Tesla Inc. TSLA -3.62% Chief Executive Elon Musk for years has used Twitter to combat critics in ways that few other business leaders would dare. His latest outburst on the platform, though, was extreme even by his standards.
Mr. Musk took offense at comments from a British cave explorer who dismissed the billionaire entrepreneur’s efforts to rescue the youth soccer team trapped in a Thailand cave as an ill-informed public-relations stunt. He suggested the critic, Vern Unsworth, was a pedophile in a tweet Sunday.
“Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it,” read a post on Mr. Musk’s official Twitter account early Sunday in response to the explorer’s criticism. The post quickly prompted criticism, eliciting a follow-up from Mr. Musk to someone who challenged the statement, which read: “Bet ya a signed dollar it’s true.”
Those posts were deleted later Sunday. A spokesman for Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment. Mr. Unsworth couldn’t be reached for comment Monday in Thailand, but he told Australian television that the dispute wasn’t finished yet.
Tesla shares slid 3.51% to $307.68 in morning trading in New York.
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It was the latest example of Mr. Musk’s aggressive and sometimes controversial use of Twitter. In recent months, he has used the platform to criticize regulators, taunt short-sellers and debate people who criticized his political donations.
Mr. Musk’s seemingly unfiltered use of the platform is unusual among major CEOs, whose public remarks are generally carefully controlled. The messages are part of a pattern of defiance that has won Mr. Musk many fans and gained him more than 22 million followers on Twitter, to whom he often promotes new products and features or customer questions.
The interactions often become hostile. In one particularly testy exchange in May, Mr. Musk fired back at a profane comment directed his way by tweeting at its author: “Does the psych ward know you smuggled in a mobile phone?”
In May, he waged a lengthy attack on the media following unflattering articles about Tesla, and announced plans to create a Yelp.com-like website where people can rate the credibility of journalists and news organizations. Mr. Musk said he would name it Pravda, after the former Soviet Union’s main propaganda outlet, then changed it to Pravduh.
The sheer volume of tweets from Mr. Musk is all the more remarkable given the enormous demands on his attention at Tesla, which has been struggling to sharply increase production of its new sedan, and at his other companies including rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX.
Mr. Musk has defended his use of Twitter, while also suggesting he would adjust. “I have made the mistaken assumption—and I will attempt to be better at this—of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season,” Mr. Musk said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “And that is my mistake. I will correct it.”
Mr. Musk’s involvement with the Thai cave drama began on Twitter, when he responded on July 4 to a user asking him to assist in the rescue. He later posted videos of swimming-pool tests in California of a metal tube that his team fashioned to carry the Thai boys out of the flooded cave.
Meanwhile, Thai authorities successfully rescued all 12 boys and their coach without Mr. Musk’s device.
Mr. Musk, who praised the rescue effort, stopped off to visit the cave on a trip to China and said he was leaving the sub in case it could be useful in the future.
Mr. Musk chafed at criticism of his effort. “This reaction has shaken my opinion of many people,” he tweeted on July 11. “We were asked to create a backup option & worked hard to do so.”
Late last week, a CNN posted a video in which Mr. Unsworth called Mr. Musk’s mini-sub a “PR stunt,” saying it “had absolutely no chance of working” because it was too big for the cave. “He can stick his submarine where it hurts,” Mr. Unsworth said.
Sunday morning, Mr. Musk replied to a tweet citing the comments, saying: “Never saw this British expat guy who lives in Thailand (sus) at any point when we were in the caves,” he wrote. “Only people in sight were the Thai navy/army guys, who were great.”
He then challenged Mr. Unsworth to show a video of the rescue, before adding: “You know what, don’t bother showing the video. We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.”
Write to Tim Higgins at Tim.Higgins@wsj.com
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