7 ms·

Of all the absolute horseshit in the article, the most obviously wrong is saying that "tech doesn't play both sides of the political aisle". So obviously wrong

by mnkv 3y ago

Of all the absolute horseshit in the article, the most obviously wrong is saying that "tech doesn't play both sides of the political aisle". So obviously wrong if you look at any single company. Just recently, we saw how FTX was lobbying hard for both sides. And there absolutely has been a backlash against tech. Ask any Facebook employee how people react when they say where they work.

blululu 3y ago
What? Internet companies are up there with trade unions and Hollywood in donating to the left: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/most-partisan-industries https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/most-partisan... Facebook is an exception. They really let their brand collapse on multiple levels. Looking at the rest of FAANG (MAGMA? whatever) the situation is pretty different. Nobody at Microsoft is ashamed to tell their families that they make dashboards to help visualize uptime metrics for cloud services. Nobody at Apple is ashamed to tell their friends that they can't talk about whatever they do for work.
- CPLX 3y ago
  Depends on what you call the left. If you mean the modern Democratic Party then sure. If you mean the division of contemporary politics that is associated with advocacy for the rights of workers and diminished power for the managerial and capital owning classes then they most certainly do not do that at all.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mxkopy 3y ago
    There are dozens of us!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jakelazaroff 3y ago
Oh, for sure. Peter Thiel was an advisor to Donald Trump! Maciej Cegłowski (the person who operates Pinboard) has done a bunch of threads on Twitter cataloging the extensive donations of big tech companies to politicians on both sides of the aisle: https://twitter.com/search?q=donation%20from%3Apinboard https://twitter.com/search?q=donation%20from%3Apinboard I also love the tacit admission that Clarence Thomas is acting as a partisan, rather than an unbiased member of an ostensibly apolitical institution.
xwdv 3y ago
Facebook is like Jupiter, absorbing the heavy hits so us smaller players can operate unscathed.
chrisco255 3y ago
Silicon Valley is 15% Republican and 53% Democrat [1]. Tech is a highly skewed industry. 98% of Netflix employees donated to Democrats in 2020, 77% of Amazon employees. Overall 84% of political donations in major tech companies goes to Democrats [2]. https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/governance/civic-engagement/partisan-affiliation/percentage-of-registered-voters-by-political-party/ https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/governance/civic-en... https://www.newsweek.com/big-tech-employees-donate-overwhelmingly-2020-democrats-1515430 https://www.newsweek.com/big-tech-employees-donate-overwhelm...
- owlbite 3y ago
  That doesn't stop them spending in such a way that they achieve their aims regardless of which color of tie is more dominant in the corridors of power.
- the_cat_kittles 3y ago
  supporting democratic candidates while working for companies that exacerbate the problems they supposed want to fix makes it hard for me to call someone a democrat unambiguously
  - erikto 3y ago
    which problems are you referring to?
- c22 3y ago
  If you look at the chart over time it looks like 'no party preference' is eating the republican side of the graph. It looks like the republican party is fracturing, which is great because we need more than two political parties. I wish the other side would break up too.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    > I wish the other side would break up too. At least in recent years independents (in Congress) have caucused with Democrats, but not Republicans. This is evidence that the Dems are slightly broken up already. To get more fine-grained, each party has sub-divisions (e.g. "Freedom Caucus" in the Republican party). The real problem is that these sub-divisions basically don't cross over to allying with the other party on particular issues. If they ever do do that, and do it consistently (not as one-off decisions from individual representatives) then the US will effectively have a more than two party system. But even if that happens, the actual people getting elected will almost always only have an R or a D after their name. First past the post, as it is done in the US, can't really sustain more than two competitive parties.
Phiwise_ 3y ago
>Of all the absolute horseshit in the article, the most obviously wrong is saying that "tech doesn't play both sides of the political aisle". So obviously wrong if you look at any single company. Just recently, we saw how FTX was lobbying hard for both sides. Wider data seems to suggest it's not that simple: https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/donors-affiliated-with-amazon-big-tech-throw-support-behind-biden-campaign-60403546 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights... >And there absolutely has been a backlash against tech. Ask any Facebook employee how people react when they say where they work. I don't know firsthand, but the impression I've gotten, especially more recently, from silicon valley is that Facebook and Zuckerberg is the sacrificial goat the rest of the industry hopes to lay their sins on and drive into the desert. How much of the hatred for facebook employees is perpetuated, or at least was seeded, by tech itself rather than the general population? Do Uber employees get the same reaction? More politically apples-to-apples, do Google, or specifically Youtube, employees? If not, could it be because they use Facebook to distract from their own actions the rest of America wouldn't approve of if they were more in the media spotlight, and didn't have the scapegoat to point to?
- boondoggle16 3y ago
  I think you're on to something here. I myself as a tech employee have scapegoated FB, but the reality is, every small startup I've worked for has has questionable ethics. That's just how business people work, they don't see things the same as us regulars. Hence why they get so rich. I do think that tech workers have something, morally, to gain from lambasting FB. But the wider US sphere of influence does, as well. US tech makes the US super strong, and super rich. If we just forget about Google's sins, we can keep being rich and powerful. Tech workers, politicians, heck even normal people receiving Google accounts, all have something to gain by denying reality.
jchw 3y ago
I worked at Google for a few years and moved back to the Midwest afterwards. At first I was afraid to mention it even if it came up directly, but honestly I've come to realize that this perception that everyone hates tech companies so much that there's a stigma against it is probably more paranoia than truth. Whenever it does come up, I think people are put off by how much I preface it as if it's something terrible. I've since stopped doing so. The truth is, even if some of this could be explained by social pressure, I really think most people in the world just don't care as much as you think they do. More than anything most people just seem annoyed by tech companies. Actually, now that I think about it, the most unwelcome I've ever felt for working in tech was in California.

by mnkv 3y ago

blululu 3y ago

What? Internet companies are up there with trade unions and Hollywood in donating to the left: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/most-partisan-industries https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/most-partisan... Facebook is an exception. They really let their brand collapse on multiple levels. Looking at the rest of FAANG (MAGMA? whatever) the situation is pretty different. Nobody at Microsoft is ashamed to tell their families that they make dashboards to help visualize uptime metrics for cloud services. Nobody at Apple is ashamed to tell their friends that they can't talk about whatever they do for work.

CPLX 3y ago
Depends on what you call the left. If you mean the modern Democratic Party then sure. If you mean the division of contemporary politics that is associated with advocacy for the rights of workers and diminished power for the managerial and capital owning classes then they most certainly do not do that at all.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mxkopy 3y ago
  There are dozens of us!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

jakelazaroff 3y ago

Oh, for sure. Peter Thiel was an advisor to Donald Trump! Maciej Cegłowski (the person who operates Pinboard) has done a bunch of threads on Twitter cataloging the extensive donations of big tech companies to politicians on both sides of the aisle: https://twitter.com/search?q=donation%20from%3Apinboard https://twitter.com/search?q=donation%20from%3Apinboard I also love the tacit admission that Clarence Thomas is acting as a partisan, rather than an unbiased member of an ostensibly apolitical institution.

xwdv 3y ago

Facebook is like Jupiter, absorbing the heavy hits so us smaller players can operate unscathed.

chrisco255 3y ago

Silicon Valley is 15% Republican and 53% Democrat [1]. Tech is a highly skewed industry. 98% of Netflix employees donated to Democrats in 2020, 77% of Amazon employees. Overall 84% of political donations in major tech companies goes to Democrats [2]. https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/governance/civic-engagement/partisan-affiliation/percentage-of-registered-voters-by-political-party/ https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/governance/civic-en... https://www.newsweek.com/big-tech-employees-donate-overwhelmingly-2020-democrats-1515430 https://www.newsweek.com/big-tech-employees-donate-overwhelm...

owlbite 3y ago
That doesn't stop them spending in such a way that they achieve their aims regardless of which color of tie is more dominant in the corridors of power.
the_cat_kittles 3y ago
supporting democratic candidates while working for companies that exacerbate the problems they supposed want to fix makes it hard for me to call someone a democrat unambiguously
- erikto 3y ago
  which problems are you referring to?
c22 3y ago
If you look at the chart over time it looks like 'no party preference' is eating the republican side of the graph. It looks like the republican party is fracturing, which is great because we need more than two political parties. I wish the other side would break up too.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  > I wish the other side would break up too. At least in recent years independents (in Congress) have caucused with Democrats, but not Republicans. This is evidence that the Dems are slightly broken up already. To get more fine-grained, each party has sub-divisions (e.g. "Freedom Caucus" in the Republican party). The real problem is that these sub-divisions basically don't cross over to allying with the other party on particular issues. If they ever do do that, and do it consistently (not as one-off decisions from individual representatives) then the US will effectively have a more than two party system. But even if that happens, the actual people getting elected will almost always only have an R or a D after their name. First past the post, as it is done in the US, can't really sustain more than two competitive parties.

Phiwise_ 3y ago

>Of all the absolute horseshit in the article, the most obviously wrong is saying that "tech doesn't play both sides of the political aisle". So obviously wrong if you look at any single company. Just recently, we saw how FTX was lobbying hard for both sides. Wider data seems to suggest it's not that simple: https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/donors-affiliated-with-amazon-big-tech-throw-support-behind-biden-campaign-60403546 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights... >And there absolutely has been a backlash against tech. Ask any Facebook employee how people react when they say where they work. I don't know firsthand, but the impression I've gotten, especially more recently, from silicon valley is that Facebook and Zuckerberg is the sacrificial goat the rest of the industry hopes to lay their sins on and drive into the desert. How much of the hatred for facebook employees is perpetuated, or at least was seeded, by tech itself rather than the general population? Do Uber employees get the same reaction? More politically apples-to-apples, do Google, or specifically Youtube, employees? If not, could it be because they use Facebook to distract from their own actions the rest of America wouldn't approve of if they were more in the media spotlight, and didn't have the scapegoat to point to?

boondoggle16 3y ago
I think you're on to something here. I myself as a tech employee have scapegoated FB, but the reality is, every small startup I've worked for has has questionable ethics. That's just how business people work, they don't see things the same as us regulars. Hence why they get so rich. I do think that tech workers have something, morally, to gain from lambasting FB. But the wider US sphere of influence does, as well. US tech makes the US super strong, and super rich. If we just forget about Google's sins, we can keep being rich and powerful. Tech workers, politicians, heck even normal people receiving Google accounts, all have something to gain by denying reality.

jchw 3y ago

I worked at Google for a few years and moved back to the Midwest afterwards. At first I was afraid to mention it even if it came up directly, but honestly I've come to realize that this perception that everyone hates tech companies so much that there's a stigma against it is probably more paranoia than truth. Whenever it does come up, I think people are put off by how much I preface it as if it's something terrible. I've since stopped doing so. The truth is, even if some of this could be explained by social pressure, I really think most people in the world just don't care as much as you think they do. More than anything most people just seem annoyed by tech companies. Actually, now that I think about it, the most unwelcome I've ever felt for working in tech was in California.