{"id":6721,"date":"2022-04-15T14:32:41","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T14:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9thstreetjournal.org\/?p=6721"},"modified":"2023-03-27T15:59:12","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T15:59:12","slug":"how-elon-musk-and-his-trolls-attacked-a-duke-professor-on-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/9thstreetjournal.org\/2022\/04\/15\/how-elon-musk-and-his-trolls-attacked-a-duke-professor-on-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"How Elon Musk and his trolls attacked a Duke professor on Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"
It is not unusual for Tesla CEO Elon Musk to tweet 30 times a day. Twitter is his marketing platform, his customer service hub and, unfortunately for his opponents, his battleground. (And now, he is <\/span>seeking to buy it<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n Last October, Musk used Twitter to target Missy Cummings, a Duke University professor and automation expert. \u201cObjectively, her track record is extremely biased against Tesla,\u201d <\/span>he tweeted<\/span><\/a> in response to one of his fans.<\/span><\/p>\n Those 9 words \u2013 just the latest in an ongoing disagreement between two outsized personalities in the booming field of automation \u2013 unleashed a fury.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Musk’s tweet mobilized an army of virtual trolls that attacked Cummings, who initially responded with grace. \u201c\u200b\u200bHappy to sit down and talk with you anytime,\u201d she tweeted back to Musk. This only enraged the trolls further, who smeared her online. And two days later, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of online harassment, Cummings deleted her Twitter account, stopped all public commentary and for the next few months largely went silent online.<\/span><\/p>\n This is the tale of that feud, which represents two distinct viewpoints about the technology behind the nation’s most popular electric car. The feud continues to simmer in different corners of social media, and will likely boil over in new ways in the future, especially if Musk succeeds with the Twitter takeover and his promise to make his favorite battlefield <\/span>\u201cbroadly inclusive.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This account is based on the tweets and public statements made by the many parties involved, a Change.org petition, LinkedIn posts by Cummings, and the syllabus she used for her Duke engineering course at the time of the tumult on Twitter. Cummings declined to comment to The 9th Street Journal. Neither Tesla nor Musk responded to requests.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Killer robots\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n The online feud traces back to at least 2017 when Cummings, a widely known former Navy pilot who became a professor in Duke\u2019s Pratt School of Engineering, began <\/span>tweeting her concerns<\/span><\/a> about Tesla\u2019s highly automated cars, saying that they were \u201ckilling people,\u201d among other criticisms.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Sometimes she was clinical, tweeting that Tesla’s autopilot technology gave drivers “mode confusion.” Other times she was blunt, saying that Tesla\u2019s \u201ckiller robots\u201d are so dangerous her students who tested them in the lab should \u201cget hazardous duty pay.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n On occasion, she got personal toward Musk. Cummings went as far as posting a GIF of a woman knocking a man out of his chair with a single punch, suggesting she might do the same to Musk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n