Elon Musk Argues That His Twitter Can't Be Taken as Factual Because He Tweets About Zombie Apocalypses and Being a Martian Elon Musk is fighting a defamation case against the cave diver Vernon Unsworth, who he referred to as "pedo guy" last year on Twitter.
This story originally appeared on Business Insider
Musk's lawyers have repeatedly argued that reasonable people would not interpret Musk's insult as a factual statement about Unsworth. Last year they unsuccessfully tried to have the case dismissed on the grounds the Tesla CEO's comments could not be considered defamation because his insults were "over-the-top" and made on the "rough-and-tumble" platform of Twitter.
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But Unsworth's lawyers have used Musk's infamous "funding secured" tweet as an example of a case in which Musk's tweets had been taken seriously. In August 2018, Musk tweeted he had funding secured to take Tesla private. He didn't, and his market-moving comment resulted in $40 million in fines from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Musk's lawyers responded that the funding-secured tweet was irrelevant to the case and didn't say much about how he used Twitter more generally.
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"Picking one tweet from Mr. Musk's over 9,000 and arguing that it demonstrates his use of Twitter to disseminate facts is highly misleading," the filing said. The lawyers then gave several examples of other topics Musk had tweeted about:
- "An impending zombie apocalypse and a money-back guarantee on flamethrowers to fight them."
- "Rumors that he is a Martian."
- "Building a volcano lair like Dr. Evil, the villain in the 'Austin Powers' movies."
- "Launching SpaceX rockets at night because they are easier to fake in the dark."
Musk has also argued that he was not calling Unsworth a pedophile; he says "pedo guy" was a common insult used to describe a "creepy old man" when he was growing up in South Africa.
