
Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World - fforflo
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-10/marc-andreessen-pro-colonialism-tweet-riles-up-india-tech-world
======
factorialboy
Extremely stupid tweet by Andreessen. He probably doesn't even realize that,
like most ignorant people.

FYI it was socialism that held back the Indian economy during the 70s and 80s.

And it was colonialism that drained the country's wealth for over two hundred
years.

Here, Mr. Andreessen, educate yourself:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=bengal+famine](https://www.google.com/search?q=bengal+famine)

~~~
rayiner
One thing I never see mentioned in this debate is the fact that America was a
British colony as well, and colonial status definitely drained American wealth
for centuries (though obviously, the occupation of India was far more brutal).
But I think it's highly unlikely that America ever would've become a
superpower without the benefit of British culture, institutions, and law.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
How about German culture, institutions and law? How about Bohemian? Austrian?
Italian? Czech? Polish?

America was last a British colony, but it was far from a uniform culture of
expat British. And it reinvented itself violently upon rebellion. Into
something quite new in the world. Or at least not seen in a long time. And
definitely _not_ British.

~~~
protomyth
Well, that's not exactly true. American is another child of the Magna Carta
and we definitely (at the North's insistence) adopted the British economic
system (Capitalism). Originally, Americans fought for their rights as British
subjects, and later turned towards independence when that was not going to
happen.

Yes, the American government was a new thing, but it was built on a foundation
already understood by the founding fathers.

I often wonder about the world in the British had given seats in the House of
Commons to its bigger colonies. Distance and communications speeds were
problems as well as the government's attitude toward the colonies. It probably
would have been cheaper than the world spanning war they ended up fighting
with France during the American Revolution.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
They did something like that - they would defer decisions until they'd _heard_
from the representative of the colony (the Governor?) In fact that was all the
'representation' that the American colony wanted in that slogan "No taxation
without Representation!" (perhaps the worst political slogan of all time?)
Just to be heard. Because our colony rep arrived a day or two too late to
speak on the tea tax, designed to defray Britain' expenses for the defense of
the Colony.

Ironically the representative would have spoken in favor! But because he was
not heard at all (and his objection dismissed as irrelevant), that put
colonists in the same bucket as slaves and women - those who were not heard in
government. _That_ was what was intolerable.

~~~
protomyth
> "No taxation without Representation!" (perhaps the worst political slogan of
> all time?)

No, a true sentiment always.

I am talking about actual MPs from the colonies not the consult after the fact
system and definitely not the way they ignored and ridiculed Benjamin
Franklin.

------
mikeash
In addition to the idiotic comment about colonialism, I'm curious about this
new phrase he used: "partial Internet connectivity."

That's a rather Orwellian choice of words, and appears to be flying under the
radar while everybody gets upset at the other stuff.

Let's call it what it really is: connectivity to a couple of services which
also happen to be connected to the Internet. "Partial Internet connectivity"
is about on the same level as "partial pregnancy."

~~~
fwn
Someone not sensitized by the net-neutrality debate would probably call a
slow, spotty or censored internet connection still internet. But as frontiers
are already pretty straight, qualitative differences in internet access
already constitute a difference to what the net-neutrality side would be
willing to accept as part of what can be called "internet".

This makes it funny that you name his wording "Orwellian" while subliminally
reproducing this carefully crafted and politically loaded understanding of
what qualifies as internet.

It in fact already is seeking political influence on a grammatical level.

~~~
mikeash
Fair, I accept that slow, spotty, and maybe even censored internet connections
might qualify as "partial Internet connectivity."

But that's not at all what we're talking about here, right? The service in
question allows connecting to just two sites or something?

~~~
vram22
No, IIRC, not just two sites. But just a few sites, may be in the range of 10,
which is not at all the same as all Internet sites, and letting the users
decide which (of the many other useful sites) they can access.

------
yalogin
Knowing the sentiment in tech about keeping internet free from external
interests, I don't know how he could support Facebook's plan like this. On top
of that he was condescending towards India by bringing up "poor" and
"morality" when instead he should have commended India for not falling for the
trap.

He is entitled to his opinions about colonialism. People that care about it
will respond.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Knowing the sentiment in tech about keeping internet free from external
interests, I don't know how he could support Facebook's plan like this."

He's a pretty big investor in Facebook. That's why he's willing to ignore the
net neutrality implications - because it benefits him.

~~~
fwn
Because everyone with a different opinion on the most beneficial
infrastructural policy is driven by pure self-interest.

..basically the pop culture version of a regulatory debate.

~~~
tetrep
> ...the most beneficial infrastructural policy...

That's a nice objective view of free basics. I honestly believe, as I believe
the parent to your comment does, that free basics really is _bad_ for the
internet and that none of the big players supporting it, e.g. the board of
Facebook, are ignorant of the massive walled garden effect that they expect
and hope it will create.

At this point I think it's pretty close to an evil plan. Imagine a privately
run "public" transit system that dropped you off inside buildings with no
exterior doors. You'd be hard pressed to argue that the creators of such a
system would not be aware of the effects it would have om the businesses
inside such buildings, much less that they're creating this network out of the
kindness of the hearts to honestly just give people who are in need access to
transportation.

(little straw-many but i reallt hate the idea and implementation of free
basics)

~~~
fwn
I did not want to say that the consequences of Facebooks Free Basics can't be
seen as something bad. ..and I personally wouldn't argue for their proposed
implementation either.

It just bugs me that the whole debate always needs to be drown to the lowest
common denominator of political understanding. There is little positioning
left if everthing is always pressed in shallow us versus them identities.

Both sides have better and worse arguments for their position.

Ultimately, in my opinion, the issue comes down to solid antitrust mechanisms.
To use your picture: If it is a transit system which sparks the idea of
mobility in a previously immobile and unconnected society: I wouldn't stop it
as long as there is room for other suppliers that might compete with exit-door
featured stations.

------
ericzawo
While I admire Mr. Andreessen a lot for his work as an entrepreneur and
investor, we're witnessing a very real amplification of the consequences
behind the expression "don't meet your heroes." The difference here is that
Marc is abnormally outspoken. It would be dubious to assume that similarly
ignorant opinions about large swaths of the world are not also shared by some
of the biggest minds in tech.

------
navinsylvester
Freebasics is a poorly disguised but bold move to colonize Internet in
developing countries. A brief prequel: [http://blog.savetheinternet.in/what-
facebook-wont-tell-you-a...](http://blog.savetheinternet.in/what-facebook-
wont-tell-you-about-freebasics)

Freebasics campaign was so flawed and the desperation in willfully misleading
people was not even on an acceptable moral terms. Facebook spent a whooping
100 Crore INR for promotion and used the term "Free Internet". More about this
here: [http://blog.savetheinternet.in/what-facebook-wont-tell-
you-a...](http://blog.savetheinternet.in/what-facebook-wont-tell-you-about-
freebasics)

Andreessen/zuckerberg is setting a very bad example here. These tweets are a
testimony to the desperation and an act of trying to flex muscle. Tech
industry luminaries are least expected to be willfully trying to rob the basic
rights of a common man. Sadly we would remain silent partners to the spoiling
fabric - if we don't vehemently oppose.

~~~
navinsylvester
*second link should point to this: [http://scroll.in/article/802128/indias-internet-regulator-ju...](http://scroll.in/article/802128/indias-internet-regulator-just-called-facebooks-free-basics-campaign-crude-and-dangerous)

------
jccc
I don't particularly like the guy, but is there a campaign of deliberate
misinterpretation going on?

Yes, probably a really stupid thing to say, and perhaps wrong for many
reasons.

No, he did not say India should have kept Britain as its colonial power, or
any of the other incredible interpretations now flying around the
Twittersphere.

Jonny Axelsson: _Anti-semitism not the opposite of semitism. Now whether anti-
colonialism is a thing is another thing. Americans, esp. right-wing, have
Humpty Dumpty appoach to redefining words but in context is clear: @pmarca
referred to the post-colonial anti-colonial mix of nationalism, socialism,
abuse /power that afflicted many ex-colonies_

Marc Andreessen: _Exactly._

[https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/697281882401026048](https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/697281882401026048)

[Please disagree with Andreessen's point, not with my point that he really
didn't say take India back to British colonialism but said something else that
perhaps is almost as stupid.]

~~~
k-mcgrady
Although I think you may be right in your interpretation how is maintaining
net neutrality by India 'anti-colonialist'?

~~~
jccc
I have _no position_ on this. Please disagree with Andreessen about that, not
with my objection to wild misinterpretation of him.

I have zero qualifications to have an opinion on the question you raise.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Yeah sorry the question wasn't supposed to be directed at you, more rhetorical
in nature.

------
mohsinr
Do Mr. Andreessen realize what colonialism was like in India?

Following two incidents are enough to educate what a gift british colonoalism
was for India:

1\. Firing on Poor people [http://www.sikh-
history.com/sikhhist/events/jbagh.html](http://www.sikh-
history.com/sikhhist/events/jbagh.html)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre)

2\. Artificial Famine took Millions of Lives:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943)

------
tomp
Tweet in question:

> “Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people
> for decades. Why stop now?”

The context is: India’s telecom regulator this week blocked Facebook's free,
but limited internet service.

------
nileshtrivedi
What Marc, Benedict and everybody else is (conveniently) ignoring is that
Facebook does NOT bear the bandwidth cost of FreeBasics. So the whole thing
about "giving something for free" is disingenuous.

Indian telcos, Indian consumers and Indian public pay for FreeBasics. Fair of
them to decide whether they want this scheme or not.

~~~
manojlds
One of the main arguments is that the "them" doesn't include the people who
would actually be benefitted.

------
tenpoundhammer
These people are shining a bright light on their own ignorance. I have worked
with many Indians through out the years, and they are fiercely independent,
inventive, and hard working. As a people and as a nation Indians are
incredibly smart and thoughtful, it's incredibly disparaging for an outsider
to claim that the Indian people don't know what's best for themselves. Under
colonial rule the Indian people, their wealth, and their culture were
plundered and forever destroyed, now they are seeing a similar attack coming
from facebook. They are smart to carefully guard their people from corporate
interests who are seeking only to exploit them.

All in all the ruling class has the same arguments now as they have always
had, "What's best for everyone is what's best for me" and they are always hurt
when everyone doesn't agree.

------
Zigurd
A casual glance at your social media feeds would have told you at least two
things: 1. In India, the public rejected a massive PR campaign designed to
create support for Free Basics, and went in the opposite direction; 2. That
nobody from India in the US tech business thought Free Basics was a good idea.

In light of that, how Marc Andreesen thought it was a good idea to wrap his
defense of Free Basics in a defense of colonialism is beyond imagining. But it
does illustrate how certain stars of the tech world, some of whom have their
claques on HN, can get pretty far disconnected from the real world.

~~~
Riod
The interesting thing about the luminaries of tech is that they are willing to
publicly display their prejudices and ignorance. You don't see leaders in
finance or airlines doing this with similar regularity.

------
british_india
There is one salient example: fresh water in India.

In 1947, the British departed with 24/7 pressurized water across the developed
parts of India.

Now, the British-built water system has all but collapsed. Instead of
pressurized water, the water comes weakly and only intermittantly. What
difference does that make, you ask?

Well, if a pressurized system leaks, the leak causes water to leave the pipe.
In a non-pressurized system--coupled with the user-side pumps that are used to
pull in more water--leaks flow INTO the water line, bringing contamination
with it. Couple that with the common practice of placing fresh water and sewer
lines in the same trench and everytime somebody pumps that water toward them,
they are pulling in fecal matter that leaked from the adjacent sewer lines,
which also leak.

That's why Indians often cannot drink their water without going through
reverse osmosis. This is just an example of how India frittered away a
resource the British brought them.

~~~
npalli
Developed parts of India made up about 10% in 1947. Today Urban india is
almost 35% and the population is 4 times larger. So effectively an increase of
14 times in number of people that are urbanized. Highly doubt the British
system would scale to current population and density levels.

We just saw reports of Flint, Michigan and multiple cities having excessive
lead and contamination in water supply etc. I wouldn't use that to suggest
British need to come back and take over the US.

------
wrs
The idiotic spectacle of otherwise intelligent people attempting to pursue a
complex argument in 140-character fortune cookies is so abhorrent to me. More
than anything he has actually said, Marc Andreesen's move to Twitter as the
vehicle for his pronouncements has made me lose a lot of the respect I had for
him. How can anyone think Twitter is appropriate for this?

~~~
kafkaesq
_How can anyone think Twitter is appropriate for this?_

Marc chose to do us a favor, and show us his true colors last night. And
Twitter was the perfect vehicle for that.

~~~
trowawee
That's actually kinda the wonderful thing about Twitter. It's a really quick
and easy way to let everybody know what you're really thinking (i.e., it's a
really quick and easy way to show your ass to the entire world).

------
chvid
I guess you need to pick your words with care; and not to be too direct if you
want to say:

1\. The "ruling" really is just protecting existing telcos' businesses.

2\. Something about India being held back by corruption and bad politics.

(Not that I agree with the above.)

What would happen in USA if a big Chinese company set up free over mobile
network access to select websites?

~~~
vram22
Good question. Interested to see if there is any answer.

~~~
trowawee
I mean, I think we can make a decent guess. If Tencent came over to the US and
offered free wifi, but it was limited to Baidu, WeChat, and QQ services, every
tech celebrity in this country would flip their shit and the government would
declare it illegal.

~~~
vram22
Exactly. Yet Indians are being told that it is "for their good".

------
typon
"Why won't you just lie down and let us control your internet?"

It's always annoying when poor countries act all uppity in the face of mega
corporations.

------
geomark
So Free Basics has been in India for about a year already. Are any of the
grand claims about it supported by the _data_? I like data.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
Facebook has never shared data. This is what one can figure out from bits and
pieces from PR releases: [https://medium.com/@sumanthr/a-data-driven-argument-
on-why-m...](https://medium.com/@sumanthr/a-data-driven-argument-on-why-marc-
andreessen-is-wrong-about-free-basics-c472184b9682#.uf0w8qi8t)

------
m52go
Anyone interested in a concise, passionate, but well-researched account of
India's situation while it was under foreign rule should check out Will
Durant's _The Case For India_.

It's eye-opening.

------
navinsylvester
How has this slipped from front page so soon when the topic is still hot.
Please forgive my ignorance. What is the logic behind it?. I have faith we are
not elitist.

~~~
dang
It was heavily flagged by users. Flagging makes posts drop in rank.

It was also penalized by HN software called the 'flamewar detector' which
reacts to overheated discussions, which this certainly is.

~~~
navinsylvester
Thanks for the clarification.

It's high time HN brings in more transparency to the whole system. I am sure
the current system can be totally rigged since there is zero clarity.

HN need to adopt badges to denote each major upward/downward state transition.
Users can notice discrepancy and help fine tune the system(not just flamewar
detector). Better solution would be to open source few parts which play a role
in fixing rank. As a community driven success story - users are not here to
serve elitism nor to serve someones personal pocket. The sooner HN realizes
the importance of clarity and willingness to work with community - the longer
it will respected.

------
navinsylvester
I saw a producthunt post about how dysfunctional and elitist it had become.
Wish we have some clarity regarding YC too. I can't seem to understand the
logic behind when they move away an item from front page and on what basis. I
am documenting but can anyone with experience explain the logic. I wouldn't
have bothered but Andreessen has a lot of clout and not only me even others
would love to understand the logic to clear the air.

------
peteretep

        > Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic
        > for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?
    

I assumed anti-colonialism meant the license raj, protectionism, central
planning, import substitution, and other illiberal policies brought in in
1947, that were sold at the time as being anti-colonial.

Can someone tell me what it actually means, or is the suggestion that these
policies weren't economic suicide?

------
jacquesm
Damage control stations!

Really, what on earth was he thinking when he wrote those tweets. And it's not
the first time he pulls a gaffe like this either.

------
danans
The best reply to such simplistic pro-colonialist comments about India is this
graph compiled by British economist Angus Maddison:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Maddison#/media/File:1_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Maddison#/media/File:1_AD_to_2003_AD_Historical_Trends_in_global_distribution_of_GDP_China_India_Western_Europe_USA_Middle_East.png)

Basically, India and China together represented the largest percentages of the
world's GDP, until they were colonized, after which their contribution
plunged. Of course, the decline was multifactorial - colonialism wasn't just
one specific thing, and there were seeds of instability that colonists took
advantage of - but the larger historical trend seems pretty clear.

------
xufi
I feel like besides what he said, which was not well thought out of at all.
India has bigger problems. I've visited it a few times and always come across
how a few major cities (Bangalore/Mumbai) are the go to cities, while the
government doesn't care about the outstanding issues such as the poverty
rate/electricity fiasco and how that's affecting things like agriculture. I
remember watching a documentary about how farmers were complaining their crops
were being reaped by government ministers but nothing could be done due to the
overly bureaucratic judicial system which it's self is a mess

------
imartin2k
Looking at the amount of opinionated tweets that he writes every day, it is
statistically inevitable that he at one point writes something which gets him
in trouble. This simply must have been taken into account by him from the
beginning when starting to use Twitter the way he does. How can he do that? He
simply knows that this, like almost anything controversial people say or do,
will blow over.

------
fwn
While probably not a smart tweet I am not sure if people just buzz about it
for entertainment reasons or maybe really did not understand what he wanted to
say.

..because I think the message in its context is only that using the anti-
colonialism gesture is not a useful policy trick to counter facebooks free
basics initiative for Indians.

On the other hand it's twitter. And they have to be outraged about something.

------
tosseraccount
China blocked Google with Baidu. Russia did it with Yandex. Japan did it with
Yahoo Japan.

Big countries can block global monopolies like Facebook.

------
geomark
I think this thread might need a refresher on how to disagree [1]. Already a
few DH0 offenses.

[1] [http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

~~~
geofft
Of course, that document was written by another VC who likes to run his mouth
on Twitter. So there's a legitimate discussion to be had about whether that
document is poisoning the well of criticism.

Marc Andreessen is an _extraordinarily_ influential person in tech, and that
influence is based on his reputation. If a nobody like me tweeted something
dumb, everyone would just ignore me. Nobody ignores Andreessen, though. Maybe
it would be better for the world if his Twitter feed and mine were treated
similarly, but that's not how the world works, and we have to respond to the
world as it is.

Furthermore, part of his continuing influence, 20 years after Netscape, is the
continuing impression that he is a clear thinker about issues facing the tech
world. (See, elsewhere in this thread,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072721)
.) There are _two_ valid discussions at play here. The first is whether Free
Basics is a good idea; the second is whether Andreessen is in fact the
insightful thinker he appears to be. (The specific subdiscussion about whether
rejecting Free Basics is a form of anti-colonialism, incidentally, is only
valid if we take it as a given that Andreessen's ideas are worth listening to
in the first place.) For the second one, a record of him just not being a good
or well-informed thinker is in fact refuting the central point of that
argument.

~~~
xiaoma
> _Of course, that document was written by another VC who likes to run his
> mouth on Twitter. So there 's a legitimate discussion to be had about
> whether that document is poisoning the well of criticism._

This comment itself is further argument that more people here could stand to
read it. You've _literally_ ignored the ideas within and just made an ad
hominem argument based on the author instead.

~~~
manish_gill
He's questioned the judgment of the person writing the document based on his
position which can introduce the bias similar to what we see in Andreessen.
Not using the ideas described by said document would be the first step when
discussing/critiquing it. Otherwise it would circular, no?

~~~
xiaoma
No.

If for example you wanted to discuss _The Selfish Gene_ by Richard Dawkins,
the first step would _not_ be to "not use the ideas described within (e.g.
genetics and biology research)". Ignoring the topics within and attacking the
author for what he later wrote about Atheism or how he behaved in interviews
would a _mindblowingly terrible_ way to critique his book about biology.

When discussing or critiquing an essay, the first step is to actually address
the ideas inside of it. Attacking the character of its author or other things
they may have said about unrelated topics is _not_ a rational substitute.

In this case, geofft's comment is flawed on multiple levels. Aside from making
a purely ad hominem argument against the 2008 essay _How to Disagree_ , its
specific attack was the author's twitter usage that occurred more than five
years later.

~~~
geofft
Did you read the remainder of my comment past the first sentence, or did you
get distracted by the ad hominem? I admit that there is one, but it wasn't
actually presented as an argument. The rest of it refutes the central point of
the claim at hand, namely geomark's claim that people in this thread are
violating DH0. They're not, and in fact I go on to _agree_ with pg's framing
of the hierarchy of disagreement in order for me to argue that the thread is
at DH6.

If you think that anything I say is invalidated because I put ad hominems at
the top of my comments, well, uh... I'm not sure how to explain this to you,
but....

(Oh, and if you think this is about Twitter usage alone, I'd like to amend my
personal attack to remove the words "on Twitter", and then direct your
attention at
[http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm](http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm)
.)

~~~
xiaoma
I read your comment in its entirety and didn't see any defense of the How to
Disagree essay. The only mention I saw you make of it was the first paragraph
with the ad hominem attack.

To answer your question, no I don't think your usage of ad hominems
invalidates everything you say. It does detract from the quality of the
discussion and the pleasantness of the site, though. It also detracts from
your ability to communicate effectively.

I completely agree with geomark's comment
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072755)).
There are a lot of comments on this article that are little more than name
calling, personal attacks or uncharitable assumptions.

------
thebakeshow
Unrelated, but why does bloomberg hijack my back button to make it more
difficult to leave their site?

------
div0
"Denying world’s poorest free partial Internet connectivity when today they
have none, for ideological reasons, strikes me as morally wrong." \- Mr
Andreesen, given how rich you are, you need to be really careful when you talk
about morals. (Quote from Bible omitted)

------
dropdatabase
Well that escalated quickly

------
jsprogrammer
> India’s decision to block a free Internet service from Facebook Inc.

How does Bloomberg lead with this "fact"? Facebook's offering is not Internet
service, but a whitelisted pipe. Does Bloomberg normally willingly eat up and
repeat corporate propaganda?

~~~
nileshtrivedi
The "free" part is also not "from" Facebook. The telco (Reliance in India's
case) bear the bandwidth costs.

------
3ris3d
wow! considering the millions (if not billions) he has made from the hard work
of people from India, he sure is a shameless @55h013

------
numair
First, a disclosure: I hate Facebook, I think Free Basics is evil, and I think
Marc Andreesen says a lot of stupid shit.

That being said, this whole uproar is just more proof that social media is
totally, utterly broken. Let me explain.

While I think Marc is on the board of an evil company and that his thought
process on this matter is incredibly ignorant, I really appreciate the fact
that he shares his point of view. I don't just appreciate it, I respect it.
Maybe he's got a point. Maybe he doesn't. I won't know unless I hear what he's
got to say, and then spend some time thinking it through. This is what
_intelligent_ , _thinking_ people do. Before they turned into kettle pots of
blind activism, this is what people went to college to learn to do. This is
what makes living in a free-speech democracy so great -- people say totally
crazy shit, some people agree, some people don't, it's all good.

Maybe the education system broke down or something, but people are no longer
capable of dealing with viewpoints that differ from their own. They
immediately label the person with whom they disagree, shame them (look at all
of those screen grabs! Oh my!), and broadcast their displeasure to the world.
We live in a world where people are supposedly taught to embrace those with
different views -- that you and your best friend and your daughter's husband
and your next door neighbor might not actually have the same exact views, but
you can still be friends and get along just fine -- but this sort of tempered
nuance attracts zero attention in a click-like-share world. Tolerance gains no
attention in the world of social media; "disgust," "outrage," and other such
intolerant reactions attract a crowd of views.

People should be thanking Marc Andreesen, the Facebook board member, for being
so utterly candid about his thought process. Those in disagreement should cite
facts to educate him. I'm sure he has his own facts that form his opinions
(and surely, he does). Maybe his opinions won't change, and maybe those of the
dissenters won't either. You know what, that's okay! That's LIFE. Life isn't
about being right, it's about being alive. You can think Marc is a total moron
on the India topic and still be his friend. We don't all have to agree on
everything. It's WEIRD if we did -- there's nothing real about it. As I like
to say, "a friend with whom you've never disagreed is a potential enemy you
never knew you had."

Social media justice isn't justice, it's a modern-day mockery of the freedom
of thought we fought so hard to attain. This shit is broken, folks. I don't
know why Marc bothers with it, but I guess he is one of those people who
thinks social media is the future of human discourse. I'm not. And that's
okay.

~~~
cousin_it
Yeah, I agree. Most social media makes it easier to attack than to argue, so
it benefits groups that attack rather than argue. A big part of the problem is
the retweeting/reblogging functionality, which seems designed to encourage
aggressive mass stupidity. There's already a problem on Tumblr where people
selectively quote others' private posts as public and add some political
sneer. I guess the best solution is to treat internet pile-ons the same way as
trolling: ban it, flag it, block it, scorn it, or walk away if all else fails.

------
azzafazza
Finally he gets caught out for saying stupid shit. Every thing this man says
is self serving (which is fine) but he tries to disguise it as profound
knowledge. Ben Evans is 10x worse however, he is one idiotic twat.

~~~
SpeakMouthWords
One of Evans' favourite debate tactics is to tweet something brimming with
subtext, then when someone calls him out on it, takes a literal approach to
what he said. It's infuriating.

~~~
azzafazza
You summed up exactly what I thought it in my head about his Tweets, he is
positively juvenile.

~~~
w1ntermute
Evans has been called out for his idiotic behavior before[0]. From what I can
tell, his only contribution to a discussion is to say the most banal things
(ex: there will be 5B smartphone users in 2020) in a way that makes them
sounds original.

0: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/benedict-evans-wants-
to...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/benedict-evans-wants-to-make-sure-
you-know-what-he-said)

~~~
MaysonL
That buzzer would be more meaningful if any of those tweets were linked or
dated.

------
pluma
What good have the Romans ever done for us?

------
pluma
Man wrote words on Twitter. This is news now.

~~~
rorykoehler
Influential people's opinions have always been news. The medium they use to
disperse those opinions is irrelevant.

------
return0
Yay let's everyone miss the point of his tweet and focus on what language is
allowed in social media, because that's all that matters.

------
xiaoma
Twitter is an amazing machine of outrage, misunderstanding and hatred. It
allows the benign comment to be taken as an offense and it amplifies genuine
offensiveness, bullying, witch-hunting and harassment.

There are some wonderful things Twitter does, especially around real time news
of non-controversial events such as natural disasters, but if the service is a
net positive for the world, it's by the slimmest of margins.

~~~
cookiecaper
Amazing how restricting all communication to 2-sentence soundbites leads to
misunderstanding and loss of nuance.

------
morgante
This headline is simply incorrect and unfair to Andreessen. Yes, it was a
stupid tweet, but it does not mean that Andreessen is "pro-colonialism."

I think the anti-communism of the McCarthy era was idiotic and contrary to
American values. Does that make me pro-communism? Only if you're a Republican.

~~~
cookiecaper
And so what if Andreessen _is_ pro-Colonialism? It seems to have nothing to do
with his performance as a VC or his early record as a tech entrepreneur, which
is why he's noteworthy.

He's not running for political office, so his political beliefs shouldn't
really make a difference. We need to be willing to accept a diversity of
belief instead of feigning shock and manufacturing outrage to try to lend
undue credence to our own ideas of social equality; doing that is really just
an admission that the argument is on shaky ground to start with and that you
don't want to allow anyone to attempt to challenge it (for fear that the
ground will crack and cause the shaky belief to collapse).

