Mike Masnick ✅Can anyone explain what happened to Marc? He used to not be this way. He actually used to have a pretty good understanding of content moderation and free speech issues. And now... this?
Derek Powazek 🐐@mmasnick money gives you brainworms.
Bruce Halperin 
@BruceHalperin @mmasnick Kissing billionaire asses is not allowed in my stream.
christian crumlish@fraying i keep saying that it seems like the billionaire brain virus is... maybe a bigger threat than this "woke mind virus" thing?
@mmasnick seems like!
Bianca@mmasnick The unmanaged Asperger’s and bipolar disorder aren’t helping his cause.
space cats in a trenchcoat@GoldenRuleLover @mmasnick neither autism* nor bipolar disorder makes you be a nazi. don't be an ableist asshole, please.
(*asperger's is no longer used bc he was a nazi)
Anthony Citrano@mmasnick yeah he is one whose "evolution" has really surprised me.
Dan Gillmor@mmasnick It would be merely sad if he wasn't so powerful at this point...
Jamie Hardt@mmasnick He may understand these things, but this kind of response indicates that he's no longer engaging in the public conversation.
@jamie Oh yeah. I mean, he used to follow me and occasionally email me stuff... and now he blocks me on twitter
Eric Dannewitz@mmasnick Right? WTF happened…..like…..does money make this happen to people?
Dave Troy 
@mmasnick IMHO it's the same Ayn Rand-ian obsession with hard currency and the "ends justify the means" that has infected the rest of them, and aligned them with Putin.
https://bylinetimes.com/2022/11/07/musks-twitter-buy-makes-no-sense-unless-its-part-of-something-bigger/
https://bylinetimes.com/2022/11/07/musks-twitter-buy-makes-no-sense-unless-its-part-of-something-bigger/
ᴚ uɐᗡ@mmasnick for anyone who is not aware, this individual is behind the venture capital that sponsors Post.news
@cundravy@mmasnick hard to draw the exact moment but it started around the time of Sanders and Warren and taxing wealth coupled with when journalists weren’t blindly reproducing his thoughts as parables.
@mmasnick it wasn’t just him. it was the entire a16z crowd + funded company CEOs + ape-rs of the a16z “current thing”
personally know otherwise sane folks suddenly reading Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi and somehow considering those opinions as “fact”
@mmasnick All under the aegis of “independent thinking” and “dyor” and “centrism”
obviously this was all supported by the PayPal mafia too. And so in a way Musk is just enabled and then reinforced by people who are both influencers and cronies
Jon Vander Pol@mmasnick Money changes people
ScreamsInternally@mmasnick I’m gunna hazard a guess and suggest some woke lefty broke his tiny little heart
Thomas A. Fine 
@mmasnick Honestly my impression is different, I've seen signs of this behavior coming for a while now.
@mmasnick He blocked me on Twitter a while back.
(Weird since he never blocked me in 1992 when I was sending him free advice on browser features to implement.)
@thomasafine Heh. Yeah. I mean, he and I were modest acquaintances (he would occasionally email me stuff and he would recommend Techdirt posts to a16z staff). But then last summer he blocked me.
Blanding S Turtle@mmasnick The usual suspects:
1. debts
2. kompromat
3. crazypants lover
4. greed
5. cult lovebombs
6. revenge
Philip MartinI dunno, maybe he is just a shitbag and always has been?
Blackout The Conspiracy@mmasnick what? Marc has long defected and been spouting some very weird “woke left” scenarios using AI. Also, any info on Post, I’m sure he’ll be more privy to know and share about with his tech bro cohorts as he’s a funder for it. Joke’s on us!
JenL@mmasnick ever since Musk started pushing Russian and Chinese propaganda on Twitter this fall, I’m assuming that either a bunch of tech bro types fell for Russian disinformation or they see some sort of personal advantage in pretending to be MAGA/QAnon true believers.
Rohan Pearce@mmasnick never recovered from the death of Netscape Navigator
Will Smith@mmasnick He got really wealthy and the only people he knows who aren’t really wealthy anymore work for him.
Glenn Fleishman@glennf @will i think it really only shifted into overdrive during the pandemic. what's funny is that he used to talk with me on occasion, and even would send around techdirt stories to a16z folks to read.
But then, somewhere in 2021 he suddenly blocked me, about a month after he had randomly emailed me some nice comments. It was weird.
Dwight Williams (💉 x9)+😷🇨🇦@mmasnick Kompromat is too obvious a theory, I suppose.
Spike 
@mmasnick It's like they all got brain worms at the same country club buffet and keep repeating the same inane garbage all their fellow buffet-line friends do
Uncle 6 🌁@mmasnick Silly Con Valley is doing for free speech what the NRA did for gun ownership
Erik MoellerHonestly since Musk took over it's been a bit of a "mask off" moment for a lot of folks over there. Kind of like when Trump won the Electoral College.
ClipperChip 
@eloquence @mmasnick To be honest, I am still not sure what his plan is. It's so chaotic... I guess the Trump comparison is fair in that sense.
Yeah, I'm not sure he's really the "planning" type.
Don MacDonald@mmasnick my take on this is that he and his cohort resent that society, especially in liberal and educated circles, has grown skeptical of tech in the past decade. This is due to the fact that the innovations of this period—social media, cryptocurrencies—have been perceived as actually harmful, and their proponents subjected to scrutiny and critique when in previous decades they had been lauded and feted.
John Levine✅@mmasnick It seems somehow consistent with his NIMBY fight against non-plutocratic housing in Atherton
Cranky David@mmasnick
he's mad he pays taxes.
he's mad he pays taxes.
Gojira1000@mmasnick He lives in a gazillionaire bubble surrounded by yes-men. The brain corrodes quickly.
Trading Places Research@mmasnick Maybe he was always a douchebag?
Chris Godwin 
@mmasnick what he proposes doesn't exist... exists. They're just comfortable in their rights as they are not trying to say the same kind of bullshit Republicans spew.
Sam@mmasnick It started around the time Andreessen appeared on Joe Rogan, same as Elon. Something about going on that podcast gives you brain worms (or maybe they went on the podcast *because* they had brain worms, idk)
Kevin Carson@mmasnick Maybe a liberal hurt his feelings and he went down the same rabbit hole as Greenwald.
Lily Tse@mmasnick my take is once the government wants they to pay their fair share of tax, they support the political party that supports the the pays no tax.
Rubicon@mmasnick Isn't that the new Data Overlord that everyone seems so excited to give their content to?
Sarah@mmasnick he has been like this for a while, but it some people think it goes back to him receiving even the mildest of criticism. Or maybe he just liked whatever group was heaping praise on him, which Eric Levitz wrote about recently in terms of Musk: they will go wherever the support goes. But at least now, Andreessen seems like another racist longtermist billionaire, which is why I am wary of anyone who ostensibly dislikes Musk for these views but switches to Post
aaronpride@mmasnick He was always this way. Nauseating high number of rich white dudes in the valley showing their true colors.
JauntyWunderKind@mmasnick i mean, i think the woke defense has been pretty on point. Musk is allowed to be a dillweeded git & do this. that's free speech; it's his site, and he frelling can throw himself, his reputation, his site on the bloody pyre if he wants to. it's his free speech right to do this. freedom baby, freedom!
it took me a while to process the suggestion at all, that he is implying the left would start being a bunch of sad sack babies like the pathetic long running shit-show the right as been asking for, where the government compels corporate speech by anyone who happens by & wants to post whatever.
as you RT'ed, there's a bunch of trumpist anti-woke laws that just got written headed to the Supreme Court that would/could block Musk. god forbid we allow these assaults, that the government prevent/obstruct sites from doing regulation/moderation as befits them, and compels state-based moderation/un-moderation.
https://mastodon.lawprofs.org/@blakereid/109521409145937415
Blake E. Reid🥫🏁 (@[email protected])
It’s far from the most important thing tonight but just a reminder that Florida and Texas passed laws last year that if enforced would almost certainly make what EM is doing to journalists tonight illegal, and the Supreme Court is almost sure to weigh in on their constitutionality this term.
bauhinia@mmasnick I think you give him a fair bit of credit by saying that. He has had issues with "OK for me but not for thee" for many, many years. And 2-3yrs ago he started being 'tribal' rather than open to arguments which were not his.
ExistentialBunny@mmasnick SV avoided scrutiny for a long time and now VCs feeling vulnerable & paranoid. Thiel/Gawker was a canary in coal mine.
@mmasnick reminds me of BillGates too at one time. Paranoid
Scott@mmasnick “Web3” broke some folk’s brains
Andrew F@mmasnick Persecution complex? A bunch of VCs are going through this, and it roughly started when SV started getting the villain treatment.
Ted T@mmasnick HUBRIS. He is a brilliant guy, but far from perfect.
Did you know he was an close adviser to Elizabeth Holmes & Theranos during her rise? She is apparently godmother to one of their kids. Smart thing though (from what I can tell) Andreessen/Arrillaga never invested in Theranos! My guess is that they knew EH was a fake, justifying it as a Silicon Valley badge of honor: "Fake it until you make it!"
Wonder if Marc called in favors with Jack Dorsey. You know, hold down the noise...
DoYabba@mmasnick I’m guessing he has rich white man persecution syndrome. Life was so much better when the little people laughed at all of his jokes and told him how wonderful he was Every. Single. Day.
Now he’s got some HR bureaucrat telling him he needs to take a 1 hour online diversity and inclusion seminar and IT’S JUST NOT FAIR.😩
Now he’s got some HR bureaucrat telling him he needs to take a 1 hour online diversity and inclusion seminar and IT’S JUST NOT FAIR.😩