270 points

In posts on X following the incident, Tesla CEO Elon Musk called the incidents “terrorism” and said the company “just makes electric cars and has done nothing to deserve these evil attacks.”

OK buddy.

permalink
report
reply
117 points

The cars suck, but he’s right that the company hasn’t done anything to deserve this. He’s the one who chose to make himself the face of Tesla, though, so however people feel about him, they’ll feel about any business he owns.

Terrorism, though? Hardly. It’s protest. He’s the one doing terrorism by dismantling the government.

permalink
report
parent
reply
40 points

The cars are poorly designed to the point of being dangerous. They deserve it a little.

permalink
report
parent
reply
30 points
*

Terrorism, though? Hardly.

Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature

Pretty much the definition of terrorism. Doesn’t necessarily make it wrong.

That’s what was so terrifying about the Patriot Act for so long.

permalink
report
parent
reply
56 points

Violent, criminal acts

Property damage is not violence and nonviolent protests are not terrorism. They will claim it is. They are lying.

permalink
report
parent
reply
33 points
*

Yes, but that definition also defines… basically all the most heinous things that Trump and those around him have done in the last… 5 years, lets say? … as terrorism.

Remember CPAC, 2022?

… kinda speaks for itself.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points

Rather it is vandalism, because Terrorism, its acts cause terror in the population.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points
*

Spraypaint a traffic camera, violence.

So what I’m hearing is, if you burn Tesla because their CEO is a scum-sucking useless billionaire who is dismantling the social services that you and your family rely on (and paid for!), in order to cut taxes for the 1%, you’re a terrorist.

If you set shit on fire because you like to watch stuff burn, you’re just a plain ol’ arsonist.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Not sure why some people are disagreeing - it for sure fits the definition. I’m not exactly sad about it - Musk is helping to rip apart the country and I have a hard time blaming people who feel that helping to rip apart one of his companies is about all they can do - but committing arson to further an ideology is terrorism.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

It’s property damage that was done specifically to avoid hurting people. By that interpretation, Banksy could also be classified as a terrorist.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

criminal acts

With this definition, a government can do anything it wants without it being terrorism because it gets to decide what’s criminal. So while it may be terrorism by definition, that definition is pretty useless without a lot of context.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

This is resisting, not furthering, ideological goals.

Could you state the ideological goal of these attacks?

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points

This is terrorism. Storming the capitol is clearly not.

permalink
report
parent
reply
34 points

The board needs to remove Elon today.

permalink
report
parent
reply
23 points

yep. I don’t get why they haven’t. He’s tanking their shit badly.

permalink
report
parent
reply
29 points

They just paid fucking 60 billion dollars to him to keep him from quitting. Maybe a smidge of sunk cost fallacy.

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

the board are his handpicked toadies that have him a bonus despite tesla losing money

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

You can remove him from the board but he’ll still have all of his shares. And I’d bet he’s not really doing much as Tesla these days anyway.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

Not much except getting their dealerships torched.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Even if they do, protests and boycotts need to continue past it. A lot of his wealth is in Tesla stock, and he’s going to benefit from the shadows if the public moves on and TSLA recovers.

permalink
report
parent
reply
29 points

It’s not terrorism. They were just peacefully touring the dealerships. Just like January 6. Peacefully touring.

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

“Evil attacks”, like we’re killing puppies, or something.

It’s vandalism against machines, and the only victim here is the insurance companies.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

“Evil attacks”, like we’re killing puppies, or something.

Leave the puppy killing to the expert, Kristi Noem.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Also some people who bought teslas before all this happened having their rates go up. And the people who had their Tesla vandalized or totaled who didn’t get a good enough payout from insurance to replace it (if you’ve ever dealt with insurance you know you’re not getting the actual value back). I’m not saying I’m losing sleep over it, but still.

I had a friend buy a Tesla after Elon was talking about buying twitter but before one could objectively say he went full fash, and I told him he’d be embarrassed about it eventually. He went through with it because it had X features or whatnot. Do I feel bad for him? A little, but it’s not like the writing wasn’t on the wall. Obviously once Elon was with Trump 24/7 he said he regretted it, but it’s a bit late for that.

There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, so it sucks to see consumers be targeted, but I understand. I have a phone and I’m sure somewhere child slavery was involved. Does that make me a bad person? Yes, the answer is objectively yes. We’re all making shitty choices every day and if one day someone decides to draw the line and I’m on the wrong side of it, I guess I’ll just have to cope. That’s kinda how I feel about it. So Tesla owners are being harmed too, but I don’t know that I’d call them victims of anything except their own decisions. I’m not sure they deserve it all equally, but we all kinda suck so whatever.

permalink
report
parent
reply
145 points

Problem with setting Teslas on fire is we can’t know if it’s an act of protest or if they just did that on their own.

permalink
report
reply
30 points

They’ve become sentient, and are committing suicide.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

This made me laugh out loud at my desk. Thank you

permalink
report
parent
reply
29 points

The incident in Kansas City genuinely does sound like one just caught itself on fire.

In Kansas City, Police Captain Jacob Becchina said in a statement that an officer first observed smoke coming from a Cybertruck parked in a Tesla parking lot. “The officer used his fire extinguisher, however, KCFD was still needed as he could not put the fire out,” Becchina said. “The fire spread to a second Cybertruck parked next to the original burning one. The circumstances are under investigation, but preliminarily, the fire is being investigated for the potential of being an Arson.”

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

HERE COMES THE SUM

permalink
report
parent
reply
26 points

Could be insurance fraud too.

permalink
report
parent
reply
16 points

Probably a lot of the time it is. Nows a great time to do it if you’re gonna.

Saw a post earlier where a guy was 42,000$ underwater on his and wanted to offload it at that big of a loss before his insurance dropped it entirely.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-18 points

*$42,000. You saved no time in typing it wrong and look stupid. Congratulations.

permalink
report
parent
reply
16 points

I was JUST about to say; how do we know they didn’t just do that? or that this wasn’t a buggy firmware update that just did that? or a malicious firmware update that did this?

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

LoL 😂

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Exactly 🤣🔥

permalink
report
parent
reply
112 points
*

We know that Teslas sometimes just catch fire on their own.

We also know that sometimes Tesla drivers will set their cars on fire themselves on purpose. Because of that…

We also know that Elon has a backdoor into all Teslas.

Now ask yourself which is more likely, the woke liberal crybabies actually causing violence or a drug addled and politically embattled CEO of a company that lost 50% of its value in the past 3 months creating a false flag to villainize the left and get insurance to cover damage to the vehicles he can’t sell?

/s (kind of)

permalink
report
reply
68 points

Didnt the Nazi party burn down the Reichstag and blame it on the other party?

permalink
report
parent
reply
26 points

They blamed it on the communist party, yes. There were 8 parties represented in the Reichstag at the time though.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

Thank you. My history has unfortunately become a bit rusty

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points

If unsold teslas catch fire, i’m convinced it’s some insurance scam. A car sold and a car gone that they can’t fix anyway

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

They’ve already shown what they are capable of, in terms of scam behavior, up in Canada.

permalink
report
parent
reply
19 points

Given Elons history, it’s definitely possible.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Wdym by “backdoor into all Teslas”

  • This could mean “taking an industry standard sorfware update feature and making it abusively aggressive to or push malware to end users”
  • it could mean “grants tesla 25-75% of the car’s controls from the internet”
  • it could mean the former AND “grants access to diagnostics, settings and controls the consumer cannot access themselves”
  • it could also mean “can run arbitrary code on your tesla at any time with little or no notice”
permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

What I know from publicly-confirmed information: Tesla (hence Musk) have access to the camera feeds, GPS location, remote unlock, remote control of the driving at least sufficient to back the car out of a parking stall to facilitate repossession, and, of course, remote software update. The latter could provide full remote access to everything through new software.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Thats horrifying!

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

He literally has access to every aspect of every Tesla.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

For the Vegas incident, I’m pretty sure those were customer cars at a collision center.

permalink
report
parent
reply
98 points

if you know anything about who did it no you don’t

permalink
report
reply
46 points

It’s obviously the MAGA crowd. They’ve spent years complaining about electric vehicles. They’ve just escalated that to burning them out. The police need to go have a nice chat with the rolling coal types.

permalink
report
parent
reply
32 points

Probably god’s will or something. What’s the pont of investigating.

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

The engineers did this, Teslas just kind of do this.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Maybe, maybe this is actually stochastic terrorism being carried out by MAGA themselves.

Think about it, their plan is to declare martial law - right? Conservatives already hate EVs, they think that Trump is a ‘good’ billionaire while billionaires like Gates are ‘bad’ billionaires - I don’t think it would take much to make Musk out to be a ‘bad’ billionaire.

Idk if this is as clear as ‘good guys vs bad guys’ - these are freedom fighters, but it’s never been clearer that a lot of people are divided on what ‘free’ actually means. You shouldn’t assume that the people doing this are actually on your side.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

maybe im deep in the conspiracy but I’m unsure who is doing the vandalism at this point

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

MAGA don’t even like EV’s to begin with.

permalink
report
parent
reply
85 points

Insurance fraud due to slow sales

permalink
report
reply
16 points

perfect. let’s see if all tesla dealerships do it

permalink
report
parent
reply

Technology

!technology@lemmy.world

Create post

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


Community stats

  • 21K

    Monthly active users

  • 14K

    Posts

  • 622K

    Comments