this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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There’s deeply cynical and then there’s things which might be illegal. In the first category we have an Elon Musk-funded PAC microtargeting Jewish and Arab communities with diametrically opposed ads about Kamala Harris’s support for Israel or Palestine. Amazingly cynical.

But then you have what I’m going to describe next which comes from another Musk-funded dark money operation. They have set up fake sites impersonating the Harris campaign using fake policy positions and then sending out text messages also impersonating the campaign which aim to drive voters to the fake site. (A lot of potential legal and regulatory questions turns on word like “fake” and “impersonating”, which we’ll return to in a moment.)


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[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 5 points 5 hours ago

This is what happens if you don't prosecute a class of people for vomiting crimes. They will keep doing crime. Because they get away with it.

It's infuriating.

[–] Spitzspot@lemmings.world 63 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Can we revoke his government contracts now?

[–] MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fuck that, take his shit. Every bit of this fuckers wealth is built on fraud. He has no right to any of it. All of SpaceX should become part of NASA. All of Tesla should be our new kickass national auto company. Twitter should be a public service.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 16 points 1 day ago

This guy could eat a baby live on TV and too many folks would be like "Any talk of using force is inappropriate. We have to engage him in the marketplace of ideas. You can't just physically stop him from doing things. You can't just take his property. Inappropriate!"

I really hope he meets an embarrassing end, and soon.

"Might be illegal"

We as a society should really consider writing our laws down somewhere at some point, so every single bad action doesn't need to be a question of legality.

[–] tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone 63 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's only illegal if someone prosecutes it

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 36 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You can't prosecute political crimes. That would be partisan.

[–] Mirshe@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

More specifically, they do this only for people who don't have money. Jacob Wohl only got dealt with because his money hose dried up.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

What's his fate if Harris wins? He's clearly done away with any pretense of being poltically neutral.

And I know Harris isn't a jerk, but man, I'd be salty AF Fif I were her. He would be right to fear some revenge from Democrats at this point.

[–] Myxomatosis@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I hope Kamala wins and then starts canceling contracts with his companies. He deserves to be ostracized from society for this and many other things.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I hope not. It would be a shame to dump SpaceX in particular for purely political reasons, when (so far) they've been the best contracter by far.

As the head of NASA said, they don't work with Elon Musk, they work with SpaceX, and the relationship has been good.

I do hope they leave X though, and just promote a Fediverse instance or something instead. That's more of Elon's pet project/playground now.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 14 points 1 day ago

Nationalize spacex.

Our supreme court is already showing us that laws and precedent don't mean anything anymore. Might as well use the chaos for some good.

[–] Myxomatosis@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I didn’t realize that. Too bad Space X can’t divest from that turd.

[–] gargamel@leminal.space 29 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Or Harris can just fund NASA to build the rockets themselves and steal all the talent from X.

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 5 points 18 hours ago

The thing about SpaceX and NASA is that their purposes aren't really the same. NASA does space exploration and science type work to a large extent, which requires them getting their equipment up into space, but since rocket launches themselves are no longer the frontier of space technology, they don't really want to be in charge of launching everything up the that people want launched (which is a lot these days), they want to focus their efforts on pushing the boundary. It would be like trying to solve the problems with Boeing by making the FAA build all the country's planes instead. Not to say that nationalization is necessarily bad, but more that if it were done, it would make more sense to keep SpaceX it's own entity as a state run corporation than to fold it's commercial rocket launching into NASA.

Alternatively, something else I could imagine threatening Musk with, if the government had the stomach for it, would be to seize SpaceX and then make it employee-owned, which avoids changing it's competitiveness in the launch industry (it has become so dominant because, for the moment, it has actually done a pretty good job at reducing launch costs and improving rocket technology, and doing anything too disruptive with it while it remains in that position might disrupt that), but takes away Elon's share of the money and decision making.

She could literally nationalize all his interests, and he is so unlikeable even his investors would probably welcome a government buyout on the cheap.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Elon may be a face of the Company, he's not responsible for much other than general long term vision. Despite what he may claim, he isn't handling the engineering directly, and Gwynne Shotwell has been running operations for nearly it's entire existence.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Hopefully they can, some day. Maybe another entity will make Elon an offer he can't refuse when he needs cash, as the synergy with his other ventures doesn't seem huge.

[–] Myxomatosis@lemmy.world 33 points 1 day ago

Reichsmarschall Musk is the poster child for why billionaires don’t deserve to exist.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 19 points 1 day ago

Campaigning has to say who is supporting or sponsoring the message, so the second part sounds very illegal. Voter manipulation.

Talking Points Memo - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for Talking Points Memo:

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Search topics on Ground.Newshttps://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/elon-musks-fake-sites-and-texts-impersonating-the-harris-campaign
https://www.404media.co/this-is-exactly-how-an-elon-musk-funded-pac-is-microtargeting-muslims-and-jews-with-opposing-messages/
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