3 ms·

Yes I think that is quite clear now. What has surprised me is the extent to which the tech community has followed along. If anything, we should be the people th

• api 8y ago
  People remain naive about online propaganda and the extent which "shill mills" influence social media. This industry has done a remarkable job keeping itself out of the limelight. There are legitimate reasons to be skeptical of Tesla, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a tidal wave of sudden strong anti-Tesla (and anti-Musk in general) stuff that started hitting social media. For me the "tell" is that a lot of it repeats the same talking points or variations of them or even the same phrases and slogans. You also had obvious astroturf sites like "stop Elon Musk from failing again" popping up around the same time. Shortly after I saw that appear I heard people online (and off!) using that exact phrase and other exact talking points. That is a propaganda campaign. You don't get that organically. There are companies that will do this for any cause you'd like as long as the payment clears. For a few million you could probably increase belief in the flat Earth by a factor of 10-100. It's a fairly large industry. The human mind is for sale.