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The techlash that never happened

eriktorenberg.substack.com

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Re: The techlash that never happened

#61

Post by majormajor »

elefanten wrote: post #9
majormajor wrote: post #3

The "media sentiment change happened because Facebook ad revenue surpassed newspaper advertising revenue" makes a cute soundbite and there's some correlation graphs, but the details presented here are pretty weak. E.g. the NYT started being negative towards facebook because of "filter bubbles" undercutting them in a conspiratorial way instead of a "that sounds bad" way - HN is mostly negative on filter bubbles too. S…

Idk that economic “attack” is good phrasing but the bundling of video content combined with tools/platforms/monetization for user generated video content absolutely had a devastating effect on legacy video media. Maybe, in your words, the initial money-burning provided a lift, but now Hollywood writers are striking for more pay and Netflix is one of they key bogeymen.

Agreed - initially it was a windfall in the 2010s, now we're seeing a backlash because the cable residuals aren't there anymore and the streaming networks realized that lighting money on fire to out-compete each other was a zero-sum game.

Re: The techlash that never happened

#62

Post by pauldenton »

bitwize wrote: post #33
c22 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the chart over time it looks like 'no party preference' is eating the republican side of the graph. It looks like the republican party is fracturing, which is great because we need more than two political parties. I wish the other side would break up too.

Having a more-than-two-party system would require restructuring the Constitution entirely. So let's do it. Start with South Africa's constitution as a model.

Firstly. Political parties were not around when the Constitution was written. The founders didn't want political parties, they were a British import Secondly. Why South Africa? since they ended apartheid, got rid of their nuclear weapons and did everything the international community expected of them South Africa has declined, it's no longer the gem of South Africa, and quality of life has reverted to the mean. Why would you make that your foundation? it's like saying American politics need to be more like Mexico

Re: The techlash that never happened

#63

Post by snowwrestler »

chrisco255 wrote: post #14
mnkv wrote: post #8

Of all the absolute horseshit in the article, the most obviously wrong is saying that "tech doesn't play both sides of the political aisle". So obviously wrong if you look at any single company. Just recently, we saw how FTX was lobbying hard for both sides. And there absolutely has been a backlash against tech. Ask any Facebook employee how people react when they say where they work.

Silicon Valley is 15% Republican and 53% Democrat [1]. Tech is a highly skewed industry. 98% of Netflix employees donated to Democrats in 2020, 77% of Amazon employees. Overall 84% of political donations in major tech companies goes to Democrats [2]. https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/governance/civic-en... https://www.newsweek.com/big-tech-employees-donate-overwhelm...

Those numbers are for individual donations; donors are legally required to disclose employer, but that doesn’t mean their employer was directing their donations.

To look at the “tech industry,” look at company-directed activity, primarily lobbying expenditures, corporate PAC donations, senior exec political donations, and especially the same categories at industry groups like trade associations. That picture is far more balanced between the parties.

BTW I would suggest looking elsewhere for your political info, Newsweek does terrible reporting on this stuff. The article you quote makes a basic mistake, confusing 98% of donations going to Democrats with 98% of employees giving to Democrats. Most Netflix employees did not make any political donations at all in 2020 (or indeed, ever).

Re: The techlash that never happened

#64

Post by acdha »

snowwrestler wrote: post #63
chrisco255 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley is 15% Republican and 53% Democrat [1]. Tech is a highly skewed industry. 98% of Netflix employees donated to Democrats in 2020, 77% of Amazon employees. Overall 84% of political donations in major tech companies goes to Democrats [2]. https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/governance/civic-en... https://www.newsweek.com/big-tech-employees-donate-overwhelm...

Those numbers are for individual donations; donors are legally required to disclose employer, but that doesn’t mean their employer was directing their donations. To look at the “tech industry,” look at company-directed activity, primarily lobbying expenditures, corporate PAC donations, senior exec political donations, and especially the same categories at industry groups like trade associations. That picture is far m…

I’d also add that there were two events relatively close to each other which I think shaped this a lot: California proposition 8 blocking gay rights in 2008 and the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United to legalize dark money. The cruelty of Prop 8 spurred unusual levels of reputational consequences for backers (on HN, notably Mozilla’s Brendon Eich) and I think that really pushed Silicon Valley Republicans to try to cloud as much of their donation history as possible. They can say our company supports diversity, donate to their company PAC, which donates to another PAC, and when that PAC backs something unpopular there isn’t a direct donation trail making it easy to have “.com executive J. Blow backed this candidate” blow up on social media or deter prospective hires.

That trend is only going to strengthen as the Republican Party stakes out positions which are unpopular outside their core supporters.

Re: The techlash that never happened

#65

Post by supriyo-biswas »

comex wrote: post #30
novok wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you dig in more into the techlash, you also see a lot of... biased behavior on the NYT. Other newspapers also have this demonstrated behavior too, but the NYT is the most well researched. It's not just FB article sentiment analysis, it's everything they've written. If you look at all sentiment & word usage of all articles you'll notice sudden shifts . The NYT also has a narrative department that explicitly crafts…

> The NYT also has a narrative department that explicitly crafts all articles towards a target narrative for example and rejects articles or phrases that doesn't go towards the current target narrative. Citation needed.

https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex (NYT controversy)

Re: The techlash that never happened

#66

Post by [deleted] »

hughesjj wrote: post #55
boondoggle16 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bubbles are super common, and even more common on the internet. I find this phenomenon fascinating. For example, there are many people on HN who absolutely cannot comprehend why people prefer single family housing, with a yard, and a car. So much so, that I've considered writing an article from my perspective, about why I prefer low-density housing. The ratio of commenters to lurkers is super low, and (speaking from…

> For example, there are many people on HN who absolutely cannot comprehend why people prefer single family housing, with a yard, and a car. So much so, that I've considered writing an article from my perspective, about why I prefer low-density housing. Personally, I've never seen a lack of understanding for the desire of SFHs, but rather the factual realization that SFH housing is not an economically sustainable pat…

[deleted]

Re: The techlash that never happened

#67

Post by ojbyrne »

repsilat wrote: post #22
ojbyrne wrote: post #7

The top graph (Gallup 2017 Business & Industry Ranking Net Positive Scores) is 6 years old. 2022 results can be found here: https://news.gallup.com/poll/12748/business-industry-sector-... Computer Industry is now 3rd and the Net Positive has gone from 67 to 35. Internet Industry has gone from 5th to the bottom half of the list and the Net Positive has gone from 41 to -2. Perhaps the Techlash was just a little late.

> just a little late It fits with the article's explanation really. The media hate tech, propagandize against it, and they eventually win people over.

Sure it fits with the narrative, but the narrative is pretty poor. This article was just published recently, and it cherry-picks a graph from even before the economist article that coined the “techlash” world.

Poor research and poor writing from (presumably) successful people contributes greatly to the “techlash.”

Re: The techlash that never happened

#68

Post by BirdieNZ »

boondoggle16 wrote: post #34
Zetice wrote: post #31

Just off the top, I'm seeing a common logical misfire here, specifically: > If you asked the average American on the street about tech, they would tell you they like to use products like Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber, Facebook, Amazon, and many other supposedly maligned companies. It's actually a bit of a giveaway when you say "on the street". Most Americans aren't on the street at all. I dunno what the quality of this sour…

Bubbles are super common, and even more common on the internet. I find this phenomenon fascinating. For example, there are many people on HN who absolutely cannot comprehend why people prefer single family housing, with a yard, and a car. So much so, that I've considered writing an article from my perspective, about why I prefer low-density housing. The ratio of commenters to lurkers is super low, and (speaking from…

Who are these people who can't comprehend SFH car preferences? I'm pretty pro-urban-density and pro-transit/walking/cycling, but I definitely understand why people prefer SFH and cars and low density. Heck, I don't think we should ban any of those, we should just allow people to build denser if they want to and spend as much on mass transit and cycling and walking as we do on cars.

Re: The techlash that never happened

#69

Post by WeylandYutani »

chrisco255 wrote: post #57
c22 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the chart over time it looks like 'no party preference' is eating the republican side of the graph. It looks like the republican party is fracturing, which is great because we need more than two political parties. I wish the other side would break up too.

This is just a chart for Silicon Valley. The Republican party fractured in California since the 70s, that much is certain. The Democrats have enjoyed a supermajority monopoly in that state for quite some time. But this is not an indication of the country as a whole. Of course, in other areas, the Republican base got stronger since the 70s.

In the US land votes. I looked it up once how many large cities have a Republican mayor.

If the US ever abolishes the electoral college you'll see Democrats campaigning in rural Texas and Republicans in Silicon valley California because EVERY SINGLE VOTE COUNTS. It would get both parties out of their comfort zone.

Re: The techlash that never happened

#70

Post by CrazyStat »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #65
comex wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The NYT also has a narrative department that explicitly crafts all articles towards a target narrative for example and rejects articles or phrases that doesn't go towards the current target narrative. Citation needed.

https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex (NYT controversy)

Neither of those links provide evidence for the existence of a narrative department.
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