> However, equally surprising to me, is the number of pro-big tech company HN people who are suddenly deeply concerned about unchecked corporate power.
I think its because the ideal vision of people who like minimal regulation is that they don't really think of mega-rich monoliths that have a direct impact on how an entire country chooses to consume its information. At least for me, I was one one of the annoying "but they're a private business" people until my optics shifted from viewing the issue as someone with an entrepreneurial mindset to someone who sees power concentrating and now being flexed by a small collection of mega-rich monolithic advertising companies that also happen to be collected in the same geopolitical region and possibly have an ideological bias.
In other words I reconsidered my principles in light of new information--my posting history here even shows this evolution. FAATG's decisions about how to handle what happened at the Capitol have actually scared the hell out of me, even more so than if the protesters/rioters/insurrectionists had actually succeeded in doing any of the wild shit people keep saying they intended to do. Those companies collectively own the most effective ways to communicate with others as well as almost complete control on the supply chain to create new competitors. I don't want to live in a world where that power exists in the hands of anyone, especially one that is willing to take political action and whose executives and employees vote and donate for one party.
> Right-wingers (conservatives haven't existed for decades now) aren't political because they don't have a value system at all. It's just confused rage at a world they don't understand and they feel is crushing them.
In the same post you lament people not knowing what the "left" is, you dismiss the right entirely as being comprised of nothing but valueless curmudgeons. This isn't meant to be a personal attack, I just want to point out the bias here in a fairly lazy jab at at least half the US since I've seen it a lot here the last few days. The right (and conservatives) do actually have a more coherent ideological standpoints than you assert, and I suggest digging into what they're saying. It'll be important now more than ever as we in Big Tech figure out how to deal with the massive class of people we've just alienated.