Comment by ncr100 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ncr100 | Hacker News Reader

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I feel our government should regulate this kind of speech more aggressively, to boost the safety of the public.

The messaging by Tesla has been misleading, yes. There have been many other examples of couching date-slippage and over-promises with phrases like "no promises but Cybertruck|FSD|Model 3|Rockets|AI|Robotics|Neural-Link|End-Of-The-World should be here in two years."

Announcing a capability, and importantly MUSK acting as a widely-recognized public figure like it's ready - shaming every other fledgling competitor, before it's ready, is amounting to GASLIGHTING.

A speculate this is what we should expect from the company-owner's notable, controversial personality type.

Immediately upon receiving "Full Self Driving Beta", in the 201x's, some Tesla drivers CRASHED because they turned ON the lane-keep-assist and then left the car to do the driving .. straight into the back of a stopped truck, or a split open lane-divider, and died.

To reiterate, this mis-leadership has resulted in death.

I suspect that CEO personality-type is a salient factor in whether a company should be allowed to operate. Should we stop this .. should we prevent actual Companies operating? Not just a group of hobbyists but tax-paying, licensed, employing companies. It is OUR government. We can stop this predictable travesty of gaslighting -> good-faith belief -> bad outcomes.

I’m not against regulation but I’m not sure it’s needed here either.

In the case of misleading statements and marketing causing death, that seems like something that a lawsuit would handle, not regulation.

In the case of false marketing misleading investors, we would see investor lawsuits for that if the stock price suffered as a result. Right now, what damages would you show for musks lies?

Instead of new regulation, a lot of nonsense would have been avoided had the SEC not given him a free pass after the last round of investor fraud. It was entirely predictable that an egomaniacal child would not change behaviour after a slap on the wrist and a warning.

Regulation often happens after companies have mislead people, it’s more a chicken egg scenario, do we let disasters happen to legislate against or do we have the foreknowledge to see the disaster happening and stop it?

No. I stopped at “the government should…”

That never goes the way you think it will.

Advertising claims are in fact regulated. There just isn't a lot of enforcement but, at normal companies, legal teams are very conservative about making claims in advertising and marketing materials. If I claim our product is better than Brand X, you'd better believe legal is going to want to see the evidence and probably qualify the statement.

Indeed false advertising is a thing and it's not legal(depending on where you live ? it is in most of the world that has teslas at least). The government reaching further than going for false advertising is where the slope gp mentioned would come in I assume, and on that I fully agree.

It is fine (and correct) to be cautious about any situation where the government gets involved and starts setting limits.

But to discard an argument entirely is to bury your head in the sand.

Regulations are applied to many industries and limit the kinds of claims that can be made about products, and those regulations are important to public safety.

Such regulations most often apply to products that involve life or death consequences.

A company marketing vitamin supplements can’t claim that the supplements are proven to cure cancer, and that’s a good thing.

This is not to say that the government can’t or doesn’t get things wrong. But I’m curious how you feel about limitations placed on financial, food, and pharmaceutical companies.

At a minimum, there’s a fraud angle. You shouldn’t be able to claim to sell something that does A when that thing cannot in fact do A.

And when A happens to be critical to not dying, the implications of that claim just raise the stakes even higher.

The involvement of government is at most the courts to redress the kind of issues you're talking about, which is narrow to the particular situation involved, guided by precedent, but not fixed by it. Fraud, injury, death are all covered here.

Heavy-handed regulation I can't back though, in part because it is (increasingly these days) as broad as possible, as vague as possible, ensnaring far more then the initial case merited.

Why would you brag about not reading what someone wrote?

I did read it, actually, but there wasn't much of merit there. The usual spend more, make more rules, enforced by someone with a gun somewhere such that bad thing X can't happen again. Then of course, it does.

Not bragging, just bored.

[citation needed]

Fair.

Although honestly, it should also be on the regulation proposer to say cite why such a rule is necessary, and more importantly, under which conditions, if it doesn't work out, such a rule might be withdrawn.

I mean: We've had Medicaid, but still have problems in elderly healthcare. We have the Patriot Act, but still have terrorists. We have a Department of Education, but still have low (possibly lower) quality schools. We have a CDC, that failed in testing and containment of disease. We have an SEC, but SBF's fraud went unabated (although hopefully punished soon). We have an FAA, but still have unworthy aircraft (737 Max looking at you).

Perhaps then next round of rules proposed by folk looking to win their next popularity contest will work next time, I just doubt it very much. I just don't see much value in these rules - if bad things keep happening, what was the point? Might as well not have them, and make people directly responsible, through a court of actual law, when actual damages have occurred.

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