I am not affiliated with Tesla or paid by them in any way, if you're implying that. Was also not making apologies for shipping devices with guessable passwords,

I am not affiliated with Tesla or paid by them in any way, if you're implying that. Was also not making apologies for shipping devices with guessable passwords, that's obviously a serious screwup that needs to be fixed - ideally at a level of changing the engineering culture if that's what it takes. But the rest of this thread treats that subject in depth, and I wouldn't contribute anything material to that discussion beyond piling on, which is a bad use of time and brain power. Thought I made it quite clear in my comment that I was specifically adressing the discussion of sub-par software engineering practices, and how this is a very common consequence of extreme growth. I know Tesla has a marketing budget and marketing people, that's obvious enough, so traditional marketing was indeed what I meant. Maybe I could have made that more clear. Wasn't aware that they're paying people to astroturf though; first I hear of this. Do you have proof of it?