Tesla to shut down its forums despite user protest

Tesla is preparing to shut down its website's forums section and replace it with a new social platform, a move that has drawn criticism from the Tesla community.

The company first announced the move with a notice at the top of its forums, reading: "Starting March 15th, Tesla Forums will become read-only. To continue the conversation with the Tesla community visit engage.tesla.com."

The new microsite, named Tesla Engagement Platform, asks owners and fans to comment on Tesla's posts, rather than creating posts and threads of their own.

The move has left many forum users unsatisfied, many of them finding the new platform limiting. Indeed, the platform doesn't appear to be a replacement, rather a blog for Tesla's industry news.

One commenter on the new microsite implored Tesla, "Please do not get rid of the Forums. This is not a replacement. The forums (with exception of the trolls on it) brought about informed discussion to help fellow owners with issues."

Tesla has not given an official reason for this switch. According to TechCrunch, one commenter on the old site with supposed 'inside info', alleged that the forums were closing because Tesla couldn't afford to hire multiple full-time moderators to keep up with the barrage of spam and trolls that would frequent the threads.