Proxygen Snags Third Big Pharma Partner in Deal Valued at $2.55B

 Proxygen has snagged its third collaboration with big pharma. The Viennese biotech added Merck to its partner roster on Wednesday, garnering an undisclosed upfront payment plus a potential $2.55 billion in milestones.

The molecular glue degrader space has caught fire since the 2013 discovery that thalidomide and its compounds could be used in this fashion. Where traditional therapeutics inhibit the activities of disease-causing enzymes, molecular glue degraders work to completely get rid of the troublesome proteins, Stephen Hinshaw, senior scientist at Stanford Cancer Center who is not associated with either company, told BioSpace.

“Unlike traditional inhibition, getting rid of something is irreversible. So that’s key.”

While other inhibitors such as kinase inhibitors are excreted or modified by the body, diminishing efficacy and allowing disease resurgence, molecular glue degraders hijack the body’s natural garbage disposal system, Hinshaw said. 

Details of the partnership’s goal are scarce, but the duo will work together on therapeutic targets leveraging Proxygen’s discovery platform for molecular glue degraders, Proxygen CEO Bernd Boidol told BioSpace.

Proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) are molecules composed of two active domains and a linker that, like glue degraders, destroy disease-causing proteins.

Boidol pointed to two advantages of molecular glue degraders over PROTACs. Glue degraders are much smaller than PROTACs, with highly effective blood brain barrier penetration. PROTACs also require a ligandable site in the protein of interest, while glue degraders do not. Theoretically, the entire human proteome can be targeted with molecular glue degraders, he said.

While the currently approved glue degraders are for blood cancers, Hinshaw extoled the possibilities.

"There’s a lot of optimism right now that basically any disease indication will have a targetable factor that we just didn’t have access to before with conventional drugs,” he said.

The initial discovery of molecular glue degraders was serendipitous, with discoveries happening by chance. This is where Boidol believes Proxygen has a competitive edge.

Its platform can identify glue degraders in a systematic way. That allows for a “very broad net to go fishing” for potential targets, with a scalable approach that can potentially reveal undiscovered ligases while also screening for chemical diversity, he said.

Three’s the Charm 

Big pharma appears to be on board with Proxygen. The biotech previously inked a collaboration with its German neighbor Merck KGaA in June 2022 valued at $554 million. While financial details of Proxygen’s 2020 deal with Boehringer Ingelheim were not disclosed, Boidol confirmed that Wednesday’s deal with Merck & Co. is the company’s largest.

In addition to its partnered programs, Proxygen’s internal pipeline is pushing toward the clinic. With the recent influx of funds, Boidol said the company will strategically expand its current headcount of 30–40 with an emphasis on maintaining the company culture.

https://www.biospace.com/article/proxygen-snags-third-big-pharma-partner-in-deal-valued-at-2-55b/

Novavax Grows Presence at World Vaccine Congress

 Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVAX), a global company advancing protein-based vaccines with its novel Matrix-M™ adjuvant, will present data on its COVID-19 prototype vaccine and its COVID-Influenza Combination vaccine candidate (CIC) at both the World Vaccine Congress 2023 (WVC) in Washington, DC, April 3 to 6, 2023, and the 33rd European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Copenhagen, Denmark, April 15 to 18, 2023.

At WVC, Novavax will present data on its COVID-19 prototype vaccine as a booster and its CIC. Novavax will also host an Insights and Tools to Counter Vaccine Hesitancy roundtable on April 4, and participate in a panel discussion on The Future of Safety for New Vaccines on April 5. In addition, Novavax has been named a finalist for the 2023 World Vaccine Congress Vaccine Industry Excellence Awards (ViE) in the Best New Vaccine Technology/Platform Award and Best COVID Vaccine Award categories. Winners will be announced in-person at the ViE Awards ceremony during WVC on April 4.

At ECCMID, the Company will present the CIC data and four poster presentations on its COVID-19 prototype vaccine.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/novavax-grows-presence-world-vaccine-120000559.html

NY left disabled people ‘in harm’s way’ when COVID hit in 2020, potentially driving up deaths

 Poor planning by New York State officials left disabled people “in harm’s way” when COVID-19 slammed group homes starting in 2020 — potentially driving up the death toll in the process, according to a new report.

“The Office for People With Developmental Disabilities did not issue timely, consistent guidance to the vast majority of their certified group homes,” state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said about a 43-page audit of the agency’s COVID-19 response released Thursday.

“Inconsistent emergency management coordination and oversight put residents, families and staff in harm’s way.”

A total of 657 people died from COVID-19 in facilities for the disabled overseen by the state agency between March 2020 and April 2022, with the majority happening in the first three months of the pandemic.

Agency leadership considered pandemics “as a risk” in their emergency plans before the virus arrived in New York — but the OPWDD nonetheless failed to make sure that nearly 7,000 facilities they regulate were fully prepared, according to the audit.

Just one out of 16 visited by DiNapoli’s staff had pandemic plans prior to the state of emergency declared in March 2020.

And once COVID-19 cases began popping up in group homes for the disabled, insufficient staffing and supplies of personal protective equipment like masks only made the situation worse, according to DiNapoli.

“We acknowledge that OPWDD did take some steps to protect its clients – such as offering trainings, issuing guidance, implementing a centralized personal protective equipment system within state-operated homes, and conducting targeted COVID-19 surveys at homes,” the audit states.

“However, OPWDD’s efforts to support facilities during the pandemic were more reactive than proactive, implementing corrective steps only after the need had been identified,” the audit adds.

The 43-page audit roughly covers the period in between March 2020 and April 2022.

DiNapoli also accused the agency of being “uncooperative” with his inquiries over eight months and not providing “data and access to key personnel.”

His audit recommends that the agency update emergency plans more regularly and make sure individual facilities follow them, including checking “infection control practices” during inspections.

Facilities housing disabled people were disproportionately hit hard by COVID-19 – just like nursing homes – because of the density inherent to congregate settings.

But government decision-making above the agency level likely played a big role as well in how the pandemic played out in facilities for vulnerable people.

This includes a controversial order approved by Gov. Andrew Cuomo requiring facilities to house infected people that critics argue drove up infections as well as deaths in group homes for disabled people as well as nursing homes.

His successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul, replaced him in the final months of the roughly two-year period covered by the audit.

Her administration has hired an outside firm to assess the state response to the pandemic with findings expected sometime in the coming months.

A Hochul spokeswoman did not provide comment on the new report by DiNapoli’s office.

“Instead of making excuses or outsourcing government duties, I hope Governor Hochul will rebuild our state capacity to take care of our most vulnerable,” Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing), a longtime critic of the state handling of the pandemic in congregate settings, told The Post Thursday.

“It’s clear we need foundational change to activate our state and counties to get back into the business of caring for disabled and older New Yorkers,” Kim added.

OPWDD spokesperson Erin Silk said the embattled agency did the best job it could controlling the coronavirus given the circumstances.

“During a global pandemic, OPWDD implemented best practice across facilities to minimize infections and satisfy state quarantine and isolation guidance, while keeping those residents in group homes safe and connected with loved ones,” Silk said.

“While the ever-changing nature of the public health emergency demanded agility in implementing New York State Department of Health and CDC guidance, OPWDD is proud of the efforts that were made to sustain continuity of services while ensuring health and safety during this unprecedented, worldwide event,” Silk added.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/06/nys-disabled-left-disabled-vulnerable-to-covid-19-despite-emergency-plans-report/

Eloxx: Recent positive developments

 Three patients now dosed in Phase 2 clinical study evaluating ELX-02 for the treatment of Alport syndrome; encouraging initial reduction in proteinuria has been observed in one patient to date

Investigational New Drug (IND) application for ZKN-013 filed for treatment of recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB)

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/eloxx-pharmaceuticals-reports-fourth-quarter-120000143.html

What Happens After The End Of Fed Rate-Hikes

 By Jessica Rabe of DataTrek

Fed Funds Futures think the Federal Reserve’s current rate hike cycle is over. In fact, they give over 50 percent odds of rate cuts starting in July. As a result, we’ve received client inquiries about what happens to US equities when the Fed stops increasing near-term rates.

Therefore, today we will look at the performance and volatility of US equities following the end of rate hike cycles back to 1990. We chose this timeframe because it captures the modern stock market when monetary policy became more transparent, so it is more comparable to today’s circumstances than previous rate cycles.

There have been 4 distinct rate hike cycles since the early 1990s. We exclude 1997 in this analysis, as it had just one rate increase of 25 basis points. First, here is how the S&P 500 performed in the month, 3 months, and year after these periods of monetary policy tightening:

January 31st, 1995 (the end of a rate cycle which started in February 1994):

• One month later: +3.6 pct
• 3-months later: +9.4 pct
• 1-year later: +35.2 pct

May 15th, 2000 (cycle started in June 1999):

• One month later: +1.8 pct
• 3-months later: +2.2 pct
• 1-year later: -14.0 pct

June 28th, 2006 (cycle started in June 2004):

• One month later: +2.6 pct
• 3-months later: +7.5 pct
• 1-year later: +20.8 pct

December 19th, 2018 (cycle started in December 2015):

• One month later: +5.0 pct
• 3-months later: +13.0 pct
• 1-year later: +27.9 pct

Average:

• One month later: +3.3 pct
• 3-months later: +8.0 pct
• 1-year later: +17.5 pct

Takeaway: US equities tend to rally in the month, 3 months and year after the Fed stops raising near-term rates. The only exception was in the year after the Fed’s last rate increase on March 15th, 2000 during the bursting of the dot com bubble. Aside from that one instance, the S&P was up a solid double digits (+28.0 pct) over the next year following a rate hike cycle. The “catch” – and it is a significant one – is that in every case the Fed started cutting rates in the 12 months after the end of each cycle.

As for measuring US equity volatility, we track how many times the S&P moves more than 1 percent up or down from close to close. That’s our preferred measure of how much investors “feel” real-time volatility. Two brief background points:

• Any one-day move greater than 1 percent to the upside or downside is +1 standard deviation from the S&P’s mean daily return since 1958 (first full year of data).
• During any given quarter and year, the S&P has averaged 13 and 55 one percent days respectively. That means there’s roughly 1 one percent day a week.

Now here’s how many one percent days there were in the month, 3 months and year after the Fed stopped raising rates over the last +3 decades:

January 31st, 1995:

• One month later: 1
• 3-months later: 3
• 1-year later: 18

May 15th, 2000:

• One month later: 9
• 3-months later: 21
• 1-year later: 103

June 28th, 2006:

• One month later: 6
• 3-months later: 8
• 1-year later: 27

December 19th, 2018:

• One month later: 9
• 3-months later: 13
• 1-year later: 42

Average:

• One month later: 6
• 3-months later: 11
• 1-year later: 48

Takeaway: US equity market volatility is usually around average in the month and 3 months after the Fed no longer increases rates, and below average in the following year. These trends make sense given that US equity returns and volatility are inversely correlated, so below average annual market choppiness coincided with the S&P posting a positive double digit return on average after a Fed rate hike cycle back to 1990. The one exception was again in 2000 to 2001 given weakening economic fundamentals during that period. Consequently, there were 103 one percent days in the year after March 15th, 2000 – almost double the average – while the S&P was down 14.0 pct. Higher volatility means more market uncertainty, hurting equity returns as a result.

Bottom line: Modern market history says if the Fed is done raising near-term rates and starts to cut them over the next year, US equities should rally over the next month, 3 months and year. Granted, this conclusion is based off a small sample size of the 4 most recent rate hike cycles, but that does capture how the market responds to a change in monetary policy with a more transparent Fed. Moreover, the early 2000s is a useful example to show that an economic shock can be more harmful than a monetary policy pivot proves helpful. While the Fed could cut rates later this year in response to a potential US recession, the severity of the economic contraction could trump an accommodative policy response as it did in the early 2000s. Additionally, unlike the other 4 periods in which the Fed decided to stop raising rates, the central bank is now fighting lasting elevated inflation. This dynamic limits the Fed’s ability to turn more dovish as the US economy cools.

Overall, this data points to a cautiously optimistic outlook for US equities with the Fed at or nearing the end of its rate hike cycle.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/what-happens-after-end-fed-rate-hikes

US earnings set to be weakest since COVID pandemic: Goldman

 Goldman Sachs strategists are predicting the most dismal earnings season since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic this quarter as an ongoing economic slowdown hammers top companies.

Analysts project that earnings per share results for companies listed in the broad-based S&P 500 will plunge by 7% in the first quarter compared to the same period one year ago, Goldman’s Lily Calcagnini and David Kostin said in a client note reported by Bloomberg on Thursday.

“If analyst projections are realized, this quarter will represent the trough in S&P 500 earnings growth,” the analysts said, adding that profit margins are likely to shrink given the tough conditions.

The latest round of corporate earnings will emerge as US companies weather concerns about the stability of the US banking sector and the Federal Reserve’s ongoing slate of interest rate hikes.

The Fed will hold its next policy meeting on May 2-3.

Investors will get their first round of major results on April 14, when BlackRock, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup are all slated to report their quarterly earnings.

The Goldman strategists pointed to several key trends that Wall Street will be tracking closely during the uncertain period, including signs of a slowdown in cash spending, company initiatives in the burgeoning artificial intelligence sector, China’s effort to re-emerge from COVID-19 lockdowns and profit margins at US firms.

Analysts see bank earnings jumping by 11% compared to last year, despite lingering “uncertainty” about the economic outlook.

US stocks have been resilient this year despite ongoing chaos in the wake of the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank of New York.

The S&P 500 is up nearly 7% since the start of the year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index has jumped by 15% over the same period.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has been flat.

The Nasdaq 100, which tracks large-cap companies, entered bull market territory last month during a rally in tech stocks.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/06/us-earnings-set-to-be-weakest-since-covid-19-pandemic-goldman-strategists-warn/

Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

 

Tesla Inc assures its millions of electric car owners that their privacy "is and will always be enormously important to us." The cameras it builds into vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are "designed from the ground up to protect your privacy."

But between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers' car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees.

Some of the recordings caught Tesla customers in embarrassing situations. One ex-employee described a video of a man approaching a vehicle completely naked.

Also shared: crashes and road-rage incidents. One crash video in 2021 showed a Tesla driving at high speed in a residential area hitting a child riding a bike, according to another ex-employee. The child flew in one direction, the bike in another. The video spread around a Tesla office in San Mateo, California, via private one-on-one chats, "like wildfire," the ex-employee said.

Other images were more mundane, such as pictures of dogs and funny road signs that employees made into memes by embellishing them with amusing captions or commentary, before posting them in private group chats. While some postings were only shared between two employees, others could be seen by scores of them, according to several ex-employees.

Tesla states in its online "Customer Privacy Notice" that its "camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle." But seven former employees told Reuters the computer program they used at work could show the location of recordings - which potentially could reveal where a Tesla owner lived.

One ex-employee also said that some recordings appeared to have been made when cars were parked and turned off. Several years ago, Tesla would receive video recordings from its vehicles even when they were off, if owners gave consent. It has since stopped doing so.

"We could see inside people's garages and their private properties," said another former employee. "Let's say that a Tesla customer had something in their garage that was distinctive, you know, people would post those kinds of things."

Tesla didn't respond to detailed questions sent to the company for this report.

About three years ago, some employees stumbled upon and shared a video of a unique submersible vehicle parked inside a garage, according to two people who viewed it. Nicknamed "Wet Nellie," the white Lotus Esprit sub had been featured in the 1977 James Bond film, "The Spy Who Loved Me."

The vehicle's owner: Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, who had bought it for about $968,000 at an auction in 2013. It is not clear whether Musk was aware of the video or that it had been shared.

Musk didn't respond to a request for comment.

To report this story, Reuters contacted more than 300 former Tesla employees who had worked at the company over the past nine years and were involved in developing its self-driving system. More than a dozen agreed to answer questions, all speaking on condition of anonymity.

Reuters wasn't able to obtain any of the shared videos or images, which ex-employees said they hadn't kept. The news agency also wasn't able to determine if the practice of sharing recordings, which occurred within some parts of Tesla as recently as last year, continues today or how widespread it was. Some former employees contacted said the only sharing they observed was for legitimate work purposes, such as seeking assistance from colleagues or supervisors.

LABELING PEDESTRIANS AND STREET SIGNS

The sharing of sensitive videos illustrates one of the less-noted features of artificial intelligence systems: They often require armies of human beings to help train machines to learn automated tasks such as driving.

Since about 2016, Tesla has employed hundreds of people in Africa and later the United States to label images to help its cars learn how to recognize pedestrians, street signs, construction vehicles, garage doors and other objects encountered on the road or at customers' houses. To accomplish that, data labelers were given access to thousands of videos or images recorded by car cameras that they would view and identify objects.

Tesla increasingly has been automating the process, and shut down a data-labeling hub last year in San Mateo, California. But it continues to employ hundreds of data labelers in Buffalo, New York. In February, Tesla said the staff there had grown 54% over the previous six months to 675.

Two ex-employees said they weren't bothered by the sharing of images, saying that customers had given their consent or that people long ago had given up any reasonable expectation of keeping personal data private. Three others, however, said they were troubled by it.

"It was a breach of privacy, to be honest. And I always joked that I would never buy a Tesla after seeing how they treated some of these people," said one former employee.

Another said: "I'm bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don't think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected ... We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids."

One former employee saw nothing wrong with sharing images, but described a function that allowed data labelers to view the location of recordings on Google Maps as a "massive invasion of privacy."

David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, called sharing of sensitive videos and images by Tesla employees "morally reprehensible."

"Any normal human being would be appalled by this," he said. He noted that circulating sensitive and personal content could be construed as a violation of Tesla's own privacy policy -- potentially resulting in intervention by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which enforces federal laws relating to consumers' privacy.

A spokesperson for the FTC said it doesn't comment on individual companies or their conduct.

To develop self-driving car technology, Tesla collects a vast trove of data from its global fleet of several million vehicles. The company requires car owners to grant permission on the cars' touchscreens before Tesla collects their vehicles' data. "Your Data Belongs to You," states Tesla's website.

In its Customer Privacy Notice, Tesla explains that if a customer agrees to share data, "your vehicle may collect the data and make it available to Tesla for analysis. This analysis helps Tesla improve its products, features, and diagnose problems quicker." It also states that the data may include "short video clips or images," but isn't linked to a customer's account or vehicle identification number, "and does not identify you personally."

Carlo Piltz, a data privacy lawyer in Germany, told Reuters it would be difficult to find a legal justification under Europe's data protection and privacy law for vehicle recordings to be circulated internally when it has "nothing to do with the provision of a safe or secure car or the functionality" of Tesla's self-driving system.

In recent years, Tesla's car-camera system has drawn controversy. In China, some government compounds and residential neighborhoods have banned Teslas because of concerns about its cameras. In response, Musk said in a virtual talk at a Chinese forum in 2021: "If Tesla used cars to spy in China or anywhere, we will get shut down."

Elsewhere, regulators have scrutinized the Tesla system over potential privacy violations. But the privacy cases have tended to focus not on the rights of Tesla owners but of passers-by unaware that they might be being recorded by parked Tesla vehicles.

In February, the Dutch Data Protection Authority, or DPA, said it had concluded an investigation of Tesla over possible privacy violations regarding "Sentry Mode," a feature designed to record any suspicious activity when a car is parked and alert the owner.

"People who walked by these vehicles were filmed without knowing it. And the owners of the Teslas could go back and look at these images," said DPA board member Katja Mur in a statement. "If a person parked one of these vehicles in front of someone's window, they could spy inside and see everything the other person was doing. That is a serious violation of privacy."

The watchdog determined it wasn't Tesla, but the vehicles' owners, who were legally responsible for their cars' recordings. It said it decided not to fine the company after Tesla said it had made several changes to Sentry Mode, including having a vehicle's headlights pulse to inform passers-by that they may be being recorded.

A DPA spokesperson declined to comment on Reuters findings, but said in an email: "Personal data must be used for a specific purpose, and sensitive personal data must be protected."

REPLACING HUMAN DRIVERS

Tesla calls its automated driving system Autopilot. Introduced in 2015, the system included such advanced features as allowing drivers to change lanes by tapping a turn signal and parallel parking on command. To make the system work, Tesla initially installed sonar sensors, radar and a single front-facing camera at the top of the windshield. A subsequent version, introduced in 2016, included eight cameras all around the car to collect more data and offer more capabilities.

Musk's future vision is eventually to offer a "Full Self-Driving" mode that would replace a human driver. Tesla began rolling out an experimental version of that mode in October 2020. Although it requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel, it currently offers such features as the ability to slow a car down automatically when it approaches stop signs or traffic lights.

In February, Tesla recalled more than 362,000 U.S. vehicles to update their Full Self-Driving software after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it could allow vehicles to exceed speed limits and potentially cause crashes at intersections.

As with many artificial-intelligence projects, to develop Autopilot, Tesla hired data labelers to identify objects in images and videos to teach the system how to respond when the vehicle was on the road or parked.

Tesla initially outsourced data labeling to a San Francisco-based non-profit then known as Samasource, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The organization had an office in Nairobi, Kenya, and specialized in offering training and employment opportunities to disadvantaged women and youth.

In 2016, Samasource was providing about 400 workers there for Tesla, up from about an initial 20, according to a person familiar with the matter.

By 2019, however, Tesla was no longer satisfied with the work of Samasource's data labelers. At an event called Tesla AI Day in 2021, Andrej Karpathy, then senior director of AI at Tesla, said: "Unfortunately, we found very quickly that working with a third party to get data sets for something this critical was just not going to cut it ... Honestly the quality was not amazing."

A former Tesla employee said of the Samasource labelers: "They would highlight fire hydrants as pedestrians ... They would miss objects all the time. Their skill level to draw boxes was very low."

Samasource, now called Sama, declined to comment on its work for Tesla.

Tesla decided to bring data labeling in-house. "Over time, we've grown to more than a 1,000-person data labeling (organization) that is full of professional labelers who are working very closely with the engineers," Karpathy said in his August 2021 presentation.

Karpathy didn't respond to requests for comment.

Tesla's own data labelers initially worked in the San Francisco Bay area, including the office in San Mateo. Groups of data labelers were assigned a variety of different tasks, including labeling street lane lines or emergency vehicles, ex-employees said.

At one point, Teslas on Autopilot were having difficulty backing out of garages and would get confused when encountering shadows or objects such as garden hoses. So some data labelers were asked to identify objects in videos recorded inside garages. The problem eventually was solved.

In interviews, two former employees said in their normal work duties they were sometimes asked to view images of customers in and around their homes, including inside garages.

"I sometimes wondered if these people know that we're seeing that," said one.

"I saw some scandalous stuff sometimes, you know, like I did see scenes of intimacy but not nudity," said another. "And there was just definitely a lot of stuff that like, I wouldn't want anybody to see about my life."

As an example, this person recalled seeing "embarrassing objects," such as "certain pieces of laundry, certain sexual wellness items ... and just private scenes of life that we really were privy to because the car was charging."

MEMES IN THE SAN MATEO OFFICE

Tesla staffed its San Mateo office with mostly young workers, in their 20s and early 30s, who brought with them a culture that prized entertaining memes and viral online content. Former staffers described a free-wheeling atmosphere in chat rooms with workers exchanging jokes about images they viewed while labeling.

According to several ex-employees, some labelers shared screenshots, sometimes marked up using Adobe Photoshop, in private group chats on Mattermost, Tesla's internal messaging system. There they would attract responses from other workers and managers. Participants would also add their own marked-up images, jokes or emojis to keep the conversation going. Some of the emojis were custom-created to reference office inside jokes, several ex-employees said.

One former labeler described sharing images as a way to "break the monotony." Another described how the sharing won admiration from peers.

"If you saw something cool that would get a reaction, you post it, right, and then later, on break, people would come up to you and say, 'Oh, I saw what you posted. That was funny,'" said this former labeler. "People who got promoted to lead positions shared a lot of these funny items and gained notoriety for being funny."

Some of the shared content resembled memes on the internet. There were dogs, interesting cars, and clips of people recorded by Tesla cameras tripping and falling. There was also disturbing content, such as someone being dragged into a car seemingly against their will, said one ex-employee.

Video clips of crashes involving Teslas were also sometimes shared in private chats on Mattermost, several former employees said. Those included examples of people driving badly or collisions involving people struck while riding bikes - such as the one with the child - or a motorcycle. Some data labelers would rewind such clips and play them in slow motion.

At times, Tesla managers would crack down on inappropriate sharing of images on public Mattermost channels since they claimed the practice violated company policy. Still, screenshots and memes based on them continued to circulate through private chats on the platform, several ex-employees said. Workers shared them one-on-one or in small groups as recently as the middle of last year.

One of the perks of working for Tesla as a data labeler in San Mateo was the chance to win a prize - use of a company car for a day or two, according to two former employees.

But some of the lucky winners became paranoid when driving the electric cars.

"Knowing how much data those vehicles are capable of collecting definitely made folks nervous," one ex-employee said.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/TESLA-INC-6344549/news/Special-Report-Tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-43445768/