Tesla Fires Employee After He Posts Candid Review of Its Full Self Driving Feature On YouTube

Electric vehicle maker Tesla has fired an employee named John Bernal who was also a YouTuber on the side for posting tech reviews of its driverless Full Self Driving (FSD) feature of Tesla.

Representative image

New Delhi: Electric vehicle maker Tesla has fired an employee named John Bernal who was also a YouTuber on the side for posting tech reviews of its driverless Full Self Driving (FSD) feature of Tesla and how it functioned in different locations in Silicon Valley. The Elon Musk-owned company has also cut off Bernal's access to the FSD Beta system in his personal vehicle despite having no safety “strikes” in the software, the media has reported.

Although Tesla did not put details into writing saying why he was fired, Tesla and other Silicon Valley companies often foster a culture of loyalty. Internal criticisms may be tolerated, but criticism in public is viewed as disloyal, according to a report published in CNBC. Bernal's candid review videos were posted on his channel named AI Addict where he had shared clips of close calls and crashes.

The former Tesla employee was informed verbally by his managers that he “broke Tesla policy” and that his YouTube channel was a “conflict of interest” for the company. However, the written separation notice did not specify a reason for his termination, the report added. According to Bernal, he was previously approached by managers after posting a video in March 2021 that showed a number of close calls with pedestrians and cyclists while using the FSD beta software on a Tesla.

Bernal had joined the Musk-owned electric vehicle company as a data annotation specialist in August 2020 in San Mateo, California. He had started the AI Addict channel on YouTube in February last year to show what the public version of FSD Beta could do after discovering Tesla’s “potentially life-saving technology".