In today’s world, Autocracy is not possible without Tech. Tech firms enable it with anything from surveillance, to mass propaganda by anyone willing to pay, to enabling things as private data collectors for law enforcement that law enforcement would legally not be allowed to do on its own.
The even bigger approach now is the denial of service attack on the judicial system coming from AI-enabled infractions that are too new to the system. To deny enforcement in an area that helps authocrats - an AI tool can enable anyone to create problems on that area automatically and easily, and now the pipeline for getting justice in that area becomes clogged. It doesn’t even need to be intentional - it can be automatic.
The zero sum game of tech firms competing for the same fluid investors in the stock market means the control of government becomes guaranteed - because if a single one is singled out the money flows out of its equities and into their competitors. It’s blood supply to vital organs. The CEOs have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders above all else. They cannot do anything that will damage the stock price without being sued to oblivion and that would attack their personal assets as well.
Reid Hoffman seems to be one of the few SV founders with a spine. The rest are content to do business with authoritarian regimes as long as profits keep flowing.
Why is this article flagged? It's directly relevant to the readers of HN.
Lately I've been just sickened by Apple, and particularly Tim Cook. The guy is revealing himself to be completely amoral.
Perhaps it was naive to assume otherwise, but celebrate at the "Melania" screening with the same people that labeled Alex Pretti as a "domestic terrorist", on the night of his murder? WTAF.
Apple employees - what are you doing to push back on this? Staying silent?
I have two questions about that, with the supposition that Cook is being coerced to do that, somehow:
- Isn't Cook supposed to step down from the role in the next few years? If so, wouldn't that facilitate an accelerated exit to not have to put up with this shit? He might as well have chosen someone who's willing to do that, and slowly fade away.
- Why haven't we seen the same level of craziness coming from Satya and Gates? Are Microsoft's offerings and interests so diversified that the government has less power over it?
> Why haven't we seen the same level of craziness coming from Satya and Gates? Are Microsoft's offerings and interests so diversified that the government has less power over it?
The government maybe has more direct power over Apple: it's a manufacturing company that has located almost all its factories in China. The government could completely destroy Apple with tariffs. Microsoft and Google? Not so much.
Also, to the GP:
>> Lately I've been just sickened by Apple, and particularly Tim Cook. The guy is revealing himself to be completely amoral.
Arguably he revealed that a long time ago, when he went all-in on Chinese manufacturing. It's just that now it's more obvious to some, as he's getting involved with stuff that's more obviously polarized.
I am a good hacker, and I find this interesting. This is on topic and should not be flagged. When an influential tech leader says "Silicon Valley can’t be neutral any longer", I want to hear what they have to say. I want to hear what the HN community has to say about it.
Since the article mentions deaths due to ICE custody -
There's a headline today (I think it was CNN) about a disabled kid who died because his dad was in ICE custody. Came over as an unofficial refugee from Kuwait, had a kid, and was selected for deportation 20y ago. Deportation was stayed due to his kid's condition (dad was his caregiver), so long as he registered with ICE (né INS) every year.
He went in for his annual meeting this winter and never came back out. His kid's health cratered and the kid died. Dad wasn't allowed to the funeral.
I know the news isn't neutral either - the people who wrote that article want you to think everything that ICE is doing is fucked up. Also, everything ICE is doing is fucked up.
It's crazy to me how so many people defending ICE have nothing to say on them going after people who did do everything legally, even detaining people minutes before they take their citizenship oaths to prevent it.
> Whichever candidates you may have supported in the past — or even if (like many of my friends in Silicon Valley) you don’t usually do politics — you almost surely did not want this.
To those responding to the headline, the article seems to use the word neutral in an odd way. They aren't saying that SV is neutral, they're defining neutrality as 'working with who is in power, regardless of who is in power'. That definition may or may not be correct, but discuss the article in that context.
I tend to agree. In this version of "neutrality" we'd have to believe that if MAGA is defeated in the not too distant future (whatever that means) that these people in Silicon Valley would flip to the other side. There's just no way.
> To be silent in the face of oppression isn't neutrality. It's implicitly siding with the oppressor.
That's the kind of "I took an edgy course in college" shit that makes people outside the progressive bubble think "society is getting too woke and everyday people are getting left behind."
You can draw a pretty straight line between "my uncle voted for the other guy so I disowned him" and the political/social dysfunction that led to Trump in the first place.
This article isn't for progressives. It's a plea for everyone else to realize what's happening is wrong. If you can't take the barbs out of your language, you're going to offend your audience before they'll even listen to what you're trying to say.
> That's the kind of "I took an edgy course in college" shit that makes people outside the progressive bubble think "society is getting too woke and everyday people are getting left behind."
Nah, that's the "I was raised in Austria and all my history classes where about driving that point home" take.
How did the Nazis ever come to power, one asks? Why didn't anybody stop them? It's because everybody stayed silent until it was too late.
Screw polite meekness. You're either against what's happening or you're a collaborator. It takes people actively speaking out to show others they aren't alone and that not everyone is okay with what is happening.
Collective guilt ( Kollektivschuld) was assigned to Germans after WWII. Meaning every German was labeled guilty of enabling the Nazi regime.Now everybody here can witness how it came about.
Tim Cook just created a new form of enshittyfication, not by making the product worse after completely locking their users in, but by making it impossible for many of their loyal customers to identify with the values of the company behind the product anymore, knowing very well they can not leave easily.
And that is why these articles get flagged time and again because the existing tech brow pretend they want no politics but what they want is no pushback.
In today’s world, Autocracy is not possible without Tech. Tech firms enable it with anything from surveillance, to mass propaganda by anyone willing to pay, to enabling things as private data collectors for law enforcement that law enforcement would legally not be allowed to do on its own.
The even bigger approach now is the denial of service attack on the judicial system coming from AI-enabled infractions that are too new to the system. To deny enforcement in an area that helps authocrats - an AI tool can enable anyone to create problems on that area automatically and easily, and now the pipeline for getting justice in that area becomes clogged. It doesn’t even need to be intentional - it can be automatic.
The zero sum game of tech firms competing for the same fluid investors in the stock market means the control of government becomes guaranteed - because if a single one is singled out the money flows out of its equities and into their competitors. It’s blood supply to vital organs. The CEOs have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders above all else. They cannot do anything that will damage the stock price without being sued to oblivion and that would attack their personal assets as well.
Reid Hoffman seems to be one of the few SV founders with a spine. The rest are content to do business with authoritarian regimes as long as profits keep flowing.
Why is this article flagged? It's directly relevant to the readers of HN.
Stuff like this is censored by HN mods because goes against YCombinator investors.
This is an important message.
Lately I've been just sickened by Apple, and particularly Tim Cook. The guy is revealing himself to be completely amoral.
Perhaps it was naive to assume otherwise, but celebrate at the "Melania" screening with the same people that labeled Alex Pretti as a "domestic terrorist", on the night of his murder? WTAF.
Apple employees - what are you doing to push back on this? Staying silent?
I have two questions about that, with the supposition that Cook is being coerced to do that, somehow:
- Isn't Cook supposed to step down from the role in the next few years? If so, wouldn't that facilitate an accelerated exit to not have to put up with this shit? He might as well have chosen someone who's willing to do that, and slowly fade away.
- Why haven't we seen the same level of craziness coming from Satya and Gates? Are Microsoft's offerings and interests so diversified that the government has less power over it?
Update: grammar
> Why haven't we seen the same level of craziness coming from Satya and Gates? Are Microsoft's offerings and interests so diversified that the government has less power over it?
The government maybe has more direct power over Apple: it's a manufacturing company that has located almost all its factories in China. The government could completely destroy Apple with tariffs. Microsoft and Google? Not so much.
Also, to the GP:
>> Lately I've been just sickened by Apple, and particularly Tim Cook. The guy is revealing himself to be completely amoral.
Arguably he revealed that a long time ago, when he went all-in on Chinese manufacturing. It's just that now it's more obvious to some, as he's getting involved with stuff that's more obviously polarized.
I am a good hacker, and I find this interesting. This is on topic and should not be flagged. When an influential tech leader says "Silicon Valley can’t be neutral any longer", I want to hear what they have to say. I want to hear what the HN community has to say about it.
I wonder who can recall a time when Silicon Valley was politically neutral?
Since the article mentions deaths due to ICE custody -
There's a headline today (I think it was CNN) about a disabled kid who died because his dad was in ICE custody. Came over as an unofficial refugee from Kuwait, had a kid, and was selected for deportation 20y ago. Deportation was stayed due to his kid's condition (dad was his caregiver), so long as he registered with ICE (né INS) every year.
He went in for his annual meeting this winter and never came back out. His kid's health cratered and the kid died. Dad wasn't allowed to the funeral.
I know the news isn't neutral either - the people who wrote that article want you to think everything that ICE is doing is fucked up. Also, everything ICE is doing is fucked up.
It's crazy to me how so many people defending ICE have nothing to say on them going after people who did do everything legally, even detaining people minutes before they take their citizenship oaths to prevent it.
The cruelty inflicted on people just trying to get by is absolutely shameful and horrible.
My only hope is that one day everyone who participated or collaborated will come to regret their heinous acts.
From the article:
> Whichever candidates you may have supported in the past — or even if (like many of my friends in Silicon Valley) you don’t usually do politics — you almost surely did not want this.
No Reid. They did want this. They still want it.
Not only did they want it some of them are literally profiting from it. And the ones who aren't yet profiting are trying to.
To those responding to the headline, the article seems to use the word neutral in an odd way. They aren't saying that SV is neutral, they're defining neutrality as 'working with who is in power, regardless of who is in power'. That definition may or may not be correct, but discuss the article in that context.
I would say the use of neutral there is a linguistic cop-out to avoid having to assign blame.
To be silent in the face of oppression isn't neutrality. It's implicitly siding with the oppressor.
I tend to agree. In this version of "neutrality" we'd have to believe that if MAGA is defeated in the not too distant future (whatever that means) that these people in Silicon Valley would flip to the other side. There's just no way.
It's all about communication.
> To be silent in the face of oppression isn't neutrality. It's implicitly siding with the oppressor.
That's the kind of "I took an edgy course in college" shit that makes people outside the progressive bubble think "society is getting too woke and everyday people are getting left behind."
You can draw a pretty straight line between "my uncle voted for the other guy so I disowned him" and the political/social dysfunction that led to Trump in the first place.
This article isn't for progressives. It's a plea for everyone else to realize what's happening is wrong. If you can't take the barbs out of your language, you're going to offend your audience before they'll even listen to what you're trying to say.
> That's the kind of "I took an edgy course in college" shit that makes people outside the progressive bubble think "society is getting too woke and everyday people are getting left behind."
Nah, that's the "I was raised in Austria and all my history classes where about driving that point home" take.
How did the Nazis ever come to power, one asks? Why didn't anybody stop them? It's because everybody stayed silent until it was too late.
Screw polite meekness. You're either against what's happening or you're a collaborator. It takes people actively speaking out to show others they aren't alone and that not everyone is okay with what is happening.
Collective guilt ( Kollektivschuld) was assigned to Germans after WWII. Meaning every German was labeled guilty of enabling the Nazi regime.Now everybody here can witness how it came about.
Tim Cook just created a new form of enshittyfication, not by making the product worse after completely locking their users in, but by making it impossible for many of their loyal customers to identify with the values of the company behind the product anymore, knowing very well they can not leave easily.
Most of Silicon Valley isn't neutral. A lot of them are aligned with the rising authoritarianism.
Thiel has been anti-democracy for a long time; Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Cook, Andreessen and many others have also shown their true colors.
Turns out the oligarchs are pro-oligarchy. Who could've guessed.
And that is why these articles get flagged time and again because the existing tech brow pretend they want no politics but what they want is no pushback.