How Theranos cheated many journalists with a fake product

This weekend I've finished watching The inventor: looking for blood in Silicon Valley, Alex Gibney's documentary about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. It is scary, painful to watch and reminds why it is better to be skeptical. If something is too good to be true, and many smart, unqualified people are, it's probably not true.

I grimaced as I watched my former colleague Roger Parloff, an honorable man and a talented journalist, tell how he had been fooled by Holmes. I have acclaimed the tenacity of The Wall Street JournalJohn Carreyrou, who refused to be bullied by David Boies, a very respectable lawyer. And I deeply admired the courage of the Theranos employees who told the truth to the authorities in trying to correct the dangerous file that their company was peddling.

Having not yet read Carreyrou's book, Bad bloodI did not realize how Holmes had tried to emulate Steve Jobs and Apple, far beyond his penchant for black jerseys. The secret at Theranos extended to internal groups. Intelligent and clean marketing has created a narrative that masks the complexity of the product. Of course, Apple made computers and phones, not blood test equipment.

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Last week, I extensively commented on my column in favor of repealing an essential law that exempts Facebook, YouTube and other Internet "platforms" from being legally treated as the publishers they are. I will come back to this topic as soon as possible. In the meantime, I found two meaningful quotes from people able to influence the change.

One of them comes from Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand's Prime Minister, addressing Parliament following the heinous terrorist act in her country after being watched continuously on Facebook. "We can not simply sit back and accept that these platforms exist and that what they are told is not the responsibility of where they are published," she said. "They are the editor, not just the postman."

Robert Thompson, CEO of the Wall Street newspaper Editor News Corp., made the same remark in an editorial of his company's newspaper. "The creators are still being slaughtered by the distributors, who are editors, although they have a hard time pronouncing the word," he wrote. "If you intervene to filter offending content, you publish, and if you publish, you should aspire to become an excellent, non-selective and responsive, yet proactive publisher."

The change happens. It's just a matter of time.