Thread by @Noahpinion

1/Someone asked me why tech companies are becoming less popular in America, so here's a thread about that.

I think it's actually due to a confluence of three or four factors.

2/First, the Great Recession clobbered a lot of industries - finance, real estate, manufacturing, etc. etc.

But not tech. It was only a couple of years after the crash that the second Tech Boom was in full swing, minting billionaires and millionaires aplenty.

3/That naturally inspired a mix of dread ("what if tech eats the world and we all have to go work for those guys?") and envy, especially among people whose industries were either in decline and/or hammered by the recession.

4/The second reason is the increasing importance of the internet to our lives, and Big Tech to the internet.

In 1996, you could choose whether to do business over the internet. Now you can't.

In 2006, you could choose whether to use Google and FB. Now you can't really.

5/Big Tech has gone from being optional to being essential. Being essential means power and control. And power and control inspire fear.

What if Big Tech chooses to use its immense power over our daily lives for ill, rather than for good?

6/Privacy violations, crushing of small businesses, intentional injection of bias into search and display algorithms, squeezing of suppliers, shadowy military and spy stuff...these are all things Big Tech *could* do to you if it wanted.

Even if it doesn't, it *could*.

7/The third reason Big Tech is getting less popular is that the news media - who influence public opinion to some extent - are seeing their industry eviscerated by technology. And this understandably makes them mad at the forces that are killing their business.

8/The internet has already killed newspapers' monopoly over classified ads, depriving them of a HUGE source of profits. It has also dramatically lowered the price of advertising, which hits the rest of their revenue.

9/The internet has also put newspapers in direct competition with each other as never before. I can now read a million news sources at the touch of a button. That probably creates winner-take-all effects.

10/Finally, Google and Facebook - the main sources of traffic for digital news media - are platform quasi-monopolies that extract much of the ad revenue from news sites' ads for themselves, thus forcing the news sites to scrape by.

11/It is perfectly natural for people in the media to be upset at Big Tech, given how both the internet and the platform monopolies have slaughtered their profits and now threaten their very careers.

12/Finally, there's the 2016 election and the era of political turmoil that has followed. Many blame FB for Trump-boosting fake news in 2016. Some fear YouTube's algorithm is radicalizing right-wingers. The right fears that Google is biasing search results against them. Etc.

13/In an era of political turmoil, control of the narrative - and therefore of the media - is of paramount importance.

And in the age of the internet, Big Tech is the big media. FB/YouTube/Twitter is the new ABC/CBS/NBC.

14/So I think a confluence of at least four major factors is behind the deteriorating reputation of Big Tech.

But it's important to remember that despite ALL these factors, Big Tech is still reasonably popular!

15/So public opinion has not yet reached crisis levels for Big Tech yet. It's just headed downward.

So what can Big Tech do to avert a further deterioration in its public image?

A few things...

16/First of all, they can share more money with other businesses - share more ad revenue with news sites, avoid competing against companies that use their platforms, etc.

This wouldn't crush Big Tech's bottom line, and it would win a lot of goodwill.

17/Second, Big Tech can vastly reduce the amount of data it collects from users, especially because much of this data isn't really that valuable. And make it clear what people can depend on companies NOT knowing.

18/On the political front, there's probably not much Big Tech can do, but censoring trolls and obvious bad actors would help somewhat.

I'm sure they didn't want to find themselves in the position of the new ABC/CBS/NBC, but they need to lean into this role.

19/At the end of the day Big Tech is always going to be a scary force - its money, power, and mystery make that inevitable. But it could do more to present a benign image to the people who increasingly fear it.

(end)