Webshit Weekly

January 21, 2025

Elon Musk’s and X’s Role in 2024 Election Interference

2025-01-15 | comments

A Substack account with no history publishes hit piece #837 about Musk running election interference through X (business model: “Twitter, but with more Nazis”). The evidence? A screenshot of GitHub documentation for something called “ElizaOS” that apparently contains configuration files for a “trump bot.” Hackernews, never one to miss an opportunity to miscorrect each other, spends the thread arguing about the authenticity of a screenshot instead of acknowledging that every social media platform has been deploying automated content farms since 2016. The webshits in the comments are particularly offended that someone would accuse their favorite billionaire of meddling in elections, as if the entire business model of social media wasn’t built on manipulating human behavior at scale. Meanwhile, the actual engineers at these companies continue their daily routine of maximizing engagement metrics, which is tech industry speak for “making people angrier so they look at more ads.” The comments devolve into whataboutism regarding Zuckerberg, as if two tech lords trying to manipulate democracy makes it somehow better.

Mullenweg’s Grip on WordPress Challenged in New Court Filing

2025-01-16 | comments

The perpetual drama machine that is WordPress continues its inexorable march toward total self-destruction, as the benevolent dictator for life discovers that occasionally the peasants get lawyers. Matt Mullenweg, who apparently missed the memo that open source isn’t supposed to be a personal kingdom, is now facing actual consequences for treating the WordPress foundation like his private fiefdom. The webshits who built their entire careers on this digital serfdom are suddenly shocked --- shocked! --- that the guy who controls 40% of the internet might be a megalomaniac. Hackernews, in their infinite wisdom, alternates between legal scholarship about property rights and heartfelt testimonials about how much they love the code that runs their client’s terrible blog. The real tragedy here isn’t that one man’s ego has jeopardized a critical piece of internet infrastructure—it’s that we’re all pretending this is somehow surprising in an industry where every solo founder eventually dreams of morphing into a tin-pot dictator given enough time and funding.

Ask HN: Why does US allow hard tech interview questions if it bans IQ tests?

2025-01-16 | comments

Hackernews, having mistaken the grueling corporate hazing ritual of a tech interview for an academic exercise, discovers that Big Tech’s thinly-veiled IQ tests might be illegal. The assembled webshits debate the legal and ethical intricacies of this revelation, desperately trying to rationalize their industry’s bizarre talent-filtering process. They propose ever-more elaborate solutions to a problem they created, from standardized certifications to AI-driven skill assessments, anything to avoid confronting the simple truth: this is all just performance art for venture capitalists. The entire comment thread is a monument to the fallacy of it all, where proving you can memorize algorithms is considered a valid substitute for demonstrating basic competence.

L.A. Fires: We Can’t Let Insurance Companies Exploit the Disaster

2025-01-17 | comments

Some webshits discover the insurance industry (business model: Human Centipede for Actuarial Tables) and miscorrecting each other on risk modeling, a concept they just now invented from first principles. One HNer demands to “open source” the proprietary math, presumably so he can vibe-code his own catastrophe derivatives in a weekend. Another genius suggests if you can’t afford to insure your house, you shouldn’t own one, a stunning insight that will surely comfort the newly homeless. The entire thread is a battle between libertarians who think insurance companies are starving animals and progressives who think they’re digital feudal lords, both agreeing the solution is definitely not taxing venture capital to fund fire departments.

Microsoft just renamed Office to Microsoft 365 Copilot on Windows for everyone

2025-01-18 | comments

Microsoft (business model: “Digital Landlord with a Token Predictors Fetish”) has graciously decided to help you distinguish their productivity software by stapling the word “Copilot” to it, because nothing says “professional document creation” like having an automated plagiarism engine suggest alternative phrasings for your resignation letter. The webshits in Redmond, having apparently solved all other problems in computing, have turned their attention to the critical issue of branding consistency across their rapidly expanding constellation of half-baked AI features. Hackernews users, who continue to inexplicably pay monthly for the privilege of typing into Microsoft’s proprietary text boxes, are outraged about the name change but will continue funding this behavior because the alternative involves downloading something else. The great tech consolidation continues unabated, with your subscription now including not just software you might need but also several “agents” you definitely don’t.

Elon Gives Nazi Salute During Inauguration Speech

2025-01-20 | comments

Elon Musk performs a Nazi salute at a political event, and the tech community collectively pretends to debate whether it was actually a Nazi salute. Hackernews, in their eternal wisdom, spends hundreds of comments “miscorrecting” each other about whether giving two full-throated Hitler salutes counts as Nazi salutes when you’re autistic and rich, finally concluding that perhaps they should wait to see if he does it again before making any rash moral judgments. Meanwhile, the X influencers and aura farmers who build this guy’s empire continue exhorting their way towards a future where apparently no red line exists for tech billionaires who want to cosplay as historical villains while selling cars to the masses.

C.E.O.s, and President Trump, Want Workers Back in the Office

2025-01-21 | comments

CEOs and their favorite orange real-estate promoter demand workers return to the-office-cubicle-mausoleum, desperately trying to prop up the rotting corpse of commercial real estate before their portfolios implode. Hackernews, ever the human-resources-enthusiasts, correctly diagnoses this as a high-density attrition protocol designed to soft-fire every federal employee whose commute is longer than a single episode of Joe Rogan, but also suggests everyone binge-watch a show about literal psychological torture as a pro-office argument. These are the people designing your critical infrastructure. They’ve replaced strategic thinking with aura farming, their understanding of economics sourced from a YouTube video about a “time bomb” in empty buildings. The great fraud continues, just with more mandatory commuting.