The Tesla Protests Come for Cybertruck Owners

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1:17Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media Podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist-founded company and needs your support. to subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404media.co. I'm your host, Joseph. And with me are the 404 Media co-founders, Sam Cole. Hello. Manuel Mayberg. Hey, what's up? And Jason Kebler. Hello, hello. Reminder, a week from now, well, on Monday, we're going to have our party at South by Southwest.

2:01So it is coming up. This is the last pod before that. If you're going to be in Texas, come see us at the speakeasy. We'll include like reservation information in the show notes again, but we're very excited. Yeah. And now I'll have a little bit more detail on where exactly timing and all of that sort of thing. Yeah. me and Emmanuel won't be there, but Jason and Sam will be. And to be honest, it's probably for the best because they will make it a lot more fun than if me and Emmanuel were there. I don't know. Maybe I'm being too harsh. Brutal, brutal. We also have hats back in stock. A lot of people were asking, but we've re-upped on hats.

2:43So if you want to buy a 404 Media hat, they're in our Shopify store. Will we have those at the event? Yes. Okay. But if you don't want to fly to Texas for a hat, I will mail you one. I guess we can use shipping. Yeah, I suppose. Whatever. Okay. So let's go with the first story. Facebook Cybertruck Owners. I can't believe I botched the headline. I got the cadence all wrong. Facebook Cybertruck Owners Group Copes with Relentless Mockery, like I'm about to after reading that. But I mean, the headline kind of explains itself and we'll get into that. But first of all, Jason, what is this broader context of, whoa, these protests against Tesla and Cybertrucks and Musk, they've really taken off in the past week.

3:34Like, what's the context that we're coming into this with? Yeah. So, I mean, the context is that people are mad that Elon Musk is destroying the federal government. firing people has aligned himself with the far right in various countries in the United States is sort of an unelected, I guess, self-appointed bureaucrat who in many cases is like self-dealing in the federal government. Like there's this big story recently about how Starlink is going to take over this critical FAA communications contract from Verizon. And I mean, that's just like, there's news every single day. And so people have been thinking, how can we push back against what is happening?

4:14Because Democrats in Congress are not doing a very good job pushing back against this. And so there's been this movement called the Tesla takedown protests, where people are protesting at Tesla dealerships, mostly on weekends, it seems like Tesla showrooms and Tesla dealerships and they're just picketing out front. But there's also been kind of like some defacement occurring either as part of this or as just like other types of self-done protests. So there was someone in Colorado who threw Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership. For example, in Massachusetts, someone lit a Tesla supercharger on fire.

5:01There's been a lot of graffitiing at various places. I think there were nine people arrested at a Tesla takedown protest in Manhattan over the weekend. And so these are really growing. These protests are really growing. And I think part of the, well, the entire point behind it is that a huge amount of Elon Musk's power and net worth is wrapped up in Tesla. And it's a publicly traded company. The stock has actually been cratering over the last couple of weeks. Sales have plummeted in Europe by like 50, 65%. Sales have plummeted in Europe. I'm very curious to see what sales are going to look like in the United States next time they report.

5:44And then there's also just like this idea that a lot of Elon Musk's power is derived from Tesla. And Tesla's stock valuation is really high, not because it is a super profitable car company, but because it has this promise of being like a robo-taxi company, a robotics company, an AI company. And all of that is very, very speculative. And so Tesla is like, I wouldn't call it a meme stock necessarily, but a lot of people are sort of investing in Tesla as a way of investing in Elon Musk. And so the thought is, if you can like tank Tesla, you can kind of take a lot of power away from Elon Musk. So that's kind of like the broader context here.

6:30super briefly do you think that is accurate or maybe like is that accurate like if people attack tesla it could take power away from musk or is it like i know the company is getting so big and now he's in government and he has starlink and all this like it may not be wholly effective and i'm not saying these people shouldn't be protesting they can protest of course about whatever they want but like do you think it could be effective or is it hard to say yet so last week uh the really good podcast uh tech won't save us had an entire episode about this where they had on the author of a book called i believe it's called ludicrous um and it's about tesla and i thought that that was a very interesting podcast if you're interested in going like deep on this um i mean the thought is that like a lot like Elon Musk doesn't have a lot of liquid assets his biggest path to liquidity is through selling Tesla stock and it's like he has a lot of money kind of like stuck in Twitter which is now a private company he has a lot of money stuck in SpaceX which is a private company and so it's not it's not very liquid and so like Elon Musk is going to remain an incredibly powerful person regardless.

7:44I think that SpaceX on its own is a massive, massive company that is currently like the United States' only way of getting to space. Well, I guess now we have Blue Origin and some other ones, but they're mainly the ones that are doing US government satellite launches and taking astronauts to the space station. And that has remained the case for a while. And so I think also Starlink is becoming increasingly important, both geopolitically, but also as a consumer product. It's being taken up by a lot of people in rural areas. And so I don't think that you can tank Elon Musk entirely by tanking Tesla, but it would certainly help a lot i think yeah sure so there's all that context people are understandably very annoyed at musk and are targeting tesla uh very fairly and cybertrucks as well you then go and find this facebook group specifically for cybertruck owners um and you go in there and i think you said there are broadly two types of posts what are those two types basically that's funny um so there's two types of posts in the the facebook cyber truck owners group one is people talking about uh like strangers flicking them off or writing on their cyber trucks like these cyber trucks attract dirt a lot of the time and like salt and things like that so people are like writing things in them uh like with their fingers and people like just sort of messing with cyber trucks and we'll talk a lot about that and then the other type is like people who own construction companies or roofing companies who have wrapped them using it's like vinyl wrap like where you change the color of the car and they basically put like advertisements for the like roofing company on there so there's There's been some MAGA wraps and stuff like that.

9:50Right. But there's... And I don't fully understand why, but there's a type of guy who is buying these, and they're a small business owner, which is great, but they're all buying wraps for their Cybertrucks? I mean, I guess you don't know why that's a thing, but it's a thing, apparently, in this group. Well, it is, but I think also it's like a lot of the protests and ad hoc like fuck tesla sentiment has been directed at cyber trucks in particular and i think there's a few reasons for that it's like one they're ridiculous vehicles like they're just gigantic um you know they're not even allowed in europe because they're too large and so there's been this movement in the united states to have like larger and larger and larger SUVs, which are very dangerous for pedestrians, first and foremost.

10:46It's like, you're way more likely to be killed if you're a biker or a pedestrian. If you're hit by an SUV, then you are a smaller car. And so that's not great. But also, it's like the Cybertruck is bulletproof. Or he's advertised it as being like, has bulletproof glass. He's advertised it is essentially like a tank that can keep you isolated from other people and you kind of like sit in this like moving fortress and i think that there people don't like that first of all like i don't like that i don't like seeing cyber trucks around and be like who who is this why are you so much better than me because you you think you're cool because you have a tank or whatever and then there's also the fact that cyber trucks were released after elon musk become became a gigantic asshole and dickhead like there's no plausible deniability in the same way there is with a potentially with a tesla even though lots of owners now are trying to cover up their ownership either with those stickers in i think somebody tweeting from san francisco says there's a lot of these stickers saying like i bought it before we all knew about him well then something i just shared in our chat is that it looks like some tesla owners are putting different vehicle branding on their teslas so there's a honda logo and stuff to make it look like a different brand of car so it can blend in um but you're right and like cybertruck is like unambiguously musk like you like you basically have to be a musk fanboy or an extreme edge case to own one of these vehicles you can see why people would target them yeah right i mean for for many years if you bought an electronic, an electric vehicle at all, you are probably buying a Tesla because they go the fastest, they have the best charging infrastructure, like the incentives to the tax incentives and things to buy them were very good.

12:42So I know and have met a lot of people who have like Tesla Model 3 or Tesla Model Y, because they were like, Oh, I want to protect the environment, blah, blah, blah. And a lot of those people are very regretful at this point because they didn't know what Elon Musk was going to become. And I think you can argue whether they should have seen the signs earlier or not. But if you're buying a Cybertruck, you're definitely aligning with Elon Musk's broader worldview at this point. And so a lot of the anger that's been directed at Tesla and Tesla owners has been directed in this first wave at Cybertruck owners.

13:26Sure. And so, I mean, that's like a long way of saying there's this Facebook group where Cybertruck owners are bitching to each other constantly about how people are mean to them, how people are flicking them off, how people are writing cyber cuck on their Teslas. Their cyber chode was another one that's good. people are putting like nazi car um what's the other one tesla it's not test nazi but it's there's like a few different like swastika swastika yeah yeah there's some swastika cars um and it's like a lot of people just coping with like how often does this happen to you and a lot of people are saying that you know they they definitely are getting flicked off pretty often.

14:12I think acts of where people are actually vandalizing their cars in some way are a little bit more rare, but they definitely engender the most conversation on this Facebook group. And so there's lots of people talking about it. And it's a mix between people who lean into it and say that they enjoy being a villain and people who are like, I just want to drive to work or my wife or my husband really doesn't like that when we're driving people like honk at us and flick us off and stuff and so now we need to get rid of our car because my spouse is mad at me right and to be clear the people uploading these photos or videos or whatever into this Facebook group they are the owners themselves or as you say maybe their spouse as the owner or the driver or whatever.

15:03So you mentioned that then there's almost two reasons why they're doing it as well. Like they kind of want to flex and revel in being a villain or they're sort of, I don't know, just being really sad about it and asking each other, what sort of the conversations in response to that? Are people then pitching in and going, yeah, it's happening to me too and this sucks? So is anybody engaging with the incredibly obvious and fair argument that Musk sucks? Is anybody engaging with that? Or is it more about their own vehicles? Some of them are like, wow, I really didn't bargain for this. And some people are saying, I don't always agree with Elon or I wish he wouldn't do this.

15:48But I would say that a lot of people are now seeing it as like an identity symbol where they're saying, I'm all in with Elon. I'm all in with Trump. You know, cry harder libs. A lot of the discussion in there is like about the type of cars that are flicking them off. So a lot of times there'll be a video or photo and they'll say like, this person driving a Ford Fiesta flicked me off. They must be poor because a Ford Fiesta isn't expensive. right they are really telling on themselves by bringing up the other car when the other car doesn't matter it's the car you're driving okay exactly exactly and then i mean the other the other thing that i think is very important to talk about is yes it is the cyber truck owners who are uploading these and the way that they're uploading them is they're using uh this feature on Tesla cars called Sentry, which is when the car is parked, you can turn it into like a stationary surveillance camera situation because every Tesla car has a bunch of camera, outward facing cameras on it.

16:57And so they're just always filming. And like a ring camera, you can go back and look at the footage. And so there's a lot of people who are posting videos of people drawing on their cars. There's one incredible video of a guy who walks up with a bunch of Kraft singles, like the little cheese slices, and he starts throwing cheese slices onto the truck's windshield. And this guy was actually filming with his cell phone. You could see him filming with his cell phone. And then people in this group were screenshotting his face and talking about trying to use facial recognition on him, which is crazy.

17:38I have not seen any... I've seen a lot of people say we should use facial recognition on these people, but I have not seen a positively identified person that was done using facial recognition. However, there was one case in Texas where someone... It was kind of an intense road rage incident, so I hesitate to defend this. but basically like another driver got out of his car at a stoplight and flicked off the Cybertruck owner. They filmed it with all of the cameras that exist on the Cybertruck. And he was wearing the shirt of his employer. And so they then like looked up on LinkedIn, that employer found him on a like group photo that was uploaded to LinkedIn and then complained to his employer.

18:28And they claim that they got him fired. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but it was covered by the local news in Texas, that entire incident. And so I guess it's just like, we don't condone anything here, just reporting, just reporting. But if you're going to fuck with a Tesla in some way, just know that they're always recording. I always think about that with Teslas when I walk by them. It just feels like walking by a big camera to me. It's like they're covered in cameras. covered in cameras so i was covered in cameras and they're facing every direction yeah and yeah it's like i don't know it's like i'm always i'm not notoriously not an amazing driver and which probably would surprise no one um and i always think about this when i'm like parking pretty tight next to a tesla i'm like if i nick this thing they're gonna see me do it and it's gonna be on camera or just you know when people vandalize people will join this when And Elon Musk, like, years ago was kind of starting down this path and people were, like, fuck the Teslas and vandalizing them or keying them.

19:31I always thought that was really bold because it's like, they can see it would do that. It's on video. Which is very different from a normal car, obviously. Yeah. Jason, I think just last thing, like, what happens now? I was going to ask, does it escalate? But you actually opened with someone throwing a Molotov cocktail. So, I don't know. It's a big mess. all around. But what do you think happens now? Do we just see more of these? I would say that the backlash to Tesla in general is still increasing. It's like every weekend. I think they've been doing these Tesla takeover protests for maybe three weekends now.

20:09And I feel like each weekend, they get more and more intense. There's more people involved. And I think also just sort of like the casual acts of flicking off Cybertrucks and stuff. This is something that people I know in my life were already like, I hate cyber trucks. I always flick them off just of their own volition. They've told me this before I even wrote this article. So I think that this is becoming another part of the culture war, more or less. And so I think it's going to continue escalating. I mean, I don't know where this all goes. I could see acts of violence and things like that. I mean, certainly not condoning them, but you have people lighting superchargers on fire and throwing Molotov cocktails at dealerships.

20:59It's pretty intense already. And I think that there's no indication that Musk is going to slow down or that the temperature is going to come down on this anytime soon. I don't know. What do y 'all think? I mean, broadly agree that every day that Doge does something else and fires more federal workers or government gets made ironically more inefficient, it's an easy target. You know, Sam, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I don't, I agree. I don't see it getting more chilled anytime soon. I was thinking of, it's like, what's the craziest thing that this could escalate into? And it's like, there's this company that came out of China, I think yesterday, they announced that they're making a drone car.

21:48So a drone open, a hatch opens on your roof and a drone comes out. I was like, what if they start putting those in Cybertruck? It's for obviously for recording, but it's like, I'm going to drone strike the guy who cut me off type vibe. I have a lot of opinions about big cars in general. I think cars have gotten less safe in general. So the Cybertruck divorced from the culture war, I find to be confusing. But, you know, it's because it's wrapped up in this stuff. It's what people are talking about. So, you know. I think it's funny that it's called a Cybertruck because it was referencing cyberpunk, right?

22:28and the whole idea is that it's built like a tank because it imagines this future where you the person who can afford a cyber truck is driving through you know these crime infested cities where criminals are on every corner trying to harm you and the only way you can survive is if you have this armored car that looks like a tank and when he introduced that people are like you're nuts it's like nobody cares about you or your car and you don't need this and like cities are safe and the world is safe and there's no need for this but like somehow he managed to create a situation where it's like yes like maybe if you have a cyber truck people will hate you and will want to throw molotov cocktails at your car it's just like i don't know he he created the car for the world he wants to see and then in a way like that world came about you know yeah i mean he's manifested it and i mean i'll bring up another podcast i was listening i think to trash future the other day and they were talking about all these billionaires with their bunkers and things like that and you have all of these billionaires that have been planning for the apocalypse because they're like oh the apocalypse is coming but like they are the ones bringing it about um and that's that's really scary um i was just gonna say sam said like cars are getting less safe and they've gotten so much less safe for pedestrians and for bikers and potentially more safe for the people in them.

24:00And that's like, it's such a huge problem where it's just like this individualistic society where it's like, fuck you, I have a tank and I can run you over if I want to. And there's a lot of that sentiment in this Facebook group as well. People are like, We need to film these people who are flicking us off and identify them and report them to their employers and things like that. And then there was one thread where they were discussing how do we respond to these protests? And people were like, let's all bring our cyber trucks down and encircle the protesters with them. And that's really scary.

24:36Well, make a violent biker gang of cyber trucks, basically. That'll go down well. Yeah. I mean, people are sort of openly discussing like let's intimidate them with our large vehicles which literally happened in charlottesville you know it's like someone died that way which is horrifying to think that people are like we could do it again with our big stupid cars yeah for sure well we'll keep an eye on that and unfortunately i'm sure it will escalate in some form uh but we'll leave that there when we come back we're going to take a hard pivot and talk about the lovely tropical island nation of Palau and how it is actually helping US traders circumvent, bypass, skirt, crypto laws in the US.

25:27We'll be right back after this.

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28:42All right, and we are back. This is one I wrote. The headline is, buying a$250 residency card from a tropical island. let me bypass US crypto laws. So as mentioned before the break, this is related to the Republic of Palau, which is a country in Micronesia, near Indonesia and the Philippines, very, small population. And the president of Palau and this company we're going to talk about, they were thinking of new ways to bring money into the country and you could do the singapore model which is you bring in millions and millions of people uh but they didn't want to do that um they were kind of screwed over by covid when what i did the tourism industry so they they came up with this idea of launching a digital um residency where you could basically remotely become a resident of Palau.

29:53But before I go into this, has anyone heard of the Estonia one? I feel like, Jason, you might have heard of that, where Estonia said it was going to do this sort of thing. Yeah, it was like a digital residency card, except I don't think they sent... I think they just sent you a digital certificate there, whereas you got an actual physical card here, which I think makes it more real. Yes. So the Estonia one was years ago at this point, and I was like, oh look, you can technically become a digital resident and you can open a company based, I'm doing air quotes for people not watching on YouTube, based in Estonia and you can make your company that way.

30:32That is similar here, but it's way more crypto focused. And yes, as you said, they give you a physical ID, which I guess I'll try and hold up to the camera now for YouTube videos. The worst photo I've ever taken of myself and you can see it on the article in the show notes um really really tired and not having my glasses on because they said you can't do that you know it's like a passport photo which should we have palau trivia very quickly like before we get into it so palau is my middle name first and foremost not from palau but it's my mom's name uh and it means palace in catalan uh which is what they speak in barcelona just so you know.

31:19Survivor Palau was one of the first places that they did Survivor on. Wait, really? It was like the third or fourth season maybe. It was pretty early on. And that's its claims to fame. That's all I know about it. And now they offer digital residency. Those are the claims to fame and bypassing US crypto laws. So, whereas the Estonia one was about making a company, this one was like Like, hey, we'll send you that. And actually, it's not just the ID. There's also all of this web-free stuff where you put your identity on the blockchain, blah, blah, blah. I did not even mention that in the article because it's basically irrelevant because there's all of this future-facing stuff.

32:01It's not real, you know what I mean? But what is real is the ID card that they send you in the mail. So they say you can use this ID card for rentals. Maybe use it at Airbnb or something like that, checking for hotels. And they have all of these other plans to let you have a residential address in Palau as well. And I'll keep an eye on that. The main thing, and they advertise this explicitly on the website to get the ID with a company called rns.id. They say you can use it for KYC, know your customer. And this is where you go to a website, like a crypto exchange, and you verify your identity, right?

32:44if you want to sell Bitcoin or whatever, you have to go to the site, you give them, I don't know, your passport or your driver's license, you tell them where you are. And that's so, you know, it's for anti-money laundering laws, but also investigators can be like, well, there's really bad suspicious stuff here. Here's a subpoena or a warrant to Binance or whoever, give us the ID of that user. This is incredibly standard, obviously not just in the normal financial industry, but increasingly cryptocurrency as well. People who trade crypto don't really like that, it seems. They like to send their Bitcoin or their Ethereum or their Monero or whatever without linking their ID to it.

33:28And you are actually not able to use some exchanges in the US, one called KuCoin, K-U-Coin. You can't use that based on Seychelles because they were told to get out of New York State, for example. You can't, without verifying your identity, access unlimited or near unlimited trading or very large amounts or that sort of thing. So if you're a US trader and you want to withdraw a million dollars of cryptocurrency every single day from an exchange that you're not actually allowed to use because you're based in the US, you can get the Palau card to do that, basically. And I've watched a ton of YouTube videos where people are saying this explicitly.