From The Wall Street Journal:
Americans have a paradoxical attachment to the social-media platforms that have transformed communication, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds, saying they regard services such as Facebook to be divisive and a threat to privacy but continue to use them daily.
Across age groups and political ideologies, adults in the survey said they held a negative view of the effects of social media—even though 70% use such services at least once a day.
. . . .
The deep-dive survey into views of technology draws a picture of Americans struggling personally with their social-media habits and looking for more supervision of social-media companies by the federal government. Pollsters said they were surprised by the high and relatively uniform dissatisfaction with social media across demographic and political groups.
“If we saw this same, strongly negative force of opinion—spanning partisanship and age—stacked against any one of our corporate clients, I think they would certainly be concerned about their standing in the marketplace and in the halls of Congress,” said Micah Roberts, a Republican pollster
. . . .
The findings about social media show that “people are kind of struggling with how to handle it from a self-regulation point of view and how we regulate it as a country,’’ said Jeff Horwitt, a Democratic pollster
. . . .
While they take a skeptical view of social-media companies like Facebook and Twitter, Americans have favorable views of Amazon, Alphabet Inc.’s . . . Google unit and Apple, though they have little faith in the ability of these three tech giants to protect their personal data.
. . . .
[A]lmost three quarters of respondents said they believe the trade-off that underpins the huge sector—consumers receiving free services but giving up detailed data about their online behavior—is unacceptable.
And a solid majority of respondents said social-media services such as Facebook and Twitter do more to divide Americans than bring them together.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (stock symbols and less-familiar formal names omitted or shortened)
For the most part, Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet, overtly stay out of politics. They aren’t talking about censoring speech, pulling down posts they don’t agree with, or crap like that. Most people are smart enough to know, if you grab a snake by the tail, you’re gonna get bit.
Agreed, Jeff, but even though you’re not interested in politics, politicians may be interested in you.
Amazon stayed out of politics until Bezos bought the Washington Post and became a major player. We can easily demonstrated that the WP has no financial relationship to Amazon, but in the public mind, it’s very hard to distinguish Bezos from Amazon. He knows that.
Jobs stayed out of politics, but Cook has been pretty vocal.
Google? They were up to their ears in the Obama administration, and are actively manipulating search results to favor their political agenda. They recently sent reps to CPAC to oppose “nationalism narratives.”
This represents a new level of corporate political involvement. Firms always lobbied for their specific needs, but these companies are pushing political agendas far outside their own business realms.
The firms have every right to be active players and say what they want. (Remember Citizens United?) But it’s reasonable to recognize what they are doing.
Google also ended their DOD AI business but remains partnered on AI with a Chinese company that is tied to the PLA. Considering it was founded by a russian you gotta wonder.
BTW, staying out of politics did Microsoft no good when the Netscape CEO cashed in his “top fund raiser in California” credits to sic Reno on them.
As you said, you might ignore the politicians but the politicians won’t ignore you if there’s money in it for them. The more control politicians have over the economy, the worse it gets for everybody else.