I am a tech employee and went from convincing my wife to vote for Sanders and not Clinton in the then-primary and then, after becoming more engaged politically in 2018-20, gradually drifted back to being much more anti-government (the last time I was anti-government was in Russia). I think I have a tentative explanation.
Most tech employees are VERY apolitical and (I hate the word but...) privileged. I've never talked politics with my coworkers, even those I was on hang-out-on-weekends/invite-to-wedding terms. Literally never remember an occasion. Tech employees are busy with tech, work, overwork, families, hobbies, etc. This is helped by the fact that we live in nice areas and have a ~lot of money, so we see few bad effects of govt policies and don't notice minor economic effects at all. E.g. $3 gas and $5 gas makes no real difference to me, I feel like the only reason I even notice now is that... I'm more engaged politically, so it's symbolic of something.
So... the only time I'd see a bad thing in 2015 is if someone pointed it out to me. Sanders would point out homelessness, student debt, whatever, and say wouldn't it be nice if we were nice to these nice people and gave them money? Sounds nice! Also I saw homeless people in cities and I can easily empathize with a college-goer. Republicans would rant about abortion, for heaven's sake, or border wall. Sounds like being mean to people, and also being anti-science (we love science), and also tech companies are full of immigrants. And even if we grant that some of these could be real problems (let's say immigrants were actually taking low-skilled jobs), they never affect me-the-techie in any obvious way.
If I devote 10 minutes a month to politics, who am I going to donate to (and did donate before actually reading DSA website, etc. :))? Nice people who want to do nice things to other nice people, or mean-spirited people who want to, I dunno, tilt at random irrelevant windmills in a mean-spirited way? I don't think most tech employees are really "woke", or tuned or engaged in any of that. If engaged at all, they are more likely to be Obama/Clinton democrats; but most likely they just follow the "nice" slogans. The fact that many are immigrants probably also makes them more apolitical.
Dem behavior isn't the only kind driven by herds and hysteria. It almost certainly also drives the notion/fear that most Dems are ruthless "cancelers" in the first place
Bryan, are you ok? Since the move to substack, your posts have not displayed the intellectual rigor I am used to seeing from you. They have been full of straw men arguments, generalizations without evidence, and don't come close to passing the ideological turning test.
In this post you include an image of data that is from 2018 (which you don't mention) and don't include a link to the source material. You also use this data to comment on the political leanings of these corporations. But the data is only on employees that donated over $200 in 2018. Thats not a representative group at all. We don't even know what portion of the total employees that donated. If the numbers of above only represent 10% of the employees at Facebook or twitter, why should we take this data to be important at all?
You don't even consider that the people making these decisions may choose to follow principles and not just blindly follow party affiliations. Or the people carrying out the majority of the decision making are not a monolithic entity and they each have to interpret subjective standards in a high pressure environment. That is hardly likely to produce consistent results.
I'd prefer fewer high quality posts to the many posts a week that are poorly reasoned.
Cancellation ("Accountability") works best when it's focused overwhelmingly on one target and somewhat arbitrary. Most onlookers get the message that they can be next even if their views are mainstream. It's a great way to enforce silence and conformity even when the numbers aren't on your side.
How did Oracle hires so many Republicans? What portion of their California employees are Republicans? Did Sun Microsystems, headed by Republican Scott McNealy, hire many Republicans, too?
There's also the question of how they define "profit" here. Maybe we're looking at that value proposition all wrong.
Professor Galloway has frequently decried how Twitter's P2E is many times lower than it should be in terms of dollars, for the amount of influence that Twitter wields in shaping public conversation. But maybe Twitter's controllers include that influence as a big part of the "earnings", and are willing to trade a big chunk of cash for an outsized chunk of "influence".
If that's the case, then maybe the point isn't to silence "R" voices, but just lower the signal-to-noise ratio there. Remove "just enough" of the most persuasive or influential voices (unbearably arbitrary, to be sure) on the "R" side of the scale, to weaken "R" political conversations by that feathersweight necessary to ensure "D" social and political positions win elections.
To me, that's what makes the uproar surrounding a potential change in ownership, make a lot more sense.
I am a tech employee and went from convincing my wife to vote for Sanders and not Clinton in the then-primary and then, after becoming more engaged politically in 2018-20, gradually drifted back to being much more anti-government (the last time I was anti-government was in Russia). I think I have a tentative explanation.
Most tech employees are VERY apolitical and (I hate the word but...) privileged. I've never talked politics with my coworkers, even those I was on hang-out-on-weekends/invite-to-wedding terms. Literally never remember an occasion. Tech employees are busy with tech, work, overwork, families, hobbies, etc. This is helped by the fact that we live in nice areas and have a ~lot of money, so we see few bad effects of govt policies and don't notice minor economic effects at all. E.g. $3 gas and $5 gas makes no real difference to me, I feel like the only reason I even notice now is that... I'm more engaged politically, so it's symbolic of something.
So... the only time I'd see a bad thing in 2015 is if someone pointed it out to me. Sanders would point out homelessness, student debt, whatever, and say wouldn't it be nice if we were nice to these nice people and gave them money? Sounds nice! Also I saw homeless people in cities and I can easily empathize with a college-goer. Republicans would rant about abortion, for heaven's sake, or border wall. Sounds like being mean to people, and also being anti-science (we love science), and also tech companies are full of immigrants. And even if we grant that some of these could be real problems (let's say immigrants were actually taking low-skilled jobs), they never affect me-the-techie in any obvious way.
If I devote 10 minutes a month to politics, who am I going to donate to (and did donate before actually reading DSA website, etc. :))? Nice people who want to do nice things to other nice people, or mean-spirited people who want to, I dunno, tilt at random irrelevant windmills in a mean-spirited way? I don't think most tech employees are really "woke", or tuned or engaged in any of that. If engaged at all, they are more likely to be Obama/Clinton democrats; but most likely they just follow the "nice" slogans. The fact that many are immigrants probably also makes them more apolitical.
Dem behavior isn't the only kind driven by herds and hysteria. It almost certainly also drives the notion/fear that most Dems are ruthless "cancelers" in the first place
Bryan, are you ok? Since the move to substack, your posts have not displayed the intellectual rigor I am used to seeing from you. They have been full of straw men arguments, generalizations without evidence, and don't come close to passing the ideological turning test.
In this post you include an image of data that is from 2018 (which you don't mention) and don't include a link to the source material. You also use this data to comment on the political leanings of these corporations. But the data is only on employees that donated over $200 in 2018. Thats not a representative group at all. We don't even know what portion of the total employees that donated. If the numbers of above only represent 10% of the employees at Facebook or twitter, why should we take this data to be important at all?
You don't even consider that the people making these decisions may choose to follow principles and not just blindly follow party affiliations. Or the people carrying out the majority of the decision making are not a monolithic entity and they each have to interpret subjective standards in a high pressure environment. That is hardly likely to produce consistent results.
I'd prefer fewer high quality posts to the many posts a week that are poorly reasoned.
Is it also possible that cancel culture is a result of civil rights law? Institutions are afraid to create a hostile work environment, maybe?
not just profit maximisation, but possibly cancellation optimality.
if you cancel too much, your platform's cancellation power gets pulverised.
even the hardiest ideologue, if rational, wouldn't cancel too much.
the fact is that the current cancellations are quite effective. because they haven't crossed the line of motivation the crowd to defect.
It's probably more that most left wing people do not have a strong desire to cancel most non-left views or people.
Cancellation ("Accountability") works best when it's focused overwhelmingly on one target and somewhat arbitrary. Most onlookers get the message that they can be next even if their views are mainstream. It's a great way to enforce silence and conformity even when the numbers aren't on your side.
Employee contributions aren't the right metric. You gotta look at the people at the top.
How did Oracle hires so many Republicans? What portion of their California employees are Republicans? Did Sun Microsystems, headed by Republican Scott McNealy, hire many Republicans, too?
There's also the question of how they define "profit" here. Maybe we're looking at that value proposition all wrong.
Professor Galloway has frequently decried how Twitter's P2E is many times lower than it should be in terms of dollars, for the amount of influence that Twitter wields in shaping public conversation. But maybe Twitter's controllers include that influence as a big part of the "earnings", and are willing to trade a big chunk of cash for an outsized chunk of "influence".
If that's the case, then maybe the point isn't to silence "R" voices, but just lower the signal-to-noise ratio there. Remove "just enough" of the most persuasive or influential voices (unbearably arbitrary, to be sure) on the "R" side of the scale, to weaken "R" political conversations by that feathersweight necessary to ensure "D" social and political positions win elections.
To me, that's what makes the uproar surrounding a potential change in ownership, make a lot more sense.
You're in great form Bryan.
wonderful analysis.
there is also a lot of borderline cases. and controlling those is much harder. so view point bias might work on borderlines