[TomMckenny]

I'm am guessing you do not live in Hungary, Poland, Brazil or Turkey either.

Everything in the US is political now: face masks, 5G networks, vaccines, mail. Facebook dominates people's lives yet is an endless spam of politics. Google search is facing anti-trust because it is "liberal", while the ISPs and other monopolies are strangely un-molested. Every tech company, apolitical or not, is automatically suspected by half of the country mostly because of their address.

But just for clarity, the major US debate is whether the election was fraudulent or not which is considerably higher stakes than a contest of identity. You can hedge your corporate bets by having no opinion on the mater but necessarily one of those parties is directly subverting the democracy. For anyone ok with that, then silence is undoubtedly a profitable path: why cut your business in half and alienate half of potential customers/employees over mere democracy?

[dane-pgp]

> why cut your business in half and alienate half of potential customers/employees over mere democracy?

I can foresee a near future where this becomes a very pertinent question. Suppose that, due to some underhanded dealings of the Electoral College (and/or SCOTUS), the current President were to be granted a second term. Further suppose that 70% of the country saw this process as illegitimate, but wanted to avoid any direct violent conflict.

My question is: Would big tech companies (or key employees within them) work together to implement a digital General Strike across the country?

This would be an extreme and probably criminal form of civil disobedience, although I imagine the perpetrators could be motivated by an expectation of receiving a presidential pardon if they were successful.

I'm sure that someone in the contingency planning departments of these big companies someone has gamed out what would happen if Apple and Google and Microsoft all pushed software updates to devices and online services which blocked certain activities (e.g. use by fossil fuel companies?) while controlling the media narrative by promoting messages from their side.

[adnzzzzZ]

Even if what you described about current American elections was actually the case (it isn't), it's not the purpose of a business to defend democracy. If you were a businessman in Germany during WW2 you would not have been a brave warrior fighting to preserve democracy, you'd just have moved on with your life and kept running your business, as would have (and as did) most people.

Also, what does Brazil have to do with this? I live here. Are you under the impression that Brazil is under the rule of a dictator or something?

[dmingod666]

How long does the US need to stop thinking that they are still fighting WW2..? it seems the only way they can interpret politics is in the context of Allies vs the Axis powers..

[ojbyrne]

I believe a significant number of people would answer “yes” to your final question, or at least complain that your leadership shows authoritarian tendencies, much like Victor Orban, Donald Trump, Rodrigo Duterte, etc.

On your first paragraph it seems to me a reasonable argument that if all the chemical companies in Germany dragged their feet, obfuscated, and ideally just outright refused to supply the government with poisonous gases, once it became clear they were being used on people, less people would have died.

[shadowprofile77]

Your statement about authoritarian tendencies is interesting. While I don't doubt that leaders like Trump or Duterte have them, it's a tricky situation to base such a label on their intentions or words alone. The vast majority of political leaders work towards the maximization of their own power regardless of their speaking style or underlying government type (Trump's overtly bellicose manner vs. say, Obama's much more diplomatically toned engagement with the public, other government branches and media). Either way though, I ask that you or anyone name how someone like Trump actually exercises(d) executive power very differently from a leader like Obama:

Both engaged in many of the same drives towards furthering their own personal political agendas during their respective administrations and while Trump says many things more baldly, and certainly lies much more flippantly, I fail to see how either his executive decisions or administrative pushes were or are in any notable way actually more authoritarian than those of Obama.

Just because one leader speaks more blandly than another doesn't mean that their fundamental governing power is much different, or that the more bellicose sounding figure is somehow an authoritarian if he or she is still fully constrained by the rest of a democratic government apparatus.

Furthermore, many if not most of the tendencies towards much broader presidential authority that Trump currently enjoys were established by a whole history of executive expansion which came before his term, and some of those started under much less visibly aggressive presidents. Focusing on what the orange man says more than on the deeper dynamics behind his office seems to me like more an exercise in ideological labeling than sound analysis of what authoritarian leadership means.

[adnzzzzZ]

>I believe a significant number of people would answer “yes” to your final question, or at least complain that your leadership shows authoritarian tendencies, much like Victor Orban, Donald Trump, Rodrigo Duterte, etc.

Someone showing authoritarian tendencies does not mean the country is under authoritarian rule. I don't like Bolsonaro but he is very far from having any real power in the country. And I would say the same of Trump. I don't know anything about the others.

>On your first paragraph it seems to me a reasonable argument that if all the chemical companies in Germany

Why would they do that? Hitler was popular because he actually fixed a lot of problems in Germany at the time. Either way, my argument is still that businesses shouldn't support or not support any particular politician. They should just move on with their business impartially, even if "democracy" is being threatened or if their product is being used for evil. It's not your job to judge how people use your technology.

[ojbyrne]

I really enjoyed and would recommend the Third Reich Trilogy [1], especially to anyone who thinks Hitler was “popular because he actually fixed a lot of problems in Germany at the time.” Hitler was never popular, he just appeared that way because he suppressed all opposition.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Reich_Trilogy

[adnzzzzZ]

Yea, just like I'm sure Trump was never popular, he just appeared that way because of... fake news and misinformation! Yea, no thanks. The way history is rewritten around touchy subjects is very clear to anyone paying attention, and it's always the same thing. In the future a book written about our time will use fake news instead "suppression of opposition" as the reason for why Trump was never actually popular. I would tell you to go read actual sources of information at the time: newspapers, books written from German citizens during those years, that kind of thing. You'll get a much more accurate view of history that way.

[pmyteh]

Trump was never popular, at least if you define 'popular' as having positive approval ratings. Maybe in inauguration week. Not afterward[0]. He was obviously popular with some people, but not the country as a whole.

Not sure why reading a censored German press would give you an accurate view of public opinion, either; and the German citizens' writings will vary depending on which citizens you read, and how circumspect they were about writing.

[0]: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/...

[TomMckenny]

>Even if what you described about current American elections was actually the case (it isn't)

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13301372676801863...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13304872462360289...

https://twitter.com/LizRNC/status/1330186217355350020

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13303679886215946...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13305556452134830...

https://twitter.com/TeamTrump

> If you were a businessman in Germany during WW2 you would not have been a brave warrior fighting to preserve democracy, you'd just have moved on with your life and kept running your business, as would have (and as did) most people.

Different people have different opinions about right and wrong. A different set behaviors by a large number of people would bring about a different outcome. Left unchecked, the luxury of dissent becomes more and more painful for company and individual.

[makeworld]

None of those tweets are evidence.