A seething hot bed of toxic neutrality. In the great pantheon of Silicon Valley political discourse many questions have been recently asked in good faith: are all forms of thinking valid, or is there an acceptable band of political speech? What role should the technology industry play in shaping national or international discourse, and — perhaps most importantly — should it be arbitrating truth? By what method? If algorithmic, can we see the algorithm? If by moderation, with some written law somewhere, penned by some unnamed executive, can we see the law? Can we speak with the executive? Our understanding of the way powerful men and women in the industry think about questions so abstract as truth, the nature of which has been debated for thousands of years, is not some triviality. The internet has fundamentally reshaped society, and questions pertaining to how we interact online are therefore questions of historical importance. The industry is not — can not be — above reasonable inquiry and critique. But this week, TheWashington Post’s Nitasha Tiku argued Silicon Valley is a fount of right wing (“far right,” with an implied possibly “alt right,” which is to say literally “white nationalist”) power. This is not a good faith critique. This is a demonstrable, insane lie.

Perhaps more striking than the misinformation was the inclusion in the piece of so telling an admission of icy rebuff from almost every one of the story’s central figures, a full eight of whom declined a request to comment from the Post. Presumably, the shocking volume of refusals to speak with an ostensibly-reputable outlet was catalogued in such a way as to demonstrate the nefarious silence of a shadowy, Silicon Valley elite. But has there ever been a cabal of shadows so talkative? Like, in history? These people are addicted to Twitter. They speak publicly every day. They just aren’t speaking with the tech press. This implies not their desire to conceal their opinions from the public, but hints rather at their opinion of the press, which they see as openly adversarial. This is not to say critical. This is not to say “asking the hard questions.” The sense among entrepreneurs, technologists, and venture capitalists is the press actually wants to destroy them.

Through my work on Pirate Wires and Anatomy of Next I received an unexpected reality check. It was not so long ago I thought the press was an antiquated, entirely unnecessary professional construct. I focussed on the loud social media personalities and the mistakes journalists made, often about people I knew, or companies with which I was familiar. The press seemed classist, elitist, and, more often than not, wrong. It also seemed to be going extinct, and I was glad. But more recently, in attempting to provide context or depth on some important topic or other, I’ve found myself relying on the work of serious journalists covering a wide range of topics spanning everything from local politics and UFOs to the Chinese Communist Party, COVID-19, and even, yes, the technology industry. Often, I’m looking for hard facts, dates, timelines, which these professionals, many of them working for mainstream institutions like The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, and The Washington Post have dedicated their lives to soberly providing. These are serious, studious writers, and they tend not, I’ve discovered, to make a lot of noise on Twitter. I’ve become acquainted with many of them, have a great deal of respect for what they do, and I’ve been asked, many times now, by people with whom I’d like to one day work in good faith collaboration, what the hell is going on between the media and tech. I’ve written a bit about this before in a piece precipitated by an early, absolutely ridiculous Clubhouse drama. I believed mostly the problem was the two industries were locked in an unfortunate tribal conflict in which no one was really listening to “the other side.” But dialogue, here plainly rejected by tech leadership, is impossible if requested in some obvious bad faith, which the Post’s piece on the politics of Silicon Valley clearly confirmed.

As I don’t believe the technology industry is better for such ugly relations with the press, and I know the press isn’t benefited by so little exposure to the people they’re meant to be covering, I think some analysis of this story is in order. My sense is many journalists genuinely do not understand the problem people in tech have with their coverage. My hope is therefore I might provide some insight here by way of my reaction to this most recent, offending piece.

Let’s take it from the subhead.

“In the left-leaning tech industry, ‘Don’t talk politics’ is the diplomatic way to say ‘Don’t be liberal.’”

Wow, many questions from the top. First, are we arguing, here, that the technology industry is dominantly leftist or liberal? This language is important because, next question, are we all sure what “liberal” means? The behavior we’re seeing among the tiny fraction of activists in tech and media currently losing their minds over, for example, Brian Armstrong’s absolutely vanilla blog post about mission orientation and focus, is of course incredibly illiberal, a culture of harassment, intimidation, and silencing that is broadly unpopular among actual liberals. But yes, it’s certainly leftist in the vein of standard Marxist political tactics (and demands, but that’s another wire for another day). Then, has anyone in tech said employees can’t talk politics, or is the movement now afoot the unimpeachably reasonable position that employees should not use company resources — including the time for which they are being paid to work — for their live action role play of the Purge? It’s apparently quite easy for a journalist, at least in journalism’s current incarnation, to confuse her work with activism. But this kind of bleed between the personal and the professional makes a lot less sense for a software engineer, for example, who mostly just codes, and who by the way took this job because she likes to code, not because she wants to spend three hours a day parsing the nuances of academic, identitarian dogma rooted in, let’s be honest, some offensively regressive concepts on a workplace slack chat. But the most important question is why on earth would a liberal executive not find tolerable a liberal employee, unless…

*spooky music happening*

If there was any confusion about the piece’s central thesis, it was clarified on social media, where a handful of comments, all of a similar “right wing” frame, were retweeted:

One of the writer’s retweets went so far as to employ the phrase “Silicon Valley is very ‘progressive’ in a eugenics way, but has never been liberal…” and concludes, in a thread, “It’s been a bastion of American fascism for 150 years.” And so the discourse is dragged to discourse Hell, which is, as all Very Online People know, thinly-veiled accusations of Nazism.

And by the way WHAT is that picture?

Ok.

First, the discussion here is purposely complicated by a distinction between tech “workers” and tech “owners.” This is something that happens in tech coverage quite a lot these days. Most notably I’ve seen it in the context of walkouts and obscure, marginal attempts at unionization at some of the larger tech companies, often absurdly comparing the specific struggles of a six-figure salaried HR executive at Google with the specific struggles of an early-Twentieth Century coal miner suffering from industrial bronchitis. There has of course never been a class of worker so empowered, so wealthy, and of so great an abundance of opportunity as the average technologist. And yes, again, the average technologist consistently votes blue. But so does the average executive, and not by a little. Support for the Democratic Party, at every level of the technology industry, is overwhelming. These are the numbers. In fact, tech industry executives are least likely to support Trump of any class of tech employee, with the vast majority of the president’s trivial support within the industry concentrated among warehouse employees and gig workers. That Silicon Valley is run by the far right is an impossible argument to make without proving first some decidedly far right bent of its leadership. As all available empirical data on the subject indicates not only the opposite of this position, but an opposite so extreme as to indicate a disinformation effort on the part of the Post, we are made to rely on a small handful of anecdotes.

Let’s take a look at that trash fire.

Cyan Banister, a libertarian-leaning investor, wondered publicly what the Proud Boys actually wanted, and how they thought. Never mind her loud endorsement, support, and primary-long campaigning for the presidency of Pete Buttigieg, a moderate Democrat, which took place just this year, details of which — for some strange reason — did not make the piece. Survey says: FAR RIGHT. Our next anecdote, reported with absolutely zero context, concerns a controversial writer with no prominent position of leadership in tech. This man appeared on a Clubhouse chat with Marc Andreessen (an actual industry leader). For readers not familiar, Clubhouse is a chat app not entirely unlike an interactive radio show, in which anyone can host or enter a room, and talk or listen to anyone they want, or not. This is to say Andreessen committed the grave crime of appearing in the same, digital space, not even necessarily by his own choice, as a “canceled” person, where he had the absolute “far right” audacity to listen to a conversation in total silence. Did Andreessen endorse any of the forbidden writer’s opinions? No. Did the two so much as speak to each other? No. And what did this forbidden writer talk about? Publicly? To an audience of literally tens of people? No idea. It wasn’t reported. This is all unimportant information as far as The Washington Post is concerned. Finally, it’s back to Brian Armstrong’s explicitly apolitical Coinbase position, and a note on, again, the trend in tech away from literally paying employees to do activism while at work.

In 2016, there was a single, notable leader in tech who drifted so “far right” as to support the current president. I’m quite familiar with the story on account of the heretic in question is my boss, Peter Thiel, and his support of Trump was not, shall we say… an entirely popular position in the industry. Awkwardly enough, the hysterical, overwhelmingly negative reaction to Peter’s endorsement made it into the Post’s piece, subtly confusing the narrative about as much as the inclusion of the only actually objectionable comment from a tech leader. That was Dick Costolo’s recent, thoughtless “joke” about murdering capitalists, a decidedly leftwing critique— not a defense — of Coinbase, the Post’s purported front of right wing political activity, which left many readers scratching their heads:

With no hard, supporting evidence for the central thesis, and with only a few, weak anecdotes, it’s clear to me, as it’s clear to most people working in the technology industry, the purpose of this story was to malign and mislead. It’s also a pretty wild piece of gaslighting. We all know the central thesis is grossly incorrect. The average person adds this example of apparent journalistic malpractice to a running tally of such examples in their mind, and walks away with the sense they can’t trust The Washington Post. Add Twitter to the dynamic, with all the visible support from other writers covering tech, and it’s easy to generalize a sense that no one covering the industry can be trusted. Strictly speaking, is that correct? No. But do you see how we’ve arrived at this position?

Would you speak with someone, on the record, who you are certain wants to hurt you?

You wouldn’t.

Thank you, next. Balaji Srinivasan argues the future of media is simply us — folks working in technology should build their own audiences, bypass this current incarnation of the press completely, and themselves become, in a sense, the media. Balaji’s been a favorite focus of the tech press Twitterati since his absolutely iconic clapback, eight months ago, after being mocked for correctly warning people about the lethal pandemic that, shortly after, killed over a million people and crippled the global economy. If you recall:

These days, he routinely turns down interviews from the institutional press, which he understandably does not trust, opting instead to speak with people who work in tech, but also write or podcast — “citizen journalists,” or “tech influencers.” I find his entire vision for the future of media compelling, and share a lot of his perspective. I especially think most young people, with no platform of their own, should avoid speaking with journalists unless they feel they absolutely must. If they must, they should research the journalist. Study what the journalist has written over the last few years, study their tweets and public commentary. In most cases, an understanding of the journalist’s worldview, and a sense of the kind of story they want to write, should be fairly apparent. Once you have a sense of what they want to write about you really just have to be honest with yourself: how might someone like me, doing the kind of work I do, best fit into the kind of story this journalist likes to tell? If gauging a writer’s perspective like this is not something that comes easy to you, you should absolutely not be talking to anyone in media. Not all tech journalists want to cast you as a villain in whatever drama it is they’re weaving, but many do, and the most unfair stories are often the most widely read.

But regardless of the bad actors — and they are legion — I believe in the value of a responsible media. While I have no doubt Balaji is going to be right, in some significant part, in the long term, full-time journalists, backed by the support of well-resourced institutions dedicated to their work, soberly reporting on what’s happening in our world serve an important function in our society. They’re also likely not going anywhere, or at least not for a while. The most probable outcome is our media will persist in a mixed state of full-time, institutional professionals, influencers, and, increasingly, in-house media teams for at least the next couple decades. This is all to say I think we should learn to get along.

“Crossing enemy lines” might be helpful. When something especially egregious is misreported, or obviously malicious, strong condemnation from the press would be meaningful. Separate from reporting, there’s social media, and I know there are journalists who believe the behavior of the unhinged Twitter personalities hiding behind the name of powerful media institutions has gotten out of hand. Well, draw a distinction between your work. You can point to the behavior of tech Twitter, and “both sides” this whole thing until the world ends, but no one in tech is paid for objectivity, no one in tech expects to be treated as an objective observer, and the behavior of people in tech does not by extension degrade your profession. That call is coming from inside your house.

We could also all be drinking more, for what it’s worth. Together. In a bar, or a park. Imagine, a conversation face-to-face, unmediated by our social media hellscape. Weird!

(Seriously though hmu I’m lonely)

-SOLANA