Infographic Tesla
Red Star News reporter Chen Qingyuan intern Li Shuangshuang
Edited by Zhang Xun
On April 27, today's headline user "Five Thousand Years of Rabbit" released a message saying that he was sued by Tesla.
After the "Tesla female car owner rights protection incident" in April 2021 was fermented by public opinion, the user, as a fan of Tesla and a practitioner in the automotive industry, had a technical discussion on the Internet. During this period, he quarreled with other Tesla fans in today's headlines, and some of the words involving Tesla in the process were extreme.
The user told the Red Star News reporter that after Tesla's legal counsel privately sent him nearly a year ago, he had deleted the relevant remarks and believed that his behavior was not infringing. In May 2021, Tesla sued him and Toutiao to the Beijing Internet Court for 500,000 yuan on the grounds of a dispute over the right to reputation. At present, he has received relevant information about the court's acceptance of the case.
The user receives information about court acceptance
Party: Tesla fans The excessive remarks have been deleted
At the Shanghai Auto Show on April 19, 2021, a car owner climbed on the roof of the Tesla booth to defend his rights, saying that his Tesla car had problems such as brake failure and believed that Tesla was responsible for the accident that occurred in his vehicle. The relevant person in charge of Tesla Company said that after saying that there was "someone behind the rights defenders", the incident quickly aroused social concern.
"I do quality, and after encountering a failure, what I want to do is to reproduce and study the mechanism of occurrence and find a solution." Today's headline user "Five Thousand Years of Rabbit" said that he has been in the automotive industry for 10 years, has done research and development, and is now an automotive quality engineer. After the Tesla roof rights protection incident occurred, the user made a technical analysis and discussion, and published an article related to "Tesla car brake technology problems" on the Internet.
Account information of "Five Thousand Years of Rabbits" on today's headlines
"Five thousand years of rabbits" told Red Star News reporters, "I have a strong interest in cars, especially Tesla, a new energy vehicle with too many new technologies, I have been paying attention for many years." At that time, in order to learn and study Tesla's new energy vehicles, I would also rent a car to drive and test the research, so I was also a Tesla consumer, very fond of Tesla, and had no malice towards Tesla. After the article was published, it received a lot of attention, including many netizens who launched verbal attacks on him.
"Five thousand years of rabbit" said that when the "black powder" insulted him, he said some over-the-top words to the "black powder" on the "micro headlines" of today's headlines, such as "hooligans" and "water troops"... "In retrospect, I did say something too extreme at the time." ”
"Five thousand years of rabbit" mentioned that in the process of his quarrel with netizens, a person claiming to be a Tesla legal counsel posted a message on today's headlines, saying that the content he published constituted infringement. After verifying that the identity of the other party was true, he deleted the relevant remarks on the "micro-headlines" mentioned by the other party that night.
Tesla sued Today's Headlines and its users for $500,000
According to a "Civil Complaint" and related materials provided by "Five Thousand Years of Rabbit", the plaintiff is Tesla Motors (Beijing) Co., Ltd., the defendant is Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as ByteDance), and "Five Thousand Years of Rabbit" is the third person in the case.
Among the reasons Tesla sued is that the company is the general dealer of "Tesla" brand cars in China. Since April 19, 2021, on the Today's Headlines platform operated by ByteDance, the user "5,000 Years of Rabbit" has long posted infringing content involving Tesla. The user deliberately fabricated and fabricated facts to defame the plaintiff's business activities, and at the same time used insulting words to maliciously slander and belittle the plaintiff and the "Tesla" brand car.
A list of infringing content accompanying Tesla's complaint
The combing table of the infringing content attached to the complaint shows that Tesla combed a total of 17 related remarks of today's headline user "5,000 years of rabbits" from April 20, 2021 to May 18, 2021, arguing that the user "sold the car and blacked out the owner, there was no after-sales service" "Tesla had an accident, the driving recorder and the black box were emptied remotely", "The European Tesla is garbage", "Tesla killed so many people" and other remarks, there are "fabricated false facts" and "insults to Tesla products" etc., the act is an act of insult or slander.
In May 2021, Tesla informed the user that the company had filed a lawsuit in court.
Tesla pointed out in the indictment that the total number of visits to the content posted by the user "five thousand years of rabbits" reached about 6 million times, which objectively led a large number of other today's headline users, consumers and potential consumers to misunderstand Tesla's business activities, causing Tesla's social evaluation to decrease, causing great damage to Tesla's reputation.
Tesla complained to ByteDance on May 21, 2021, requesting the removal of the infringing content, and Toutiao explicitly refused to deal with it on the same day. Since then, the infringing content has continued to spread, and the damage to Tesla has continued to expand.
Tesla believes that today's headlines, as a network service provider, neglected to perform the management duties and obligations of the infringing content and the published account involved in the case, infringing the plaintiff's right to reputation, and should bear the corresponding infringement liability. Request the court to order ByteDance to stop the infringement, including deleting all infringing content involving the plaintiff published by the user "Five Thousand Years of Rabbit"; and require ByteDance to provide relevant information about "Five Thousand Years of Rabbit", add "Five Thousand Years of Rabbit" to participate in the lawsuit; pay Tesla 500,000 yuan in infringement damages and other litigation claims.
Lawyer: Tesla should be monitored and tolerated enough
On April 27, a Red Star News reporter logged into today's headlines and observed that the "5,000-year-old rabbit" had a total of 19,000 followers on today's headlines and received 189,000 likes. Among the more than ten articles published by the user on today's headlines, many of them involved Tesla roof rights protection incidents, including "Tesla rights protection girls did not lie!" Using brake data to restore the horror five seconds before the accident, "I may have found the cause of Tesla's brake failure, pure visual autopilot has fatal flaws" and other articles involving the analysis of car data and design.
The "five-thousand-year-old rabbit" told Red Star News that after learning that Tester sued him, the two sides had consulted, but so far the consultations have not reached an agreement. On April 24, 2022, he entrusted Zhou Zhaocheng, a lawyer who had represented the female owner of a Mercedes-Benz car in Xi'an, as his lawyer.
Lawyer Zhou Zhaocheng believes that as a loyal fan of the Tesla brand and founder Musk, the client does not have any fabricated or fabricated facts, nor does it have insults or defamation infringements. Despite the existence of "individual rhetoric", it was quickly deleted afterwards and did not have any serious consequences.
Zhou Zhaocheng also mentioned that Tesla is a well-known new energy vehicle brand in the United States, which should be subject to public and consumer supervision in China, and should maintain sufficient understanding and tolerance for the "criticism and supervision behavior" of the public and consumers. If Tesla insists on litigation, Mr. Zhou Zhaocheng will actively respond to the lawsuit on behalf of his client.
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