Have you always had that one person in your life that you rival with,
you want to be better than them and accomplish more than what they have?
Now imagine if that rivalry was in the public eye and in front of millions of people!
That is exactly the scenario between the two multi-billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
The two have been having one of the biggest (and most expensive!) public feuds
for years. If you want to know more about this ongoing battle then you are at the right place!
Hello everyone, and welcome to our channel Elon Musk's Zone.
Over the past four years, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg,
two of the most elite business tycoons have had a not-so-private dispute over a variety
of topics ranging from rockets all the way to robots, artificial intelligence,
and even political riots. Here are five incidents where Musk outsmarted the Facebook founder:
Number 1. SpaceX's Explosion Costs Facebook Their Satellite
The feud started in September of 2016 when SpaceX was conducting a test on their rocket, Falcon9,
which was worth sixty-two million dollars. During its test run, the rocket accidentally exploded in
Cape Canaveral, Florida. Even though the explosion was massive, it was not fatal.
The cargo and the rocket were destroyed, along with Facebook's AMOS-6 satellite.
The satellite's bandwidth had been reserved by Facebook for Internet.org,
which was an integral part of Zuckerberg's global mission to provide internet coverage to
less developed parts of the world. It would have also been Facebook's first satellite in orbit.
Hours after the incident, Zuckerberg posted on Facebook that he was disappointed about SpaceX's
failures since it would have connected a large number of entrepreneurs and others throughout
the continent. However, Musk did not stay silent but also used the opportunity to create a snarky
remark. Musk said, "Yeah, my fault for being an idiot. We did give them a free launch to make
up for it and I think they had some insurance. ” Number 2. Artificial Intelligence Causes Conflict
The second public disagreement between the two happened a year later, in 2017. During
a live broadcast, Zuckerberg was asked about his opinion on Musk's fear of the
development of artificial intelligence (A.I.).Musk had previously stated that
"A.I. is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization."
Zuckerberg stated that he understood it, but that thinking about doomsday was harmful for him
in certain aspects. Zuckerberg has even said that it is quite irresponsible. "With A.I. especially,
I'm really optimistic, and I think that people who are naysayers try to drum up these doomsday
scenarios," he said. As a response, Musk quickly took to Twitter to say that he's spoken with
Zuckerberg on this subject and that Zuckerberg's understanding of the subject is very limited.
In May 2020, Musk tweeted "Facebook sucks" as a response to Facebook's
head of artificial intelligence, who said that Musk did not understand what A.I. was.
Number 3. Musk Blames Zuckerberg For Capitol Riots After the Capitol Riot that took place in 2021,
Musk tweeted a picture of dominoes lined against each other and captioned it, "This is the domino
effect.". The smallest brick in the front was labeled "a website to rate women on campus,"
which was a reference to the early version of Facebook. The last domino was a tweet from the
New York Times about the rioters. The picture was a meme that indicated the riot was due to
years of the public being polarized by social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram.
The Tesla CEO had also encouraged people to switch over to an app called
"Signal" during early 2021. He tweeted," Use Signal." when WhatsApp announced that it would
be changing its terms of service so that users have to share their personal data with Facebook,
its parent company. Signal Advance Inc. shares had more than sixfold increased at the end
of the first day. That was enough to boost Signal Advance's surge by more than 5,000%
in three trading days, giving it a market value of $390 million.
Number 4. Cohen Criticizes Zuckerberg
Not only does Musk not use the social networking site, but he also encourages other celebrities to
do the same. In early 2020, Hollywood director Sacha Baron Cohen made an anti-Facebook tweet,
which called for more regulation of Facebook. Baron Cohen asked in his post why Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg was allowed to "control the information seen by 2.5 billion people,"
Elon quickly responded by calling Facebook lame and suggested Cohen deleted it.
Number 5. Musk Calls Facebook "Unsettling."
In 2018, when Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal was creating headlines, Musk once
again went to Twitter to showcase his dislike of Zuckerberg. When a co-founder of WhatsApp tweeted
"#deletefacebook," Musk responded to the tweet by saying, "What's Facebook?". However, his followers
quickly pointed out that even though he didn't recognize the website, Musk still had a Facebook
page for both SpaceX and Tesla. Elon responded to this by ridiculing the app once again.
He tweeted that he did not realize that those pages existed and would immediately delete them.
Soon after, Musk deleted the accounts of both his high-profile companies from the website.
He also deleted his Instagram after discontinuing his official pages due to its association
with Facebook. When asked about this, Musk responded by saying he felt that the website was
"Unsettling. “It’s not a political statement and I didn’t do this because someone dared me to do it,
Just don’t like Facebook. Gives me the willies. Sorry.,”
Musk had tweeted. However, Mark has not reacted or responded to any of Elon’s actions.
Where do you think this expensive public feud will go next?
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