The sight of the CEOs of Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Tiktok arranged in a decorative semicircle behind Trump on the dais on inauguration day was the final repudiation of the Obama-era notion that tech was somehow committed to democracy (or the Democrats).
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pluralistic.net/2025/03/24/wha…
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Cory Doctorow
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These billionaires transferred millions from their personal accounts to Trump's "inauguration fund," a kind of presidential tip jar that Trump rattled under the noses of any convenient industry leaders hoping for preferential treatment from his regime. It paid off handsomely.
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Cory Doctorow
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Just days before the inauguration, Trump flew to Davos where he told the world's leaders - especially in the EU - that he would not tolerate attempts to regulate US Big Tech companies, such as the EU's groundbreaking Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act:
gizmodo.com/trump-returns-big-…
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Trump Returns Big Tech's Ass Kissing at Davos
Lucas Ropek (Gizmodo)Cory Doctorow
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There's been a lot of talk about how disillusioned liberals - especially those in Silicon Valley - are with Big Tech's heel turn, but what about the Trumpist factions that hate Big Tech?
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Cory Doctorow
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Plenty of people in the Trump base profess a hatred of Big Tech, and then there are the "Khanservatives" - JD Vance, Josh Hawley, Matt Goetz, Marsha Blackburn, Ted Cruz, etc - who aligned themselves with Biden's FTC Chair Lina Khan and professed a principled objection to Big Tech monopolies and even co-sponsored bills with the likes of Elizabeth Warren that were designed to strike at the root of tech monopolists power.
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Cory Doctorow
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Trumpism - like every successful political movement - is a coalition. It's made up of factions who virulently disagree on key issues, and Trump himself is the arbiter of which faction emerges triumphant and which one will have to eat shit and like it:
pluralistic.net/2025/01/06/how…
It's pretty clear at this point that the anti-Big Tech wing of the Trump Party has lost. Trump's saber-rattling is funneling billions into Big Tech's pockets and consolidating their power.
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Pluralistic: Winning coalitions aren’t always governing coalitions (06 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
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Nowhere is this more visible than in the UK, where PM Keir Starmer fired the country's top anti-monopoly enforcer and replaced him with the former head of Amazon UK:
pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/aut…
But the British giveaways to US tech monopolists don't end there. Now, Starmer's announced plans to give a £800m/year tax giveaway to US Big Tech:
bbc.com/news/articles/c8j0dgym…
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UK considers big tech tax changes to appease Donald Trump
Mitchell Labiak (BBC News)Cory Doctorow
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If the Trumpist techbusters were truly sincere in their professed belief that Big Tech had too much power and must be broken up, then this should all be provoking howls of outrage from the Khanservatives - but they're all conspicuously silent.
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Cory Doctorow
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Riley Quinn, showrunner of the amazing Trashfuture podcast, once proposed that the conservative animus towards Big Tech was driven entirely by grievances over content moderation algorithms that downranked conspiracy theories, racial slurs, and fundraising messages from grifting far-right politicians.
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Cory Doctorow
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Quinn joked that these conservative techbusters could be satisfied if every Big Tech board meeting was henceforth solemnized with a "Stolen Likes Acknowledgement," in which the execs publicly repudiated the fortunes their forerunners amassed through the suffering of shadowbanned culture warriors. Think of it as a Twitter Files mirror world doppelganger of the "stolen land" acknowledgments often heard before progressive meetings and presentations:
pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not…
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Pluralistic: Naomi Klein’s “Doppelganger” (05 September 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
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For its part, the EU is holding its ground in the face of Trumpism. Indeed, Trump's obnoxious belligerence has trashed the popularity of many of the EU's far right parties, especially in Scandinavia, where the burgeoning neofascist movement has lost nearly all momentum in the face of Trump's threats to annex Greenland away from Denmark:
bbc.com/news/articles/c4g0718g…
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Greenland condemns planned visits by Usha Vance and Trump adviser
James FitzGerald (BBC News)Cory Doctorow
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(The same thing has happened in Canada, where the Trumpist Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has seen his massive polling leads collapse on the eve of a snap election):
cbc.ca/news/politics/livestory…
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Cory Doctorow
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But if the EU *really* wants to assert its sovereignty against American Big Tech, it should roll back Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, which copies the 1998 American Digital Millennium Copyright Act by banning reverse-engineering and modification of tech products and services:
pluralistic.net/2025/03/08/tur…
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Pluralistic: Gandersauce (08 Mar 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
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By rolling back this legislation - which the US trade rep lobbied hard for, threatening tariffs on EU exports if it wasn't passed - the EU would open space for European companies to compete with American tech giants, striking at their most profitable lines of business. This would let EU companies make app stores for mobile devices and games consoles (so EU software authors wouldn't have to send 30% of all revenues to a US tech monopolist).
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Cory Doctorow
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It would also let EU companies jailbreak US cars, like Teslas, unlocking all their software upgrades and also seling made-in-the-EU apps to European drivers. This move would let EU mechanics fix any car without paying an American car company for an expensive diagnostic tool, and it would let EU small businesses refill printer ink cartridges, crashing the 10,000,000% margins enjoyed by US giants like HP.
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Cory Doctorow
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Trump is in the tank for American Big Tech. He may have courted the anti-Big Tech wing of his movement by trash-talking US tech giants, but all it took was a few million in bribes and he changed his tune. US Big Tech is now an ascendant faction in the Trump Party coalition, which makes them fair game for the trade war.
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Cory Doctorow
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I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.
Catch me in SAN DIEGO TONIGHT (Mar 24):
mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow
And in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2:
exileinbookville.com/events/44…
More tour dates here:
martinhench.com
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Authors on Tap: Cory Doctorow and Peter Sagal
exileinbookville.competer honeyman
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