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Molly White (writer)

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Molly White
White smiling
White in 2022
Born
Molly Allen White

1993 (age 30–31)
Alma materNortheastern University
Occupation(s)Software engineer, Writer
Known for
  • Cryptocurrency criticism
  • Wikipedia editing
Websitemollywhite.net

Molly Allen White[1] (born 1993) is an American software engineer, Wikipedia editor, and crypto skeptic. A critic of the decentralized blockchain (Web3) and cryptocurrency industries,[2] she runs the website Web3 Is Going Just Great and a newsletter, which document malfeasance in that technology space. White has appeared in Web3-related news, consulted on federal legislation for regulating the crypto industry, and successfully proposed that the Wikimedia Foundation cease to collect crypto donations. White additionally volunteers as a Wikipedia editor and is among the site's most active women. She has edited a range of articles on right-wing extremism.

Wikipedia editing

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"GorillaWarfare" redirects here. For other uses, see Gorilla Warfare.

White began editing Wikipedia at the age of 13, and became a site administrator while still in high school.[3] Initially, White wrote articles about her favorite emo bands and women scientists, but she came to write about right-wing extremism—such as Gamergate, the Boogaloo movement, Gab, Parler, and Jacob Wohl—during the first Donald Trump administration.[4][5] She received mainstream news coverage for her work editing the article about the January 6 United States Capitol attack.[6][7] Under the username "GorillaWarfare",[3] she had made over 100,000 edits by early 2022.[5] This work, she said, fulfills her interest in validating information online and her belief that spreading information produces societal change.[4] She served six years on the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, which adjudicates editor disputes.[4]

As one of Wikipedia's most active female editors, White has been a regular target of online harassment, threats of violence, doxxing, and hounding both on Wikipedia and off-site. Her experience was the subject of a 2016 speech on editor harassment by Wikimedia Foundation CEO Katherine Maher. White had previously been targeted after her photograph was featured in a Foundation fundraising campaign. The harassment escalated in 2018 after she began editing Wikipedia articles on incels and other contentious topics.[8]

Cryptocurrency criticism

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My overwhelming feeling is that Web3 projects seem to be a solution in search of a problem.

Molly White, May 2022[9]
White's 2022 presentations on blockchain solutionism and abuse on the blockchain

In late 2021, White noticed a public tone shift around cryptocurrencies with a push to take crypto mainstream as a default technology. This grew her concerns for the suitability of cryptocurrency in general, based on the performance of past projects.[9] In her research, she started with the Wikipedia article on Web3, an idea for a Web based on decentralized blockchains. Despite the concept's hype on social media with sizable venture capital investment, she found the term to be ill-defined and associated with numerous scams, frauds, and "rug pulls" affecting consumer investors.[5] She created a website, Web3 Is Going Just Great, in December 2021 to document these cases. The website provides a timeline of Web3 and cryptocurrency projects and the losses to their investors.[10] Many of its stories are not covered in the mainstream press,[11] and unlike press coverage of Web3, its headlines are unsensational.[12] The Verge described her writing as "dryly funny, almost clinical" in its documentation.[10] A running total of dollars lost to crypto failures runs in the website's corner.[12] The site also includes a glossary of jargon, curated resources about the blockchain, and an annotated critique of Kevin Roose's New York Times article, "The Latecomer's Guide to Crypto",[13] which she considered a "grossly irresponsible" advertisement for cryptocurrencies.[4] The website's traffic grew quickly after it was listed on Hacker News, Reddit, and multiple news publications,[14] growing to 60,000 and 100,000 monthly visitors by the end of the year.[15] During this time, she worked for several hours a day on the blog.[4] White also covers crypto and trending technology in her newsletter Citation Needed.[16]

By mid-2022, White was known among the most prominent and knowledgeable critics of the crypto and Web3 industries.[2] On those topics, White lectured at Stanford University, counseled U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on legislation, and provided fact checks for inquiring journalists.[5] Her appearances on Web3-related news sites, podcasts, and technology mailing lists made her into an "unofficial Web3 ombudsperson", according to The Information.[4] She has a large following among cryptocurrency skeptics[17] and, in late 2022, was recognized among both Forbes's "30 Under 30" people in Social Media[18] and Prospect's list of the world's top thinkers.[19]

White's Twitter thread on flaws in the proposed cryptocurrency project Cryptoland went viral and led to large-scale ridicule of the now-inactive project.[5] In early 2022, she proposed that the Wikimedia Foundation cease accepting cryptocurrency donations, which she argued were associated with predatory technologies and no longer ethical. Following a community vote with majority support among participating Wikipedia editors, the Foundation adopted her proposal in May 2022.[3] She also sees privacy and harassment implications with having an individual's entire transaction history permanently available and accessible to the public via blockchain, and has been surprised by how few companies consider vectors for abuse. According to White, "Any time you're talking about taking user-generated content and putting it into immutable storage, you're going to have really serious problems."[17] She holds that crypto has not democratized the web but has exacerbated inequalities, stating that Web3 technologies have actually re-centralized power under the control of a few wealthy investors, many of whom are already very influential in shaping the current web tech landscape, according to White.[20] She also says that positive use cases for the technology have largely consisted of situations in which "any replacement is better than what exists", such as sending funds to people struggling to live in sanctioned states.[9]

White has called for federal regulation of the crypto industry. She signed a June 2022 letter to the U.S. Congress with 25 other technologists urging regulation.[21] The letter states, in part, that blockchain technology is "poorly suited for just about every purpose currently touted as a present or potential source of public benefit."[22] White opposed a cryptocurrency regulatory proposal by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Cynthia Lummis for its leniency on the industry. Cryptocurrencies are treated as consumer investments, more like a security than a commodity, she argued, and should be handled by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, not the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.[23]

At a March 2023 SXSW talk, White claimed that the tech industry's shift to artificial intelligence displayed a similar pattern of hype and uncritical media coverage as happened with blockchain technology.[12]

In 2024, White's Follow the Crypto project tracked political donations from the crypto industry.[24] White and advocacy group Public Citizen filed a campaign finance complaint with the Federal Elections Commission against Coinbase in August 2024, alleging that a $25 million donation to a super PAC was in violation of laws affecting federal contractors.[25]

Personal life and career

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White was born in 1993[4][15] and raised in Maine.[26] While attending Camden Hills Regional High School in Rockport, White interned at a NASA-funded University of Maine lab that researched lunar habitat module sensors.[27] She attended Boston's Northeastern University, where she participated in two co-ops with the marketing software developer HubSpot. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in computer science in 2016, she continued to work there as a software engineer for six years, through May 2022,[26] when she resigned to recover from burnout.[28] As of late 2022, she is an affiliate of Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.[15]

White lives in the Greater Boston area.[4] She holds left-wing views that skew towards socialism.[29]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ White, Molly (April 18, 2024). "just dug up a book i made when i was five. not too much has changed". Bluesky. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  2. ^ a b * De Vynck 2022: "Molly White, a veteran Wikipedia editor, is fast becoming the cryptocurrency world’s biggest critic" * Newitz, Annalee (March 5, 2022). "Web3 is a fantasy, but it can still hurt you". New Scientist. 253 (3376): 28. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(22)00381-5. ISSN 0262-4079. S2CID 247249277. one of Web3's smartest and best-informed critics * Bernard 2022: "she’s become known as the unofficial Web3 ombudsperson" * Pahwa 2022: "One of the most prominent skeptics these days is Molly White"
  3. ^ a b c Quiles, Emily (May 5, 2022). "Wikimedia has officially stopped cryptocurrency donations. Here's how a 28-year-old Wikipedia editor started the debate from the inside". Business Insider. Archived from the original on May 5, 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Bernard, Zoe (April 29, 2022). "Crypto's CSI: How Molly White Became an 'Absolute Nightmare' for Web3 Evangelists". The Information. Archived from the original on May 12, 2022. Retrieved May 30, 2022.
  5. ^ a b c d e De Vynck, Gerrit (May 29, 2022). "First she documented the alt-right. Now she's coming for crypto". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on May 30, 2022. Retrieved May 30, 2022.
  6. ^ Kelly, Heather (January 15, 2021). "On its 20th birthday, Wikipedia might be the safest place online". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on September 5, 2021. Retrieved May 30, 2022.
  7. ^ Gedye, Grace (February 4, 2021). "When the Capitol Was Attacked, Wikipedia Went to Work". Washington Monthly. Archived from the original on March 2, 2021. Retrieved May 30, 2022.
  8. ^ Harrison, Stephen (March 2, 2021). "The Tensions Behind Wikipedia's New Code of Conduct". Slate. Archived from the original on March 3, 2021. Retrieved May 30, 2022.
  9. ^ a b c Stackpole, Thomas (May 10, 2022). "Cautionary Tales from Cryptoland". Harvard Business Review. Archived from the original on May 25, 2022.
  10. ^ a b Newton, Casey (February 16, 2022). "Why you can't rebuild Wikipedia with crypto". The Verge. Archived from the original on April 11, 2022. Retrieved May 30, 2022.
  11. ^ Sullivan, Mark (March 23, 2022). "How a Wikipedia editor became one of the loudest Web3 skeptics". Fast Company. Archived from the original on May 8, 2022. Retrieved May 30, 2022.
  12. ^ a b c Cheredar, Tom (March 10, 2023). "Where Have All the Crypto Bros Gone?". The Austin Chronicle. Archived from the original on March 11, 2023. Retrieved March 11, 2023.
  13. ^ Naughton, John (July 2, 2022). "Crypto-sceptic Molly White could be the new JK Galbraith… just much tougher". The Observer. Archived from the original on July 6, 2022. Retrieved July 6, 2022.
  14. ^ Pahwa, Nitish (May 12, 2022). "The Signs That the Crypto Crash Was Coming". Slate. Archived from the original on May 28, 2022.
  15. ^ a b c Pimentel, Benjamin (October 20, 2022). "'People were sucked into schemes': Inside Molly White's campaign against crypto". Protocol. Archived from the original on October 24, 2022. Retrieved October 24, 2022.
  16. ^ Pot, Justin (July 2, 2024). "The Best Substack Alternatives". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028.
  17. ^ a b Harty, Declan (March 31, 2022). "Web3 skeptic Molly White and her mission to pop the blockchain bubble". Fortune. Archived from the original on April 12, 2022. Retrieved May 30, 2022.
  18. ^ Levine, Alexandra S. (November 29, 2022). "30 Under 30 In Social Media 2023: The Creators, Founders And Entertainers Shaping The Biggest Brands And Most Powerful Platforms On The Planet". Forbes. Archived from the original on November 30, 2022. Retrieved November 30, 2022.
  19. ^ "The World's Top Thinkers 2022". Prospect. July 20, 2022. Archived from the original on November 25, 2022. Retrieved March 11, 2023.
  20. ^ Kelly, Jemima (July 13, 2022). "Web3 is just a fresh serving of the same old crypto nonsense". Financial Times. Archived from the original on July 14, 2022. Retrieved July 19, 2022. Perhaps the most disingenuous and pernicious aspect of Web3 is the lie that it is truly about decentralisation. Its biggest backers are Andreessen Horowitz—or a16z—a venture capital firm with billionaire co-founders and assets under management of more than $28bn ... this firm also happens to be a major Web2 investor: it has, for instance, a stake in Meta, formerly known as Facebook, on whose board a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen still sits.
  21. ^ Light, Joe (June 1, 2022). "Crypto Has A New Foe In Washington: Techies". Barron's. Archived from the original on June 1, 2022. Retrieved June 1, 2022.
  22. ^ "Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy". Concerned Tech. June 1, 2022. Archived from the original on June 2, 2022. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
  23. ^ Donevan, Connor; Jarenwattananon, Patrick (June 14, 2022). "There's a new plan to regulate cryptocurrencies. Here's what you need to know". NPR. Archived from the original on June 24, 2022. Retrieved June 26, 2022.
  24. ^ Khalili, Joel (August 23, 2024). "Crypto's Shiny New Political Machine". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on August 23, 2024.
  25. ^ Goldstein, Luke (July 31, 2024). "Crypto Cash Affecting Both Sides of the Democratic Divide". The American Prospect. Retrieved August 17, 2024.
  26. ^ a b Thomsen, Ian (June 3, 2022). "'Gem of Northeastern,' Molly White takes on crypto". News @ Northeastern. Archived from the original on June 3, 2022. Retrieved June 4, 2022.
  27. ^ Auciello, Shlomit (December 23, 2010). "PopTech sparks interest for Camden Hills' Molly White". Knox County VillageSoup. Archived from the original on February 18, 2022. Retrieved May 30, 2022.
  28. ^ Gardizy, Anissa (July 11, 2022). "Meet Molly White, the Mass. software engineer going after the crypto industry". Boston Globe. Archived from the original on July 11, 2022. Retrieved July 11, 2022.
  29. ^ Bernard 2022: "not just because of her leftist politics (she describes herself as skewing socialist)"
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