Genuinely curious: how did you identify this story as being low value? The Shanghai anecdote to me seems self-evidently low value (since the incidence of car fires is still rare, and individual incidents have low impact). But this story's headline (on the article page) alleges serious misconduct, as well as financial problems/shortfalls that unavoidably impact Tesla.

I didn't say this particular one was, I was cautioning people against what I see as an instance of a very tight social media bubble.

My example may seem low-value, but I've seen lots of very long and detailed discussions around here about Tesla's "Executive Exodus", which fall into the exact same selection bias pitfall.

It's strange how you are responding to a perceived trend, yet will not respond substantively to the actual contents of this particular post. Are you correct, and is this part of anti-musk mania which must be discarded? Or does this report have some value?

Red flags for me were language and sources. The writer didn't try to test her assumptions, as far as I can tell.

I think it's true that Musk went in and tried to save SolarCity by assuming control and changing the course. That was news at the time where it happened. He did the same to Tesla, actually. It's also true that he's always talking about visions.

What do you have in mind in terms of the writer needing to test her assumptions? I don't know what that means, both in terms of the assumptions that she's obligated to test, or what that "test" would look like in the article.

Here's an example of an assumption she could have tested (as opposed to re-printing as a quote).

The headline of this article starts with: "He (Musk) is full of shit".

Why?

Because that's a quote from a single person she interviewed, who is a disgruntled ex-employee of Tesla with a history of ranging against Tesla and Musk (to quote the article "Since then, he had taken to sending Elon Musk emails and point-blank tweets, describing the pain the layoffs were causing.").

(as a total aside, if you've heard about a laid off low-level employee angrily tweeting and e-mailing a CEO of Fortune 500 company (116 to be exact) you would probably think "an unstable person" not "a good subject expert to interview").

Instead of treating "Musk is full of shit" as a fact, she should could ask herself "is Musk really full of shit"?

Should could do it by asking more people what they think about Musk, more Tesla employees, including those that are still happily employed.

This article is clearly sourced from the most vocal, the most virulent Tesla haters (the self-proclaimed members of $TSLAQ on Twitter).

You can easily find even more people very happy with Tesla's products and I'm sure there are plenty of employees who think highly of Musk.

But it's clearly a hit piece, not interested in presenting a balanced account.

The part about Walmart lawsuit doesn't mention Tesla's response (which paints Walmart in a very bad light) or subsequent joint statement from Walmart and Tesla where they make nice.

After the Shanghai fire Tesla did an over the air update to lower the cars’ capacity by charging to a lower voltage.

Your uninformed mother-in-law may have actually had a better handle on things by not being a major fan and not internalizing the Tesla PR response.