That viral video of a 'deactivated' Tesla Cybertruck is a fake

>Those priors were obviously wrong.

You're doing it again here with the passive voice. You weren't wrong, it was "Ockham's razor" and "those priors" that were wrong.

>Do you think I shouldn't update my understanding based on new information?

Your responses here show that you aren't actually doing that. You aren't taking any responsibility for your prior incorrect assumptions and therefore you are likely to continue making similar wrong assumptions in the future. How can you learn from this experience if you can't admit that you did anything wrong?

Sorry for piling on here. To be clear, I don't think you've done anything terrible that requires an apology, and I think it's admirable that you are here after the hoax was debunked and willing to admit you were wrong and discuss it openly. It's just interesting (and somewhat rare on HN) to be able to go back and pick apart your comment less than 24 hours later with perfect hindsight.

You comment was:

> What's the alternative here? A rapper went to the effort to publish an MV, then figured out how to display a fake disabled message in the vehicle, then faked a C&D, knowing that these actions would give Tesla a very legitimate claim against them?

> Ockham's razor is not favorable to the alternative.

I think the issue is that you greatly underestimated how far people are willing to go for likes. There are billions of people online, and while most would not bother to do what you said, some of them are indeed willing to go to incredible lengths for views. The YouTuber who intentionally crashed his plane, for example [1]. This stunt with the Cybertruck feels relatively low-effort by comparison.

Or as my favorite response to your comment summed it up:

> "You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?"

I don't typically like sarcasm in a thoughtful discussion, but in this case it felt warranted.

You also failed to apply Occam's razor to the other side, and consider the legal and reputational risks that Tesla would face by remotely disabling someone's car while they were driving on the expressway. Yes, Musk has done brash things before, which certainly increases the believability of this hoax. But this would be new ground even for Musk. And you have to weigh Musk's capacity for doing brash things against the entire internet's capacity for generating fake news and hoaxes.

You probably should have known better than try and apply Occam's razor to determine the likelihood that an instagram post is a hoax. There are just too many irrational people out there (and rational people acting in bad faith) for Occam's razor to be applicable. And the fact that you were able to overlook the overwhelming number of counterexamples to your application of Occam's razor suggests to me that there may have been some confirmation bias at play.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67622247

I read the thread when it had something like 50 comments, and most of them were treating it as either confirmed or at least potentially true, and using it as an opportunity to rail against corporate abuse in full generality, just like every HN thread about a negative story about a tech company. It was only later that the skeptical comments started to rise to the top.

Many of the people who suspected the story to be a fake were... not very well received in that thread, at least at first.

Exactly - they might have something to gain by convincing others it is true for example.

According to HN guidelines, upvotes means something that sparks curiosity.

Then they are illogically boosting a hoax on purpose, or at least with reckless disregard for truth.

If Tesla weren't constantly attacked as a supposed shady company by NYT and the rest of the psyop propaganda machine it wouldn't have gotten so many upvotes.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah

>Because it is on-brand with Musk behavior.

It really isn't. I said as much in the previous thread, but the part that elevates this past the typical petty Musk behavior was the accusation that the car was bricked while it was being driven. That goes way past anything Tesla or Musk has done before and could easily have killed someone. Doing that doesn't just require an asshole CEO, it would require incompetence of both the legal and technical folks at the company who would actually implement this type of haphazard remote disabling.

hmm, remember when Mercedes tried to fake how well their emergency assistance works and had their mics still on?

"Yeah I fell for the bait, but that says a lot about my political enemies"

Come on, you'd get laughed out of any other serious forum.

More like it's on brand with the fantastic delusions people have about Musk. In reality Tesla and Musk are very good about privacy and leaving control with the user. But, you do you.

Nothing new under the sun. Remember when NBC admitted to rigging a truck to burst into flames in a crash for Dateline, because it wouldn't do it on its own? Or when a jury found that Consumer Reports lied about how easily an Isuzu pickup rolled over on turns?

But hey, the media probably wouldn't lie these days, and Musk bad man.

During election, Musk promoted a lot of deep fakes about Kamala Harris, including fake images generated using Grok. He's a total asshole.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/kamala-harris-de...

"couldn't have happened to a nicer guy"

[flagged]

Precisely. If it had been a Honda or a Ford would folks have found it as plausible?

Amazing that people like you are still defending the story.

Its telling about your bias, not Tesla or Musk.

[dead]

Both customers and employees put pressure on companies to take sides on particular issues.

I can see the rationale behind it but it has very dysfunctional and unhealthy outcomes.

Other then Tesla which car companies are doing politics beyond the usual "donate to both sides" thing?

Tesla, due to Musk, is an absolute outlier here.

You're ignoring the "X" and "Reddit" and focusing purely on Bluesky. Your post here is a good example of confirmation bias in itself, and it's sad that you're not realising it.

> It's telling on the users in question and their relationship with reality.

It’s telling to Tesla’s brand reputation. This will take decades and billions of dollars to repair, if it even can be fixed.

Tesla may become synonymous with cars-as-internet-of-shit. Same as how Italian cars to this day are the butt of every reliability joke. This reputation has followed them since the 90’s. British cars are synonymous with cheap construction – a reputation they built in the 70’s.

Stuff like this can be forever.

Sure, it's not true, but the fact that I believed it could be true pretty much confirms that Elon is evil, does it not?

You mean X users, right?

Tesla has a PR problem. I'm not sure that is what the comic is addressing.

There's something of a difference between the abstract presentation there and the much more tangible brand problem Tesla has. If this was a Ford nobody would believe it. They might argue it broke down. If it was a Toyota nobody would believe that.

But Elon Musk has made himself the face of Tesla, used that power in other contexts to go after critics, and the Cybertruck had a bizarre anti resale clause when released and Tesla have made a habit of features-as-a-service with remote software deactivations when other vehicles are resold.

So in the specific case here, the reaction very much represents a big brand sentiment problem attributable to concrete issues.

You don’t have to define “bad” after the second nazi salute.

The current situation in the USA is that we're dealing with milquetoast liberals on one side and a party led by a full-blown authoritarian autocrat (with whom Musk has aligned) on the other. This is no mere ideological difference. This is a struggle against evil.

What? I didn't even hear about this until this post. Crazy projection.

It's crazy that people would believe Elon's salute meant exactly what he wanted them to think. /sarcasm

Self-professed Nazis are probably the best judges of Nazi symbols, and they approved it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk_salute_controversy#F... The only other place it could have come from is a "Roman salute" which was used by other fascists who killed hundreds of thousands; is that any more defensible than Nazi?

I'll grant you he is probably not a Nazi in any organized way. And he probably meant it more as a troll than an earnest profession. But if he talks like a Nazi, salutes like a Nazi, donates to the party cheering on concentration camps for minorities and crying about fake Nazi-esque "white genocides"... maybe he's just a Nazi in denial that he's a Nazi.

Is this how people are going to water down and re-brand "dog-whistle"? Get it to stop meaning "coded political messaging" and have it mean "indicator"? Regardless of whether you agree with GP or not, there was nothing coded about what they were saying.

The man did a nazi salute on live television in front of millions of people. Twice.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. George Orwell, 1984.