Max Fisher Profile picture
Dec 16, 2022 10 tweets 3 min read Read on X
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 ImageImage
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 Image
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…
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More from @Max_Fisher

Jun 25, 2024
Most young people get their news from social media. But influencers lack the resources to gather information so mostly repackage it from traditional sources

The result is young people *do* consume trad'l news, but refracted through an attention economy that hides its provenance Image
The online attention economy is governed by algorithms that reward outrage, conspiracism, and social distrust. So the influencers who get most amplified are the ones who repackage traditional news while telling followers to distrust those sources as agenda-driven and dishonest.
That the top social platforms now explicitly suppress news links has further shifted young peoples' media diets away from primary sources and toward influencers whose livelihoods depend on repackaging that news with a "the media won't tell you this" framing.
Read 5 tweets
Mar 1, 2023
After seven great years at the NY Times, I resigned last week to pursue an exciting new project, to be announced soon. But I wanted to share a bit about why I left what had been my dream job since my days at the student paper.
Since Jan. 6 and other events, I've been thinking a lot about where I could do the most good. No knock against the NYT, which remains more essential than ever. I came to believe I could personally be of greater use to people in a different form, which you'll hear about soon.
But I'd be lying if I said that the now yearslong and increasingly bitter fight between the guild and management over our contract hadn't played a role. But not because of money.
Read 7 tweets
Jan 9, 2023
The images out of Brazil yesterday might've looked eerily similar to Jan 6th, but there are some extremely important differences between the two events.

I'll survey the big ones here. Altogether they suggest that Brazil's J8, scary as it was, was more tantrum than full J6.
1. AGENDA // Jan6 was executed with the explicit goal of overrunning Congressional vote certification so as to overturn Trump's election loss and keep him in office.

In Brazil, there was no ongoing certification to seize. Bolsonaro had already left. His loss was forgone.
On Jan6, the storming of Congress was just one part of a larger plot to overturn the election in an orchestrated autogolpe/self-coup.

In Brazil, there was no apparent larger plot. No electoral process to seize. It was just the riot.
Read 11 tweets
May 20, 2022
News: A major U.S. company is, through a factory in owns in Russia, quietly supplying vital materials used by Russia’s air and missile forces in Ukraine

Our investigation reveals the company’s terms with Moscow – and its struggle to keep its plant running nytimes.com/2022/05/20/wor…
We reconstructed the history of Alcoa/Arconic's involvement in Russia through financial filings, archival reports, and, chiefly, internal company documents provided by a whistleblower who had a moral objection to the company continuing this work amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The company didn't seek out Russian military work. Rather, this was Moscow's condition for it to, in 2004, purchase a massive factory in Russia, which mostly produces basic commercial/industrial goods. The plant also had some machines that can make advanced aerospace materials.
Read 15 tweets
Apr 28, 2022
Two stories today highlight that authoritarianism doesn’t come with a tank rolling up to the capital anymore. It comes with a leader promising to do whatever it takes to control the dangerous minorities or radicals in our midst, to protect “us” from “them.”
In El Salvador, Bukele’s iron-fist crackdown on crime is winning grudging public support, even as he hollows out the judiciary and independent institutions. If they try to check his power, they must oppose the people’s will or support the criminals, right? nytimes.com/2022/04/28/wor…
Hungary’s initial turn toward authoritarianism looked, @zackbeauchamp shows, a lot like parts of America today: a patriotic leader pledging to “take back” social and cultural institutions from the radical minorities who’d corrupted them. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
Read 6 tweets
Mar 26, 2022
I would strongly urge people to wait for the context on Biden’s speech before repeating that he called for regime change in Russia, much less made this US policy. The nine-word quote being passed around does not, on its own, support this.
Maybe it will turn out that, in context, he did say this. But folks may be overinterpreting based on a very unusual stretch in 2011, when Obama said similar things to signal when the US was dropping support for MidEast leaders facing Arab Spring protests. Not really the same.
Unclear whether this was a case of lost context, a gaffe/misstatement, or a post-speech walkback. Maybe some combination.
Read 7 tweets

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