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Silicon Valley culture needs to recognize its tendency towards bullying people that are perceived to not fit the ideological mold, and fix it. Like now. Brendan
by pvnick 10y ago
Silicon Valley culture needs to recognize its tendency towards bullying people that are perceived to not fit the ideological mold, and fix it. Like now. Brendan Eich and Peter Thiel are two examples in recent memory. In addition to being ethically wrong, it's also bad for business in the long run. Trump isn't going away anytime soon, and part of his nationalist populist economic strategy to pick winners and losers. Silicon Valley may find itself as one of the losers.
- mwfunk 10y agoI would rather be a loser in Trump's world than profit from normalizing it.
- panic 10y agoThis isn't about their ideology; it's about their actions. We should be putting pressure on anyone working with Trump regardless of ideology.
- prodigal_erik 10y agoIf everyone who cares what you think stops advising Trump, all his advice will come from people who don't care what you think. Why would you ever want that!?
- panic 10y agoAll his advice already comes from people like that. If Trump were planning to swap out Bannon for Kalanick, what you're saying would make sense, but this is a relatively unimportant advisory council. It's not exactly Trump's inner circle.
- rhizome 10y agoWhat exactly is Trump going to replace Silicon Valley with, his 10 year old son who is "good at cyber?"
- mempko 10y agoImagine this dream. All of Trump's advisors get so scared they leave. Trump's support base falls over and he becomes powerless. We can dream.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoImagine this reality. Trump's tech influencers (the Thiel crowd) get scared and leave. Thiel loses influence. Bannon and the nationalists don't get scared. They show loyalty to Trump. Trump then favors the priorities of those who are loyal to him.
- mempko 10y agoDon't kid yourself, trump will only surrounded himself with like minded people. Judging from the people in Council. Uber exec isn't exactly known to be progressive.
- staticautomatic 10y agoThis is a lot of fear-mongering, relativist nonsense.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoPeter Thiel is a billionaire. In the words of Killer Mike, 'who's gonna bully me if I got a billy?'
- mark_edward 10y agoThe oppression faced by millionaires like Brendan Eich and billionaires like Peter Thiel is one of the biggest issues facing America today. We should all stand up in solidarity for the minority demographic "Holders of Immense Wealth".
- skybrian 10y agoPart of marketing is associating yourself with good things; that is, things your customers like or at worst don't care too much about. This is why most companies avoid controversy when they can. It seems naive to think that if you associate yourself with something some of your customers especially hate, it won't have any effect. Sometimes you gotta take a stand, but it has costs. (It's kind of weird to apply this to Uber though, since they're hardly a company that avoids controversy.)