Redirecting the Techlash
Big tech deserves its lashings — but we still need technology solutions
The world is warming, the middle class is shrinking, journalism is withering, hate is spreading, censorship is rising, and democracy is dying. At least according to the headlines. Histrionics notwithstanding, the problems outlined in an ever-increasing number of think pieces and op-eds are, often, quite real. Depictions of the hellish futures that await humanity are everywhere, and it’s unsettling how plausible some of these futures seem to be. Even more unsettling to me is that while many see a world that’s headed to hell in a handbasket, the mantra of the moment is still “tear it all down.”
This righteous rage against is prevalent in modern life. From a politics focused on opposition (abolish ICE, prevent judicial appointments, repeal the Affordable Care Act) to the cultural act of deplatforming to the backlash against the big technology firms, we are in a cultural age that Martin Gurri has described as political nihilism — an age of pure negation. Or, as an insightful friend once put it, “shared hate is much stronger than shared love.”
The technology sector has proven to be fertile ground for humanity’s shared hate: Even Republicans and Democrats can agree to hate on big tech. The Trump administration — having accused social media companies of censorship — has presented a draft executive order that would subject social media companies to increased oversight and liability. Democrats are more likely to say those same companies colluded with foreign powers to elect Donald Trump.
Modern sci-fi is all Black Mirror, no Star Trek.
But all agree that bad behavior abounds: The FTC found that Facebook violated the law with respect to the Cambridge Analytica scandal and issued a record-breaking $5 billion fine. Congress has conducted adversarial interviews with Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, and other technology titans. The DOJ has announced a large-scale antitrust review focused on the biggest technology firms. And now, turning to smaller tech, Congress has subpoenaed the owner of 8chan to testify about his website’s role in spreading the manifestos penned by the shooters behind the recent tragedies in Christchurch, New…