It isn’t really Alex De Vries’s fault. There will always be someone willing to exaggerate and there will always be media who will publish those exaggerations.
The funny thing isn’t really Alex De Vries blatant lying, it’s the media’s willingness to skip doing the research when a story already fits. Alex De Vries credentials sound good. Something about a university and the Netherlands. That must be iron clad.
And their readers want to read how bad bitcoin is. Alex De Vries can help.
After 10 years of helping the mainstream media scare old people with bitcoin stories, Alex De Vries was recently quoted on how horribly much energy AI data centers use. Yes, Alex has found a new income stream. When you get quoted you also get to earn money from online appearances, from conferences, speaking and the like.
Suddenly this guy in Holland is the expert on AI data centers. Not the many CEOs and researchers working in the field?
No, this guy, who’s always been quoted about how horribly terrible Bitcoin is in every mainstream media outlet all around the world, is now being quoted on AI data centers. Because what Alex says fits what the reporter wants to print.
Not because Alex actually is an expert on the field. But because he is willing to say the most outrageous things about Bitcoin, and now also about AI data centers.
Next up, we will probably see Alex De Vries becoming an expert in robot, space exploration and fusion energy. Well, as long as he says the craziest things about the future the mainstream media will proclaim him the expert.
It does not matter if it’s true, it sounds like news. The readers cannot check the facts, so the mainstream media outlets can continue publishing the same nonsense “warning” content year after year. And they wonder why their readerships are declining…
Mainstream media have no problem publishing a title like “Technology X will boil the oceans and kill us all” — as long as it’s someone else saying it, and they can quote them. Then it does not have to be true.
The news outlet’s editors cannot fathom the long tail effect, the so called Gell-Amnesia Effect; that’s what happens when a reader discovers he or she knows more about the subject than the reporter. And that the reporter is wrong.
Over the long run more and more people discover this discrepance. The mainstream media tries to cater to their older audiences, printing bs like “technology X is bad”, because it makes the old readers feel well. They can think “I told you so”.
There are countless articles telling you that Bitcoin is using more energy than a country like, say, Finland. This is of course not true at all. That’s just crazy. But did your newspaper check that fact before they published it? Of course not. How could they?
Lots of “newspapers” have published this bit of “news”, on Bitcoin’s or crypto’s other variants’ energy useage, even though there is nothing backing that up a part from made up websites related to Alex De Vries. He is not associated to any university.
And that’s how Alex De Vries makes a living. Year after year. He never hesitates to say the most outrageous things you can imagine around energy usage in the technology sector. Does he have data to back it up? Actually, yes, but the data is as distorted as his quotes, and they are only sourced from a few miners, lagging years behind in its insights into actual data centers, not taking into account the current reality where data centers often use “green”, renewable energy.
The mainstream media readers won’t get updated on this, but you, you the dear and very smart reader of Webonanza, will learn the truth about the Internet.