Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future
A new report from The Midas Project examines 18 of Andreessen Horowitz's most controversial investments, revealing a pattern of backing companies that exploit regulatory gaps and engage in deceptive practices. From a bot farm that fakes social media engagement to an AI tool that encourages cheating, the portfolio raises questions about the firm's influence on AI policy. As a16z spends millions to shape regulations, the report argues that its investments prioritize profit over public welfare.
We run the only VC-backed bot farm in America. Because why let Russia and China have all the fun?
- pulkitsh1234
"A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case" -- Niccolo Machiavelli
It's a self fulfilling prophecy... while us commoners, or so called "activists" or ethicists ponder and debate on culture, morality, law and ethics... The powerful are just living an alternate life devoid of all these moral qualms and are have clearly distanced themselves from the mundane, have distanced themselves from the guilt or any kind of accountability. In their eyes, they are just capitalising on the human tendencies which have been always existed (the seven deadly sins), so the "absolve" themselves pretty quickly by saying that they are not creating new "sins", just leveraging, or allowing the people to go along those sins.
They think, why should they be the ones to not capitalise on them, if someone else might and will. It's a coordination problem of our society. No one wants to let go. They want to hedge, they invest in ozempic and invest in fast-food at the same time, there is no moral compass guiding them. It's for us commoners to debate and think about.
- vintermann
> Lee's stated goal was to “desensitize everyone to the phrase ‘cheating.’” If you say it enough, he argues, “cheat begins to lose its meaning.” A16z praised Lee's approach as “rooted in deliberate strategy and intentionality.”
Investors: but surely they won't cheat me!
- radarsat1
I know this is a very minor point in the article, but reading the message next to the Doublespeed phone farm:
> out of 130 dms sent, 15 pointed to a conversion.
> From a former ecom guy's lens this is insane
Why do these otherwise very smart people always seem to draw these kind of shortsighted conclusions?
It seems pretty obvious to me on the surface that this "works" because it's new. As soon as it becomes common place people will see that channel of communication as a source of coercion/marketing and start to ignore it. Aside from the fact that he seems to be drawing massive conclusions about the viability of a business based on extremely little data here, it seems really naive to not consider in his calculations the long term effects of essentially ruining the value of the channel that you are exploiting to get those numbers in the first place.
- tedggh
How come Flock is not listed? That’s the most troubling company a16z has heavily invested on and supported.
- bambax
Marc Andreessen is an evil man with the behavior (and appearance!) of a Bond villain.
- JSR_FDED
Don’t forget a16z’s breathless boosterism of NFTs and Crypto.
They really are the gift that keeps on giving.
- Zigurd
This is just one of the things turning China into a relatively less dangerous and harmful trading partner. I've often wondered aloud how the US tech industry is going to deal with losing international markets, which have historically been half their sales in mature product categories.
Investors might be attracted to the bleak future they are selling, but they are selling a shrinking share of the world economy.
I can think of one way to explain it, and it's not good: they expect global war.
- chaseadam17
On one hand, VCs that fund thousands of early-stage startups are inevitably going to fund some bad stuff, even if they try hard to avoid it.
On the other, the older I get the more I worry about the decline of spirituality in the West. Especially in tech, I sometimes feel like I’m living in a hyper rational snowglobe of people optimizing a local maxima, not even considering (and often looking down on) the possibility that there are larger, more important games to play.
- flipgimble
I think this is a symptom of Big Tech and VCs scraping the bottom of the barrel to extract as much capital and social control from what remains of the good will for technology as a whole. They are literally running the internet into the ground. The popular backlash is brewing. I see this in increasing opposition to flock cameras, anti data-center activism, or generally against companies that extract, exploit and control instead of contributing to the common good.
- TwoFerMaggie
Not surprised at all as Marc Andreesen has been in the rabbit hole for a while: https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-t...