this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
13 points (100.0% liked)

TechTakes

2426 readers
81 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid.

Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. A lot of people didn't survive January, but at least we did. This also ended up going up on my account's cake day, too, so that's cool.)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] rook@awful.systems 4 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

Moltbook still going great. Even the enthusiasts are feeling that the shine may have worn off.

eastside mccarty @eastsidemccarty

So just to clarify: You created a thing that you now realize you can't control, and you can't do anything to secure it, and people that use ClawdBot... err sorry.. @openclaw, are own their own to deal with the consequences?! Did I get that right?

Turns out that combining unsecurable vibe-coded web services with unsecurable chatbots and combining them into an unmoderated public platform can be bad. Also, shrugging off problem reports with “i unno” is a bit of a bad look.

alt text

eastside mccarty @eastsidemccarty

Hey @openclaw team, can you do something about these malicious skills in your registry, ClawHub? Last night, one user, hightowerSeu, published more than 200 malicious skills. Each of these tricks the user into installing malware

Rajveer @RajveerJolly

Tried to reach out, no response yet. @steipete please address it

Peter Steinberger @steipete

Yeah got any ideas how? There's about 1 Million things people want me to do, I don't have a magical team that verifies user generated content. Can shut it down or people us their brain when finding skills.

Rajveer @RajveerJolly

Sorry homie I don't have any idea either. I understand you have a lot on your plate perhaps some sort of flagging feature could do wonders

Peter Steinberger @steipete

And who reviews the flags? That would be abused right away too

eastside mccarty @eastsidemccarty

So just to clarify: You created a thing that you now realize you can't control, and you can't do anything to secure it, and people that use ClawdBot... err sorry.. @openclaw, are own their own to deal with the consequences?! Did I get that right?

Rajveer @RajveerJolly

I hear you. I guess for now people just need to double and check and verify it all bevause there isn't a simple solution to this

[–] FredFig@awful.systems 3 points 5 hours ago

The real damning thing is the speed that the true believers abandoned this garbage fire. You used to be able to string these guys along for years, and now they can barely keep the trend going for a week. Gonna be real weird when the scammers realize they've finally burnt out all the good will.

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 7 points 18 hours ago

there isn’t a simple solution to this

How about just not creating the problem in the first place. How about that.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 21 hours ago

The people who are worried that Moltbook is where agents are gaining self-consciousness forgot the part of Accelerando where all the AIs were basically scammers (the Slug)

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 3 points 20 hours ago

@rook

Peter should go back to PDF manipulation libraries.