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A “massive cyberattack” is causing disruptions to X, the platform’s owner and Trump senior advisor Elon Musk claimed Monday. “We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved,” he wrote in a post on the social media platform. He added the company was “tracing” the source. Users reported intermittent outages on the social media platform on Monday, according to outage tracker Downdetector. In 2022, Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, for $44 billion and made wide-sweeping cuts to its staff and changes to its content policies. Since then, the billionaire Tesla CEO has endeared himself to President Trump and now plays a key role in the current administration. Musk, leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has brought crews of young tech workers to Washington, D.C., to slash government budgets and workforces. But Musk’s recent rightward shift and current chaos propagating has caused massive backlash against the world’s richest man. Shares of Tesla, his electric vehicle company, were down 14% on Monday. The stock has sunk more than 35% in the past month as sales slumped in Europe and investors feared his political activities were taking too much time away from managing his EV company. Tesla has also been the focus of protests, with many taking to dealerships to call out Musk’s sweeping cuts. Musk had a simple response to an X user who theorized that a mysterious “they” wanted “to silence you and this platform,” leading to the attack. “Yes,” he said.
Category:
E-Commerce
Cybertruck owners are having a tough time of it, increasingly saying that their $80,000-plus vehicles are the victims of cheese-related attacks and anti-nazi harassment as a result of recent backlash against CEO Elon Musk. Now, one owner has taken matters into his own hands, calling on his congressman to demand it be made a hate crime to be mean to Tesla owners. I find it deeply troubling that owning an American-made vehicle has made meand many othersa target for unjustified hostility, he wrote in a Facebook post last week. I have personally experienced multiple alarming incidents. On one occasion, while driving on I-80, another driver deliberately attempted to run me off the road. In another unsettling encounter, while washing my car in my own driveway, a stranger drove up, hurled insults at me, and then left while running stops signs. Rather than an issue of property damage, he believes these crimes call for harsher punishments. “I urge you to consider legislative action that would increase penalties for these acts, potentially classifying them as hate crimes or enhancing legal consequences for individuals who engage in such behavior,” he continued. “No one should be harassed, threatened, or harmed based on the car they drive.” This concerned Facebook user has not been the only target. 404 Media recently reported on a Facebook group for Cybertruck owners full of videos and photos of passersby and other drivers flipping them off, as well as people kicking their cars. One video taken from inside a Cybertruck shows a man throwing American cheese slices at its windshield. The comments are full of fellow Cybertruck owners suggesting the victim files a police report against the cheese-attacker. Attempts have also been made to dox the person by posting a screengrab of his face to social media. Police appear to be taking these pleas from Cybertruck owners for protection seriously. One TikTok posted from a march organized to commemorate International Womens Day in New York this weekend, shows no less than nine police officers guarding the perimeter of a single Cybertruck. Thought the Cybertruck was tough with a steel body and unbreakable glass, one user commented. Why does it need protection? Wider protests and backlash against Elon Musk at Tesla dealerships has turned driving a Cybertruck into an intended, or unintended, statement. On Saturday, over 350 protesters convened upon a Tesla showroom in Manhattan as part of the nationwide Tesla Takedown protests. Protesters are encouraging shareholders and vehicle owners to dump their stock and sell their cars in response to the political role Musk has played in the Trump administration as part of the cost-cutting task force Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). TSLA stock (Nasdaq: TSLA) has dropped about 40% since the beginning of the year, and was down 13% in midday trading Monday. For those who cant afford to sell, they are coming up with other creative solutions. Anti-Musk bumper stickers have been popping up on Etsy and topping Amazon bestseller lists. Regretful Tesla owners are grabbing up stickers with the statements like, I bought this before Elon was crazy, Anti Elon Tesla Club, and Elon ate my cat.
Category:
E-Commerce
Markets tumbled again on Monday after President Donald Trump said he won’t rule out an upcoming U.S. recession, sending skittish investors into another sell-off fueled by whiplash over tariffs and overall economic uncertainty. When asked if he expected a recession, Trump told Fox News on Sunday: “I hate to predict things like that . . . There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America.” Later, when pressed further, Trump said, “All I know is this: Were going to take in hundreds of millions of dollars in tariffs, and were going to become so rich youre not going to know where to spend all that money.” And so this week starts off, as last week ended, with market turmoil and even more discussion about tariffs. While across-the-board tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico are delayed, 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the U.S. go in effect on Wednesday, which are aimed at China, but will also affect Canada, Brazil, and Mexico, where we get most of our steel. And many countries are promising to clap back with “reciprocal” tariffs, the costs of which will likely get passed on to American consumers. A look at the numbers shows all three major indexes fell in morning trading, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down almost 1%, the S&P 500 shedding 1.7%, and the Nasdaq shedding almost 3%. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq dropped to their lowest levels since September 2024, according to CNBC. Some of the biggest movers were tech stocks, with Elon Musk’s Tesla shares plunging 8%, Palantir falling 7.5%, chipmaker Nvidia falling 5%, and Meta and Alphabet both losing 4% at the time of this writing. Not a pretty sight. Adding insult to injury, HSBC downgraded U.S. equities, saying “there are better opportunities elsewhere” and turning its eye toward stocks in Europe, citing the ongoing tariff debacle. What is a recession? It’s unclear if we are heading into a recession, but what is clear is how to measure one. A recession is defined as two consecutive negative quarters of gross domestic product (the value of all the goods and services the U.S. produces). But it can also be measured more broadly as a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production,” according the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, which tracks recessions. It looks at factors like unemployment, industrial production, real income, personal consumption, and wholesale-retail sales to determine the depth and breadth of economic decline. So far, the NBER has not declared a current recession in the U.S. Will there be a recession? Some experts say they are more worried about inflation than a recession, and that while Americans worry about tariffs, that isn’t a great indicator of upcoming consumer spending. (Inflation measures how much prices are going up, while a recession measures a period of time when there is negative economic growth, according to Fidelity Investments.) Demand is showing some fraying around the edges, but it hasnt accumulated to enough to be a meaningful risk of a downturn,” Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at BNY Investments told CNN. Inflation is still a top priority. The Federal Reserve seems to also be more worried about inflation. Based on what we know today, given all the uncertainties around that, I do factor in some effects of tariffs now on inflation, on prices, because I think we will see some of those effects later this year, New York Fed president John Williams said, as reported by CNN. Going forward, one big question will be if inflation worries gain enough steam that we see another rate cut. Meanwhile, Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, told CNBC on Monday, I dont think we will talk about a U.S. recession. The U.S economy is resilient, I would say, largely despite Donald Trump,” but was quick to call Trump an agent of chaos and confusion.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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