The media went after Big Tech. And Big Tech went after the right.
WHY SILICON VALLEY IS KILLING FREE SPEECH
Control leads to censorship.
In one survey, 75% of tech entrepreneurs voted for Hillary Clinton. 8.8% voted for Trump. 83% back higher taxes, 82% support gun control and another 82% are in favor of socialized medicine.
Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon employees were 4 out of 5 of Bernie Sanders’ top donors. Cash from Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft poured into the Clinton campaign. $1.6 million was donated by Google employees to Hillary Clinton and Google employee money is still pouring into competitive congressional races in the midterm elections. The same is true across the tech spectrum.
People have a right to their own political views. But that’s an idea that today’s Silicon Valley rejects.
The internet was born through universities, hobbyists and neglected labs. It was experimentally libertarian. Two generations later it’s controlled by a handful of monopolistic tech firms whose leaders and employees are dogmatically leftist. Most users haven’t cared much as the local BBS and then the forum gave way to centralized platforms like Facebook. But centralization represented a cultural and political shift. Freedom ceased to be part of the internet’s innate technological DNA and instead became an eccentricity that Big Tech temporarily tolerated because it made the tech companies money.
And relying on the tolerance of the adherents of a political movement that had never been noted for its willingness to tolerate the dissenting speech of its political opponents was never going to end well.
The internet was free when control over its medium was diversified. Its message ceased to be free as its core platforms became centralized. Its old model had been innately libertarian. Its new model was just as innately socialist, imitating its old hobbyist culture with free services, but offering those free services in exchange for reselling control and surveillance over the people who were making use of them.
