YouTube removes video by Tesla investors using kids in FSD Beta test

Tesla Model 3

Source: Tesla

YouTube has removed a pair of videos from its platform which showed Tesla drivers conducting amateur vehicle safety tests using their own children in place of mannequins in the road or the driveway.

The tests were to determine if a slow-moving Tesla equipped with the company's latest driver assistance systems would automatically avoid colliding with pedestrians — in this case children — walking or standing still in the road.

After CNBC reached out, a YouTube spokesperson, Elena Hernandez, wrote in an e-mail Friday night:

"YouTube doesn't allow content showing a minor participating in dangerous activities or encouraging minors to do dangerous activities. Upon review, we determined that the videos raised to us by CNBC violate our harmful and dangerous policies, and as a result we removed the content."

The specific policy that YouTube cited is pertaining to harmful and dangerous content. The company removes videos that encourage dangerous or illegal activities that risk serious physical harm or death when it is aware of them. The spokesperson said, "Specifically, we don't allow content showing or encouraging minors in harmful situations that may lead to injury, including dangerous stunts, dares, or pranks."

Tesla markets its driver assistance systems in the U.S. as a standard package called Autopilot and a premium option called Full Self-Driving (or FSD) that costs $12,000 up front or $199 per month. It also offers some drivers access to an experimental program called Full Self-Driving Beta if they attain a high score on the company's in-vehicle safety tests.

None of these systems make Tesla cars self-driving, nor safe to use without a driver behind the steering wheel, attentive to the road and able to steer, brake, or accelerate on short notice. Tesla's owners manuals caution drivers that the systems do not make their cars autonomous.

Driver: 'I was prepared to take over at any time'

In a video posted on Aug. 14, a Tesla owner and investor in the Elon Musk-led company, Tad Park, drove a Model 3 vehicle at eight miles per hour towards one of his children on a road in the San Francisco Bay Area. No one was hurt in the test.

The video had tens of thousands of views before YouTube, a division of Alphabet's Google, removed it. Alphabet also owns Waymo, the autonomous vehicle technology developer and robotaxi operator.

Park is the CEO of Volt Equity, and portfolio manager of an autonomous driving technology focused ETF called VCAR. "I have experienced the product myself, and believe in my investments," Park told CNBC. "We did extensive safety precautions so that kids were never in danger." 

In a follow-up email, Park wrote, "First we tried on a mannequin, then we tried with a tall basketball player, then finally one kid stood and my other kid crossed the street."

He said the car was never traveling more than eight miles an hour, and explained, "We made sure the car recognized the kid. Even if the system completely failed, I was prepared to take over at any time. I had a sense of when I was going to need to brake if the car was not sufficiently slowing down."

The tests were a success in Park's view, because the car slowed and did not strike any object, pedestrian or his kids. Asked if he would do it again, he said: "I do not think further tests are necessary, but if I did, yes, I would do this test again."

"That being said, I wouldn't recommend people to deliberately try this at home," he added.

Park conducted the tests in part as a rebuttal against a national advertising campaign from software company founder Dan O'Dowd criticizing Tesla's driver assistance features.

The video, now removed, was posted on a YouTube channel named Whole Mars Catalog, which is run by Omar Qazi, a shareholder and major promoter of Tesla on social networks. Tesla CEO Elon Musk frequently interacts with the blog and Qazi on Twitter.

In addition to YouTube, CNBC reached out to the California DMV and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to ask whether such videos are safe or legal.

NHTSA said on Aug. 16, "NHTSA advises the public that it could be highly dangerous for anyone to attempt to test vehicle technologies on their own. No one should risk their life, or the life of anyone else, to test the performance of vehicle technology." 

The agency also noted, "As NHTSA has stated consistently, no vehicle available for purchase today is capable of driving itself. The most advanced vehicle technologies available for purchase today provide driver assistance and require a fully attentive human driver at all times performing the driving task and monitoring the surrounding environment."

The California DMV told CNBC via email: "As advanced vehicle technologies become more widely available, DMV shares the same concerns as other traffic safety stakeholders about the potential for driver misunderstanding or misuse of these features. DMV has previously indicated to Tesla and continues to emphasize the importance of providing clear and effective communication to customers, buyers and the general public about the capabilities, limitations and intended use of any vehicle technology."

The California DMV recently alleged that Tesla is engaging in deceptive marketing or false advertising where its driver assistance systems are concerned. It is also in the midst of a lengthy safety related review of Tesla's technology including FSD Beta.

Police in the town where Park conducted the test drive did not respond in time for publication. Tesla did not immediately return a request for comment.

Source https://www.globalcourant.com/youtube-removes-video-by-tesla-investors-using-kids-in-fsd-beta-test/?feed_id=13296&_unique_id=630064e11f546

Elon Musk sells 7.92 million Tesla shares worth $6.88 billion

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 02: Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

Dimitrios Kambouris | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold 7.92 million shares of Tesla worth around $6.88 billion, according to a series of financial filings published Tuesday night.

His transactions occurred between Aug. 5 and 9, the SEC filings revealed, following Tesla's 2022 annual shareholder meeting on Aug. 4 in Austin, Texas.

Earlier this year, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said on social media that he had "no further TSLA sales planned" after April 28.

That week, SEC filings revealed Musk had been selling a block of shares in his electric car maker worth about about $8.4 billion.

The centi-billionaire is in the midst of a contentious legal battle with Twitter, the social networking giant he agreed to acquire in April for about $44 billion or $54.20 per share.

Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro

Amid an overall market decline, Twitter's share price and the price of Tesla shares dropped. Musk said he was terminating the deal and accused Twitter of failing to give him all the information he needed to go ahead with the acquisition.

He also accused Twitter of understating the number of bots, spam and fake accounts on its platform.

By July 8, Musk told Twitter he was terminating the deal.

Twitter has sued to ensure the Musk deal goes through for the promised price, which would represent a windfall for many of its shareholders.

Tesla shares were trading nearly flat after hours on the news. Shares in Tesla closed at $850, down just over 2% for the day on Tuesday, before the CEO's insider sales were made public through SEC filings.

Source https://www.globalcourant.com/elon-musk-sells-7-92-million-tesla-shares-worth-6-88-billion/?feed_id=8893&_unique_id=62f3282811812

Elon Musk challenges Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a debate on bots

Centi-billionaire Elon Musk provoked Twitter and challenged the company's CEO Parag Agrawal to a "public debate" about fake accounts and spam in the midst of a contentious legal battle over a $44 billion acquisition.

Musk filed a bid with the Securities and Exchange to acquire Twitter back in April this year. After the companies agreed to move ahead with a take-private deal, Musk said he was terminating his acquisition, and accused Twitter of presenting false numbers, including in its SEC filings, pertaining to the amount of monetizable daily active users, and the number of spam and bot accounts on the social network.

Twitter then sued Musk in a Delaware chancery court to ensure the deal would go through as promised, and Musk filed counterclaims and a countersuit there on July 29.

In a series of tweets that Musk began posting just before 1 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 6, Musk interacted with a fan who had summarized his accusations about Twitter including that it was stonewalling him and giving him, "outdated data," and "a fake data set" when he asked the company for details about how it tabulates mDAU, and estimates for spam and bot accounts.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO wrote, "Good summary of the problem. If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they're confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms. However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not."

By just after 9 a.m. Saturday morning, Musk started a Twitter poll asking his followers to vote on whether "[l]ess than 5% of Twitter daily users are fake/spam." Respondents to the informal poll could choose one of Musk's provided answers which read either "Yes" followed by three robot emoji, or "Lmaooo no." (The slang abbreviation "lmao" stands for "laughing my a-- off.)

Musk also wrote Saturday morning: "I hereby challenge @paraga to a public debate about the Twitter bot percentage. Let him prove to the public that Twitter has <5% fake or spam daily users!"

A source close to the company says a debate is not going to happen outside of a pending trial.

Attorneys for Musk did not respond to requests to comment on Saturday, and an attorney for Twitter declined to comment on Musk's Saturday tweets.

Twitter's attorneys have argued in court filings that Musk gave the company just twenty-four hours to accept his offer before he would present it directly to Twitter shareholders, and waived due diligence including a chance to seek more information on false or spam accounts.

They wrote in court filings, "Musk's repeated mischaracterizations of the merger agreement cannot change its plain words."

At an annual shareholder meeting for Tesla on Aug. 4, Musk was asked to speak about Twitter during a question-and-answer session that followed a proxy vote.

He said, drawing laughter from the audience in attendance, "I obviously have to be a little careful what I say about Twitter because there's this lawsuit and stuff." He confirmed that the only two publicly traded securities he owns are Tesla and Twitter.

And then he spoke as if he still wants to become the owner of the social networking company, a stark contrast to arguments made by Musk via his attorneys in legal filings in Delaware in which Musk argues he should not have to go through with the deal.

At the Tesla 2022 shareholders' meeting, Musk said: "I think in the case of Twitter since I use it a lot, shoot myself in the foot a lot, you know, dig my grave, etc. I think it's — I do understand the product quite well, so I think I've got a good sense of where to point the engineering team at Twitter to make it radically better."

He added that Twitter would "help accelerate" a "pretty grand vision" he had to build a business he'd been thinking about since his earliest years as a tech entrepreneur, X.com or X Corporation.

"Obviously that could be started from scratch," he said, "but I think Twitter would help accelerate that by three to five years. So it's kind of like something I've thought would be quite useful for a long time. I know what to do. Don't have to have Twitter for that but, like I said, it's probably at least a three-year accelerant and I think it's something that will be very useful to the world."

Musk didn't go into any further details at that meeting. However, he reportedly said during a town hall meeting with Twitter employees in June this year that he wanted to grow Twitter's user base to a billion people and saw Twitter as a platform that could evolve into an app like China's WeChat, a "super app," that incorporates everything from messaging, video and social media, to mobile and point-of-sales payments, with a robust app ecosystem.

Unless they reach a settlement first, Twitter and Musk are headed for a five-day trial in Delaware that starts on Oct. 17. The judge ruling on the case is Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick.

Source https://www.globalcourant.com/elon-musk-challenges-twitter-ceo-parag-agrawal-to-a-debate-on-bots/?feed_id=7577&_unique_id=62ef05186a540