I've been curious off and on about the story of how Silicon Valley turned against Democrats over the past few years. Jeremiah Johnson describes it as the fault of Democrats who broke an implied bargain:
The big concern that emerged in 2016 was misinformation in the form of fake news.... When Donald Trump won, Facebook faced blistering criticism that it didn’t do enough to combat that kind of misinformation. [Mark] Zuckerberg had to do tours of media and Congress, he promised to do better, and Meta built a lot of systems that endure to this day.
....I’ve watched a lot of Zuckerberg’s public appearances in the last year, and as best I can tell he’s genuinely exasperated with how the last few years have played out. I’d summarize his vibe as “I did almost everything you asked and got precisely zero credit, so screw you guys”. This is part of a larger storyline in Silicon Valley where the tech elite view Democrats as having ‘violated the deal’.
....The ‘deal’ was something like this — you mostly leave us alone to build our companies, and we’ll make the country richer and support you politically. This worked for a number of presidential cycles, but the deal started to fall apart as progressives started to villainize the big tech companies. They accused them of allowing misinformation, they railed against billionaires, antitrust crusaders sought to prosecute and break up several large tech companies, and all of the sudden a significant wing of the Democratic party was now treating the tech industry like an enemy. That’s the origin of the new Tech Right.
Alex Heath more or less agrees:
I've been talking to people in and around Meta about Zuckerberg's MAGA-fueled changes. They all describe Meta’s relationship with the Biden admin as quite hostile.
And of course Zuckerberg himself said the same thing to Joe Rogan last week:
Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Biden officials would “scream” and “curse” at his executives at Meta over censoring Facebook’s users, as he continues to take on a more MAGA-friendly persona following Donald Trump’s win.... “They pushed us super hard to take down things that honestly were true.”
....“When it went from ‘two weeks to flatten the curve,’ in the beginning it was, ‘There weren’t enough masks,’ ‘masks aren’t that important,’ to then it’s ‘Oh, no you have to wear a mask.’ Everything was shifting around. It just became really difficult to kind of follow,” he said.
....“They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio.... We said, ‘No, we’re not gonna take down humor and satire. We’re not gonna take down things that are true.’”
The Meta CEO said that he’d incurred the administration’s full wrath after that. “Biden gave some statement at some point,” Zuckerberg continued, “where he’s just like, ‘These guys are killing people.’ And I don’t know—then all these different agencies and branches of government just started investigating and coming after our company. It was brutal.”
Now, this all makes sense. Liberal censoriousness can be really annoying, and more than a few people have turned against the left because they just got tired of being constantly hectored.
More accurately, though, it would make sense if it weren't for the fact that conservatives have been hammering tech companies for years in exactly the same way. They've conducted investigation after investigation about how social media companies are biased against conservatives and demanding that they knock it off.
The difference, I suppose, is that during the height of the COVID vaccination misinformation campaign Democrats happened to be in charge, not Republicans. And Zuckerberg has obviously swallowed the right-wing meme that the CDC and others had no idea what they were doing and therefore had no business telling anyone else how to do things. More importantly, he's also bought into the conspiracy theory that government actions against Meta were plain and simple revenge:
"Then all these different agencies and branches of government just started investigating and coming after our company."
It's pretty common to get paranoid like this, especially among people who aren't especially mature, so it's no big surprise that Zuckerberg feels this way. So why not take a flyer on Trump? Zuckerberg probably sees it like this: If you do everything liberals want, it just makes them hungry for more. They're never satisfied. But Trump? Sure, you have to do what he wants, but if you do he's your best friend for life.
Maybe. I'm not entirely convinced by this, though. In the end, I think Josh Marshall may have the best answer: Silicon Valley companies got big and rich. And when you get big and rich, you almost automatically become friendlier toward Republicans:
The major technology platforms became mature businesses at vast scales; in so doing they butted up against the regulatory purview of the national government; and with the former leading to the latter they shifted toward a more conventionally anti-regulatory politics. A lot of it is really that simple.
....This was a period in which the focus on wealth inequality and the light tax touch applied to Big Tech became a big deal; people became more aware of the role of devices creating a generation of device addicts; then there was the 2016 election and scrutiny of the way social platforms were vehicles for foreign and domestic election subversion. And then there was anti-trust, a genuine existential threat to the whole word of Silicon Valley or at least the big companies which dominated it.
....Big picture it was inevitable that Silicon Valley would get a lot more involved in Washington, DC and just about as inevitable that Silicon Valley’s corporate power would align more and more with Republicans, or at least in ways that were less and less distinct from other industries.
It's all fun and games when you're a feisty new startup and everyone is cheering you on. It's a different story when you become bigger than General Motors and you have to play by the same rules as General Motors. Democrats were in charge when that rule change finally broke out and became serious business, which made it very appealing to take a look at the other side to see if maybe they treated gigantic companies more indulgently. The answer was straightforward: yes, Republicans have always been friendlier to big corporations than Democrats.
All that was left was to come up with an excuse that didn't look too money grubbing. The obvious option was to blame it on lefty wokeness in one form or another, and that's what many of them have done.
Some of these players might truly be annoyed by wokeness. There's no law that says tech CEOs have to be socially super liberal. But I'm willing to bet that it's mostly a way of assuaging their guilt over becoming standard issue money-grubbing industrial titans.
Self interest is the biggest impulse in politics. Never, ever doubt that. The second biggest is building an intellectual superstructure that justifies your self interest as truly being in the national interest. That's what's happening in much of Silicon Valley.
IF I ran one of these large tech companies, I would want to be publicly, politically neutral. Both Democrats and Republicans buy phones, use Facebook etc. Further, while your employees may have a preference, clearly large companies have employees from both parties.
In the recent time, it has become very difficult for large companies to remain neutral on large social issues (BLM being a recent example). However, as Budweiser/InBev learned, taking sides on heated public topics come with risk.
That is a lot of words to say this: I think taking corporate positions on US politics is, more times than not, a bad business decision.
Separate point. "There's no law that says tech CEOs have to be socially super liberal." I would bet, most tech CEO are socially liberal on topics such as abortion, gay rights, and immigration and conservative on issues such as unions, taxes and anti-trade legislation. So its a mixed bag.
Trump is the ultimate enemy of US corporations on trade. Though Biden hasn't exactly been a friend either.
Tech companies don't participate in "trade", except in chips and other electronic parts, all of whose production is pretty much easily automated in any location. They don't exists in meatspace! They exist in virtual reality which ignores borders unless governments choose to censor what their citizens see, hear and think.
Chips exist in meatspace.
They don't censor what their citizens think. They censor what people say they think. In an autocracy, hypocrisy is universal, just like in a theocracy (basically the same thing).
I am not aware of many companies who suffered losses from shitting on Democrats or the left, generally.
You can't be neutral.
The Republicans want you to harass minorities. Meta's position now is that harassment is okay.
That's not neutral.
And if you stop their harassment, you're no longer neutral.
Just like newspapers telling the truth isn't neutral, for Republicans.
That isn’t as important as defeating regulations. Consumers don’t have a good alternate to Facebook.
In addition to Marshalls take, with which i agree, I question very much whether the executives at these companies were ever liberal. The majority of the staff yes, but the executives and board probably not. Now that labor has lost some leverage in the past few years the executives can let their true colors fly and blame someone else as the right always does.
They're educated and electrical engineers, both heavily democrat groups.
Citation needed. This paper finds that engineers in higher positions are more conservative than those in lower positions: https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10529569#:~:text=We%20found%20that%20engineers%20in%20higher%20positions%20in%20their%20workplaces,politically%20liberal%20than%20male%20engineers.
This survey disagrees with you directly: https://www.machinedesign.com/news/article/21819513/the-politics-of-engineers
That's a bit too narrow to support your assertion.
The Machine Design survey found engineers three times more likely to identify as Republicans as Democrats. I couldn’t get the full article, so I can’t vouch for the sampling method. I would take the findings as suggestive, not definitive.
"Engineers" only understand "problems", not interpersonal relationships. It's an old cliché, but it's largely the truth. If you think people act like machines, the clear solution to any problem is to throw the "defective" machines on the trash heap, which is what many do politically.
I have never met a liberal engineer. They've ranged from raving MAGA loons to laid-back libertarians, but never progressive. Maybe they're out there somewhere; I've just never encountered one personally.
I've been commenting on this blog for more that twenty years. I am an engineer, I think I probably am progressive. You could, if you felt like it, probably find *something* I have said or support to disqualify me, because that's a game that is often played. I don't agree with AOC on every policy point, for sure.
And what's more, I know lots of other engineers here in Silicon Valley who are, in fact, progressive. I worked for a company in the 90's - Silicon Graphics - that was one of the earliest companies to offer domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples.
I am responding because I have had to put up with idiotic stereotypes of engineers my entire life. Frankly, it kind of feels like it comes from the same place that the whole "Dunk On California" movement comes from.
Maybe you need to get out more. I have a brother and a sister who are both engineers and both are what the MSM would call "liberal." My dad was an MIT-trained chemical engineer and was president of the local ACLU.
You get the difference between staff and executives/board members, right? The latter lean heavily republic (see, 2 can play the stupid childish I'm going to intentionally misspell your party's name game).
Follow the money. That is all.
They scrapped their fact checking because poor little Zuck 's post on his knee surgery got little engagement
My take is they got legal advice that "Fact Checking" could lead to being declared "Publisher" and therefore being liable for the content they publish. They are currently "Common Carriers" and no liable for the content they post.
They're responsible once they've been informed their content is harmful.
Publishing harmful content absent child pornography, fraud, ave a few other exceptions is neither a crime or a tort.
For example, it is totally legal for me to put up a billboard urging all Democrats/Republicans to kill themselves and, even if I am so persuasive that many do so, I cannot be charged with a crime or successful sued.
You're usually wrong.
And of course, you're wrong again, although this time because you can't understand the difference between basic liability and criminal liability. The absence of criminal liability is not the absence of liability.
Gross.
It's all about the Benjamins.
There is going to be such a volume of unsavory, vicious, salacious, hate provoking, provocative, nasty stuff about Trump and his 2nd Reich flowing through Facebook and all the other social media apps, that the Administration and the MAGA Congress are going to turn on these folks and flood them with threats and investigations.
Of course most of the horrid stuff is likely to be true, but that doesn't seem to matter anymore. Trump will throw Zuckerberg, Musk, and all theses guys under the bus in a heartbeat.
You're imagining dropping restrictions means the won't restrict anti-Trump speech.
It will be corrupt, just like the tariffs. The tariffs aren't going to hurt corporations that are in bed with Trump.
Yeah, anti-Trump speech is already limited.
Pay off the Don and you won't have to pay his "carrying charges".
Speaking as someone who overthinks pretty much everything, I think you are overthinking it. These are guys -- pretty much always guys -- who don't believe that anyone should be able to tell them what they can and can't do. They see a kindred spirit in Trump.
Nothing about the 2016 election and Zuck selling information to Russian trolls at Cambridge Analytica? Zuckerberg wanted the resistance to be posted on Facebook while taking money from both sides and deciding "privacy doesn't help my stock options" and then got mad when people pointed these things out.
His version of the "implicit bargain" was "I donate to Democrats and say the right things and you ignore what I do behind closed doors." Yeah, that was never going to hold.
Jesus, why does anybody credit Mark Zukerberg with any humanity. The SOB stole the idea for Facebook, as was proven in court a couple of years after Facebook became an impregnable bastion of social media. The Winklevosses won in court, but the original suit was narrow enough that they didn't win the entire company.
Thus far, I remain unconvinced that Silicon Valley has "turned against Democrats."
It may look that way to Democrats, but the problem could, to a great extent at least, be with them, not with Silicon Valley.
I do agree with Kevin that we're talking about Capitalists and that they're motivated by self-interest: "Self interest is the biggest impulse in politics. Never, ever doubt that."
But what if we engage in a thought experiment and actually take Zuck at his word? Here's what he said:
"We’re going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far…"
I'm a Democrat who has no problem with this. I don't see it as cozying up to Trump or pacifying rightwing reactionaries or turning "against Democrats." He's pointing out that Left-wing inspired censorship was excessive. And he's right.
He's shifting back to a moderate center. And, in that moderate range of sanity, people will (apparently) be able to express completely mainstream views regarding opposition to biological men (trans women) on women's sports team or opposition to the biggest surge in immigration (which took place under Biden) in the country's history. These and other views that the Left labels as fundamentally evil and unspeakable heresy are in fact held by majorities of, I believe, all demographic groups (except maybe for young, white, Leftists).
All of this sounds like a return to sanity to me. Not a turn for or against any particular political party. Maybe there really isn't anything more to it than that?
Leo, I think we've already established that your version of "sanity", a "moderate center" and "a Democrat" are somewhat out of step with what most of the rest of us consider to be true.
Further, your claims about what is fundamentally evil, or unspeakable heresy, or who actually holds power "on the left" are equally disconnected from reality.
So you characterizing Zuckerberg's position as a "return to sanity" is about as vacuous as it could be, given the above.
@PaulDavisThe1st
Regarding your comment: "So you characterizing Zuckerberg's position as a 'return to sanity' is about as vacuous as it could be, given the above."
I think you need to get out more.
Here is the nonpartisan FIRE organization commenting on Facebook's recent policy changes:
"The changes simplify policies, replace the top-down fact-checking with a Community Notes-style system, reduce opportunities for false positives in automatic content flagging, and allow for greater user control of content feeds. All these changes mirror recommendations FIRE made in its May 2024 Report on Social Media."
Again, I find myself in basic agreement with FIRE that there just doesn't seem to be much to complain about regarding these changes at Facebook. At least not yet. We'll see how they play out. But, based on what we've seen so far, the whole situation sounds like good news for free speech.
So an organization that promotes harassment and hate speech likes it?
Gee. Great citation, bigot.
Your expiration date is past, Leo.
And we se the Censorious Left in action!
It's not censorious to call a moron a moron, moron.
So, disagreement is now censorious? No wonder Republicans see censorship everywhere while the rest of us just scratch our heads.
No, specifically I was talking how cmayo and so many others who post on this site were attacking @Leo1008 not really on specific points but instead under the general rubric "shut up, your comments are not welcome." It would be one thing if they respectfully engaged, or even just ignored them. I mean, from what I see @Leo1008 is a pretty reasonable commentator with salient and cogent arguments, someone who seems to actually think for himself, which is far rarer than is healthy. But instead they respond with comments that cast him as somehow beyond the pale and not worthy of serious consideration.
It's that kind of condescension and dismissiveness among some elements of the Progressive Left that is so alienating to the majority of the American electorate and was a a contributing factor to Trump's election.
@tango
I usually (always, I guess) ignore Leo's comments. But it bothers me that he seems to claim to be a Democrat, a lefty, while essentially finding fault with everything Democrats and The Left do and say. If he came out, I could accept his comments at face value, but he's pretending to be "one of us" when clearly he is not. Those who suggest he should STFU might be addressing this hypocrisy, rather than his stated political positions..
Last minute correction: Apparently he wants to be known as "normie Dem," not a lefty. Probably like those normie Dems in Boston who didn't want their kids bussed to schools where they might meet black kids.
well, at least you did not have to resort to any sweeping generalizations and all encompassing stereotypes to arrive at your conclusion.
This is because you're not a Democrat, you're a bigot.
Approving direct slurs and harassment of minorities is not okay with anyone who isn't a bigot.
There’s just a touch of irony there.
@Crissa
To the best of my knowledge, hate speech is in fact protected and free speech in the USA. And that is of course a good thing. Bans on "hate speech" can obviously open the flood gates of censorship. Does that mean that we have to put up with the "harassment" that you describe? Of course it does. Welcome to an open society. We have the freedom to express ourselves, but so do others. And, as The Who might say, I call that a bargain, the best I ever had.
Hate speech is protected from government reprisal. It is not protected from civil society. Social media companies can ban racist and sexual harassment since it will negatively effect their bottom line and they have the free speech right to not carry that speech.
@memyselfandi:
But your point raises the question of what exactly constitutes "racist and sexual harassment." These determinations are not always, perhaps even not usually, straightforward.
And Meta (Facebook) has decided that it's been leaning too far in the direction of censoring speech that most people would not find problematic. Hence, Zuck's sensible call to update policies that were ultimately "out of touch with mainstream discourse."
Getting back to capitalism, you reference the bottom line of these social media platforms. But it's censorship that they seem to consider the worst threat to their bottom line, not so-called "harassment." And if our free market actually winds up supporting free speech in that way, I consider that very good news indeed.
So your position is that bigots should rule the roost and it' s perfectly okay to utter slurs, libel, and harassment - as long as there's no laws against it?
Why would anyone hang around in a place which tolerated such disrespectful behavior?
"And Meta (Facebook) has decided that it's been leaning too far in the direction of censoring speech that most people would not find problematic."
Most [sic]? I missed that poll. Got a link?
Again, confusing social responsibility and reaction with 'illegal. Is your the argument really 'but it's not illegal'?
https://xkcd.com/1357/
"I can't remember where l heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express."
@ Crissa:
It’s not a question of legal or illegal. It’s a question of constitutional or unconstitutional. And our first amendment rights have been interpreted over time in such a way that protects so-called “hate” speech.
Are you setting yourself up as an enemy of our constitution? If so, how are you different than Trump? He also only seems to adhere to the constitution if and when it suits him.
And opposing our constitutional rights is a very, very bad look for the Left. It’s certainly one main reason why normie Dems like me want absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Leftists.
Take a civics class. The constitution is the LAW of the land. It is illegal for the government to violate the rights enumerated in the constitution because the constitution is described, repeatedly through the founding period and in supreme court decisions as the LAW of the land.
Beyond that, Zuck and Facebook have fought tooth and nail to not actually fix the harms they cause. Their actions and irresponsibility are contributors to violence in Myanmar and Africa and they have moved at a snail's pace to take even basic precautions. I don't think credulously believing someone who has demonstrably acted in bad faith for a decade is actually a good path forward.
More lies belching from the Cowardly Lion about "the biggest surge in immigration in the country's history". CL was obviously not living in the United States in the 1880's and 1890's when the raw number of immigrants reached essentially the same level as the recent decade, but to a nation with 40% of the population it now has. So the PERCENTAGE of immigration, which is the real issue, not the raw numbers, was two and a half times higher between 1880 and 1900 than it was during Biden's term.
Look I too agree that we need to rationalize our immigration laws, in particular the "Asylum" statutes which were written during the Cold War to help poach smart people from Eastern Europe under the Stalinist Soviet Union.
But without a BIG stream of immigrants over the next twenty-five years America is going to run aground on the exodus from the workforce. AI isn't going to make the shakes at McDonalds.
@anandakos
The data about the biggest immigration surge in USA history (the one that took place under Biden) was recently provided by the NYT. All you have to do is just look it up.
Noted, you failed to support your own argument.
That means you know it was dishonest.
The NYT is factually incorrect. See the Anandakos comment above.
Illegal immigration was also higher in both 198 and 2000 than it is today. Yes apprehensions are higher now, but that is because we have quintupled the number of border agents on the border, added all of the fencing, added the ATV trails along the border, added drone patrols above the border and seismograph and motion detector monitoring stations. And the vast majority of illegals are apprehended when they turn themselves in to apply for asylum. As far as the NYTimes falsely claiming it is the biggest immigration surge in history, they can be just as wrong as anyone else. The have a lot of financial motive to make this mistake as sensationalism drives their profits.
I have followed the whole Musk thing closely, and there is one more point.
These social media platforms make billions off of content they don't even produce. They have legal protection that they are not, in fact publishers of the stuff on their platforms.
Unsurprisingly, given the sheer number of millions of idiots out there, pressure emerged for social media platforms to behave more like actual publishers, and actual publishers have editorial staff and pay attention to content.
I cannot imagine how expensive it would be for Facebook to edit posts to make sure no actual bullshit is posted. Much cheaper, and more profitable in the end, to just let everyone post whatever nonsense they wish, as long as its not pictures of mutilated children, and the platforms can use AI to sort those out.
Add in that one party out of the two does not want moderation or editing, and that party just prevailed with a slight national majority, and this isn't surprising at all.
I don't know that Zuckerberg has ever actually cared what anyone posts on Facebook one way or the other, and I don' think he does now.
Musk is an addict, high on his own supply, Tweeting like over 200 times a day and barely reading what he posts. Tweeting in the middle of Tesla showcase events from backstage, tweeting on the can. All you can say for sure is he doesn't like people telling him what to do.
Of course the Dems are sort of against social media -- un moderated social media is the enemy of liberal democracy.
You opening point about making millions is key.
There are (at least) 3 totally different scenarios you can imagine for the set of platforms that make up "social media":
1. nobody's getting rich; the platforms make just enough to get by, if that, there's some vaguely tech-appropriate salaries involved but little to no profit.
2. the platforms are making a ton on subscriptions, but the only content that is distributed is contributed by users. People are literally paying to be "in the network" and profits are fat and flowing hard.
3. the platforms are making a ton on advertising. they not only distribute user-contributed content, but paid-for advertising. almost nobody pays for the service, but the profits are fat and flowing hard.
Obviously, our reality corresponds to #3. Our legislative situation is apparently modelled on the idea that we're in something more like #1 or #2. That needs to change.
"and more profitable in the end, to just let everyone post whatever nonsense they wish," How'd that work out for Elon Musk and twitter. Zuckerberg will be reintroducing moderation when his site is over run with neo-nazis and white supremacists.
It's worked out very well for Musk, at least so far. You have to understand X as a loss leader. What he's lost on X, especially given that all of his losses to this point are purely on paper, he's more than made up through a combination of increases in the value of his other companies and the personal satisfaction of having a huge microphone to say whatever he wants and his strong belief that he is responsible for picking the next president.
I would hazard a guess that several things can be true. Democrats ARE annoying on messaging, and clearly they suck enough at it to lose to an obnoxious, game show host, felon. TECH founders and executives are well known for a libertarian bias around taxes, on which score the other team delivers better.
We live in a capitalist system, this is how it goes. Unless you're a billionaire, the only way to win at this game is to not play. Your attention is for sale, stop giving it away cheap. You dollars are wanted, demand more value for them.
Rich oligarchic fucks gonna do rich oligarchic fuck things, what is surprising about this?
Nothing. Nothing should be surprising about this.
These people are all pissy in their diapies because they don't like being told no, they can't have everything, and no, they can't just run amok without regulation. Any other reason given is just an excuse to justify/rationalize their otherwise naked financial self-interest.
They're all libertarians. Republicans are closer than Democrats. As Peter Thiel said, democracy and freedom are incompatible.
You need your head examined if you think he's got your freedom in mind at all.
Assuming 'freedom' is the right to only have rights if you're rich.
By "freedom" he means freedom of capital to do capital things. In his vision of freedom, only those with money have agency.
"Freedom" as Thiel uses it just means anarchy, lawlessness, nature before civilization.
However, most people these days prefer some kind of Law. The only question is which kind, or how much of it.
Now what was that question Tip O'Neill was said to ask..."How much money to have to help the working class make before they turn Republican?"
Yes, they were different times.
Wokeness, or at least DEI, remains important to Silicon Valley. A diverse group of smart people produce tech more efficiently than a homogeneous group. Plus, you run out of smart people to hire.
I would dispute that Silicon VAlley has turned against democrats. The leading maggot in Silicon Valle is Peter Thiel and he has always been a right wing nutjob. Zuckerberg is sucking up to Trump right now for the same reason that ABC paid Trump a 15 million dollar bribe in that completely frivolous law suit, republicans control the presidency, both chambers of congress and the courts (the last since 1973.) Also, there are a lot of Chinese in Silicon Valley and they were shocked that Biden was even more anti-Chinese than Trump.
Biden was what when where?
Citation needed, dude.
Biden and the Democrats aren't specifically anti-Chinese. We would love to do free open and FAIR trade with them. It's they who insist on giving all valuable IP to their Communist government. We only limit our trade with them on some narrow important things.
Perhaps they think it's Biden who is anti-Chinese because the policy only took major effect during his administration. But, complaints about IP theft have been made for decades. It's not new. Biden just did something about it.
So, if I read the internet correct, every cruel, shitty thing right-wingers do is because of something that Democrats did or said.
That is such bullshit. Maybe the explanation is just that rich assholes are assholes.
+1
Thank you, "look what you made us do," isn't something an adult should ever hide behind.
The ever relevant satirical tweet from Cody Johnston of Some More News.
"The Left got a little too PC so I changed all of my opinions about the economy, social issues, systemic racism, health care, and history."
Greed has been known since Biblical times, and not in a good way. If money itself isn't the root of all evil, then perhaps it can be said that Greed is.
If a corporate CEO isn't sufficiently greedy, then Wall St. steps in and threatens to savage the company. Wall St. greed knows no bounds.
Conservatives even convinced universities to teach that "Greed is good" and "making money is the only purpose of a corporation". Neither is true.
I generally agree with Josh Marshall’s analysis but I’d add one thing: big corporations and tech bros support the Republican Party because they see advantages in do so. But I think they also feel that there’s no risk in supporting Republicans because if the Democrats ever get in power again they aren’t going to remember who their enemies are and punish them. All issues with “messaging” aside, what I think the Democratic leadership needs to do is to say that corporations and billionaires can be neutral or they can support the Democratic Party. Everyone else is an enemy and will be treated as such (within the bounds of the constitution).
Big Tech, particularly Mark Zuckerberg, wants Democrats to eliminate Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, is how I read it.
"FREE SPEECH", isn't that right, Zuck?
Fucking asshole idiot.
more than a few people have turned against the left because they just got tired of being constantly hectored.
Yes, all that unfair "hectoring" about human rights, saving the environment from collapse (California tech bros must already be so tired of hearing about those tiresome fires), about the need for vaccines, denying that there are space lasers or pedophile pizza joints...
The "hectoring" list goes on, and JFC are Americans tired of hearing about important real-world things!
"Hectoring" is a vague term to throw out against "all of those people" that carries no weight and reveals ignorance. It's goddamned "vibing" again, which is code for "I don't know much about this topic really, but I feel like I do and can speak authoritatively about it."
Has the tech sector really turned against Democrats? Several very rich, high profile tech titans appear to have done so, sure. But they're not the whole industry. It would be interesting to find out where the contributions of, say, the top 10,000 campaign donors from tech go to. I'd be pretty surprised if the bulk of it is going to MAGA.
The big problem is not the number of individuals, but the financial weight of each. If all the billionaires turn to MAGA, then it would take a lot of non-billionaire individuals to be a counterweight to that.
Another possibility is that the tech billionaires know that while Democrats might tweak this or that rule against them here and there, today’s Republicans, especially their leader, get much more threatening if crossed. Especially now with the ascendant right wing, always prone to overreach.
The risk associated with pissing off one of the parties is skewed. They have more to fear from the right than the left.
there is a case to be made that censoring wrong ideas was not a good thing to do during the pandemic. or now. first off it didn't work. there are so many wrong ideas that people now believe that it's inconceivable there would be any more such wrong ideas in circulation had social media just kept their mitts off of what people are saying past a certain point. it certainly true that conservatives are excessively willing to censor ideas they disagree with so maybe going all in on no more censorship turns out to be a cunning response to the conservative war on facts. and it seems to me undeniable the Democrats went way too far, and were way insufficiently tuned into the reasonable concerns in circulation about The credibility of the CDC et al.
Citing the fact that Republicans are worse is just whataboutism
When a private entity does it, it’s exercising editorial control, not censorship.
I dunno I suppose if I wanted my party seem to be more populist, then being hated by a bunch of billionaires doesn't seem to me to be a bad thing does it?
I dunno I suppose if I wanted my party seem to be more populist, then being hated by a bunch of billionaires doesn't seem to me to be a bad thing does it?
Reminiscent of the right's criticism of the way Obama handled Katrina. He's describing what happened during the final year of the Trump presidency. Nothing to do with Biden.
It's another validation, intentional or ignorant, of the MAGA narrative that far-left Democrat Fauci was a dictator managing the response to the pandemic while Trump and the rest of the White House were helpless bystanders.
+1. People forget that all the confusion was sown by Trump toadies at the CDC and elsewhere trying to play down any threat and make sure the stock market stayed strong because that's what Trump thought was the most important thing. Then when it became clear that PPE was going to be needed badly, he put his stupid son-in-law in charge of hoarding it all so blue states wouldn't get enough.
Oh goodness, what a whiny little man baby. He's upset that he was expected to have responsibilities and instead would prefer to be worshipped and feted.
It's not (just) low taxes that pulls this type of guy into the GOP universe. The deference, worship and lack of responsibilities are probably more important. Zuck is a major noble of this country, he must be treated as such by the commoners.
"During the height of the COVID vaccination misinformation campaign Democrats happened to be in charge, not Republicans."
Really, Kevin? Am I just imagining that COVID, the COVID vaccine, and vaccine disinformation all happened during the Trump administration. Because I'm sure it was pretty big news at the time.
Trump fucked up the initial public response to the pandemic, but the vaccines started coming online at the beginning of Biden's term and that's when you started getting all this pushback against government agencies and companies requiring people to get the jab and everything.
This is where the science hits the road.
Why weren't Republicans backing the science and telling folks to get the vaccination? It's because they've made everything in America so divisive that there was no middle-ground for uncertainty or doubt. It's because they turn everything into a political war they want to win, regardless of who or what gets hurt (see L.A. fires today for example).
The divisiveness of Republicans began in the late 1970s or early 1980s when a political operative suggested they kept losing fights because the Dems could get some R votes for Liberal policies. The Republicans began pushing out Liberal Republicans to split America completely. It worked politically, so they kept at it until today.
Power above all else is hurting America.
+1
Cast aside, one good thing in "The Cheyenne Social Club".
Henry Fonda and James Stewart are riding fence as two clapped-out saddle tramps until Stewart inherits a brothel.
After his transformation into influential man of business, Stewart asks Fonda not to tell anyone that he used to be a Democrat.
very funny movie, and prescient on that point, though the meaning of that expression in the 1880s would have been quite different
Tipper Gore did not help Democrats when she publicized the policy to censor pop music lyrics, but Frank Zappa did not become a Republican. Kanye did but probably not because of Tipper's campaign.