Technology Isn't Political - Platforms Are
From Compton to Congress, set trippin’ all around
Ain’t nothin’ new, but a flu of new Demo-Crips and Re-Blood-icans
Red state versus a blue state, which one you governin’?
- Kendrick Lamar, Hood Politics
This post was originally labeled Technology is Political. I tried my hardest to defend the title as it wasn’t meant as rage bait, but I couldn’t. No matter what words I tried technology the bits the bytes, they don’t care. The protocols don’t give a shit what color sport jacket you wear to the polls, or whether an elephant or donkey are your spirit animals.
SMTP, TCIP, FTP they don’t care what your beliefs on the traditional family or abortion are. Technology is as apolitical as it comes.
Platforms on the other hand not so much.
Platforms have seemingly gotten more and more political over the years.
Politics for me isn’t just the policies or team we donate to every four years. My definition of politics here is the culmination of values that we hold, that are reflected in the technological platform choices we adopt and make. Whether directly through our wallet, or indirectly through our time and engagement.
The inherent politics of platforms has become more obvious in recent times. Certain platforms make it obvious where they are on the spectrum. No one’s confused about whom rumble or truth social cater to. Nor, what side of the aisle the user bases of Bluesky or Mastadon stand. Implicit political biases and stereotypes exist for the crypto crowd.
AI and the various entities in the space have raised the ethical and moral quarries surrounding art, creativity and fair use. Once again testing our values around human creation vs the various commodification of such talents. Testing what we believe is fair game vs copywrite infringement. How we view a chat bot responding to questions on information its digested from newspapers, and encyclopedias vs an AI that we task with making an illustration in our favorite artists style.
Whether we value privacy, security and transparency vs simplicity, connectiveness and costs. Which ones we truly hold close vs those that are nice to haves become apparent when we choose what platforms we endorse.
A lot of these choices aren’t as soul crushing or character defining. Valuing privacy while also wanting to be able to share and interact with my parents when opting for WhatsApp over Signal.
While others are - opting to post solely on Rumble over YouTube. Whether as a means of free speech puritanism or censorship avoidance, we get an idea of what you might be saying or the audience you’re trying to attract, depending on where your content lives.
Opting to self host your content at the detriment of its reach vs posting on centralized platforms at the detriment of your control, is in itself a political statement of sorts. Wanting to avoid any co-ownership of the content to the likes of Meta, Google or X.
Adopting a blockchain vs a relational database may not be a value call but rather an imposition of the product - the choice can challenge ones values of privacy, censorship, moderation and control. Do we favor government and regulations vs independence and a completely wide open free market open with all its faults and shortcomings?
Flights towards or away from platforms tend to happen when the algorithms and our core values come at odds. Sikh organizations urged users to avoid Meta’s platforms when Zuckerberg’s relationship with the Ambani’s came to light during the farmers protests. Elon admitted that they’ll censor content at the bequest of governments as the operational cost to do business in those places. Youtube whole heartily complies with nations when content is geo-banned to avoid any issues with advertisers in those regions.
Libertarians flocked towards the blockchain and cryptocurrency after the 2008 financial crisis reared its head and governments were bailing out predatory lenders. Wanting monetary instruments that followed rules and governed by unbending laws etched code and not just the whims of bankers and political profiteers. Yet what was once a libertarian wet dream of fiscal independence from a corrupt cash printing machine became the home of grifters and snake sales men selling you meaningless NFT’s and tokens that got the SEC excited.
Twitter users constantly jump towards alternatives when Elon does Elon type things.
Even Tesla comes under value scrutiny when people question the leaders political allegiances to their own. What was once a darling of the left for its environmentalism as it moved us away from fossil fuels, the same technology began to be viewed in a harsher light when Elon shifted more politically right and we started to question the materials and environmental impact of batteries and capacitors.
Certain political ethos are engrained in the way technology and software are produced and shared. Open source and the free software movements of the 70s and 80s adopted a counter culture of the the closed source proprietary formats and patent stacking of big corps. A political movement that formed the bedrock of *nix operating systems, and the core of most of our modern software stacks and protocols.
Valuing communal efforts and lifting the restrictions on sharing knowledge and data vs valuing the black boxing and ownership of it.
Sure bits and bytes don’t discriminate, but the way technology and platforms define us is hard to hide. Whether its the algos that influence us or the audiences we hope to reach with them. In my opinion we should be open to at least admitting as much, since these days its pretty apparent.
So no - technology isn’t political. Protocols don’t give a shit on how they’re used or who uses them. But the platforms we adopt, the audiences we grift towards and cater too, and chase, well ya that’s all political and like our friends can start to paint a pretty broad picture of us and what we believe and value.