I wouldn’t understate the role of companies like Google that pioneereed “exploiting idealism as a PR strategy.” The IPO listing claimed “Google is not a convent

I wouldn’t understate the role of companies like Google that pioneereed “exploiting idealism as a PR strategy.” The IPO listing claimed “Google is not a conventional company and does not intend to become one” and their recruiting tag line was “Do cool things that matter.” They leaned hard into social issues like gay marriage and paid lip service to FOSS and hacker pet topics. But over time they’ve shown willingness to sacrifice any amount of user privacy, willingness to censor and suppress, willingness to illegally collude against labor, and willingness to embrace special rules to protect elites in their club. People nowadays complain that gay pride parades have gotten too corporate, but especially by companies that are willing to exploit people in other ways. But this is simply the playbook Google pioneered, to take good will around certain social issues and use it as a decoy while you pick people’s pockets and put your boot on their face. I don’t think we can understate the extent to which good causes have been infiltrated by bad corporate actors and how much that had undermined our trust in our communities.