Assuming today’s typical use of “politically correct”, it really works in the opposite. I. e. stories about racism or sexism in the tech industry have almost no

Assuming today’s typical use of “politically correct”, it really works in the opposite. I. e. stories about racism or sexism in the tech industry have almost no chance of reaching this audience, that could actually have the power to effect change. Meanwhile, stories and comments cynically portaying all of the “mainstream media” as corrupt, biased, and incompetent routinely rise to the top because that POV is now almost universally seen as uncontroversial fact. Explicit right-wing drivel like overt racism have no chance, thankfully. But having written a tech & politics column for 15 years in my native country, I can read my old stuff and see how my politics have developed. And while I have moved a bit on issues like diversity, I feel the tech community has moved somewhat in the opposite direction, or perhaps towards a sort of cynical, self-focused sort of populism. To use one example that’s almost purely about technology: the GPL used to have many proponents in the slashdot era. These days, anything not MIT licensed is quickly derided as “socialism” or “against freedom”. The general understanding of issues also seems to have gone downhill. It appears, for example, that very people even understand the motivation behind GPL 3.0.