{"id":275125,"date":"2025-09-30T20:32:47","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T17:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dana.nwar.uk\/sa\/facebook-and-silicon-valleys-split-from-the-democratics\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T20:32:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T17:32:47","slug":"facebook-and-silicon-valleys-split-from-the-democratics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/facebook-and-silicon-valleys-split-from-the-democratics\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook and Silicon Valley\u2019s Split From the Democratics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Illustration: Ward Sutton<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Three summers ago,<\/strong> a worker stood up at \u201cQ&A,\u201d Facebook\u2019s weekly all-hands, town-hall-style meeting, which is usually held on Friday afternoons in Menlo Park and livestreamed to its offices around the world \u2014 and aggressively closed to the public and press \u2014 to ask Mark Zuckerberg whether the company had a plan in case the public turned against it, like what had happened to the big banks a few years earlier.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg didn\u2019t even know how to answer the question. That backlash won\u2019t happen<\/em>, he said, as long as the company keeps shipping products people like<\/em>. Some conservative commentators had been accusing Facebook, with little evidence, of censoring their voices, but the company remained popular. Hillary Clinton, sure to be the next president, was shaping up to be a great friend of Facebook\u2019s and of tech titans in general. In fact, there were few more reliable allies of Silicon Valley in national politics than the Democratic Party. Democrats and many of Silicon Valley\u2019s leaders were partners on everything from campaign funding to voter-data programs. Sheryl Sandberg, of Lean In<\/em> fame, had traveled to Clinton\u2019s Brooklyn headquarters to talk about gender equality with the candidate and her staff almost as soon as the campaign launched in 2015. The following August, Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs\u2019s widow, held an intimate dinner for Clinton and about 20 industry leaders, each of whom paid $200,000 to be there. Around that time, Sandberg was widely considered a contender to be Clinton\u2019s Treasury secretary, and other Silicon Valley bigwigs, such as Google CFO Ruth Porat, were the subjects of Cabinet talk too. That spring, Apple CEO Tim Cook found himself on Clinton\u2019s initial list of potential running mates, and on Election Night, Google chairman Eric Schmidt \u2014 who\u2019d played an important role in guiding the party\u2019s data operations since 2008 \u2014 walked around the Javits Center wearing a staff credential.<\/p>\n

Three years later, things couldn\u2019t look more different. Leaders of Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party are, if not exactly at war, in some ugly early stage of a protracted, high-powered, acrimonious divorce. A new phase of regulatory crackdown has delivered fines, like $5 billion for Facebook\u2019s mishandling of user information (a slap on the wrist that caused genuine panic among other tech companies that can\u2019t afford the same fate). This month, members of the House demanded personal emails from executives at Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. But the split has also exposed the underlying marriage of party and industry as more a union of convenience than either side thought back in the Obama era, when liberals saw in the Bay Area a natural ally of technocratic progress. Perhaps no one had bothered to discuss the ideological details.<\/p>\n

Broadly speaking, Silicon Valley remains socially liberal and anti-Trump. Its boards and executive floors are stacked with Obama-administration alums. But what once seemed like an intuitive mutual understanding between the emerging Democratic majority and the robber barons of the 21st century has grown into something more mutually suspicious, sometimes even hostile. Technologists no longer unquestioningly assume the more liberal party actually shares their values, and Washington Democrats are no longer willing to be seen by tech billionaires as know-nothing functionaries who can be counted on to do their bidding. In 2017, when a nationwide listening tour prompted widespread speculation that he was running for president, Mark Zuckerberg was asked about his political plans at another company Q&A. No offense to the presidency<\/em>, he said, but I already run a community of 2 billion people<\/em>. Today, tech leaders are baffled and angry that Democrats so routinely question their motives. Who do they think they are?<\/p>\n

And while it took the 2008 financial crisis \u2014 and the decade of fallout that followed \u2014 to tear Democrats from Wall Street, the onset of their breakup with Silicon Valley happened much more abruptly.<\/p>\n

This decoupling reflects the tarnished reputations of once-gleaming companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, still widely trusted but increasingly damaged, especially on the left, by public furor over election interference, monopolistic practices, and labor policies. It reflects, too, a more populist Democratic Party, which sees tech monopolies not as the swaggering future of corporate America but as a target for a revived antitrust movement. (\u201cThe fact that within the first five minutes of the first debate of the entire season, antitrust came up \u2014 how far are we from 2008?\u201d asks Facebook co-founder and Obama 2008 \u201conline organizing guru\u201d Chris Hughes, who in May called for the company\u2019s dismantling and labeled his Harvard roommate Zuckerberg\u2019s power \u201cunprecedented and un-American.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Partly it reflects the rise of the alt-right and increasingly open libertarian sympathies among leaders in Silicon Valley, along with the growing divide between some of those bosses and the rank and file, who are much less comfortable with Trump. (Elizabeth Warren was the biggest recipient of Google-employee campaign donations over the first half of 2019, even as she threatened to separate the company\u2019s central businesses.)<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t just an ideological story or an inevitable one. Some blame for the breakup lies with the calculated maneuvers of just a few politicians on the rise and the blunders of a few big-money techies looking to play politics, with neither party willing to pay the deference the other felt was required. Democrats might\u2019ve been a lot more willing to forgive the sins of Big Tech if its executives had performed even the smallest show of political humility or contrition in their responses to political scandals or in their outreach to candidates.<\/p>\n

Or if some hadn\u2019t been so shameless in their courting of Trump or their ham-fisted playacting of distance from Democrats in response to Republican accusations of bias \u2014 one leading industry group presented its Internet Freedom Award to Ivanka Trump in May, for instance. Complaining about tech leaders, the chair of one state Democratic Party told me that at this point, \u201cthe only way for them to redeem themselves is to write big checks, which they\u2019re not doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Illustration: Ward Sutton<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If the question<\/strong> about banks befuddled Zuckerberg at the town hall, it would\u2019ve made sense to Warren, who, in private meetings on Capitol Hill as early as mid-2017, was explicitly comparing the country\u2019s tech leviathans to the pre-regulation giants of high finance because of their information advantages over consumers and their D.C. influence. Over the next two years, she effectively made it politically impossible for her serious rivals to offer Silicon Valley outright praise. BREAK UP BIG TECH read a billboard her campaign put up outside San Francisco\u2019s main Caltrain station this spring.<\/p>\n

Last September, Bernie Sanders re-branded legislation from Bay Area congressman Ro Khanna as the \u201cStop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act\u201d (Stop BEZOS), aiming to pressure Amazon into increasing workers\u2019 wages. Sensing trouble, Amazon calculated it would be worth back-channeling with Sanders\u2019s staff and invited the Vermont senator on a warehouse tour even as he ratcheted up public pressure. Sanders pushed on, and in October Amazon announced a $15 minimum wage for its U.S. workers. Sanders got no heads-up, but the left felt empowered. The company was reluctant to play nice again if it meant another public capitulation. The next month, when Amazon announced its deal to place a second headquarters in Long Island City, it did no concerted outreach to progressive activists, figuring it already had sufficient support from New York\u2019s Democratic mayor and governor, the latter having jokingly offered to change his name to \u201cAmazon Cuomo.\u201d As opposition to the deal soon mounted, both Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio failed to get Bezos on the phone, instead only occasionally connecting with Jay Carney, the former Obama White House press secretary now running Amazon\u2019s comms and policy arms. Amazon had enough of the leftward pressure and pulled out in February.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmazon came, Amazon left,\u201d Warren crowed a few weeks later in Long Island City, announcing a new plan to \u201cbreak up\u201d the biggest tech firms (which would actually have regulators undo a series of tech mergers). \u201cYou know, that is the problem in America today \u2014 we have these giant tech companies that think they rule the Earth. They think they can come to towns, cities, and states and bully everyone into doing what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone in the party saw it like that. Among the 2020 candidates, none have tried having it both ways on tech more than Pete Buttigieg, the contender who could fit most seamlessly into Sand Hill Road tomorrow if he wanted to. Buttigieg was Facebook\u2019s 287th user as an undergrad, knew Zuckerberg at Harvard, and hosted him in South Bend in 2017. He has criticized Google and appeared with striking Uber and Lyft drivers, but he has also raised money from or staged fund-raisers hosted by Netflix chief Reed Hastings; former Facebook exec Chris Cox; Uber\u2019s Chelsea Kohler; Google\u2019s Scott Kohler, John Flippen, Jacob Helberg, and Clay Bavor; Nest\u2019s Matt Rogers; Quora\u2019s Charlie Cheever; and Groupon\u2019s Andrew Mason. Buttigieg also tapped a Square and Kleiner Perkins alum, Swati Mylavarapu, to run his finance operation and a former Google big shot, Sonal Shah, to lead his policy shop.<\/p>\n

But even Buttigieg\u2019s growing Silicon Valley financial network pales in comparison to the operations assembled for candidates in recent election cycles after the door between Big Tech and campaigns burst wide open with Obama in 2008 and the industry cemented its role alongside Hollywood and Wall Street as one of the party\u2019s biggest backers. One reason for this is that the field of candidates is so big that investors are still hedging their bets, giving to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and others. Yet none of the candidates has publicly visited any of the tech behemoths in person, unlike in previous election cycles, when a Google stop was part of the campaign circuit for aspirants aiming to prove their savvy.<\/p>\n

The general cooling has shown up in more conspicuous places as well. Whereas tech giants co-sponsored many primary debates in recent election cycles \u2014 Facebook hosted two Democratic and two Republican debates in the 2016 race, while Twitter and YouTube each sponsored a Democratic one \u2014 this spring the companies made it clear to the debates\u2019 organizers that they would no longer participate. Onstage at the first debate in June, Booker was pushed to name specific companies when discussing the dangers of corporate consolidation, and he responded with a juxtaposition that would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. \u201cI will single out companies like Halliburton or Amazon that pay nothing in taxes,\u201d Booker said. No one batted an eye at the comparison of Amazon (which had hosted a big presidential address from Obama in his second term) to Dick Cheney\u2019s old company, and the moderators moved on.<\/p>\n

Tech\u2019s battered image<\/strong> goes only so far in explaining the Democratic Party\u2019s retreat. Tech overreach may have been just as important \u2014 Silicon Valley billionaires\u2019 being unwilling or unable to play nice with political veterans and what the tech crowd saw as their old, fusty rules when they did choose to get involved.<\/p>\n

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, for one, let the Democratic Establishment know he meant to innovate them into the future over the weekend of Trump\u2019s inauguration. Hoffman \u2014 who\u2019d advised Obama and Clinton, then finished Election Night 2016 by watching The West Wing<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>pilot \u2014 stood alongside Zynga founder Mark Pincus at a secluded gathering of party donors in southern Florida and pitched them on a platform that would empower voters to pick issues to pressure Congress about. That project was greeted with groans when shared more widely, like many \u201cdisruptive\u201d initiatives brought to Democrats in the aftermath of that humbling election. \u201cIt\u2019s hubris that these folks believe they can do anything and everything better than anyone else and that if you just give them some time and money they\u2019ll be able to fix it,\u201d one senior party leader told me.<\/p>\n

This dynamic was well illustrated by WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann, who\u2019d never demonstrated much interest in domestic politics before. (Hoffman, at least, has been a big Democratic supporter for years.) The Israeli-born businessman, who in the past few weeks has reportedly decided to cut the valuation of his company precipitously in advance of an IPO, recently talked with a political pro about the feasibility of changing the laws so people not born in the U.S. could run for president. He was told that this would be quite an undertaking and that it was unrealistic\u2014it would require a change to the Constitution. Neumann was then asked if he might consider running for governor or mayor in New York. According to someone familiar with the conversation, he replied, \u201cOnce you\u2019ve reached my level of success, only president will do.\u201d (A person close to Neumann says he was kidding about the requirements for running for office and denied he said that line.)<\/p>\n