People really need to understand how mainstream it has become in some tech VC circles to argue that journalism itself is dangerous as an idea and should be abolished, and that it will be up to the tech world to carry this out.
It comes out of a Valley utopianism has said since the 90s that all legacy institutions are ultimately barriers to progress, but that the enlightened minds of the tech world, guided by the pure science of engineering, will one day liberate us by smashing the old ways.
The idea of rejecting institutions to build a purer society on the internet, in vogue in tech in the 90s, by the 2010s had become a mandate to abolish and remake those institutions in big tech's image
It's the VCs of the 2000s and 2010s, especially Peter Thiel, who came up with a certain Elon Musk via PayPal, who argued that this was the technology industry's destiny
Still, few in the Valley wholly shared this view. At least until 2018, when a series of disruptions radicalized – there's no other word for it – elements of the tech world, particularly around the idea that the news media is incompatible with their mission to elevate humanity.
If you remember the Clubhouse sagas of 2020, you saw how openly this is now discussed among some of the Valley's most powerful. "Why does the press have a right to investigate private companies? Let the market decide." theverge.com/2020/7/16/2132…
There's a deep belief that the defining battle of our time is bw tech companies that want to liberate us and dying institutions like the newsmedia trying to halt that progress out of a desperate bid for survival. Only by destroying those institutions can big tech save humanity.
There's been a movement for a few years now among many of big tech's most powerful VCs to mass block, even try to harass or ban, news reporters as a class. Journalism unwelcome in the new digital utopia. And that's the circle from which a certain new Twitter CEO comes.
Of course there's a lot that got us from the 1990s cyber-revolution manifestos to what we see on Twitter today, and a lot more going on behind the curtain. If you'll forgive the crass plug, I tell that story and its implications for our future in my book: littlebrown.com/titles/max-fis…
Like I was saying
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.