The downvoting is because it's a low effort comment that is more about being snarky than attempting to provide an insightful comment.

Elon Musk has legitimate reasons for criticism; sarcastically dismissing him as a charlatan isn't a productive way of doing so.

In my defense, dismissing him as a charlatan and not engaging with his latest news is the most effective way to combat Musk-ism. People have taken him seriously long enough and in enough numbers to give him some air of legitimacy when none is deserved.

It's the same strategy with internet trolls; you either ignore them completely, or call them out on trolling and engage no further. Musk is, in some sense, the internet's largest troll. And droves of people have taken the bait.

In some ways I can understand that as a strategy, but as a forum, HN has explicitly banned that type of response in lieu of more thoughtful dialogue.

Elon is actually a good example of why dialogue is important. You see him as a charlatan. I (with the context that I interned for SpaceX 7 years ago), see him as a flawed but impactful innovator who has pushed the state of tech forward considerably and employs 90,000 people though his two biggest companies.

Little is gained by sarcastically dismissing each others' perspectives. But by refusing to pretend that he is all bad or all good, and discussing his successes alongside his failures, we can lean into the purpose and value of HN.

> In my defense, dismissing him as a charlatan and not engaging with his latest news is the most effective way to combat Musk-ism.

Putting aside your unstated reasons why you believe Musk is a charlatan or the "Internet's largest troll", simply calling someone a charlatan will not convince people who think otherwise.

If I simply said "Biden is a charlatan", his supporters, or even those who had no opinion of him, would not simply begin to think of him as one. The same applies to if I said "Trump is a charlatan", so I am not sure what you're trying to achieve here.

I suggest you talk to the thousands of happy starlink customers on the r/starlink subreddit.

Capitalist scumbag leverages capital to create a useful service that some people find useful. Wow!

By that metric, <Walmart ; McDonalds ; Nestle ; Activision ; Eli Lilly ; choose your favorite corporation> are a great boon to humanity and we would be so lost without them!