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Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

newyorker.com

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Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#11

Post by bertil »

mindgam3 wrote: post #5

Big defector, my ass. He doesn’t even have the cojones to call out his old pal Zuck. McNamee is merely profiting from the techlash to get his name out there. Source: went to see him speak at Stanford. Asked him myself during live Q&A, if Facebook is so evil and must be stopped, why doesn’t he call out Zuck for terrible leadership given that Facebook culture and business practice comes straight from the top? His answe…

> “well, he and I are friends.”

Hasn’t Mark said in public that he didn’t remember McNamee, that he was barely invested early on in Facebook and left when they switched business model?

(The whole “You know what’s cool, a billion dollars?” and refusing Yahoo!’s offer was actually a big internal shift that ostracised a lot of early employees and investors.)

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#12

Post by harry8 »

firasd wrote: post #8

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year. In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but a…

So is the anti-big-tech policy really genuinely unpopular with voters as you're implying or does it trigger the backlash from Big Tech? Like for example facebrick adjusting their algos to promote say, anti-Warren content. How would we know?

It seems to me like most people support Warren's anti-big-tech stance in principle or they don't much care. Not many outside of the bubble seem to be genuinely opposed to it and it's a quite esoteric argument as to why it would make things worse (maybe a true, valid and legitimate argument, - but not the sort of thing that takes on support organically without a bit of push - can we see that push?).

Then there's the obscenely large amounts spent by big tech on lobbying in washington and PR in the media and in places like right here.

Do any of us really believe big tech isn't paying for PR here at hacker news? Whether the PR is working is a different question. Whether there is a lot of pro-big tech opinion, much of which I share, here organically is a different question - and yes there is. The only thing that would prevent paid PR here is if hacker news has no impact and paid PR could not influence and this was known, as far as I can see.

Separate to the venture capitalist owners interests being served by mods, which of course happens and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it, either.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#13

Post by larnmar »

firasd wrote: post #8

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year. In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but a…

Cynically we could say that the current news cycle is about putting pressure on big tech companies to try to rig the next election in favour of a Democrat.

Even more cynically we could say that an awful lot of people at an awful lot of tech companies want to do exactly that, and “responding to pressure” just gives them a perfect excuse.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#14

Post by majormajor »

harry8 wrote: post #12
firasd wrote: post #8

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year. In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but a…

So is the anti-big-tech policy really genuinely unpopular with voters as you're implying or does it trigger the backlash from Big Tech? Like for example facebrick adjusting their algos to promote say, anti-Warren content. How would we know? It seems to me like most people support Warren's anti-big-tech stance in principle or they don't much care. Not many outside of the bubble seem to be genuinely opposed to it and i…

> It seems to me like most people support Warren's anti-big-tech stance in principle or they don't much care. Not many outside of the bubble seem to be genuinely opposed to it and it's a quite esoteric argument as to why it would make things worse (maybe a true, valid and legitimate argument, - but not the sort of thing that takes on support organically without a bit of push - can we see that push?).

I think the reason Warren could lose ground talking about Big Tech is pretty straightforward - it's a way less generally compelling, personally-broadly-relevant message than her other key issues, and so a distraction. Less a pure negative, but an opportunity-cost net negative.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#15

Post by ggm »

My grandmother never said, but could have said "if you have nothing nice to say about somebody, maybe its better to say nothing" but actually, she was quite willing to call it as she saw it. I'm struggling to see good things to say about the people here. Money corrupts.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#16

Post by mindgam3 »

bertil wrote: post #11
mindgam3 wrote: post #5

Big defector, my ass. He doesn’t even have the cojones to call out his old pal Zuck. McNamee is merely profiting from the techlash to get his name out there. Source: went to see him speak at Stanford. Asked him myself during live Q&A, if Facebook is so evil and must be stopped, why doesn’t he call out Zuck for terrible leadership given that Facebook culture and business practice comes straight from the top? His answe…

> “well, he and I are friends.” Hasn’t Mark said in public that he didn’t remember McNamee, that he was barely invested early on in Facebook and left when they switched business model? (The whole “You know what’s cool, a billion dollars?” and refusing Yahoo!’s offer was actually a big internal shift that ostracised a lot of early employees and investors.)

> Hasn’t Mark said in public...?

I don’t know, has he? Citing a source would be constructive as I’m not aware of Zuck saying anything publicly about McNamee ever since his PR stunt kicked off.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#17

Post by dfsegoat »

firasd wrote: post #8

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year. In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but a…

>> Based on this survey, Tech is still the most trusted industry sector: https://www.edelman.com/trust-barometer

Devils advocate: Is there a chance this amounts to willful ignorance? Seems to me like once you are 'hooked on something': Amazon 1-click ordering, A social network, your phone - it's not easy to admit that you have 'a problem', let alone condemn a whole industry.

Beyond that: If 'they' actually know everything about us - I desperately want to trust them with that information.

edit: formatting.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#18

Post by harikb »

harry8 wrote: post #12
firasd wrote: post #8

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year. In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but a…

So is the anti-big-tech policy really genuinely unpopular with voters as you're implying or does it trigger the backlash from Big Tech? Like for example facebrick adjusting their algos to promote say, anti-Warren content. How would we know? It seems to me like most people support Warren's anti-big-tech stance in principle or they don't much care. Not many outside of the bubble seem to be genuinely opposed to it and i…

> Then there's the obscenely large amounts spent by big tech on lobbying in washington and PR in the media and in places like right here.

Any data here? I would have thought compared to other industries, tech hasn’t spend nearly enough! Few people occasionally tweet our Google or Facebook having donated $2700 to one republican superpact or another. This has to be peanuts compared to any real money involved.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#19

Post by closeparen »

firasd wrote: post #8

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year. In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but a…

I think you’d want it to be your own party that gets to start regulating political speech. Advocating for censorship while the opposition is in charge is a phenomenal amount of trust, to say the least.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#20

Post by antielectronite »

firasd wrote: post #8

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year. In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but a…

I think one reason journalists are having a moral panic about tech is that a lot of them seem to have a very unhealthy twitter addiction, which clouds their view on the impact social media has on society.

A lot of media people seem to spend ~8 hours tweeting almost everyday, which is obviously unhealthy but not indicative of how most people use "big tech".

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