well, there is an asymmetry that is obvious to me: it is easier for the PR of tesla to make its voice overpower the voice of a consumer (promoted links, using the crowd of the company to upvote on HN or /., paying community manager to do damage control).
And random rightful consumers may just remember that before daring to voice a concern.
I call it bullying because like in school, it it the tallest and strongest against the isolated weak ones.
And yes Tesla so far has used yet no legal means, but they have a better arsenal to harm a consumer than a consumer has to fight the company, especially if you have NO lawyer to support you.
So, it is a new prototype of censorship by bullying resulting in people potentially shutting their mouth in fear of the harm for their cyber reputation or liability.
Most people think we should fear government and need more secrecy, I say we should begin to fear corporations and need more transparency from these legal entities.
I don't know if the consumer is a fraud (maybe he is) but I find the tesla PR pretty disproportionate.
We should certainly be watching for abuses of power like you describe, no question. But let's be careful not to cry wolf lest we hurt our own cause. Let us save our outrage for when a real abuse has occurred.
In this particular case, we now have both sides of the story and are able to form our own opinions based on the presented information. I think that's as close to an ideal situation as you're ever going to get. Were this to happen in the 1980's (or earlier) we wouldn't even be discussing it.
What a great time to be alive :-) And yes, we should definitely remain vigilant against corporate/government abuse and control.
And random rightful consumers may just remember that before daring to voice a concern.
I call it bullying because like in school, it it the tallest and strongest against the isolated weak ones.
And yes Tesla so far has used yet no legal means, but they have a better arsenal to harm a consumer than a consumer has to fight the company, especially if you have NO lawyer to support you.
So, it is a new prototype of censorship by bullying resulting in people potentially shutting their mouth in fear of the harm for their cyber reputation or liability.
Most people think we should fear government and need more secrecy, I say we should begin to fear corporations and need more transparency from these legal entities.
I don't know if the consumer is a fraud (maybe he is) but I find the tesla PR pretty disproportionate.