Re:TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
by whimsicalism on Sunday January 19, 2025 @02:28PM
(#42760730)
yes, the Trump faction also flirted with anti-tech politics in the 2016-2020 cycle - but there have been shifts since then. i don't disagree with you that a significant part of this alignment is due to strategic reasons - but it doesn't fully explain outsized donations to Trump prior to his election and shifts in donation patterns by regular tech workers. I do think that there has been a real political shift rightwards in SF/SV, especially among the tech elites but percolating downwards.
Re:TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
by matthewdgreen on Sunday January 19, 2025 @03:41PM
(#42761578)
There has definitely been a rightward shift in SV management and ownership. Maybe a lesser shift in individual workers, but it's really hard to tell. And frankly, that hardly merits a footnote when compared to the sums that the wealthiest can spend on elections now.
Re:TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
by creato on Sunday January 19, 2025 @03:07PM
(#42761220)
The shift in SV isn't that much different from the rest of the country, and it's because Democrats are failing to govern in a positive way for anyone that isn't a recent illegal immigrant, petty criminal (or both), or can lay claim to some kind of minority. Even the things that Democrats are "for", like clean energy, are hamstrung by insane environmental or other regulation.
Re:TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
by spacechild1 on Sunday January 19, 2025 @04:29PM
(#42762066)
They don't want those pesky regulations. Marc Andreessen says it openly: https://a16z.com/politics-and-the-future/
This line in particular sums up the cynical stance of these billionaires:
> We are non-partisan, one issue voters: If a candidate supports an optimistic technology-enabled future, we are for them. If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them.
They simply don't care about society as a whole, they want their businesses to thrive, no matter what.
Trump proposed the TikTok ban and even tried to enforce it via executive action during his first term. He also said he would put Zuckerberg in prison and attacked big tech companies for almost a decade at this point. The reason Silicon Valley is aligning themselves with Trump’s administration is for strategic reasons. If there are any ideological reasons I doubt these would stand the test of pendulum shifts.
Republican speaker Johnson also still wants to enforce the ban and only considers Trump’s interference as a delay to have TikTok sold to a US entity (which the bill explicitly allows as an alternative): https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-johnson-2-...