[simondotau]

It's impractical to demand laws to protect people from all incarnations of their own stupidity or credulity.

Specifically, it's not Musk's fault that it seems a large numbers of stupid and credulous people are choosing to have their "investment" strategy influenced by the tweets of a well known Twitter jokester. If Musk tweeted that paper shredders actually convert $100 bills into gold, should he be liable for any losses incurred by anyone stupid enough to think he was being serious?

[throwaway_kufu]

There is a major difference between laws to protect people from all incarnations of their stupidity from pump and dump schemes directed at unregulated investment vehicles.

It’s the same individual who has already faced legal repercussions with the SEC for his Tweets related to publicly traded stock. Let’s not forget Martha Stewart didn’t actually go to jail for insider trading, but she did go to jail for publicly stating she would be found innocent of the insider trading and they ended up nabbing her for those comments which amounted to securities fraud because they boosted her stock price.

It’s not like he doesn’t know his tweets are primarily influencing young, uneducated investors, and as they say in tech...that’s a feature not a bug. And for what it’s worth your comment is consistent with the opinions of scammers who never accept responsibility, to them it’s always the victims that deserved to be scammed for what ever reason.

[Applejinx]

What else are laws for?

[bpodgursky]

Wait, seriously?

The main (and to some people, only) point of laws is to protect people _from other people_, not from _themselves_.

[throwaway_kufu]

Victims, whether or not they are educated, or even if they are stupid as they have been called, are still victims. You are exercising crazy mental gymnastics to victim blame, it’s exactly what people do when a girl is rapped and they say she should have dressed to provocatively.

It’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard...to not protect someone because they should have been smarter than to act upon a desire selfish desire to make money, well no shit that’s why fraud and cons work, because almost everyone acts on the desire to make money. It’s why people have jobs and work, that doesn’t give employers a green light to defraud employees.

Should all those old people who fall for scams down to the Nigerian price email scams not be protected because they are stupid and acted selfishly?

Let’s say a casino rigged a deck of cards or rigged a slot machine and falsely advertised the odds of winning to the public, would victims not be entitled to protection because they are stupid and acted in a greedy way to get rich?

Why shouldn’t the victims of Elon, all the Twitter bots , and those behind them, that are pumping and dumping Doge be protect besides calling them stupid and greedy? What is it is shown millions of the victims are actually just kids that idolize musk? Are they still just stupid and greedy and thus deserve to be scammed?

[bpodgursky]

> What is it is shown millions of the victims are actually just kids that idolize musk

Just to be very clear, even if everything about your argument was correct (which I don't grant), you're talking about hypothetical future victims, in a hypothetical crypto crash, because Dogecoin (along with the rest of crypto) is at a dramatic all-time high.

[simondotau]

It’s also debatable whether a person who “invests” in crypto and loses everything is a “victim” or merely ignorant to the basic principles of investment risk.

Doge isn’t a scam, it (as with all crypto investments) behaves like any other investment vehicle, except that it has no inherent value and produces no value.