This isn't really the context here. It's a tweet from 10 years ago. He wrote a tweet, lying about having secured funding to take Tesla private, even giving the weird price of $420. His tweet was not taken out of context or misconstructed, he did this tweet very willingly and this tweet meant exactly what he wanted it to say.

@ravenstine's comment about deleting past tweets is thought provoking - I use to use Twitter a lot but abandoned it years ago. Might be a good idea to check I didn't say anything too many naive and stupid things that I've forgotten about

>A world where your entire life has to be squeaky clean in order to achieve anything above-average is not one I want to live in...

We always lived in that world, it's only extent of the checks that have changed.

Outside of a national security context, a background check in 1950 entailed an inquiry with the local constabulary and citizenry about your character. Maybe a cursory check to make sure you were current on your bills. (And of course, a check to make sure you didn't get a dishonorable.) By 1980, the check on bills had been formalized into a credit check, and the check with the local constabulary had been formalized into a nationwide criminal record search. Today, we're approaching the point where we can formalize the inquiry with local citizenry as to the content of a person's character, but every other check is still made. (Try to find a decent job if you have a dishonorable, or a criminal record.)

Point is, previous generations have always had the problem of companies wanting to know more about us than we wanted to share. It's just that not many other generations would have foolishly volunteered all of that information to companies. We did.

I've got even worse news for you, as you might imply from my little timeline above, background checks will get better and better as time goes on. It's just the world we live in. It's the world we've always lived in.