When Elon Musk turned Twitter verification into a paid service, he promised to remove blue checks from “legacy verified” Twitter accounts that had earned their status before the change. He said this great de-verification was happening “in the coming weeks.” Then he said it would be “soon.” Then it was “in the next few months.” After half a year of delays, he set a date. “On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks,” he tweeted. Then, right on schedule, he blew the deadline.
Twitter’s legacy verified users logged on Saturday morning to find their checkmarks intact. Bizarrely, the only legacy verification Musk zapped was the blue checkmark on the New York Times account, apparently because he was upset by a meme about the Times refusing to pay for verification.
Dude couldn’t even get his April Fools joke out in time
— David Teicher (@Aerocles) April 3, 2023
Looking at the billionaire’s track record, there’s only one area where he’s truly dependable: If Musk sets a deadline, you can almost guarantee he won’t meet it.
“I almost view it like a solved problem,” Musk said at a 2015 conference about self-driving Teslas, describing a technology that still isn’t available 8 years later.
It’s got to be embarrassing to make a widely reported promise about your own work and then break it so spectacularly. But there’s something about making this kind of grandstanding that Musk can’t resist. The guy loves deadlines. He’s just terrible at meeting them.
Elon does this so often that a comprehensive list of his timeline failure would be a serious research project, but a few examples stand out. Here are the most humiliating times Elon Musk missed a deadline.
Fully self-driving Teslas are coming in 2017, no 2018, sorry 2019, actually 2020…
Elon Musk really, really, really wants to make a car that will drive itself without a human behind the wheel. In fact, he’s already done it! At least, that’s what he reported in 2015.
Musk said totally autonomous Teslas would be ready by the end of 2017. Later, he promised to demonstrate the feature in 2018. In February 2019, Musk said Tesla will be “feature complete, full self-driving, this year. Meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up and take you all the way to your destination without an intervention. This year. I would say I am of certain of that, that is not a question mark.”
Indeed, there wasn’t a question mark when Tesla added that promise to its website. And when the calendar rolled over to 2020, the promise of self-driving “coming later year” was still up. In January 2020, Musk said once again the tech would be “”feature complete” by the end of 2020, though he clarified that feature complete “doesn’t mean that features are working well.”
A few months later, Musk said a Tesla would be able to drive itself without a human in the car by 2021. In 2022, Tesla officially made “full self driving” available to any Tesla owner. However, your Tesla still can’t drive without you in the car. It is now 2023.
The coronavirus pandemic will be over by April 2020
In March of 2020, Musk reassured his millions of Twitter followers the pandemic would be over by April. Nailed it.
Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2020
Neuralink will be implanted in a human skull by 2020
Neuralink, a company which denies the allegations that it tortures monkeys for its research, has mercifully not tested its technology on humans… yet. Which is weird, because in 2019, Neuralink founder Elon Musk said the tech would be attached to people’s brains by 2020. Musk promised Neuralink would be “implanted flush with skull & charges wirelessly, so you look and feel totally normal.”
Currently, Neuralink is looking for surgical partners for human trials, if you’re interested.
A Tesla semi truck by 2019
Telsa announced ambitious plans for a semi truck in 2017, setting a 2019 release date. You are not going to believe this… but that didn’t happen. Tesla didn’t even begin production on its Semi until 2022. On the other hand, three years behind schedule is actually pretty good by Elon’s standards. Most recently, Tesla recalled the Semis that do exist for brake failures, just three months after their release.
A SpaceX Mars mission by 2026
For about a decade, the tech press hailed Elon Musk as a genius that might just be so smart he’s going to save the world. It was ludicrous at the time, but after his mess at Twitter it’s even harder to believe. SpaceX, however, is often the one example Musk stans point to. You gotta hand it to him, the company is doing groundbreaking work. But if I were a betting man, I’m not sure I’d take the odds that SpaceX will be doing any ground breaking on Mars.
Elon Musk, who got his start from incredibly rich parents, not strokes of genius, said SpaceX would launch a Mars mission by 2026. That mission is now delayed in 2029, when I’m sure it will happen.
One million Tesla robo taxis by 2020
In 2019, Elon Musk proudly declared Tesla would have one million “robo taxis” on the road by 2020 — which seemed like an empty promise even then. In April 2022, which is not 2020, he said the robo taxi army was still two years away. He means it this time though, guys.
An open sourced Twitter algorithm by “next week”
When Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, he promised to make the company’s algorithm public. On February 21, 2023, he said it would happen “next week.” Guess what happened over the next week? Not that.
On March 31, 2023, Twitter actually published its recommendation algorithm. That revealed a number of embarrassing details about how the company serves up Tweets, like the mechanism it uses to give Elon’s tweets special treatment.
A 10 kilometre Hyperloop tunnel by 2020
Elon Musk has a company called Hyperloop. For a while, he pretended this was a serious venture, so serious that he actually built some short tunnels in LA and Las Vegas you can drive your Tesla through.
He did not, however, build the 10 km tunnel he promised to complete by 2020. Why? It might have something to do with the fact that Hyperloop was bullshit from the start. Musk admitted in an interview that he never intended to make Hyperlink a reality. He started the project to distract California lawmakers from a project to bring high speed rail to the state because he loves cars and hates public transportation. Cool.
The Twitter Blue rollout
Twitter already had a paid subscription service called Twitter Blue which gave you a few perks when Elon Musk took over. His first order of business, before massive layoffs, was turning Twitter Blue into a paid blue check system. To his credit, or more accurately to the credit of Musk’s engineers, that change rolled out very quickly, and launched November 9th, 2022. It was a disaster.
Immediately, people started impersonating politicians and brands. One tweet pretending to come from drugmaker Eli Lily reportedly tanked the company’s stock to the tune of billions of dollars. Twitter disabled new Twitter Blue sign ups days later.
Musk told employees and the public that Twitter Blue would relaunch on November 29th and… wait for it… he missed the deadline. There is absolutely no reason to take this kind of L. All you have to do is not set a date! Twitter Blue sign ups restarted in early December.
Expect the rest of the Twitter algorithm to be open sourced ‘in the coming weeks’
Twitter did actually release the code for its recommendation algorithm, but that’s not the full transparency Elon promised. This past weekend, Musk tweeted, “In the coming weeks, we will open source literally everything that contributes to showing a tweet.” Whatever you say, buddy. He’s still got time to make it happen!
This is most of the recommendation code. In the coming weeks, we will open source literally everything that contributes to showing a tweet, such that the output can be at least roughly approximated.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2023