clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Marc Andreessen's Latest Tweetathon? "Naughty Fun" Leads to "Ruined Lives" in Anonymous Apps.

He attacks tech that enables "voyeurism," which might start as "naughty fun" but ends with "broken hearts" and "ruined lives."

In a 12-part Twitter treatise late last night, high-profile venture capitalist Marc Andreessen attacked tech that enables “voyeurism,” which might start as “naughty fun” but ends with “broken hearts” and “ruined lives.”

Though Andreessen, the co-founder of influential VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, didn’t name any companies (and asked people not to guess), he also said it’s an important topic to discuss.

But he is obviously targeting anonymous sharing apps such as Whisper and Secret, which is only 46 days old but yesterday said it had received $8.6 million in funding. And Whisper has raised $30 million at a $200 million valuation recently.

In his latest tweeting marathon — he’s done a lot of this kind of thing since the beginning of the year — Andreessen implied that these social apps are tapping into deep-seated human nature, but that they’re morally reprehensible and shouldn’t be built. The engineers, he noted, are responsible for stepping up to the moral plate.

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444709881900064770

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444710221596745728

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444710538707095552

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444710962549882881

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444711728446590976

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444712063193993217

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444712485250031618

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444712765777670145

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444713031897845761

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444713435184390145

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444713752785473536

Andreessen continued today:

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444941023710433280

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444941220775604224

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444941520441835520

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/444941935531134976

One Secret user responded in the mobile app’s standard tone of, well, you know:

Secret users responded to Andreessen.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for Vox Recommends

Get curated picks of the best Vox journalism to read, watch, and listen to every week, from our editors.