I've come to the conclusion is that politicians have decided that tech is a safe punching bag for both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans can punch up on tech companies to seem like they care about Russian interference without beating up their own candidate, or examining their own advertising practices, and Democrats are still angry that the election was so close and tech seems like something they can just keep punching unlike Comey or Clinton.
We basically need to weather the storm here and act contrite since no one has come to this topic with good intentions of actually trying to fix our elections.
Public sentiment has turned at this point. Tech companies are no longer the intrepid, utopic little guy fighting the good fight -- they are the incumbents.
I would bet serious money that one of the hallmarks of the next presidential election is regulation of big tech. The backlash is building. That wave will have some mainstream politicians calling to break up big tech.
There’s quite a bit of animosity directed at various tech companies from people all over the political spectrum. That is definitely bleeding over into the professional generally.
Cynically we could say that the current news cycle is about putting pressure on big tech companies to try to rig the next election in favour of a Democrat.
Even more cynically we could say that an awful lot of people at an awful lot of tech companies want to do exactly that, and “responding to pressure” just gives them a perfect excuse.
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