Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, speaks with CNBC on May 16th, 2023.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Twitter suspended the accounts of PlainSite and its founder Aaron Greenspan, a prolific Tesla and Elon Musk critic, on Tuesday afternoon.
PlainSite is an online database that makes state and federal court filings and other public records available to users for free. The site also offers analytics features to paying subscribers, meant to help lawyers and pro-se litigants gain insights about attorneys, judges, government offices and the law.
Greenspan has meticulously tracked litigation by or against companies mostly in the U.S., including Tesla, Twitter (which Musk took private in an acquisition last year), as well as competitors GM, Meta and a myriad of others. He and Musk have also been involved in litigation over the years.
At the time PlainSite’s account was suspended, it boasted more than 24,000 listed followers on Twitter. Greenspan’s personal account had around 2,500 followers.
The suspension stands at odds with public statements from Twitter’s executive chairman and CTO Elon Musk, and newly-appointed CEO Linda Yaccarino. Yaccarino was previously global advertising chief at NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.
In April 2022, after Musk announced his intention to acquire Twitter, he wrote in a tweet, “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”
More recently, Yaccarino wrote in a company-wide memo that a healthy civilization needs an “unfiltered exchange of information and open dialogue about the things that matter most to us.” She also said in the memo, “You should have the freedom to speak your mind. We all should.”
Greenspan told CNBC on Thursday that he has not yet received information from Twitter saying why the company suspended his accounts, though he has requested a reinstatement of both.
He also discussed some of the reasons why he started the “legal transparency initiative” PlainSite, and how he came to be regarded as an Elon Musk nemesis.
“I created PlainSite with two friends in 2011, because we were all wondering why Occupy Wall Street didn’t have the impact we expected,” he reminisced. “No financial execs went to jail for the 2008 financial crisis though it really was obvious there had been criminal wrongdoing somewhere. One reason, we thought, was that people didn’t understand what the law said and what are the loopholes banks or execs were able to exploit to get out of being held accountable.”
Over the years, Greenspan has shorted stock in some of the companies he has researched and written about on PlainSite, disclosing those positions when he held them. He is not short Tesla today, but he has been in the past, he said.
Why PlainSite began looking into Tesla
PlainSite began its focused research on Tesla in 2018 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Musk and Tesla with civil securities fraud.
The charges came after Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share and had funding secured to do so, causing a halt in trading that day, and sending Tesla stock into a period of volatility for weeks.
Musk and Tesla settled the charges with the regulators, without admission of guilt or the ability to claim innocence.
Greenspan said, “I was not interested in Tesla until the SEC took action against the company and Elon that year. That got me thinking that it may be over-valued, given the fact it was running into trouble with financial regulators.”
A community on Twitter, including short sellers and other subject matter experts interested in what Tesla was doing, became frequent PlainSite users and subscribers.
Court filings and public records rendered easily searchable by PlainSite often revealed details about Tesla’s troubles and tactics. PlainSite records obtained through FOIA requests have been widely cited by press including CNBC, Reuters, NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times and many others.
Since 2018, Greenspan has made court filings and other public records available on PlainSite that revealed:
Twitter is facing more than 25 lawsuits over non-payment to vendors since Elon Musk took over in October 2022.
Even as Musk continuously promised shareholders that Tesla was on the brink of delivering a “level 4-5” self-driving robotaxi – the company’s Autopilot engineers categorized its most advanced driver assistance systems as “level 2” in official government communications with the California DMV. A level 2 system is not self-driving, it requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel.
Complaints sent to attorneys general in Texas, Nevada and Ohio, showing that Tesla customers there were not able to get the EV maker to provide required documentation to register their vehicles with local DMVs.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk once attempted to refer a former process technician at Tesla’s Gigafactory, whistleblower, Martin Tripp, to the US Attorney’s office for the District of Nevada for criminal prosecution (p. 192).
Elon Musk knew but did not tell shareholders that SolarCity was facing a liquidity crisis at the time the Tesla board was pushing for an acquisition of the solar installer, which was started by Musk’s first cousins and where Musk was a major investor and board member.
In May 2020, Greenspan sued a Tesla promoteralleging harassment, and named Elon Musk as a party contributing to that harassment in the lawsuit.
A woman walks past a logo of WhatsApp during a Meta event in Mumbai, India, on Sept. 20, 2023.
Niharika Kulkarni | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Meta is pushing back against a ban on WhatsApp from government devices.
The chief administrative officer, or CAO, of the U.S. House of Representatives told staffers on Monday that they are not allowed to use Meta’s popular messaging app. The CAO cited a lack of transparency about WhatsApp’s data privacy and security practices as the reason for the ban, according to a report by Axios that cited an internal email from the government office.
The CAO told House staff members in the email that they are not allowed to download WhatsApp on their government devices or access the app on their smartphones or desktop computers, the report said. Staff members must remove WhatsApp from their devices if they have the app installed on their devices, the report said.
“Protecting the People’s House is our topmost priority, and we are always monitoring and analyzing for potential cybersecurity risks that could endanger the data of House Members and staff,” U.S. House Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor told CNBC in a written statement.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone on Monday responded to the report via a post on X, saying the company disagrees “with the House Chief Administrative Officer’s characterization in the strongest possible terms.”
“We know members and their staffs regularly use WhatsApp and we look forward to ensuring members of the House can join their Senate counterparts in doing so officially,” Stone said.
In a separate X post, Stone said WhatsApp’s encrypted nature provides a “higher level of security than most of the apps on the CAO’s approved list that do not offer that protection.”
Some of the messaging apps the CAO said are acceptable alternatives to WhatsApp include Microsoft Teams, Signal and Apple’s iMessage, the Axios report said.
Meta is currently embroiled in an antitrust case with the Federal Trade Commission over the social media company’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram.
The Super Micro Computer headquarters in San Jose, California, on Dec. 3, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Super Micro Computer shares fell about 6% on Monday after the server maker said it plans to offer $2 billion in convertible notes, maturing in 2030.
A company’s stock often falls on the announcement of a convertible offering because the eventual conversion to equity could dilute existing shareholders’ stakes.
Super Micro, which has seen its business boom due to soaring demand for Nvidia’s artificial intelligence processors, said in a press release that it plans to use the proceeds from the offering for “general corporate purposes, including to fund working capital for growth and business expansion.” It also said it would spend about $200 million to repurchase its stock from the note issuers.
Even after Monday’s slide, Super Micro shares are up close to 40% so far in 2025 as the company remains one of a handful of server makers that can sell systems based around new chips from Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and Intel soon after they start shipping. The stock has been viewed by Wall Street as an AI pure play that will appreciate with tech megacap companies expected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers to support AI workloads.
Super Micro also secured a major contract with a data center in Saudi Arabia when President Donald Trump visited the Middle East in May.
Super Micro “has emerged as a market leader in AI-optimized infrastructure,” Raymond James analysts wrote in a report last month, saying that 70% of the company’s revenue was attributable to AI. The analysts recommend buying the stock.
Investors soured on Super Micro in March and April on concerns about tariffs, and in May the company slashed its fiscal 2025 guidance and chose not to reiterate its previous forecast for $40 billion in fiscal 2026 sales, due to tariff and AI chip uncertainty.
The stock has recouped some of those losses but is still trading well below its high for the year reached in February.
Super Micro had a tumultuous 2024 largely because of accusations of accounting irregularities, and was forced to refile financials with the SEC in order to avoid delisting from the Nasdaq. Super Micro also named a new auditor, removed its CFO and named additional members to its board of directors.
An Atlas V rocket of United Launch Alliance (ULA) lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on June 23, 2025.
Gregg Newton | Afp | Getty Images
Amazon‘s second batch of Kuiper internet satellites reached low Earth orbit on Monday, adding to its plans for a massive constellation and ramping up competition with SpaceX’s Starlink.
A United Launch Alliance rocket carrying 27 Kuiper satellites lifted off from a launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6:54 a.m. ET, according to a livestream.
“We have ignition and lift off of United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet constellation, continuing a new chapter in low Earth orbit satellite connectivity,” Ben Chilton, an ordnance engineer at ULA, said on the livestream following the launch.
Six years ago, Amazon unveiled its plans to build a constellation of internet-beaming satellites in low Earth orbit, called Project Kuiper. The service will compete directly with Elon Musk’sStarlink, which currently dominates the market and has 8,000 satellites in orbit.
Amazon in April successfully sent up 27 Kuiper internet satellites into low Earth orbit, a region of space that’s within 1,200 miles of the Earth’s surface.
The 54 craft currently in orbit are the start of Amazon’s planned constellation of 3,236 satellites. The company has to meet a Federal Communications Commission deadline to launch half of its total constellation, or 1,618 satellites, by July 2026.
The company has booked more than 80 launches with several providers, including rival SpaceX, to deliver Kuiper its satellites into orbit.