* Author is director at company heavily invested in oil industry
* Author has published false stories regarding Tesla.
* Author has incited social media attacks on Tesla advocates, bulls, and fans.
Basically, the author was using pseudonymity and relative anonymity to manipulate the market in which he and his employer are heavily invested.
I am not a lawyer. Given his company's position and his own personal position, what he was doing is at least unethical and may even be illegal, exposing him and possibly his employer to liability once his employer became aware of his editorial moonlighting.
Freedom of speech is constrained regarding financial market manipulation. I don't know of any laws this specific individual might be breaking by criticizing a third-party they are market-bet against, but in the general category of such law: there's all kinds of things I could say about my employer that would be considered insider trading and put me at risk of fines or jail time, my frozen peaches be damned. ;)
Freedom of speech is constrained regarding financial market manipulation
Sure. But the Musk fanboys seem to be under the impression that if you're shorting Tesla it should be illegal to say why, or even to write about Tesla. Or if for some reason the SEC won't go after people for that, they think it's OK for Musk to use the threat of well-funded litigation to shut up the critics, and will endlessly spin justifications for that based on what they perceive the critics' sins to be.
AFAICT the author discloses his short position and the short position of whomever he represents. Which is... what responsible people do when writing about companies. Bullying him into silence because Musk and his sycophants don't like his writing is a horrible thing (especially given how much overlap there is between Musk fans and people who think of/describe themselves as free-speech advocates).
* Author is director at company heavily invested in oil industry
* Author has published false stories regarding Tesla.
* Author has incited social media attacks on Tesla advocates, bulls, and fans.
Basically, the author was using pseudonymity and relative anonymity to manipulate the market in which he and his employer are heavily invested.
I am not a lawyer. Given his company's position and his own personal position, what he was doing is at least unethical and may even be illegal, exposing him and possibly his employer to liability once his employer became aware of his editorial moonlighting.
[0] https://electrek.co/2018/07/24/tesla-troll-short-doxxed-oil-...
EDIT: formatting