Slate spreads FUD about Monero

Slate¹ magazine is spreading FUD about Monero and its community with Jake Dean²’s latest article:

The Bitcoin Competitor Beloved by the Alt-Right and Criminals³

The freelance journalist does his best to paint Monero as a coin that’s exclusively used by extremists, criminals and racists.

His skillful use of sensitive keywords, crafted to trigger people, seems to align perfectly with Slate’s slogan: Sticky, Provocative, Generative.

Perhaphs this is how the Graham Holdings Company⁴-owned site has earned the National Magazine Award for General Excellence Online .. a decade ago, in 2011⁵.

There’s no doubt that FUD sells, but it doesn’t even come close to any reasonable definition of journalism that I could find.

It is worth mentioning that Jake’s previous reporting for Slate includes articles about Lady Gaga & Justin Bieber⁶, rainbow lights at a soccer tournament⁷ and VTubers⁸.

A rather big grain of salt comes to mind. As long as this type of stuff doesn’t divide us as a community, Monero will survive.

Not shifting the focus from research and development looks like a solid plan:

Unfortunately, the task of tracing will be made harder by the recent announcement of atomic swaps between Monero and Bitcoin [..]

Fortunately, all of this can be interpreted as free advertising.