ByteDance sacks intern for sabotaging AI project

What we often think of as Insider Threat in the west is just another Tuesday in Chinese business. I have many experiences of this in the video game industry. This industry sabotage and theft is a very real part of getting ahead, even amongst companies that are owned by the same parent company (ex: studios owned in part by Tencent).

for every gifted, motivated, positive, constructive person in the world, there are probably 100,000 that want to tear them down and eat the carcass.

Yet oddly enough, the vitriol didn't turn up against him when he was creating awesome stuff, but when he was creating awesome stuff and behaving like a monstrous asshole. Curious!

(There are plenty of people bandwagonning on Musk hate, and definitely some for his political bent, but there are also plenty of totally valid and non-political reasons to have disdain for him)

I'm curious. In your opinion, what makes him a "monstrous asshole"?

1. Calling a rescue worker a pedophile because the rescue worker saved kids and made Elon look like a useless diva

2. Firing employees at a company he purchased (i.e. people who did literally nothing to him), in as vicious and demeaning way possible

3. Sexually harassing an employee on his airplane

4. Frontrunning a story about sexually harassing said employee by suggesting that it was some political issue, thus making his own sexual misconduct a red vs blue problem in an already deeply polarized society

5. Advancing falsehoods about election security in the US

6. Releasing a product to public roads called "Full Self Driving" which is, in fact, not fully self driving

7. Hiding data required for the public to evaluate the safety of this "Full Self Driving" which is already operating on public roads

8. Was such a hysterical crybaby about rebranding PayPal to X that the board had to fire him from the CEO role while he was on vacation

9. Requesting permission for Bladerunner imagery for his We, Robot event, having that request declined, then stealing said imagery anyway

10. Deliberately overplaying the viability of Hyperloop in order to kill high speed rail projects (https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions...)

Idk do I need to go on?

1. After he was insulted by the rescue person. Besides, have you ever insulted someone? I when I was young a common insult was to call someone "gay". It doesn't mean anyone thought they were gay, it was just an insult. The worker sued Musk over it, and lost, because it was just an insult, and didn't rise to defamation.

2. Firing people is not about them doing nothing to the owner. It is about getting rid of employees who were not core contributors in a company that was losing a lot of money fast. They were all well paid, there's no need to feel sorry for them. If they're competent, they'll have no trouble getting hired elsewhere. Besides, every person I personally knew who were fired thought they were treated unfairly. Even the ones who were embezzling, padding expense accounts, and showing up for work drunk (I'm not suggesting that the Twitter workers were that, just illustrating how everyone thinks they are unfairly treated).

3. He said / she said is not evidence. If it was, he would have been prosecuted. Wealthy people are usually counseled to avoid situations where they could be falsely accused. Did you know Tim Walz is also accused? No evidence there, either.

4. Maybe it was a political issue. A lot of people don't like his politics, and so may think it justified to go after him.

5. Nobody has proved that US elections are secure. In Washington State, the elections department as official policy does not verify that registered voters are citizens. A secure system would welcome audits, not prevent them.

6. Full self driving is a spectrum, not an obvious yes/no line. Human drivers have car accidents all the time. Everyone in my family has been involved in a car accident in one form or another. My grandmother was killed in one, I nearly was killed in another.

7. Don't know about that.

8. So the board fired him in as vicious and demeaning way possible?

9. Oh, the monster! Jeez. You're talking to the wrong guy, I give my IP away for free.

10. The Boring Company is profitable and now valued conservatively at $7 billion and optimistically at about $125 billion. TIME magazine hates him - I wouldn't take what they wrote seriously. Nor do I believe that Musk is responsible for the total failure of California's high speed rail.

On the other hand, the people who invested in his companies have done very well. Every Tesla owner I know loves their car. Starlink has been crucial in helping the Helena disaster victims. He's making science fiction real.