[baron_harkonnen]

> the left trying to shut down free speech

People really have no idea what the "left" even is anymore do they?

I was once down voted here for mentioning that the NYTimes is not an extreme left wing publication. The NYTimes is a centrist liberal publication that is widely reviled by anyone on the left.

It's amazing to me that the media (not just Fox-news and co) has constructed this bizarre bogey-man of the left as some control hungry liberals. Those people certainly exist, but they aren't, by anyone who is engage in leftist politics and theory, remotely left.

Believe it or not people on the left have been critical of the growing role that corporations have in setting public policy for decades. Sure, centrist liberals my be cheering, but nobody on the left wants to see corporations be the unchecked regulators of society.

However, equally surprising to me, is the number of pro-big tech company HN people who are suddenly deeply concerned about unchecked corporate power. People who two weeks ago would claim that companies should drive out employees who disagree with them, now wish these companies were subject to the will of the people. You can't spend a lifetime fighting to reduce the power of the federal government and then be surprised at all that large corporations are the ones deciding our public policy.

The entire fact that the will of the people has no direct power over corporate action is exactly why the left doesn't like the perpetual growth of corporate power and of its deregulation.

The unfortunate conclusion of all this confusion for me is that this is clearly not political in the slightest. Right-wingers (conservatives haven't existed for decades now) aren't political because they don't have a value system at all. It's just confused rage at a world they don't understand and they feel is crushing them.

[manfredo]

> The NYTimes is a centrist liberal publication that is widely reviled by anyone on the left.

This is a very different characterization than what most people would offer.

The New York Times is a staunchly left publication, and the past few years have seen the few centrist people at the company driven out (e.g. Bari Weiss). It is definitely not "reviled by anyone on the left", it's by far one of the most widely read publications among liberals.

I say this as a lifelong Democrat and liberal. This seems like one of those statements that only olds true when one draws the line between the left and right such that the overwhelming majority (easily >90%) are categorized on the right.

> People who two weeks ago would claim that companies should drive out employees who disagree with them, now wish these companies were subject to the will of the people.

Can you elaborate on what this is referring to? If you're talking about Coinbase, the company was asking employees to check their activism - of any political leaning - at the door. Not that people should be driven out. In fact, a big part of why this was well received is because often times activism in the company leads to employees trying to drive each other out.

[throwaways885]

> However, equally surprising to me, is the number of pro-big tech company HN people who are suddenly deeply concerned about unchecked corporate power. People who two weeks ago would claim that companies should drive out employees who disagree with them, now wish these companies were subject to the will of the people. You can't spend a lifetime fighting to reduce the power of the federal government and then be surprised at all that large corporations are the ones deciding our public policy.

I wouldn't say these are in conflict. The biggest reason I oppose political movement in SV corporations is because I believe they'd become even more censorious than they are now. Today's corporations are evil to make money and protect their brand, but I don't want tomorrow's corporations to be evil for a political ideology.

[malwrar]

> However, equally surprising to me, is the number of pro-big tech company HN people who are suddenly deeply concerned about unchecked corporate power.

I think its because the ideal vision of people who like minimal regulation is that they don't really think of mega-rich monoliths that have a direct impact on how an entire country chooses to consume its information. At least for me, I was one one of the annoying "but they're a private business" people until my optics shifted from viewing the issue as someone with an entrepreneurial mindset to someone who sees power concentrating and now being flexed by a small collection of mega-rich monolithic advertising companies that also happen to be collected in the same geopolitical region and possibly have an ideological bias.

In other words I reconsidered my principles in light of new information--my posting history here even shows this evolution. FAATG's decisions about how to handle what happened at the Capitol have actually scared the hell out of me, even more so than if the protesters/rioters/insurrectionists had actually succeeded in doing any of the wild shit people keep saying they intended to do. Those companies collectively own the most effective ways to communicate with others as well as almost complete control on the supply chain to create new competitors. I don't want to live in a world where that power exists in the hands of anyone, especially one that is willing to take political action and whose executives and employees vote and donate for one party.

> Right-wingers (conservatives haven't existed for decades now) aren't political because they don't have a value system at all. It's just confused rage at a world they don't understand and they feel is crushing them.

In the same post you lament people not knowing what the "left" is, you dismiss the right entirely as being comprised of nothing but valueless curmudgeons. This isn't meant to be a personal attack, I just want to point out the bias here in a fairly lazy jab at at least half the US since I've seen it a lot here the last few days. The right (and conservatives) do actually have a more coherent ideological standpoints than you assert, and I suggest digging into what they're saying. It'll be important now more than ever as we in Big Tech figure out how to deal with the massive class of people we've just alienated.

[_fnhr]

At least in the mainstream right wingers are the left wingers of yesterday. Two good examples are how free-speech and free-markets are considered right wing today.