Chinese bloggers claim that Tesla threatened them with defamation lawsuits

Chinese bloggers claim that Tesla has threatened them with legal action to post negative content about the U.S. carmaker as it fights a wave of bad publicity in the world’s largest car market.

The electric vehicle company has this month created an account on the popular Chinese microblog Weibo for its legal department in China. Some users claimed that the account was used to send them private messages warning of defamation lawsuits.

Public sentiment in China, one of Tesla’s largest markets, has seemed to derail against the California-based automaker in recent months after a a series of controversies which involves customer complaints about alleged vehicle breakdowns.

At least two accounts of Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, have issued letters in recent days apologizing for videos referring to non-existent Tesla quality issues after they claimed they had received legal notices from the car company.

By threatening to use legal means against critics, Tesla would follow an example set by Chinese technology companies, including Tencent, which has sued bloggers according to the country’s defamation law.

These lawsuits often call for a withdrawal, apology, and compensation.

“Ruifeng Auto,” one of the accounts, said it would “reflect deeply” after posting a video in late May suggesting that the brakes on a new Tesla vehicle had failed before leaving the showroom. The account admitted that the claims had “no factual basis.”

On Wednesday, a woman whose protest took place at the Shanghai Motor Show in April over an alleged brake failure helped increase online anger toward Tesla, recognized Jinri Toutiao, an app news aggregation made by TikTok owner ByteDance, who had been “extreme” in pushing the company into compensation.

He had previously called Tesla to hand over his vehicle data to regulators and threatened to sue the company if it did not.

On the same day, “a five-thousand-year-old rabbit,” a blogger who had posted screenshots of messages claiming to have come from Tesla threatening a lawsuit against Jinri Toutiao, apologized to the vehicle manufacturer for causing any crime. The blogger had called Tesla a “garbage company” and accused him of acting like a “hooligan.”

The blogger, who also insisted he had not fabricated any Tesla-related content, added: “I also hope everyone doesn’t create hostility. [towards Tesla] due to quality issues and above all we hope that the problem does not rise to the level [of] discussion between China and the US “.

He told the Financial Times that Tesla’s alleged warning had caused “inconvenience to my normal work and life,” but declined to talk further about the matter.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the activities of its Chinese legal department.

The American group, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has faced an advertising nightmare in China in recent months at a time when it is facing increase competition of local rivals.

Chinese state media criticized Tesla for initially saying it would not negotiate with people making reasonable requests, saying it did not take customer complaints seriously after the incident at the Shanghai Motor Show. This motivated the vehicle manufacturer to do so apologize publicly.

Lei Xing, a U.S.-based independent automotive analyst, compared Tesla’s problems in China to a “soap opera,” with quotas appearing daily or weekly.

Tesla leads sales of high-end passenger vehicles in China’s electric vehicle market. Its sales in the country rose 29 percent month-on-month, to 33,463 vehicles, according to data from the Chinese Wagon Association.

Chinese regulators have intensified the company’s review of national security and safety issues.

In March, some military precincts banned Tesla cars for fear that their cameras and sensors could be used to collect sensitive data. Tesla has denied that its cars are used for spying.

In May, Tesla set up a data center in China to comply with local laws prohibiting data transfer outside the country.