Tech's Worst Assholios of 2023

Let's try this again...

Jan 26, 2024

Elon Musk

It’s the trainwreck you can’t look away from. Elevating white supremacists, cursing out advertisers, accusing them of ‘blackmail’ when they avoid advertising alongside white supremacists, bringing Alex Jones back to X on the anniversary of Sandy Hook. Wait wait, it gets better: He advances the conspiracy theory that Jewish people seek to replace white people by ushering ‘hordes’ of pliant minorities (like me!) to do their bidding. You can’t make this shit up.

VC’s causing the bank that gave them preferential treatment to collapse

SVB’s collapse might not exclusively be the fault of VCs but they were complicit. Most VCs required, or at least aggressively encouraged, their portfolio companies to bank at SVB. There is great irony in the fact that many VCs (👀Founders Fund 👀) then urged their portfolio companies to make a run on the bank. VC’s could have leveraged their influence to collaborate with the bank and stabilize the market. They sowed panic instead.

Vivek Ramaswamy

There’s a reason that Hollywood is increasingly making its villains tech bros: that reason is dudes like Vivek Ramaswamy. Regardless of what you think of his politics – and holy hell do I have big feelings about his politics – this guy is giving everyone in tech a bad name by association. Calling President Zelensky, one of the greatest world leaders of our generation, a Nazi? Jeezus.

Binance

It hasn’t been an easy year for crypto. It has been a fun year to be a guy who never bought any – but I’m much too gracious to gloat about that. It turns out that a shadow industry attracts shadowy players – and shadowy CEOs. If Sam Bankman-Fried was the most egregious rule-breaker in crypto last year, this year has to go to Binance CEO Changpeng Zao. CZ pleaded guilty to money laundering and is awaiting sentencing.

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreesen

Tell me you read Atlas Shrugged when you were a 16-year-old white boy and have carried around a copy ever since WITHOUT telling me you read Atlas shrugged when you were a 16-year-old white boy and have carried around a copy ever since. At first I thought this was just excellent satire. Comrades, I regret to inform you it is not. I appreciate the impulse to codify one’s personal philosophy and write it all down, but this is details-be-damned dogma masquerading as first-principles philosophy. It wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't the precursor to a16z's announcement that they plan to lobby the US government to deregulate tech -- and will donate to *any* candidate who commits to deregulation. At a time when we're literally fighting tooth and nail to save democracy, being a single-issue donor feels especially thick. And frankly, I expect a lot more from somebody with a brain as big as Marc’s.

If this feels belated, it’s because it was originally published on LinkedIn in December of 2023. It was removed for “violating community standards.” They never did say which. Sometimes I think it must’ve pissed somebody off who was mentioned. Other times, I think a content moderator on LI saw my post along with my last name and assumed that “assholio” was Spanish for “asshole.” C’mon, cabrón — it’s a Beavis & Butthead reference.

YARN | I am Cornholio! | Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) | Video clips by quotes | f604f538 | 紗

What I’m Listening To:

What I’m Reading:

The mental health app data privacy problem is getting worse by Adriana Belmonte VIA Yahoo News

“Data brokers capitalizing on mental health data is nothing new. A February 2023 report from Duke University found that out of 37 different data brokers that researchers contacted about mental health data, 26 responded, and 11 firms ‘were ultimately willing and able to sell the requested mental health data.’ It's also completely legal.”