Of course, that document was written by another VC who likes to run his mouth on Twitter. So there&#x27;s a legitimate discussion to be had about whether that document is poisoning the well of criticism.<p>Marc Andreessen is an <i>extraordinarily</i> influential person in tech, and that influence is based on his reputation. If a nobody like me tweeted something dumb, everyone would just ignore me. Nobody ignores Andreessen, though. Maybe it would be better for the world if his Twitter feed and mine were treated similarly, but that&#x27;s not how the world works, and we have to respond to the world as it is.<p>Furthermore, part of his continuing influence, 20 years after Netscape, is the continuing impression that he is a clear thinker about issues facing the tech world. (See, elsewhere in this thread, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11072721" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11072721</a> .) There are <i>two</i> valid discussions at play here. The first is whether Free Basics is a good idea; the second is whether Andreessen is in fact the insightful thinker he appears to be. (The specific subdiscussion about whether rejecting Free Basics is a form of anti-colonialism, incidentally, is only valid if we take it as a given that Andreessen&#x27;s ideas are worth listening to in the first place.) For the second one, a record of him just not being a good or well-informed thinker is in fact refuting the central point of that argument.