I don’t like comparing the number of deaths, far-right extremists use that kind of whataboutism a lot to justify their hate speech (like Stalin was a mass murderer, hence the far-left is bad and the far-right is good), let’s not use the same kind of argument in the other direction. Even if it doesn’t induce murders directly, promoting hate or fear of a group of people (whether migrants, LGBT, billionaires or white males) leads to escalation from the other side, and ultimately to violence.
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They all do that. This is how they can sleep at night despite their horrible behaviour or even actual crimes.
Other markets have shown that as long as you have the superior product, such ups and downs usually balance out. In Musk’s case, he is familiar with that case because that’s what happened with Twitter. It was at some point heavily boycotted by advertisers, gutted in stuff by Musk himself and reeling in value and price and supposedly ready to go down and close altogether.
That changed very soon though and before the November elections. Why? Mostly because Twitter was the superior product on its market. (Personally I do not like media that restrict letter counts - for obvious reasons 
- but the users of said markets decide which platform is best)
I am just quoting those because that’s what I wanted to write, as well.
Putting a number and keeping score only on the “visible cases” is more than useless. It is detrimental because it detracts from the main problem which is the existence of those extreme ideologies and the abject lack of common sense in big amounts of population.
The real issue is whether we will finally manage to realise that we all live on the same planet and that we are the same species, thus finally moving away from far-whatever ideas and focusing on the well-being of everyone on this world, including the world/nature itself.
But it is not going to happen, who are we kidding? 
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Maybe X recovered in the US, but not in the Netherlands. The platform seems to have lost almost half a million users (a 14% drop) between January 2024 and January 2025 (although the remaining users spend more time on the platform).
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True, but it is a global market.
It is important to notice that Twitter was returned to “private” status, instead of “publically traded” so key figures and numbers are no longer rigorously tracked and reported anymore, but it seems that it had balanced out and is no longer on the brink of closing down, as it was around 16 months ago. That much, at least, we can all agree with as being a very likely conclusion.
The same thing possibly will happen with Tesla, concerning its reputation.
Long-term it is in more danger from losing sales to cheaper and equally practical/efficient cars made in China (e.g. I saw a BYD in my village before I ever saw a Tesla, even though BYD is fairly new to the market. Why? Because it is what people here can afford) long term, than whatever reaction people will have on the company’s owner’s politics.
At the end of the day, do we ever question the ethics and politics of the CEO of the company that made our clothes or our oven or our solar panels? Do we ask for a political certificate of “ethical compliance” with the electrician or plumber or builder that will come to our house to make some repairs?
No, we do not.
Are those things less important? No. Why would the CEO of the company we bought our car from be subjected to extra criteria? There is no reasonable/logical answer to that. We just happen to know who that CEO is in that particular case, but in reality in all the other 99% of products we consume we do not even know the name of the CEOs and we do not care to even find out who their are, let alone learn about their moral standpoints. Why? Because it doesn’t really matter to us, as consumers. (it can be argued that it should, but I am just describing what happens practically. Not what “should” or what ideally would be more reasonable to happen. )
It is a very specific (and hard to quantify in each case) target group of people that will care and not buy your product to boycott you OR they will care and will buy your product to support you (such things always have two different sides) and noone really knows in this case if they are losing or winning customers with all that publicity, because we do not know those two numbers.
At the end of the day it probably doesn’t really matter. They might or might nor be losing some clients now, but long-term other things will matter most. Competion, quality, price, availability of parts and services and so forth.
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We ll see what courts of law here in Europe think on X soon.
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You say we don’t know who are the CEO of the other products we buy, but the other products are not carrying advertising for their CEO like X does.
I am not a X user but I went to read on X what “people” think about Musk nazi gesture. So denying the truth. So on his side.
Why hiding the truth when he doesn’t hide himself on his attraction to the fascism and the European party commited into it?
Don’t get cheated by his denial, historians reminded us that was 2 pure perfectly executed nazi salut.
And we are not talking about Musk cars, we were primarily talking about a media
Well considering media in some way we do if you know something about “independence” in the media world.
Yes, that will be interesting, but it will also need precise moderation. Laws can have… side-effects 
Remember these folks?
The ultra-conservatives there tried to ban books on “sexually explicit content”… they forgot that their legal definition of that, really fit the Bible like a glove
In my country this is called “going to buy some hair and ending up getting your hair cut” 
Whatever fault the European courts find in Twitter will probably apply to its competitors or, even worse, other similar social media.
I’ve never seen a Tesla or X advertisement with Musk in it.
I have seen Musk promote those companies of course, but the companies using the CEO as advertisement is hard to fathom. I think only Steve Jobs comes to mind for doing that, but I could be wrong. I do not really watch ads, after all.
Let’s say that it was.
I do not see anyone burning their VW or Mercedes-Benz or their Hugo Boss and Coco Channel designer stuff.
Did you consume any Fanta this century? You know, the brand that Coca-Cola created so it could still sell its product to WW2 Germany?
https://corporatecitizen.in/issue3/corporate-history-mercedes-was-hitler’s-idea.html
The fact that those brands still exist and even thrive enhances my point that most people do not care, as long as the product is good.
That part is not my “opinion”, it is observable reality.
Will Tesla and Twitter remain competitive in their respective markets? I do not know.
But as long as their products are good, compared to the competition, they can afford to wait out protests and political dissatisfaction of a part of their customer base.
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No we usually don’t, but CEOs of other big high-profile companies tend to not loudly campaign in favour of extremist politicians in other countries’ elections, trying to add fuel to the fire and potentially undermine societies of US allies.
Putin does it as well (and probably Xi Jinping), but their methods are much more covert, and they are not our allies so we kind of expect them to.
I was trying to make the point that Musk’s actions are hurting the popularity of his own products in (Western) Europe. I don’t know if it affects his sales in the rest of the world, but I think Europe is an important market for him and the US.
But perhaps Musk is getting too high on his own supply (revelling in MAGA popularity domestically) to really care about it.
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It is still in my eyes. I’m not considering changing my mind at all.
You are still debating on something else as medias but ok.
There are multiple cases where ethics did change consumers attitude that you can’t just put aside this matter. I’m sure you heard about it.
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Posting but also I don't really suggest reading it?
("Elon Stole My Nazi Swag": Kanye West Goes On Fresh Antisemitic Tirade)
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Correct. That makes them smarter and, potentially, even more dangerous.
This means that they can do what Musk does, and worse, if they’d like, and noone would notice.
For example, how many companies - mostly for cheap clothing and cheap products - have been caught red-handed using child labour in unsafe factories in impoverished countries. Quite a few. And you can bet that quite a few did it and weren’t caught.
Obviously they were smart enough to not advertise such a horrible practice, but that didn’t stop them for doing it.
Do note that most of those brands had a momentary “hit” in their popularity and profits and then people went back to buying their cheap products anyway. 
I didn’t write anything that would aim into making you consider changing your mind on that particular issue. My point is simple and only about the products/companies.
There are some, however I cannot think of any case where the product was good and better than the competition but ended up floundering because of bad press or something that the CEO did. However I am not a “product/company historian” or anything. So, if you have any examples, I’d be happy to learn of them 
My prediction on Tesla vehicles in Europe is that the cheaper electrics from China will eventually out-compete them, but I am not a fan of the current iteration of electric vehicles, so who knows what new battery tech might improve things in the coming years and which company will have it?
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Yes, so I think it’s good that some European institutions are pushing for legislation to increase liability for such practices.
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If I know anything about classic folklore, I’m fairly sure mermaids are never “there for your safety” 
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In case of fire, if you hear mermaids, jump into the water.
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Please let’s not get the American version, thank you.
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I know that territories have been traded between countries in the past, but those were different times. I don’t see how that would fly today. Like in today’s rules-based international order could Starmer sell Scotland to Trump without consulting the Scots about it? [Only 6% of Greenlanders would like to join the US while 85% is against]
If might makes right and territories are just up for the taking without consulting its inhabitants or honouring international treaties and widely agreed international borders, there can be little objection to Xi Jinping taking Taiwan, Putin taking Crimea and the Donbas, Serbia taking Kosovo, Hungary taking Transylvania, Turkey taking Greece, etc. That’ll become a huge mess.
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