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Comment by tpmx | Hacker News Reader

Anyone thinking about buying a Tesla needs to follow r/RealTesla for a month before pulling the trigger (unless they're worth perhaps more than 10x-20x the cost of the car).

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r/TeslaMotors has plenty of real criticism of the car - assuming you don't just go by Tesla's marketing material (which there isn't much of - Tesla's publicity can be attributed to word of mouth and national news chains covering Tesla news/Elon tweets) panel gaps are extremely well-known and almost always expected, and more critical issues are also a possibility for every delivery.

To be fair, I have noticed that r/teslamotors has transformed a little bit in the past year or so. Obvious quality control issues are no longer always systemetically downvoted. Like roofs flying off when driving home from the pickup place.

Maybe it's only recent but r/Apple is also very critical of Apple's anti-consumer moves[0].

0: https://redd.it/jaidc5

> r/TeslaMotors has plenty of real criticism of the car

Autopilot-barrier-lust posts are quietly removed, for example, My X Tried to Kill Me Today! A reminder for all you auto pilot drivers ... [1]

That issue was introduced in April 2018,

> Well, even AP2 didn't do this until a few weeks ago when they completely changed the algorithm. So what even counts as "AP1" or "AP2" if they can change everything on you overnight? [2]

Then there is "Phantom braking" which began happening in October 2016. A week ago Elon said it is "fixed" and when a user says it isn't, a mod jumps in to say,

> Sometimes I don’t think he really knows what is getting pushed to the fleet at that moment. [3]

The biggest forum for discussing something should not be moderated as if it were a fan club.

[1] https://new.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/hslr3z/my_x_tr...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/8a0jfh/autopil...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/j7jvms/elon_mu...

But it is a fan club. :)

Only because it is moderated to be that way. Also removed:

(489 comments) Hey Tesla, maybe stop building cars for a couple days to build up a repair part inventory.

https://new.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/ew7mm4/hey_tes...

Here's another removed one,

> PSA: FSD Beta is NOT FULL SELF-DRIVING. Be safe and drive smart. [1]

The user says they were permanently banned [2]. Even in a fan club it doesn't make sense to ban someone for reminding fans to drive safely with new features.

[1] https://www.removeddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/jfyrt1/psa...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/jfywoe/i_was_jus...

I believe that was removed because those kinds of anecdotal reports belong in the "experience" threads. Those threads also tend to be mostly positive (as one would expect in a gathering of fans).

Again, the gathering of fans exists because it's moderated to be that way. Tons of positive experiences exist as their own anecdotal threads.

If you expect differently, you haven't been around many vehicle (or brand) specific fan forums.

r/teslamotors purports to be a place for fans and critics alike. Nowhere does it say "fans only."

The forums you're talking about specifically state they are for fans, both in name and description.

Actually they don't say they are for fans either. But good luck if you go in there to call their cars ugly.

We are in agreement that,

1) They don't say they are a fan club

2) They moderate as a fan club would

But keep in mind there is no analagous r/RealAudi or r/RealFord to form a baseline.

I've found other car manufacturer-specific subreddits to be significantly less crazy/religious/cultist than r/teslamotors. I don't think there's a real need for that.

I don't disagree. But I've also found them to have fewer influxes of non-owners that are there just to say negative things.

FWIW, I spend some time in both r/teslamotors and r/realtesla. There are pretty clear reasons that both exist, and pretty clear reasons for some frustrations on both sides.

Maybe that fact is telling in itself. No one is preventing anyone from making r/RealFord, I assume.

It is telling. The Tesla fan reddit has 824k subscribers. The BMW reddit? 163k. Audi? 91k.

Tesla attracts a vastly more active audience than most other automakers, and the results are interesting.

One should be REALLY cautious about drawing broad conclusions, positive or negative from the anecdotes from either (r/realtesla or r/teslamotors) group.

I view r/TeslaMotors as a fan club (boring), and r/RealTesla as a Tesla criticism/general EV discussion hub (interesting).

That's actually pretty fair at times, though I find the RealTesla crows to be needlessly acerbic at times. But then again that is often true of the r/TeslaMotors crowd too if someone accidentally "insults" the car in the "wrong" way.

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