Tesla has a weird relationship with the public. Loved by some, hated by others, their history of strange and uncommon PR moves has certainly set them apart from other automakers. But that doesn’t mean they don’t care. Quite the opposite. There’s evidence that Tesla makes an active effort to suppress negative coverage of the Beta program.

Vice/Motherboard’s Aaron Gordon did some investigating on social media, getting in touch with various folks that are part of Tesla’s early access tester program. In their efforts, they learned that every Full Self Driving tester has to sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to participate. The NDA specifically prohibits testers from communicating or giving test rides to the media.

While NDAs in the tech world aren’t tremendously uncommon, Tesla’s isn’t formatted in a normal way. Usually used to protect intellectual property secrets, the early access program NDA seems to encourage social media posting, as long as it casts Tesla favorably

Motherboard further claims that the NDAs encourage users to fight back against those that speak negatively of the company. And when posting, to carefully consider whether the content is interesting.

“Do remember that there are a lot of people that want Tesla to fail; Don’t let them mischaracterize your feedback and media posts.”

“[You should] share on social media responsibly and selectively...consider sharing fewer videos, and only the ones that you think are interesting or worthy of being shared.”


While not independently insidious, this wording follows not long after multiple videos of Tesla’s self-driving technology failed were published. When given that context, it can be easy to interpret the NDA as suggesting they don’t post errors or other failures from the system.

Since full release versions of the Full Self Driving technology are not subject to community curation or NDAs, we’ll likely see a more honest and accurate representation of what the function has to offer.