Are we surprised that technology companies are extremely mercenary? Why?

Tech companies spent decades trying to sell themselves as an enlightened class of nobel philosopher kings.

This going all the way back to John Perry Barlow and a utopia in cyberspace to escape the right wing world of Reagan and Thatcher. But it reached its zenith around the "Arab Spring" with the idea that through connecting people the tech companies were giving voice to the voiceless and creating a new world of participatory democracy.

Many of us developed an interest in technology substantially because of the promise they were selling

Yet then, the moment they received the tiniest bit of pushback they all threw in fully and enthusiastically with Trump and are now even facilitating the Right Wing Internationale as we see with the Zuck trying to silence Lula supporters in Brazil.

It's basically the mother of all rug pulls and yeah, people are a little sore

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magimas 4 hours ago | parent [-]

mh, there's some truth to this, but I think it's much more that a split emerged in the community. There was originally a coalition between the social progressive movement and the techno-liberal/libertarian STEM side.

But all the stuff that happened from 2012 to 2024 had disenfranchised a lot of the actual engineers that do the real work with the progressive movement. There were a lot of early warnings, but they were ignored and instead silenced via social pressure.

Now the progressives are shocked that they couldn't just ratchet their causes ever further without losing support. And it is crazy who the techno-libertarian side joined forces with, but it was also obvious this was bound to happen at some point. You can't just continually ignore the grievances of your allies and then be shocked when they turn against you.

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jordanb 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> techno-liberal/libertarian STEM side.

John Perry Barlow-esque techno libertarianism is dead.

Modern network state authoritarianism is unrecognizable from the perspective of old-style technolibertarians.

If you had told those people the modern silicon valley was working to build a Panopticon and sell it to the TLAs they would not have believed you!

	▲	mmooss an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> If you had told those people the modern silicon valley was working to build a Panopticon and sell it to the TLAs they would not have believed you! I think they would have absolutely believed it - that's what they were worried about and fought against. They would have not believed that libertarians and progressives (to use the terms of this thread) have adopted such an absolutely helpless, defeatest attitude and have therefore become moribund and ineffective.

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mrtesthah an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s not really a matter of being surprised, is it? It’s a matter of whether they should be mercenary in the first place. Claiming that some behavior was expected is just another way to shut down criticism through cynicism.