." The tweets have since been deleted.

In a statement, Tesla said that the blogger's employer was a longtime supporter of Tesla and one of the first to buy a Model S.

So, why Elon Musk's? Does it appeal to unnamed bloggers who criticize Tesla? Because now, the company needs all the hype that she can get.

Tesla had a difficult year. It burns money at a fast pace and had to lay off 9% of its staff in June. Tesla has also repeatedly missed the production targets of Model 3 and has not yet sold one at a price of $ 35,000 promised for a long time.

Related: The magic of Tesla dissipates as the excitement of Model 3 decreases

According to some industry experts, Musk must maintain the hype and l & # 39; 39, history surrounding his vision of the future.

"Trust in Tesla is an existential issue," said Benedict Evans, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, earlier this year. "We need to increase a lot more capital, based on public trust that his vision will work."

David Kirsch, professor of economics at the University of Maryland, argues that Musk's recent irritable behavior on Twitter shows how he lost control of Tesla's narrative.

"Since he's talking about how busy he is, and that he pulled out a sleeping bag in the factory. – this raises some question about how thin he needs or choose to take the time to silence a sullen critic on a stock blog, "said Kirsch.

Meanwhile, Veljko Fotak, professor at the # 39, University of Buffalo, who is studying short selling, expects Montana's suffocating Skeptic to turn against him by drawing more attention to a little-known critic.

"He'd better ignore the critics and try to prove to them the cont "said Fotak.

Over the years, the Tesla ( TSLA ) chief executive made great efforts to shape the perception of his businesses, including Tesla, SpaceX and the boring company.

He often reveals information about products and companies on his popular Twitter account that has 22 million subscribers, rather than letting his communications team take the initiative. Even before the incident with Seeking Alpha, Musk has been known to personally reach top publishers of publications that criticize his companies.

When journalist Ashlee Vance began writing her 2015 bestseller on the entrepreneur, Musk also had unique requirements. He first asked to read the book before it was published and to add footnotes to places he felt were inaccurate. (Vance has not agreed to do so.)

As effective as Musk has been in telling stories about his businesses in the past, he may need to take a break to engage so strongly in the media coverage.

Earlier this month, Musk apologized for calling Vernon Unsworth, one of the Thai cave rescuers, a pedophile without justification after calling Musk's attempt to save boys stranded with a "submarine".

Vivek Wadhwa, who teaches entrepreneurship at Carnegie-Mellon University, suggests that Musk remove Twitter from his smartphone to reduce spontaneous tweeting.

"No matter who in his situation would reach a breaking point if he was harangued as he was," Wadhwa told CNNMoney. "He is both the Edison and the Einstein of our time, all our heroes were imperfect, just like Elon."

CNNMoney (Washington) First published July 26, 2018: 20:11 ET