Of course, currying favor with the new administration.
This has always been the case, of course, but it feels much more out in the open now. Where does the slippery slope end? Go down this road too far and these tech companies will end up like their counterparts in China (Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, etc.) who do the autocratic government's bidding in controlling the population (by controlling information) for fear of retribution to their bottom line.
I suspect individuals capable of being tech leaders are also capable of holding less partisan opinions.
I suspect most don’t really see themselves as a Democrat or a Republican, but individuals with their own principals, which makes it easier to see where there is alignment with each side.
> where does this slippery slope end? [...] who do the autocratic government's bidding in controlling the population (by controlling information) for fear of retribution to their bottom line.
The people have exercised power and voted for Trump. Corporations currying favor with the currently fashionable leader is what you should want, because the currently fashionable leader represents the interests of the people, and this is a check that the people have over corporations. You theoretically want to go all the way down this slippery slope for as long as the people control their government; the people are sovereign, and invest their power in an elected government; that in turn invest in corporations the freedoms that they need to maximize prosperity.
Or is something wrong with the institutions today that despite Trump winning both in terms electorally and the popular vote, this is somehow undemocratic? I would like for you to examine why a dynamic that is supposed to be democratic has led you to consider that it is aligned with autocracy (I think you mean authoritarian here); such an exercise will help with the quality of the discussion we are having.
That's an interesting point, but if you follow it just a little bit further you'll realize the problem. Corporations shouldn't live in existential fear of the executive administration because then they'll kowtow to every executive demand regardless of the legitimacy.
What happens if Trump decides that every media outlet that criticizes him should be muzzled? Your suggestion is that all these born again Republican companies should play along and turn themselves into FOX News. That is a feedback loop that would permanently enshrine the current officeholders.
> Corporations shouldn't live in existential fear of the executive administration because then they'll kowtow to every executive demand regardless of the legitimacy.
Every executive demand is legitimate in a democracy to the extent that they represent the people. To take an extreme example, media companies should want to pander to the government, except only in cases where the government fails to represent the electorate. On the other side of the coin, one thinks that it is the national interest to muzzle foreign-owned media companies that represent only foreign national interests, and you would think that it is democratic for such companies to live in fear of the executive administration. You have a contemporary example in TikTok, where regardless of the actual reasons the rhetoric used to justify current actions is couched in that.
That perspective assumes people are passive receptacles, who simply vote for whatever the TV tells them to vote for. But most US TV news and newspapers was supporting Harris, and in every election Trump was outspent by his opponents. People aren't slates on which other people scribble, they have agency and make their own decisions.
Trump tried to overturn the results of an election. That should never happen in our democracy and he should never have been allowed to run for president. There's not even any point in debating policies. It's not about Republican vs Democrat, it's about democracy vs authoritarianism, which he tried to do 4 years ago and was only stopped by Pence and the Georgia Sec of State.
So yes, very undemocratic.
I did mean autocracy -- that's what China has become (once again) under Xi.
No matter what Trump tried to do, I think that winning the popular vote and election is the highest form of democratic legitimacy. Xi was not elected by the people, and the party's election of their head of party was not fair (there is coercion); that's why some people say that he is an autocrat. A government cannot be autocratic when its head-of-state is decided by an election that is quite representative. If the US were an autocratic government, the election would be meaningless, and Biden would be naming his successor. Which is not presently the case.
The best argument I can give for your statement is that the present US population democratically chooses as their head-of-state a person who would like the government to be more autocratic, or have authoritarian personalities, or are strongmen; between Chávez, Marcos, Duterte, Modi, and Bolsonaro, among others, you will be able to find instances where strongmen with great popular support are elected in sufficiently fair and free elections. I still consider they reflect the will of the people, even as some regard that the people suffer for that choice.
In which case, my original point still stands; I still think you want companies to want to cooperate with governmental leadership in a well-functioning democracy, and you have misidentified where dysfunction lies (if there is dysfunction) by thinking that for things to be arranged otherwise would be democratic.
> I still think you want companies to want to cooperate with governmental leadership in a well-functioning democracy
Without education, people will succumb to bias, propaganda and misinformation, often voting against their own interests. There's already a fundamental issue with capitalism favouring profit above anything else, leading to a lot of the current issues with (for example) privatization of health care. I don't think you can have a functional democracy without education. As a species we keep falling into a pattern of a wealth gap, followed by extremism, followed by wars, followed by poverty, while at every individual step we find reasons why it's perfectly fine.
you're really missing the point. Having an autocratic president weakens the foundations of democracy. If Trump is okay reversing a free and fair election, then he is okay with acting in ways that are completely undemocratic, whether those who voted for him (less than 50% of voters, by the way), agree or not. So yes, a government that is elected can absolutely become autocratic if its leader is able to undermine the pinnings of democracy and does not encounter sufficient opposition. (Hitler came to power as the result of elections too.)
You don't seem to have a problem with autocracy, but I do. I've lived in countries with those leaders - and Trump is cut from the same cloth. Enjoy it while it lasts.
No, you're missing the point. This discussion isn't about my comfort level with autocracy, it's about how, in a democracy, you want corporations to be aligned with the policies of the currently fashionable governmental leadership.
> You don't seem to have a problem with autocracy, but I do.
I hadn't expressed my own views in autocracy myself. I had argued how the democratic will of the people as expressed for elections can actually be for the (future) society they live in to be autocratic; I gave examples, and you just gave Hitler as an example. So I don't think you have argued against this point. You should revise your last paragraph to read:
(The voting US majority) doesn't seem to have a problem with autocracy, but I do. I've lived in countries with those leaders - and Trump is cut from the same cloth. Enjoy it while it lasts.
I had hoped that you would be able to express that you understand that the current system is somewhat democratic, and that the current will is for the democratic system to extinguish itself. With this distinction being understood, I would have liked to discuss what institutions it would take for a society to not only be democratic, but also sustain that democracy into the future.
I would have liked to explore more nuanced notions; for example,
- you talked about companies "doing the autocratic government's bidding in controlling the population (by controlling information)", but I wanted to discuss what it means
- to shape the information environment of a voting citizen, so that they have certain beliefs so strongly autocratic that even in a democratic process their democratic will is to have an autocratic government.
- to examine the reality of the information and mass communication environment already present that is quite necessary for nationhood, that convinces someone to vote for a person that they have never spoken to personally and pretty much never heard of directly with their eyes and ears, to protect and advocate for their personal interests and rights, over someone they know from experience they can trust with for that like a family member or close friend. It is clear to a 4 y.o. that their parents are the only person they can trust for that, but as we grow up and learn about society through our information diet, we learn that we should be trusting people we never meet for it.
It's different this time because Musk helped get Trump elected and is there as First Buddy and they are scared he'll use that to advantage X and Xai etc to take over the market from them.
I don't like this being flagged. This is a leader in our industry, involved in precedent setting legal action, discussing the solipism of his opposing side, and the further weakening of the laws on which he relies.
Flagging only potentially limits further discussion, i.e., the ability of HN commenters to add more comments and votes. The submission stays regardless of being flagged.
I'm not a gamer but Tim Sweeney seems like he has some integrity unlike these so-called "tech leaders".
Just for the sake of argument, what if they were just pretending to be Democrats?
I think the "fair weather voter" is a real phenomenon - people are often more attached to being part of the winning team than they are to their political beliefs. And I don't see why tech leaders would be immune from this.
I see you’re getting downvoted but I’d be interested in a comment with an alternative perspective. I haven’t listened to it so I don’t know the contents or how genuine they are.
Tech Opportunists could coast taking advantage of Moore's Law, outsourcing and low interest rates for decades. As the environment changes, we will see new types of leadership.
The word "currying" is never used at all in that context. There is no coverage at all, typically, because it's accepted as a good and virtuous thing. Do you remember seeing standalone articles about [insert company here] donating to a presidential inauguration fund? Of course not; there is no more mention than the fifth paragraph in an article discussing overall planning for the inauguration itself, with a few names mentioned as representative examples of how corporate America is donating to this celebration of American democracy.
Tim Sweeney literally exploits children’s psychology on an Epic scale with Fortnite V-Bucks. He doesn’t get a say about anything, and in a sane world, would probably be in prison (and he wouldn’t be alone).
If you wrote a web app for elderly people which demanded $799 every time they needed tech assistance, with said assistance coming straight from Pakistan and thus unintelligible, there’s no law against that.
But seriously, if you have literally once condemned something that doesn’t have a law against it, that shows your argument is trash.
That doesn’t make him any more right than someone who pulled this claim out of his rear. Tim Sweeney has hated all of these people for years, so it’s a fine slur completely in line with past comments.
I find Fortnite to have a much more reasonable monetization pattern compared to literally all other games that children play nowadays (Genshin and Roblox being the two most problematic). I also love that Epic is the only attempt at breaking the Steam game distribution monopoly we have today.
Also, Sweeney not wrong. Billionaires are lining up to pay Trump his dues because it'll lead to more $$.
I'm not saying Genshin's pull-gambling isn't problematic, but it was one of the first I knew of that have a pity system, where you'd eventually be guaranteed to get the unit you wanted. As a player that pays $5/mo for some gems and gets all their other gems for free, I've hit that pity payout quite a few times since launch.
I wouldn't call it "one of the most problematic". It's bad, but it's not even close to the worst.
Fortnite does feel a lot more reasonable to me. From what I know of it, you pay for things directly, or you pay for a pass that you earn things on if you just play enough. And it's pretty cheap, compared to other online service-based games.
And it's not pay-to-win. I bought a skin when I was playing Fortnite just because I sunk enough time into it. Gachas in games like Genshin, on the other hand, directly impact gameplay and prey on the frustration of F2P gamers and their sense of progression. I'm a fan of microtransactions when it's purely cosmetic.
I got into Pokemon TCG Pocket recently, and the temptation to pay to keep pulling cards / doing wonder picks is strong. I can see why it's making almost as much as Pokemon Go's launch.
IMO framing any discussion around pay2win is missing the forest for the trees and playing into publisher's hands.
On Gamebanana (formerly FPSBanana) you'll find a million pieces of non-P2W content for certain games created for free.
Sure hosting the stuff is not free and has never been, but discussing the nuances of monetary addons is very far from the firsts of complaining about horse armor DLC or the distinction of extensions and addons, given that gaming was paid of gamers' own pocket for a long time.
The narrative is shifting/has shifted from a cultural to a consumerist artifact, exactly as intended.
I would consider modding very different from pay-to-win mechanics. We're talking about live service games with anticheat and online communities.
I think it's just the nature of live service games that have grown in popularity, their expectation of ongoing content creation, rising salary/production costs for said game development, and the wild success MMORPG's discovered years ago with gacha whales. I will say I greatly appreciated the F2P cosmetics-only business model during my MMO days as a student with no income.
Kind of rambling at this point, but my problem lies in the exploitative psychology commonly found with microtransactions in these sorts of games. Cosmetics-only seems to relieve a lot of the pressure to take out one's wallet.
Live service games are a phenomenon of securing income streams. In the cultural era this live service has been done by (let's face it) mostly children such as formerly you and me.
There never was a significant beneficial income (or rather: profit) stream. Only a stream of (self-limiting, but sometimes long lasting) experiences.
I have thousands of hours on a multiplayer game that cost 20 bucks. Its obscure sub-community has lived on for 20 years largely self hosted despite the formal "need for development".
I get that this also is about the ever precarious profession of an artist, but the market may simply not be as large. Content creators (hate to use the term) work for a living at the margins to create ever more stuff, to squeeze through the tight attention grid (dozens of games get published on Steam every day now!)
This creates pressure and it motivates the need for repeatability of transactions, so this story may not necessarily be about greedy execs alone (though it certainly can be!).
I find it ultimately tragic. So much creative talent chasing too little attention and only the most predative sustaining. When the market was more restricted these effects weren't as pronounced and you could more readily create mythologies (such as around Half Life or FF7)
How about we accept the truth that any child psychologist would tell you: they are both, and all, exploitative. The only thing that could remotely considered ethical would be a game paid for upfront.
It’s like saying that it’s better that our children are smoking cigarettes instead of smoking weed. How about we just stop the smoking in the first place?
You do pay "up front" for Fortnite. For every season. It's constantly being updated and getting new content.
You can continue playing for free with your old skins and enjoy the game. You don't need to pay more. But you can also choose to get the new stuff, and you know what it'll be before you pay.
In a world where toys in cereal boxes are considered "exploitative", I'm not going to argue that live service games aren't. But there's a world of difference between what Fortnite does and what Genshin Impact does.
Because it sieves for those who don't give a damn about whatever values lead the previous generation to forfeit their seat. Are we not just climbing an old argument?
Hewing to this conversation specifically, I’m not so sure that the interests of preventing fascism is a goal reserved to previous generations.
The top comment’s “the H in STEM is for history” is apt here.
Speaking generally though, just because someone vacating a seat means someone else can sit in it, doesn’t mean that next person has to be any worse.
At the end of the day, many of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are showing that they’re happy to service fascism (or worse) if it serves their own goals, and history won’t be fooled about that. Let us not pretend it’s all about shareholder returns. The likes of Zuckerberg and Musk thrive on this without too much worry about what shareholders will think.
To become a "tech leader" your values of market dominance and maximizing profit overrides any party sentiment.
Look at international chains - they're in countries that are democratic, authoritarian, theocratic, monarchist, capitalist, socialist ... it doesn't matter
The only name I recognize on that list is Sarkeesian, who made waves years ago for being one of the first journalists to criticize mainstream games for being misogynistic, objectifying, and/or overly-sexualizing female characters.
It was controversial at the time because she was/is an outsider and not a gamer, and kicked off the Gamergate thing in which some really ugly things got said about her.
This has always been the case, of course, but it feels much more out in the open now. Where does the slippery slope end? Go down this road too far and these tech companies will end up like their counterparts in China (Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, etc.) who do the autocratic government's bidding in controlling the population (by controlling information) for fear of retribution to their bottom line.
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