Why is Big Tech backing Trump”s agenda
At Donald Trump’s inauguration on the 20th of January, what stood out was the world’s biggest tech czars: X’s Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Apple’s Tim Cook — all in the front row. Big tech billionaires are the new entrants in Washington’s corridors of power, thrilled that they can now yield power in a new way but with consequences that go far beyond the White House. Now these companies and their founders are gravitating closer and closer to the Trump orbit even if that means ending fact checks like Meta has done. OpenAI chief Sam Altman gushed on X “watching @potus more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him. I’m not going to agree with him on everything, but I think he will be incredible for the country in many ways”. Trump loves this. Watch video summary of Nidhi”s op-ed.Once a bastion of democratic and progressive values, Silicon Valley has donated millions to Trump. Elon Musk alone reportedly spent upwards of $250 million on Trump’s campaign. Look at Meta. Long forgotten are the days when Zuckerberg banned Trump on Facebook and Instagram for inciting violence after the US Capitol Hill riots on Jan. 6, 2021. While both men have said some unflattering things about each other, that has been left in the past. After the assassination attempt on Trump during the campaign, Zuckerberg decided it was time to shift gears. He appointed a close Trump ally, Dana White, to the Meta board, and announced the end of Meta’s fact checking programme. Zuckerberg defended doing away with it in the name of free speech. Meta will now have a “community notes” style template like X. Musk gave his approval to the new policy with a “Cool”. .Was Musk’s gesture at Trump inauguration a ‘Nazi salute’?.Global implications.Meta’s move has implications not just for America but all over the world. Facebook has more than 3 billion users most outside the US. For them including countries like India, Facebook is a huge source of news. Doing away with fact checks now opens up the social media space to even more manipulation and misinformation. Zuckerberg has justified cosying up to Trump in a question-and-answer session with Meta employees according to The New York Times. The paper says he told colleagues this was an “opportunity “ to have a “productive relationship with the US government “..Elon Musk used the free speech argument on X too to justify many policy changes. But it was very evident that X’s algorithm highlighted posts in favour of Trump and those tarnishing Kamala Harris. Musk has caused a ripple not just in America but also in the UK and Europe with his comments on grooming gangs in the UK and Kier Starmer’s leadership and his support for the far right in Germany where are elections are soon due..Google has made nice with Trump as it faces serious anti trust cases in the US. Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post and forced them to drop an endorsement of Kamla Harris, an example of when big tech interests collide with editorial policy. The problem today is that trust in mainstream, legacy media has eroded and more and more people rely on social media to get their news, and often their views. When algorithms are skewed in one direction, we can only imagine where this will go. .Legacy media needs to be strengthened, it needs to regain the trust of readers and viewers. For now, the fact that tech giants have overwhelmingly shown their support for Trump means the far right’s takeover of social media is complete. In the garb of “free speech”, anything and everything will be justified. .The consequences will be for everyone to bear. .Nidhi Razdan is an award-winning journalist. She has extensively reported on politics and diplomacy.
Source: Nidhi Razdan