If Elizabeth Holmes got out of prison, and said she spent her time coming up with an entirely new technology to save the world, the media would cover it enthusiastically, and VCs would throw millions at her.
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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Fediverse vs Disinformation
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Pointing out, debunking, and spreading awareness about state- and company-sponsored astroturfing on Lemmy and elsewhere. This includes social media manipulation, propaganda, and disinformation campaigns, among others.
Propaganda and disinformation are a big problem on the internet, and the Fediverse is no exception.
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headline: “Bad person X destroyed in epic clapback!”
reality: Bad person continues to do awful things with no repercussions, never reads criticism.
It is at lesst in part a contraction of the imagination. Of what is thinkable. Of what is dreamable.
I think it is at least in part, that few and fewer people in the general public actually understand how a variety of technologies work. It's all magic to them, so if a CEO promises some crazy thing that an expert knows is bogus, most of the people aren't critical because who knows, it might be possible.
I think culture of obedience and slopification are also problems.
The only words I'm interested in hearing from these assholes are a few mumbled expressions of regret just before they die friendless, unloved, and surrounded by ghouls trying to get their claws on a fat inheritance.
Media in a "attention grabbing headline" Era is like a snake eating its own tail. When everything is breaking news, nothing is....
They did the same with Jobs. We value success not intelligence. It just happens success favors sociopathic behaviors as they will do anything to achieve it. They don't have empathy for those they hurt on the way up.
Okay but could we please also value intelligence?
Sorry success and money only
This guy is such a stupid fuck.
I'm 100% certain Musk has been buying guerilla social media campaigns since at least the early 2010s.
Nobody gave a shit about some random CEO back then. But in certain spaces like reddit, he was talked of like a god.
This is memoryholed but at one point the mods of /r/technology put filters against the flood of Musk spam. When this was revealed, there was a minor brigading of pro Musk content to that subreddit. It's another in the long history of reddit incidents but nobody seems to remember this one.
That's when I clued into the patterns of this artificially generated Musk popularity. Why the hell did anyone care about this guy back then? It obviously wasn't organic content. The guy manufactured himself.
I remember watching the Tesla and SpaceX live streams over the years because of all the hullaballoo. Nobody else watched those. Nobody else cared. I watched and saw nothing special. He's nothing but another bumbling CEO. Most the time he'd try to sound smart and get smacked down by the actual scientists and engineers from the company who were on the panel.
There's another guy right now. Jeff Arcuri or whatever. He's on r/all every single day for the past several years. Who the fuck is Jeff Arcuri, you ask??? Some random comedian. But he's obviously been buying himself a top spot on reddit. Based on that kind of presence you'd think he's one of the most legendary comedians in history. Guy isn't even notable enough to have a Wikipedia page.
The SpaceX launch/landing videos with people cheering wildly the whole time always annoyed the shit out of me. I'm watching a documentary on Apollo 11 and you don't hear people constantly cheering in the control rooms. Like, they had actual work to do.
How dare those engineers who made one of the greatest strides in rocketry in decades celebrate a successful launch and landing.
What annoys me most is this asshole gets away with it all the time. He's been clearly lying for years and years now. He claims his companies can do stuff they obviously can't, yet every time he makes a new claim the stock goes up.
How is he not in jail? Sure you might present things in a favorable light, cherry pick the ideal testcase, talk about the most optimistic predictions. But just straight up lie? Isn't that like fraud or something?
And because he's gotten away with it, a lot of dickheads like him are doing it as well. That meme boy Sam Altman with his bullshit line about AGI replacing all jobs in 2025. Now we're in 2026 and all of a sudden it's yeah maybe 2028 or maybe 2030. OK so you were just pulling shit out of your ass and have zero paths to AGI, like anyone with a brain already knew. But again zero consequences, just keep pumping that stock with bullshit.
At least with Nvidia they have actual products that do what it says on the tin. The folks running the show there should also definitely be in jail for their endless carousel of circular investment bullshit, but at least they have an actual product.
How is he not in jail?
Because he gets the right people rich and makes the simps poor.
Elizabeth Holmes made the mistake of taking money from the rich.
How is he not in jail?
Let me give you a very simple answer.
He is a richwhiteman.
I mean, say what you want about the tenants of Liberal Capitalism, Dude, at least they sold a product!
He’s an idiot whose only skill is using his frankly disgusting access to money and power to steal ideas from actual geniuses and calling them his own.
When he first became famous, I thought he might be smart. Then he started talking about things in my field of expertise and I realised he had no idea what he was talking about. Since then, I’ve heard engineers and designers in other fields say the same thing.
I’m actually angry he gets away with this. I’ve struggled to make ends meet, and I have high level skills – it’s infuriating that a moron can make bank in my field by pretending and being a fucking sociopath.
e: my passion overrides my ability to spell
I watched a video some time ago where he was showing the evolution of SpaceX rockets. At one point he referred to "the fiddly bits" on the outsides of the rockets.
To be fair, he has some things going for him: the uncanny ability to get away with false advertising and stock manipulation.
Somehow, "{Super far-fetched thing} will be available NEXT YEAR!" manages to keep working despite the clear history of his promises being even more overhyped and overpromised than even Peter Mollineaux's.
I mean the man is 5 or 6 distilled PowerPoints away from the people who actually know something. This coupled with the fact that he is clearly seagull management personified I'm gob smacked the (shitty) iron man image continues.
He's likely paying for this PR fluff to be written.
Elon Musk is a moron’s hallucination of a genius.
More failed launches in 2020s than the earliest space programs of the 60s, where they had pencils. Finally he gave up on Mars...now it's the moon....soon Nebraska.
He’s probably still trying to get to Epstein’s island.
we chose to go to Nebraska, not because it's easy
It's a harsh climate, but Nebraska can be colonized.
But because it’s corn.
But because your mom is
"We choose to go to the moon. We chose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because we thought it would be easy"
Angela Collier had a fantastic video on how all these rich people think having money means they are experts in everything.
It's annoying that some (software) engineering friends think he's smart. Like, bro. He's not the one building the rockets. He's just the guy with money that pays actually smart people to build rockets.
Just because your manager can tell other teams what YOU are working on, does not mean your manager has the technical chops to do it.
He also predicted there will be fully self driving cars by the end of 2017
Traffic tunnels, vacuum trains, solar tiles, robot butlers, Tesla Taxi, Tesla Roadster....
He said (10 years ago) he’d have ships with millions of people colonising Mars by 2026.
nice summary, thank you
They can, and they will!
Of course it’s his awful pose. WTF, journalists?