4 ms·

Imagine if we listened to the unruly mob here and elsewhere that were calling for the NYT/Broder's head on a stick. I recall one very long-winded rant here on

Imagine if we listened to the unruly mob here and elsewhere that were calling for the NYT/Broder's head on a stick. I recall one very long-winded rant here on HN where a commenter described Broder as having an axe to grind, a shyster, and concluded his comment with "Fuck the NYT. Fuck Broder." All of this, in the grand scheme of the automotive industry, are small ripples. Tesla will survive this, and electric sales will proceed more or less unimpeded. The real takeaway here is keeping your cool and turning off the "mob outrage" circuit in your brain. The drummed up pitchfork-wielding mob was, in the end, a more sobering spectacle than any electric car issue. I must sound like a broken record by now. It seems every month some one-sided account will splash onto HN's front page, stir up a hornet's nest of indignation, resulting in long, angry rants and calls for heads to roll. Inevitably a more balanced picture emerges - but the usual suspects will be back the next time someone writes a blog post manipulating their outrage. Whenever a blog post is so utterly absurd and ridiculous that it demands unfettered and unrestrained anger, there is a strong chance you're being played.

vor_ 14y ago
I was surprised at the number of people casually accusing Broder of a conspiracy. Usually, it's the big company representative who gets the vitriol and the journalist is the underdog good guy, but for some reason, much of the reaction was opposite from the expected.
- niggler 14y ago
  Elon Musk is idolized by many people here, to a great extent because of Tesla, and when they see Musk make accusations they fall in line. It's more Musk-worshipping than anti-NYT sentiment.
- ubernostrum 14y ago
  It was completely expected. Elon Musk is basically a cult figure for a lot of wannabe "entrepreneurs", so criticism of him or his company is taken very personally and responded to very harshly. (lest you doubt this, go dig up some of the Boeing 787 threads and see what people were saying about him there -- the level of outright worship of him in the HN comments was more than a little bit scary)
- homosaur 14y ago
  That's because Elon Musk is some sort of superhero genius to the many of the types that lurk here. The Jason Calicanises of the world have all but declared this guy automobile Jesus.
  - Metapony 14y ago
    I don't buy into the Musk mythos. I do believe he can afford a large media team to blanket messageboards and sway opinion.
- gabipurcaru 14y ago
  I'm not surprised. Don't know if this happens on a global scale, but here in Romania there's a trend of journalists and other media people starting to abuse their power like Broder (supposedly?) did, so for me (not sure about others), a journalist having a strong opinion quickly triggers a bullshit bell.
jrockway 14y ago
I'm getting kind of tired of Elon Musk. Last month his crusade was reaming Boeing for their 787 battery problems. This month, someone wrote a bad review of his car (which turned out to be largely factual). Both times, he's on Twitter to talk about himself to anyone who will listen (which is a lot of people, for some reason). I'm getting a tub of popcorn so I can be adequately prepared for his next crusade. I'm sure that this time it will paint him in a positive light...
- sambe 14y ago
  I don't think 'largely factual' is largely factual. The difference between this review and the NYT one is night and day. Omissions, misrepresentation and tone matter - especially in journalism.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    The question here is whether or not you should be an expert to review a car: the author of the Times article did seem confused about some aspects of the car that would not be confusing to an experienced user. Making matters worse were the weather conditions that are extremely unforgiving to an electric car. So while I wouldn't call it a perfect review, the points it made were relevant. You can't expect people to change cabin temperature settings to be uncomfortable, drive 45mph on the freeway, not drive when it's cold out, and to know the nuances of the car's range estimator. (If the range display says "0 miles", it's reasonable to assume that the battery is dead.) Remember: the car mostly worked fine, which is a huge coup for electric cars. The article emphasizes the negatives, but the negatives are all things that can be fixed -- many with a simple software upgrade. So on that note, I don't think the review was particularly bad, and I certainly don't think the Times was compensated to make the car look bad, as Musk accuses. (The article is also a good human factors and UI case study. When customer service and an electronic read-out disagree, one implicitly trusts the read-out more. It happens to airline pilots, too.)
rorrr 14y ago
The issue wasn't with the battery having less capacity when cold. The issue was with Broder's lies.
- Kylekramer 14y ago
  Pretty much every "lie" Broder has been accused of making can easily be chalked up to the imperfect nature of human memory. His article has problems and certainly could have done with a bit more accuracy especially given that Musk/Tesla were known to be proactive about reviewers' truthfulness, but I am not comfortable characterizing any of it as a "lie". I'd love to hear any concrete example of him lying though.
  - etherael 14y ago
    "I cannot account for the discrepancy, nor for a later stretch in Connecticut where I recall driving about 45 m.p.h., but it may be the result of the car being delivered with 19-inch wheels and all-season tires, not the specified 21-inch wheels and summer tires." Sure he can.
    - vacri 14y ago
      If you look at Musk's graphs where the caption says "At no point did broder drive at 45mph" with an arrow pointing to a 50mph segment, the immediately previous (yet short) segment was at 45 mph. There are a few other places where Musk uses quite a bit of poetic license in interpreting the logs, too. I can't say whether or not Broder's notes would have corresponded to this particular segment, but there was indeed a point where he was travelling at 45mph.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    He gave precise numbers that were incorrect, often by a significant margin. He claimed these were from his notes. Rather than an error of memory, I think it's far, far more likely he just made them up to create an illusion of accuracy that he simply did not do the work to record.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
The difference is that this article seems to be an accurate account of events whereas Broder's was at best sloppy journalism and more likely outright journalistic malpractice (an attempt to juice up a story to conform to a preconceived plot, little better than tabloid journalism). No real-world fault of the Tesla justifies a reporter trying to bend the facts or going out of the way to manufacture a story. Broder clearly set out to drain the Tesla and get it on a tow truck, and he tried his damnedest to make that happen.
- lukeman 14y ago
  > more likely outright journalistic malpractice That is a heavy charge and the evidence just doesn't support throwing it around so haphazardly. Musk's jumping to that conclusion did this entire discussion a disservice. Remember, Musk stated as fact that Broder "drove around in circles" for 0.6 miles trying to run the batteries out. His casual accusation on just that point alone makes it hard to take the rest of his analysis (of his company-provided data) without a grain of salt.
  - codex 14y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if Musk were sued for libel on this point. Were he a journalist, I suppose what he had done could be called journalistic malpractice.
  - albedoa 14y ago
    Remember, Musk stated as fact that Broder "drove around in circles" for 0.6 miles trying to run the batteries out. His casual accusation on just that point alone makes it hard to take the rest of his analysis (of his company-provided data) without a grain of salt. I'm posting these without commentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fO_OHpyYw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fO_OHpyYw http://twitter.com/TeslaRoadTrip/status/302958514245087233 http://twitter.com/TeslaRoadTrip/status/302958514245087233
    - uvdiv 14y ago
      That backs up Broder completely! Look how inconspicious those chargers are. He said he couldn't find them because they were unlit at night, and this video lends that enormous credibility. Broder: While Mr. Musk has accused me of doing this to drain the battery, I was in fact driving around the Milford service plaza on Interstate 95, in the dark, trying to find the unlighted and poorly marked Tesla Supercharger. That someone found the charger faster than him is neither here nor there (it's irrelevant to the review he wrote). His story stands, and Musk's accusations look increasingly like complete libel.
CyberDroiD 14y ago
There was no mob. Just some angry posts on the internet. Please realize most people don't care about random internet comments, or take them seriously. Just something to argue about when we're focused on a story, it's no big deal. The outrage seemed normal: Broder and Consumer Reports seem to think that leaving the car unplugged overnight is normal or should ever be done. Or they combine 2 days+1 overnight unplugged, and call that a day, knowing that the cold overnight storage sapped the battery. So either they are acting stupid, or don't really know how to test battery-powered vehicles. Sure, you don't have to follow instructions, but if you don't, you will have problems, no matter what excuse you have about 'testing something'. If Broder can't remember what happened, farting around for details, he should have been a professional and videotaped at intervals so he could check the facts.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "Just something to argue about when we're focused on a story, it's no big deal." It's a big deal when it labels someone as a liar and a fraudster. It's a big deal when tens of thousands of knee-jerk readers are calling for someone's immediate firing. It's a big deal when someone's entire career is threatened by a bunch of people "not taking things seriously" on the internet. Not taking things seriously is the problem. People in internet-mob-outrage-mode are flippant, quick to judge, and unreasoned, believing that just because it's a bunch of electrons that there are no consequences. Hell, this situation in specific is lighter than it could be. On Reddit we've seen in the past vigilantes who turned internet-angry-comments into real-life threats against lives, we've even seen one case where someone committed suicide after being hounded by thousands of "random internet comments" that are (according to you) "no big deal" - the accusation was molestation, btw. Accusations of fraud are Serious Business(tm) for a journalist - there are real consequences for real people when that is tossed around. Just because you don't take your own words seriously doesn't mean other people don't. Yours is the worst kind of defense - akin to a bully saying "gosh, I was just horsin' around" when called on the awful things that have been coming out of his mouth.
- codex 14y ago
  Sometimes you have to leave a Tesla unplugged overnight: on a ski trip, in a cold airport parking lot, when traveling and a charger is unavailable, etc. In addition, the Tesla can lose range even when not parked overnight; it can simply be driven when it is very cold outside. You can "instruct" people not to do these things, just like Steve Jobs "instructed" people not to hold their iPhones "like that", but you will be ignored.
jacques_chester 14y ago
There is a psychological label which is useful here: "Naïve Realism"[0]. Basically, everybody assumes that they are correct and that all fair rational people would draw the same conclusions as them given the same information. When that doesn't happen, it can't be because the person is wrong; their interlocutor must be wrong. If the interlocutor continues to deny that they're wrong, they must be intellectually or morally defective. That's what's happening here: people are assuming that since Broder doesn't agree with them, he must be deliberately deceitful. You can search any Tesla thread on the net and find the word "liar" or "lies". Personally I think that Broder made some factual errors but that the big picture -- the battery ran flat in spite of the advice given -- is what matters. Maybe there's an RTFM problem here, maybe there isn't. I don't really care at this point because I happen to know that all new technologies ever have had embarrassing teething problems. When Musk's rockets blow up nobody seems to blame the journalists. Musk overreacted because it's his baby and because surely anyone who disagrees with the wonderfulness of Tesla must, by the reasoning of Naïve Realism, be intellectually and morally defective. Sprinkle in the way that humans love to form themselves into tribes, the "hostile media effect" and attitude polarisation and basically we're just hearing the same tunes that are hummed about Microsoft / Google / Obama / Bush / Rails / node.js / whatever. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology)
- MartinCron 14y ago
  I was afraid to read yet another depressing shouting match about the Tesla/NYT debacle. Instead I find your comment, which I actually learned something valuable and insightful from. Thank you for keeping HN great. I am in your debt.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    Here, let me ruin that fuzzy feeling for you with a filename meme: ohstopityou.jpg
- cmccabe 14y ago
  If Broder made factual errors, then Musk was right to call him on it. It's really as simple as that. Stop fudging and hemming and hawing about psychology and take responsibility.

vor_ 14y ago

I was surprised at the number of people casually accusing Broder of a conspiracy. Usually, it's the big company representative who gets the vitriol and the journalist is the underdog good guy, but for some reason, much of the reaction was opposite from the expected.

niggler 14y ago
Elon Musk is idolized by many people here, to a great extent because of Tesla, and when they see Musk make accusations they fall in line. It's more Musk-worshipping than anti-NYT sentiment.
ubernostrum 14y ago
It was completely expected. Elon Musk is basically a cult figure for a lot of wannabe "entrepreneurs", so criticism of him or his company is taken very personally and responded to very harshly. (lest you doubt this, go dig up some of the Boeing 787 threads and see what people were saying about him there -- the level of outright worship of him in the HN comments was more than a little bit scary)
homosaur 14y ago
That's because Elon Musk is some sort of superhero genius to the many of the types that lurk here. The Jason Calicanises of the world have all but declared this guy automobile Jesus.
- Metapony 14y ago
  I don't buy into the Musk mythos. I do believe he can afford a large media team to blanket messageboards and sway opinion.
gabipurcaru 14y ago
I'm not surprised. Don't know if this happens on a global scale, but here in Romania there's a trend of journalists and other media people starting to abuse their power like Broder (supposedly?) did, so for me (not sure about others), a journalist having a strong opinion quickly triggers a bullshit bell.

jrockway 14y ago

I'm getting kind of tired of Elon Musk. Last month his crusade was reaming Boeing for their 787 battery problems. This month, someone wrote a bad review of his car (which turned out to be largely factual). Both times, he's on Twitter to talk about himself to anyone who will listen (which is a lot of people, for some reason). I'm getting a tub of popcorn so I can be adequately prepared for his next crusade. I'm sure that this time it will paint him in a positive light...

sambe 14y ago
I don't think 'largely factual' is largely factual. The difference between this review and the NYT one is night and day. Omissions, misrepresentation and tone matter - especially in journalism.
- jrockway 14y ago
  The question here is whether or not you should be an expert to review a car: the author of the Times article did seem confused about some aspects of the car that would not be confusing to an experienced user. Making matters worse were the weather conditions that are extremely unforgiving to an electric car. So while I wouldn't call it a perfect review, the points it made were relevant. You can't expect people to change cabin temperature settings to be uncomfortable, drive 45mph on the freeway, not drive when it's cold out, and to know the nuances of the car's range estimator. (If the range display says "0 miles", it's reasonable to assume that the battery is dead.) Remember: the car mostly worked fine, which is a huge coup for electric cars. The article emphasizes the negatives, but the negatives are all things that can be fixed -- many with a simple software upgrade. So on that note, I don't think the review was particularly bad, and I certainly don't think the Times was compensated to make the car look bad, as Musk accuses. (The article is also a good human factors and UI case study. When customer service and an electronic read-out disagree, one implicitly trusts the read-out more. It happens to airline pilots, too.)

rorrr 14y ago

The issue wasn't with the battery having less capacity when cold. The issue was with Broder's lies.

Kylekramer 14y ago
Pretty much every "lie" Broder has been accused of making can easily be chalked up to the imperfect nature of human memory. His article has problems and certainly could have done with a bit more accuracy especially given that Musk/Tesla were known to be proactive about reviewers' truthfulness, but I am not comfortable characterizing any of it as a "lie". I'd love to hear any concrete example of him lying though.
- etherael 14y ago
  "I cannot account for the discrepancy, nor for a later stretch in Connecticut where I recall driving about 45 m.p.h., but it may be the result of the car being delivered with 19-inch wheels and all-season tires, not the specified 21-inch wheels and summer tires." Sure he can.
  - vacri 14y ago
    If you look at Musk's graphs where the caption says "At no point did broder drive at 45mph" with an arrow pointing to a 50mph segment, the immediately previous (yet short) segment was at 45 mph. There are a few other places where Musk uses quite a bit of poetic license in interpreting the logs, too. I can't say whether or not Broder's notes would have corresponded to this particular segment, but there was indeed a point where he was travelling at 45mph.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  He gave precise numbers that were incorrect, often by a significant margin. He claimed these were from his notes. Rather than an error of memory, I think it's far, far more likely he just made them up to create an illusion of accuracy that he simply did not do the work to record.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

The difference is that this article seems to be an accurate account of events whereas Broder's was at best sloppy journalism and more likely outright journalistic malpractice (an attempt to juice up a story to conform to a preconceived plot, little better than tabloid journalism). No real-world fault of the Tesla justifies a reporter trying to bend the facts or going out of the way to manufacture a story. Broder clearly set out to drain the Tesla and get it on a tow truck, and he tried his damnedest to make that happen.

lukeman 14y ago
> more likely outright journalistic malpractice That is a heavy charge and the evidence just doesn't support throwing it around so haphazardly. Musk's jumping to that conclusion did this entire discussion a disservice. Remember, Musk stated as fact that Broder "drove around in circles" for 0.6 miles trying to run the batteries out. His casual accusation on just that point alone makes it hard to take the rest of his analysis (of his company-provided data) without a grain of salt.
- codex 14y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if Musk were sued for libel on this point. Were he a journalist, I suppose what he had done could be called journalistic malpractice.
- albedoa 14y ago
  Remember, Musk stated as fact that Broder "drove around in circles" for 0.6 miles trying to run the batteries out. His casual accusation on just that point alone makes it hard to take the rest of his analysis (of his company-provided data) without a grain of salt. I'm posting these without commentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fO_OHpyYw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fO_OHpyYw http://twitter.com/TeslaRoadTrip/status/302958514245087233 http://twitter.com/TeslaRoadTrip/status/302958514245087233
  - uvdiv 14y ago
    That backs up Broder completely! Look how inconspicious those chargers are. He said he couldn't find them because they were unlit at night, and this video lends that enormous credibility. Broder: While Mr. Musk has accused me of doing this to drain the battery, I was in fact driving around the Milford service plaza on Interstate 95, in the dark, trying to find the unlighted and poorly marked Tesla Supercharger. That someone found the charger faster than him is neither here nor there (it's irrelevant to the review he wrote). His story stands, and Musk's accusations look increasingly like complete libel.

CyberDroiD 14y ago

There was no mob. Just some angry posts on the internet. Please realize most people don't care about random internet comments, or take them seriously. Just something to argue about when we're focused on a story, it's no big deal. The outrage seemed normal: Broder and Consumer Reports seem to think that leaving the car unplugged overnight is normal or should ever be done. Or they combine 2 days+1 overnight unplugged, and call that a day, knowing that the cold overnight storage sapped the battery. So either they are acting stupid, or don't really know how to test battery-powered vehicles. Sure, you don't have to follow instructions, but if you don't, you will have problems, no matter what excuse you have about 'testing something'. If Broder can't remember what happened, farting around for details, he should have been a professional and videotaped at intervals so he could check the facts.

potatolicious 14y ago
> "Just something to argue about when we're focused on a story, it's no big deal." It's a big deal when it labels someone as a liar and a fraudster. It's a big deal when tens of thousands of knee-jerk readers are calling for someone's immediate firing. It's a big deal when someone's entire career is threatened by a bunch of people "not taking things seriously" on the internet. Not taking things seriously is the problem. People in internet-mob-outrage-mode are flippant, quick to judge, and unreasoned, believing that just because it's a bunch of electrons that there are no consequences. Hell, this situation in specific is lighter than it could be. On Reddit we've seen in the past vigilantes who turned internet-angry-comments into real-life threats against lives, we've even seen one case where someone committed suicide after being hounded by thousands of "random internet comments" that are (according to you) "no big deal" - the accusation was molestation, btw. Accusations of fraud are Serious Business(tm) for a journalist - there are real consequences for real people when that is tossed around. Just because you don't take your own words seriously doesn't mean other people don't. Yours is the worst kind of defense - akin to a bully saying "gosh, I was just horsin' around" when called on the awful things that have been coming out of his mouth.
codex 14y ago
Sometimes you have to leave a Tesla unplugged overnight: on a ski trip, in a cold airport parking lot, when traveling and a charger is unavailable, etc. In addition, the Tesla can lose range even when not parked overnight; it can simply be driven when it is very cold outside. You can "instruct" people not to do these things, just like Steve Jobs "instructed" people not to hold their iPhones "like that", but you will be ignored.

jacques_chester 14y ago

There is a psychological label which is useful here: "Naïve Realism"[0]. Basically, everybody assumes that they are correct and that all fair rational people would draw the same conclusions as them given the same information. When that doesn't happen, it can't be because the person is wrong; their interlocutor must be wrong. If the interlocutor continues to deny that they're wrong, they must be intellectually or morally defective. That's what's happening here: people are assuming that since Broder doesn't agree with them, he must be deliberately deceitful. You can search any Tesla thread on the net and find the word "liar" or "lies". Personally I think that Broder made some factual errors but that the big picture -- the battery ran flat in spite of the advice given -- is what matters. Maybe there's an RTFM problem here, maybe there isn't. I don't really care at this point because I happen to know that all new technologies ever have had embarrassing teething problems. When Musk's rockets blow up nobody seems to blame the journalists. Musk overreacted because it's his baby and because surely anyone who disagrees with the wonderfulness of Tesla must, by the reasoning of Naïve Realism, be intellectually and morally defective. Sprinkle in the way that humans love to form themselves into tribes, the "hostile media effect" and attitude polarisation and basically we're just hearing the same tunes that are hummed about Microsoft / Google / Obama / Bush / Rails / node.js / whatever. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology)

MartinCron 14y ago
I was afraid to read yet another depressing shouting match about the Tesla/NYT debacle. Instead I find your comment, which I actually learned something valuable and insightful from. Thank you for keeping HN great. I am in your debt.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  Here, let me ruin that fuzzy feeling for you with a filename meme: ohstopityou.jpg
cmccabe 14y ago
If Broder made factual errors, then Musk was right to call him on it. It's really as simple as that. Stop fudging and hemming and hawing about psychology and take responsibility.