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Scammers use Elon Musk to advertise on Facebook and Instagram Scammers use Elon Musk to advertise on Facebook and Instagram

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Scammers use Elon Musk’s face to advertise on Facebook and Instagram

Credit: JC

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Scammers are using doctored videos and images of Elon Musk to advertise on Facebook and Instagram. Meta, Facebook, nor Instagram are doing anything to stop these out-of-control scammers.

Hopefully, that will change. Probably not.

Busted!

Andrea Stroppa, former contributor to the World Economic Forum, and cyber security researcher focusing on digital communication, social media, and research, shared what he found. He also shared his thoughts with me.

In a Twitter thread, Andrea pointed out that both Facebook and Instagram have a major problem. Both social media networks allow hundreds of sponsored posts that link to scams.

These scammers are using the name and face of Elon Musk with fake interviews or fake endorsements.

“In the past three days, this page created 20 different ads on Facebook and Instagram with a video of Elon Musk that suggested investing in a crypto platform. It’s a scam,” Andrea tweeted.

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Andrea found that these scammers also use verified Facebook pages to advertise on the Meta apps. These verified pages are most likely hacked.

Elon Musk, SpaceX, and Tesla are used in these scams.

The scammers don’t limit themselves to verified pages, but they also have recently created pages with fewer than ten thousand followers that are given the green light by Facebook to advertise.

Elon Musk isn’t the only one these scammers are using to advertise their scams. They also use the logos of both Tesla and SpaceX.

And they use the power of the Meta Business Suite to target specific users for countries, ages, sex, and other variables.

Analyzing Fraudulent Ads on Facebook And Instagram

Andrea said that his team analyzed the fraudulent ads on these platforms that were related to counterfeit products for a particular target audience.

What he found instead were these scams which, he added, are very likely the top of the iceberg. These scams have a common pattern.

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In my opinion, Facebook doesn’t seem to care about stopping it. As long as they get their money, they seem to be just fine with the scams. If not, then they would put an end to the scams. Right?

Perhaps someone at Meta will read that and prove me wrong.

Austrian Office of Taipei hacked

Credit: Andrea Stroppa

Andrea’s team even found a government page involved with the scams. He shared a screenshot of the Austrian Office Taipei’s post claiming “Tesla’s latest project shocks the world and the bank is in shock.”

Fortunately, the Austrian Office of Taipei was able to recover their account and posted a statement about being hacked.

However, all of their content posted between August 2021 and May 2022 was deleted.

“We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the scammers. We have done all we can to make sure that nobody is able anymore to abuse our page.”

“As of today, we will return in the usual manner to inform you about our activities in Taiwan, inform you about Austria in all its aspects, such as culture, as a travel destination, its economy and businesses, science and innovation, sustainability and many other areas.”

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“Thank you so much for your support. The Team of the Austrian Office Taipei.”

Elon Musk & Meta’s users are victims of negligence

Andrea called on Andrew Bosworth (Boz) the Chief Technology Officer at Meta and

Adam Mosseri, the Head of Instagram to be serious about the moderation of ads on these networks.

“Elon Musk and your users are both victims of scammers and your negligence. Fix it now.”

In a statement to Teslarati, Andrea Stroppa said,

“No doubt that Elon Musk is not just one of the best entrepreneurs of his generation but even a formidable capital allocator. That’s why many people want to listen to his bits of advice.”

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“But all these ads appearing on Facebook and Instagram with potential investments are scams.”

“Looking at these malicious ads, there are many common patterns, keywords, and media content. Facebook has the technical skills to reduce the magnitude of these damaging activities. But they don’t.”

 

 

Johnna Crider is a Baton Rouge writer covering Tesla, Elon Musk, EVs, and clean energy & supports Tesla's mission. Johnna also interviewed Elon Musk and you can listen here

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Tesla Semi lands the biggest electric truck deal in U.S. history

Tesla leads a record 2,500 truck order, but not every truck will be a Semi.

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Tesla has landed the largest electric truck order in U.S. history. ZET SCALE, a new alliance of shippers and carriers, named Tesla its primary manufacturer on Tuesday for an initial order of 2,500 electric Class 8 trucks. The deal alone would nearly double the number of electric heavy trucks operating in the country.

According to the press release from Catalyst Mobility, the nonprofit formerly known as CALSTART, Kenworth, RIDE and Volvo were also selected as secondary manufacturers that carriers can pick if their operations call for it. No split between the four brands has been published, so the exact number of Semis in the order is not yet known.

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Tesla won the top slot through a competitive request for proposals. The alliance, which Catalyst Mobility runs with the Smart Freight Centre, scored bidders on price, range, charging capability and production capacity. Pooling freight demand from founding shippers, including Microsoft and PepsiCo, let every truck maker bid lower than it would for a single fleet. “The Tesla Semi is designed for lower cost per mile operations than diesel,” said Dan Priestley, director of the Tesla Semi program, as noted in the press release.

The financing is built to pull in carriers who have avoided electric trucks. ZET Financial is issuing the purchase order for all 2,500 units and will place them with fleets through a fair market value lease. The trucks will be deployed over the next few years across 10 freight hubs in Los Angeles, Stockton, Bakersfield, Seattle and Tacoma, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Chicago, Atlanta, and the Newark and New York area. ZET SCALE says the first order is only the opening round, with a longer term goal of 10,000 trucks or more.

Even if Tesla ends up with only a majority share, it would still be the biggest Semi deal to date. Einride’s 500 unit order in August was the previous record, and WattEV’s 370 truck order in May was the largest California deal at the time. Einride’s CEO has since said he expects all 500 trucks delivered by the end of 2027.

The announcement lands two days before Tesla formally inaugurates its Semi factory in Nevada on September 24. The 1.7 million square foot plant sits next to Gigafactory Nevada’s 4680 cell lines and is designed for 50,000 trucks a year.

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Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant

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Credit: Grok

Tesla has expanded Grok from an in-car chatbot into a hands-free work assistant. On September 22, Tesla officially launched Grok Bot capability, confirming that drivers can now manage email, calendars, files, chats, and tasks by voice and then hand more ambitious errands to the AI-fueled productivity cheat code.

Grok itself is built by xAI. The new car features split into two layers: Connectors link Grok to outside accounts. Grok Bot, currently limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, can complete multi-step tasks such as placing a usual coffee order, booking a reservation, or scheduling an appointment. It truly puts the driver in a nearly complete hands-free driving and productivity setting, with ironically the only task truly requiring your hands being to touch the “Start Self-Driving” button.

We were granted access to Grok Bot’s Tesla integration a few weeks back, and we’ve been able to do a handful of things with it. On a handful of occasions, we’ve used it to order food and have it ready for pickup slightly later into the evening; we’ve managed to pick up groceries after a day of errands with Grok Bot, and outside of the car, it’s helped with budgeting and even my fantasy football draft.

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Tesla shows another way to utilize it: in their demo, a driver says “Hey Grok,” asks the assistant to check an inbox, and hears that a message concerns a weekend reservation. Grok then scans the calendar, reports no conflicts, and confirms the Tahoe trip is clear. It can also add check-in details to a road-trip itinerary. The point is not novelty chat. It is keeping eyes on the road, or on Full Self-Driving, while the car handles the paperwork of a trip:

This Grok rollout is not a gadget add-on as much as it is Tesla’s thesis in software form: the car should stop being a machine you operate and start being a room you occupy.

Connectors and Grok Bot treat the cabin as an office that happens to move, and that has truly been Tesla’s intention for years now. The car has slowly become an extension of a home more than a vehicle. Inbox, calendar, groceries, takeout, and reservations become voice work, not dashboard chores that you need to do before you get in your car.

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Responsibility shifts from the driver to the stack, and as many Tesla owners rely on FSD for travel, Grok Bot now handles the monotony of dinner reservations or appointments.

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Elon Musk

X changed how everyone gets paid, and this lawsuit shows why

X sued a Bitcoin account network over fake payouts as its creator pay model shifts

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Elon Musk’s X has taken a Bitcoin-focused engagement ring to court, and the case doubles as a receipt for how differently the platform pays creators today. The company filed suit in the High Court of England and Wales against Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa, alleging the pair ran six accounts, including @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy and @TrendingBitcoin, as one coordinated operation to fake the kind of engagement that used to translate directly into money.

According to the filing, first reported by Gizmodo, the accounts posted near identical “BREAKING” crypto headlines seconds apart, in one case 11 seconds, then had three more handles like, reply to and repost the material to manufacture what X called “a false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction.” X says the scheme pulled in at least £207,384, about $278,000, and pegs its own investigation and remediation costs at another £75,000. The accounts were suspended August 18. X general counsel James Burnham announced the case on X last weekend, writing that the company “will act forcefully to protect our platform and the earnings of genuine creators.” Musk’s own reaction, posted shortly after, was three words: “Don’t mess with 𝕏.”

The timing lines up with a a recent update to how X pays its creators. The program these accounts allegedly gamed, Creator Revenue Sharing, launched in mid 2023 and paid out based on how much a post got engaged with. Originality was never part of the formula, which is exactly how the platform ended up flooded with recycled clips, copy pasted “BREAKING” posts and replies engineered purely to farm reactions from paying subscribers.

X tried patching the model more than once, including an April cut to aggregator payouts and a March regional weighting change that Musk personally paused hours after it was announced. X retired Creator Revenue Sharing for good on September 7 and opened its replacement, Original Content Rewards, the next day.

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The new math is stricter. Payouts now come only from qualified impressions, meaning unique Home Timeline views from Premium subscribers where at least half the post is visible, and replies no longer count toward eligibility at all. Copied posts, reuploaded media and reposts without meaningful changes are explicitly excluded. Allegra Jacchia, senior product manager for Creators at SpaceXAI, which now runs X’s product and AI work following xAI’s acquisition of the platform, put it bluntly, saying the goal is to reward creators who bring original ideas and perspective, “not those who have become best at gaming the system.”

Read that way, the lawsuit isn’t really about six crypto accounts. It’s X putting a dollar figure on what the old incentive structure cost, then suing to collect it right as the new one goes live. For live updates on how the case and the new rewards program shake out, follow @Teslarati on X.

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