Japanese Unicorn SmartNews failing in the US because the CEO went down the QAnon Rabbit Hole (restofworld.org)

submitted 6 months ago by sculd@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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The investors might want a refund after seeing what the money were used for.

Notable quotes:

Several employees pointed to Suzuki’s research into the American far right, which included him presenting on QAnon during a company wide all-hands meeting and attending Donald Trump rallies using company funds.

This mission would, at times, lead Suzuki down far-right rabbit roles, according to several former employees. “[He] really wanted to get inside QAnon and figure out what’s going on there,” one former employee told Rest of World, saying Suzuki’s interest in its conspiracy theories only heightened during the Trump administration. “We were worried for him.”

The trips often included visits to rallies for Donald Trump, multiple employees said. “Why would I want to give up one week of my life showing some guy from Tokyo around a Trump rally?” recalled one employee who declined an invitation to join the road trip in 2020. “The whole premise of the idea was very bizarre.”

Yeah, not exactly a good working environment.

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[-] detectivemittens@beehaw.org 11 points 6 months ago

This sucks. I really liked SmartNews but this explains why it’s been so terrible as of late.

[-] mermaldad@beehaw.org 6 points 6 months ago

I recently switched away from SmartNews because it keeps getting into a mode where it 1) can't load the stories, or 2) seems to load but just shows a black screen beyond a certain point, or 3) crashes. I hung on for awhile, hoping it would get fixed, but once I heard about the internal turmoil, I gave up.

[-] detectivemittens@beehaw.org 3 points 6 months ago

Yup. That’s been my experience too.

I also get aggressively pushed some conservative news sources in my main feed even though I never subscribed to any of those.

[-] sculd@beehaw.org 4 points 6 months ago

What a shame. One thing I noticed on Twitter is that a lot of Japanese men have sympathy for Trump. What I did not expect is they really fell into QAnon when given the opportunity.