Chris Dixon’s ‘Read Write Own’ ⇥ citationneeded.news

Molly White, following an excoriating review of venture capitalist Chris Dixon’s new book on her Citation Needed newsletter, which is a great name I would steal if I had a time machine:

Although there are no footnotes marked in the text, I was briefly pleased to find a section for notes at the end of the book, where Dixon does lightly cite various sources — mostly news articles, and many from crypto media outlets. However, my relief that I might be able to easily fact-check the long list of questionable claims I had noted quickly faded as I discovered that citations were included to verify things like his statement that “people hated the irritating alien Jar Jar Binks”, and not the much bolder claims he makes throughout. Many claims go completely unsubstantiated, and one subsection — the one on “Blockchain networks” — cites just one source (for the epigraph).

Even knowing that Dixon is an extraordinarily influential and wealthy person, White’s review makes it sound like this is some self-serving promotional nonsense he must have self-published. In actual fact, it appears to be some self-serving promotional nonsense from the “world’s largest English-language general trade book publisher”. Judging by the feedback Dixon is receiving, it seems to be good enough for the true believers.