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Anil Dash
@anildash.com

I can never guess what things I post will get shared a lot; I’m glad people found this a useful summary of the grim reality of the tech tycoons. I said the other day that people usually think I’m crazy for about ~7 years, then they understand what I meant and get very sad and/or angry.

Anil Dash@anildash.com

It’s worse than this. Having been in the room with many of them (long ago, before I knew they were psychopaths), the tycoons who are left running the industry have an active contempt for ordinary people, including their own workers. They actively want to oppress, control and punish them.

Anil Dash
@anildash.com

We’re just about six and a half years since we voluntarily recognized the union at Glitch; our workers were the first at any startup to win voluntary recognition and I think the necessity of their organizing will finally start to become obvious to the rest of the industry soon.

6 reposts77 likes

Anil Dash
@anildash.com

It’s ten and a half years since I said that tech execs would be seen as the new robber barons. Saying that as a digital strategy advisor to the Obama admjn while he was still in office and many Google + FB alums were making tech policy, it was… not well received. medium.com/humane-tech/...

medium.com“I thought we’re the good guys?”No matter how good our intentions, people who work in tech will be seen as the new robber barons if we don’t start being more…
Anil Dash
@anildash.com

I don’t share all this to say “I told you so”. I share it to say “this was *obvious* to many, and documented, and shouted about at the top of our lungs. I know I don’t have any conventional credentials and have never pursued respectability, but it was ALL foreseeable.

J. Nathan Matias
@natematias.bsky.social

Thanks Anil for all your leadership on this. I too have been dismayed to see how much the social darwinism of the tech sector has sorted away those with the creativity to notice, reverse-engineer, and re-imagine how it might be better

wells
@wells.bsky.social

My question is if you think we're doomed to only have tech execs with these politics, which lately it does feel like... A big part of me wishes I could start a social media co-op that tries to do things thoughtfully, but at the end of the day I wonder if it'll fall to the same old tech trappings...

OlympicTorch
@olympictorch.bsky.social

I was a tech apologies for years. I kept saying things like “of course they’re antisocial, they’re nerds!” I think I took my admiration for Steve Jobs (problematic, but sincere) and extended it to the other tech leaders. Google’s vibes and slogans made them look much better than Microsoft or IBM.

Anil Dash
@anildash.com

I think we all started there! And in that era, they *were* differently bad, in ways that were less socially destructive.