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Comment by alexdevkar | Hacker News Reader

Is it true that Broder is winning the argument?

That was not my impression, but I haven't read everything yet.

It's not my impression, either. Basically the only thing that might make Tesla look bad in this is if people believe that Tesla support personnel told Broder all the misinformation that he claims they did. I find it telling, though, that Broder has tried to move the debate from places where there is hard data to places where it's unclear what was said (since, I suppose, no one was recording that). He doesn't really dispute anything Musk says, but only tries to excuse it.

I'm usually on the side of not talking back to reviewers of your work, having read that advice over and over in essays and articles by wise authors and other creative types. In this case, though, everyone I've spoken to in person about this is convinced that Broder was just trying to tell the most entertaining story; Musk, given his accomplishments, naturally has higher credibility than Broder. It's a point in Broder's favor that all the people I've spoken with about this are technical types, who might be predisposed to side with Musk, but those are also the sort of people most likely to be swayed by actual hard data, which only one side of this argument has provided.

I would say yes he is. The article is correct in its driving more traffic to the Broder site where people have to read what was said in the review. Most people also will want to read the article in its entirety.

I also found myself looking for similar articles, wondering if indeed the car really does have problems or is it just poor publicity.

I found this article which linked to the original NYT article as well as Musk's rebuttal:

http://jalopnik.com/the-tesla-model-s-is-the-world-s-most-ex...

The best way to avoid MORE negative PR is too simply ignore the bad PR you are getting. Had Musk simply said, "Eh, whatever, it was a bad review, I know what my cars are capable of." and left it at, people wouldn't care. Once you start defending your product so vigorously, it makes it seem like maybe there is something to the claims and negative reviews.

Very true. It really doesn't matter whether Border lied or screwed up or anything. Musk gave him more free PR than Tesla would have gotten from a good review. It's ooooh so tempting to get into a fight when someone slanders your company, but it's almost always the worst decision you can make. If you're going to sit down and pick apart someone else's writing, data point and word by data point and word, you're going to be under the exact same scrutiny. And, now, everyone who reviews the Tesla will want to test it out in cold weather, just to be sure.

Seems like reddit is very pro Elon, to the point of many wondering when Broder will get fired. I wonder if there's an old media/new media divide here?

The divide is between people who have been following this story critically and those that haven't. Most of reddit and many people here have been suggesting he's an oil industry shill that was determined to see the car fail, but they were already looking to side with Elon.

Yeah, but for those casuals just peaking in, I think there's also an immediate divide between the media and the tech community. The invective here was very much pro-Elon right off the bat, and hasn't favored Border since. But all the other coverage I see in the journalism community is entirely pro NYT.

Perhaps. I work in finance, I'm not a programmer or 'hacker' at all. So I constantly feel like an outsider to this community, and especially when stories like this pop-up that really highlight the groupthink.

> highlight the groupthink

The perspective may also be a good way to become aware of your own groupthink.

More likely it is a people who have had to depend on cars/people who have not had to depend on cars divide. There's very little practical argument to be found in these threads on that website, just shrill invective. The "journalist committing libel" angle is quite juicy if you have no horse in the race. Average auto consumers might think Musk's behavior off-putting, detached, etc. and see the journalist's concerns as legitimate: A car, especially at that price, should get you from point A to B predictably, preferably with a comfortable cabin.

Maybe on HN, but not elsewhere as far as I can tell.

Tesla is down by 3% today(DJI is down 0.3%), so it doesn't look like investors are favoring Musk here.

Algorithmic trading based on news "evaluation" alone could account for that. For those people who actually sold by hand, I doubt they actually evaluated the data. For those people who actually evaluated the data, they're just waiting for a signal that they can buy Tesla at the best discount.

TL;DR: stock price says... meh.

Good point but probably need to look at the beta for TSLA before estimating what effect this PR flap is having.

Most people won't read everything, which is why Broder is not, in fact, winning the argument.

Most people heard about it in passing on cable news or in a single newspaper story. All they will remember is that the Tesla CEO accused the NY Times of faking a car review.

I showed Tesla's post to a non-tech (but very smart) colleague and he said "wow, he crushed the New York Times."

That was further than I would have gone with it, FWIW, so I don't think I was leading him to the conclusion.

Considering that Elon accused Broder of faking/fabricating the review when he clearly wasn't and that he's focusing on side-stories in order to distract from the fact that the Model S is terrible in cold weather, he's definitely not winning this argument.

Yes.

He would have been way better off by simply saying there were inaccuracies or inconsistencies in the review than going nuclear by screaming out "FAKE!"

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