Elon Musk’s April Fools’ Tweets Were ‘Not A Joking Matter,’ Experts Say
Summary
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk is no stranger to pulling stunts and jotting off provocative tweets. The billionaire entrepreneur loaded his own cherry-red Tesla Roadster onto a rocket made by his other company, SpaceX, and launched it into orbit. He started a tunnel-boring company on Twitter and tweeted last week that he was deleting his company’s Facebook accounts. In 2015, his company put out an April Fools’ news release announcing a “Model W” watch amid the hype surrounding the Apple Watch, depicting London’s Big Ben tower protruding from a man’s arm, warning it “requires the wrist strength of an Orangutan.”
But while his latest prank — a series of April Fools’ tweets Sunday joking that Tesla was bankrupt — was funny to many of his followers on Twitter, it also raised questions from some communication experts, Tesla analysts and governance watchers about the timing and the judgment of the tweets.
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Joseph Grundfest, a former SEC commissioner and professor at Stanford Law School who said he has used Musk’s 2015 April Fools’ joke in a class seminar, said that while it may not have been the “best idea Elon has ever had, because it opens him and the company up to unnecessary criticism and questioning about something that was clearly intended to be a joke,” it likely didn’t pose risks.
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