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    ‘They’ve lost my trust’: consumers shun companies as bosses kowtow to Trump

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    In late January, Lauren Bedson did what many would likely find unthinkable: she cancelled her Amazon Prime membership. The catalyst was Donald Trump’s inauguration. Many more Americans are planning to make similar decisions this Friday.Bedson made her move after seeing photos of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, sitting with other tech moguls and billionaires, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai, just rows behind Trump at his inauguration.“I just couldn’t stand to see them so cowardly,” Bedson, of Camas, Washington, told the Guardian. “I lived in Seattle for over a decade. I was a fan of Amazon for a long time, I think they have a good product. But I’m just so disgusted. I don’t want to give these billionaire oligarchs any more of my money.”It’s a sentiment that many Americans have been feeling since Trump entered the White House. Companies and business leaders who were once passive or vocally critical of Trump are now trying to cozy up to him, leading consumers to question the values of the brands they used to trust. A recent Harris poll found that a quarter of American consumers have stopped shopping at their favorite stores because of shifting political stances.Many are being inspired by calls to boycott coming from social media. One boycott has gone viral over the last few weeks: a “blackout” of companies that dropped some of their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals, including Target, Amazon and Walmart, is planned for 28 February with protesters planning to halt all spending at these corporations for the day.View image in fullscreenBut people are also making the decision to boycott at their kitchen tables, trying to figure out how to resist Trump, and perhaps corporate capitalism at large, within their own communities.The Guardian asked readers how their shopping habits have changed over the last few months, as the political climate started to shift after Trump’s win. Hundreds from across the country said that they have stopped shopping at stores such as Walmart and Target that publicly announced the end of DEI goals. Dozens like Bedson had cancelled long held Prime accounts. Others have shut down their Facebook and Instagram accounts in protest of Meta.“I’m just trying to do little things that make me feel a little bit empowered, to stake my claim against what’s happening and how companies are acting in ways that are opposed to my values,” said Kim Wohlenhaus, of St Louis, Missouri, who cancelled her Prime membership, deleted her Meta accounts and has stopped shopping at Target. “It feels good to be able to do something.”Erica Bradley, of Reno, Nevada, said she stopped shopping at Target because of their changing DEI policies.“I don’t plan on going there ever again, just because I feel like they’ve shown that they’re not really committed to these things,” Bradley said. “They’ve lost my trust.”View image in fullscreenFor many consumers, the shift away from the big companies has revealed how much they have come to rely on them. As of last spring, 75% of American consumers had Amazon Prime memberships, a total of 180m Prime accounts, according to Bloomberg.Bedson said cancelling her account made her aware of a culture of consumerism in American where “in some ways, it feels like we don’t have a choice”.“Amazon is so convenient,” she said. “I think we all have become very complacent or complicit, and it’s hard to make these changes. But on the other hand, what else can we do?”It’s been a year since Bradley cancelled her Prime account, after she saw Amazon’s union busting. She recalls a transition period as she was adjusting to life without Prime, but it ultimately led her to spend less overall.“I just decided I don’t really need a lot of these things. Like I don’t need more clothes, I don’t really need more house decorations, which are things I used to spend a lot of money on,” Bradley said. “It’s not retail therapy anymore.”The Harris poll found that a third of Americans are similarly trying to “opt out” of the economy, cutting down on overall spending as the political stances of corporations have become murky.View image in fullscreen“It’s like a Whac-a-Mole now,” Wohlenhaus said. “You could really look in any direction and find something you dislike about the way corporations are caving to this administration.”Wohlenhaus said she has started to prioritize shopping at local businesses. She kept her Costco membership, since the company affirmed its DEI policies.During Joe Biden’s presidency, many of the boycotts against companies actually came from conservatives who felt corporations were caving to a “woke” mob. But boycotts didn’t amount to any serious consequences – with two exceptions. Bud Light saw a drop in sales after it sponsored a post by a transgender influencer and Target removed some of its Pride merchandise after conservative backlash.It’s unclear what the consequences of the current backlash will be. But Wohlenhaus and others voiced optimism that consumers are thinking critically about the choices they’re making at checkout.“Hopefully if thousands of other families are doing what we’re doing, I think they’ll start to feel it,” she said. “We don’t care about your products as much as we care about those values that we cherish.” More

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      To the CEOs who’ve joined Trump’s fight against diversity, I say this: you’re making a big mistake | Stefan Stern

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      The mask has slipped and the gloves are off. A company which in 2022 boasted that it had exceeded its target, “spending $1.26 billion with US certified diverse suppliers”, is now ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.That company is Meta (formerly known as Facebook), whose chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, announced DEI dismantling shortly before he had a prominent seat at Donald Trump’s recent inauguration. Perhaps from that privileged spot he was able to imbibe some of the “masculine energy” he says he wants to see at work.Meta is not alone in signalling a shift from its previous position. Amazon, McDonald’s, Accenture, Google, General Motors, Pepsi, Walmart and Boeing are among the corporate giants who are downplaying or removing altogether references to DEI and public commitments to it. The consultancy Deloitte used to declare that “diversity, equity and inclusion are core to our values”. But, the FT reports, the page those words appeared on has been wiped from its website.It is possible these decisions were taken partly on legal advice. Zuckerberg seems to have pre-empted the attorney general, Trump’s Florida favourite Pam Bondi, as she recently declared that there should be an end to what she called “illegal DEI” and “accessibility” discrimination. You can imagine that in-house counsel had anticipated legal trouble and so were moved to suggest caution on DEI issues. Zuckerberg is not merely being cautious, however. He has moved Maxine Williams, former chief diversity officer, to a role concerned with “accessibility and engagement”. Whether that restructuring will be enough to satisfy the Maga overlords remains to be seen.Some of the changes at other companies may be merely symbolic or presentational. And not everyone is backing down. The investment bank Goldman Sachs stated: “We strongly believe that organisations benefit from diverse perspectives” – although this belief has not stopped them from removing one of their former requirements for diversity in their clients. Goldman Sachs is still “committed to operating our programmes and policies in compliance with the law”, it says. Jamie Dimon, the boss of JPMorgan Chase, dared anti-DEI activists to challenge his bank’s pro-diversity stance. (But he is taking a hard line on forcing people to return to the office, despite remote working being key for modern diverse workforces.)All the same, the overriding effect of seeing that array of (newly) admiring CEOs lining up in Washington to salute the incoming chief was to recall the timeless Marxist dictum (Groucho, not Karl): “Those are my principles and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.”View image in fullscreenMaybe the pressure has finally got to some of these top bosses. A recent article from senior partners at McKinsey noted that “CEOs are on the job 24/7, responsible for addressing an ever-shifting array of problems and threats”.But perhaps part of the problem is feeding already narcissistic CEOs the sort of grandiose advice offered by the blue-chip consultants in their article. Likening the boss to an “elite athlete”, the authors argue that CEOs need to use their time purposefully (like LeBron James, the basketball star), “perfect the art of recovery” (like the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo), keep learning (like the golfer Bryson DeChambeau), embrace data and analytics (like a Formula One grand prix driver) and be adaptable and resilient (like the gymnast Simone Biles and … Muhammad Ali).The end product sounds like a remarkable person indeed: “This is how leaders can … build their resilience muscle, and become … ready to thrive in the 21st century, while staying humble, celebrating noble failures, and always helping team members.” Yep, nobody I know, either.In fact, bosses risk being cut off from the everyday concerns of their staff. An academic study into this phenomenon looking back decades, published in the American Journal of Sociology and called The Great Separation, draws on evidence from a dozen countries. The highest earners inhabit the same narrow terrain, and have limited contact with lower earners, the researchers found. This can affect how elites engage with the rest of society, and how in turn lower earners see them. This “great separation” may have had an impact on “the key social and political challenges of our time”, the study says. Brexit, Trump, populism and the rise of the new right may all be symptoms.Can the media do anything to help? The new media business Semafor has just launched a weekly newsletter called The CEO Signal, available (for free!) to bosses running companies with annual turnover of at least $500m (£400m). Its editor, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, says there is a need for such a specially targeted publication: “There’s a place here in the market for something that’s much more tightly focused to the people at the very top of the org chart – who are actually trying to run exceedingly complicated organisations, at an increasingly complicated time,” he told the Press Gazette.“And there’s nobody in any organisation who faces the same list of challenges as the CEO does,” he added. “It’s a cliche to say that it’s lonely at the top, but there is something to that.” The venerable Harvard Business Review is also about to launch a new service specifically for the “C-suite” – that is, for people whose job title begins with the word “chief”.How these new publications will help to mitigate some of the problems highlighted by the “great separation” study is not immediately clear. I am, however, reminded of what Laura Empson, a professor at Bayes Business School in London, has observed: that if a leader complains it is lonely at the top then they “are not doing it right”.Rather than an ever-narrowing elite of CEOs becoming more and more detached from their workforce, we would do better to try to reconnect. Companies and workplaces should be vibrant and cohesive communities of people.The ghastly alternative could be seen at the White House last week, when Elon Musk cavorted around the Oval Office firing off wild and unsubstantiated accusations against public officials, while Trump looked on calmly. Musk confidently asserted, without offering any evidence, that some officials at the now gutted USAid had been taking “kickbacks”. This is not model CEO behaviour. And this is not the leadership we need.

      Stefan Stern is co-author of Myths of Management and the former director of the High Pay Centre. His latest book is Fair or Foul: the Lady Macbeth Guide to Ambition
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Revelations of Israeli spyware abuse raise fears over possible use by Trump

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      Even as WhatsApp celebrated a major legal victory in December against NSO Group, the Israeli maker of one of the world’s most powerful cyberweapons, a new threat was detected, this time involving another Israel-based company that has previously agreed contracts with democratic governments around the world – including the US.Late in January, WhatsApp claimed that 90 of its users, including some journalists and members of civil society, were targeted last year by spyware made by a company called Paragon Solutions. The allegation is raising urgent questions about how Paragon’s government clients are using the powerful hacking tool.Three people – an Italian journalist named Francesco Cancellato; the high-profile Italian founder of an NGO that aids immigrants named Luca Casarini; and a Libyan activist based in Sweden named Husam El Gomati – announced they were among the 90 people whose mobile phones had probably been compromised last year.More is likely to be known soon, when researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which investigates digital threats against civil society and has worked closely with WhatsApp, is expected to release a new technical report on the breach.Like NSO Group, Paragon licenses its spyware, which is called Graphite, to government agencies. If it is deployed successfully, it can hack any phone without a mobile phone user’s knowledge, giving the operator of the spyware the ability to intercept phone calls, access photographs, and read encrypted messages. Its purpose, Paragon said, was in line with US policy, which calls for such spyware to only be used to assist governments in “national security missions, including counterterrorism, counter-narcotics, and counter-intelligence”.In a statement to the Guardian, a Paragon representative said the company had “a zero-tolerance policy for violations of our terms of service”. “We require all users of our technology to adhere to terms and conditions that preclude the illicit targeting of journalists and other civil society leaders,” the representative said.The company does appear to have acted swiftly in response to the cases that have emerged so far. The Guardian reported last week that Paragon had terminated its contract with Italy for violating the terms of its contract with the group. Italy had – hours before the Guardian’s story broke – denied any knowledge of or involvement in the targeting of the journalist and activists, and said it would investigate the matter.David Kaye, who previously served from 2014 to 2020 as a special rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion said the marketing of military-grade surveillance products, such as the kind made by Paragon, comes with “extraordinary risks of abuse”.“Like the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, it is easy for governments easily to avoid basic principles of rule of law. Though not all the details are known, we are seeing the likelihood of scandalous abuse in the case of Italy, just as we have seen that in other contexts across Europe, Mexico and elsewhere,” Kaye said.The issue seems particularly relevant in the US. In 2019, during the first Donald Trump administration, the FBI acquired a limited license to test NSO Group’s Pegasus. The FBI said the spyware was never used in a domestic investigation and there is no evidence that either the Trump or Joe Biden administrations used spyware domestically.In the face of increasing reports of abuse, including use of NSO’s spyware against American diplomats abroad, the Biden administration put NSO on a blacklist in 2021, saying the company’s tools had enabled foreign governments to conduct transnational repression and represented a threat to national security.Biden also signed an executive order in 2023 that discouraged the use of spyware by the federal government and allowed it to be used in limited circumstances.It was therefore a surprise when it was reported by Wired last year that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency had – under the Biden administration – signed a $2m one-year contract with Paragon. The contract was reportedly paused after the news became public and its current status is unclear. Ice did not respond to a request for comment.A Paragon representative said the company was “deeply committed to following all US laws and regulations” and that it was fully compliant with the 2023 executive order signed by Biden. The person also pointed out that Paragon was now a US-owned company, following its takeover by AE Industrial Partners. It also has a US subsidiary based in Virginia, which is headed by John Fleming, a longtime veteran of the CIA who serves as executive chair.Unlike its predecessor, however, the new US administration has publicly stated that it will seek to use the levers of government against Trump’s perceived political enemies. Trump has repeatedly said he would try to use the military to take on “the enemy from within”. He has also singled out career prosecutors who have investigated him, members of the military, members of Congress, intelligence agents and former officials who have been critical of him, for potential prosecution. He has never explicitly stated that he would use spyware against these perceived rivals.Researchers like those at Citizen Lab and Amnesty Tech are considered the leading experts in detecting illegitimate surveillance against members of civil society, which have occurred in a number of democracies, including India, Mexico and Hungary. More

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      Amazon donates $1m to Trump’s inaugural fund as tech cozies up to president-elect

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      Amazon is the latest tech giant to donate to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund.The company plans to give $1m to the fund, first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Amazon follows Meta, Facebook’s parent company, also handing over $1m to Trump’s inaugural committee. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Friday that he, too, would make a personal donation of $1m, first reported by Fox News.As Trump prepares to enter office for a second time, several tech titans are cozying up in hopes of favorable treatment for their businesses. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is slated to meet with Trump next week. And Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg dined with him at his Mar-a-Lago estate last month. Google CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly had plans to meet with the president-elect this week at his club as well. And Time magazine, which is owned by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, has named Trump its “person of the year”.OpenAI’s Altman says that Trump will be a leader in technological progress. “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” he said in a written statement to the Guardian.Donations to inaugural committees are fairly standard for big businesses looking to make nice with incoming administrations. Amazon donated $57,746 to Trump’s first inaugural fund in 2017, according to OpenSecrets. Google and Microsoft also donated. Meta confirmed to the Guardian that it did not donate that year.For Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, Amazon said the administration did not accept donations from tech companies, according to the Wall Street Journal.Trump is offering bonus perks to donors who give at least $1m to his inaugural committee, according to the New York Times. Those include several tickets to activities planned around the event, such as dinners with Trump, his cabinet picks and JD Vance.Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, had long been the focus of Trump’s ire. The president-elect had blasted the newspaper over its coverage of him, often zeroing in on Bezos for being at fault. At one point in 2018, Trump called the paper “the Amazon Washington Post” and said it had “gone crazy against me”. He also alleged the paper lobbied on behalf of Amazon.Those days of conflict may be over. Before the election, the Washington Post broke with longstanding tradition and announced it would not endorse a candidate in the presidential race, a move widely seen as Bezos not wanting to rankle Trump. Bezos defended the decision, saying it was to avoid “a perception of bias”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen Trump won the election, Bezos praised him on X. “Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities,” Bezos wrote. “Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.”Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also lauded the win on X, saying it was a “hard-fought victory” and that “we look forward to working with you”. Amazon’s stock has risen 14% since the election. Amazon did not return a request for comment. More

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      Meta donates $1m to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund

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      Meta has donated $1m to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the company confirmed on Thursday.The donation, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, appears to be the latest effort by the social media company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to improve relations with the incoming president, and comes just weeks after Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.Meta confirmed its donation to the Guardian on Thursday but did not provide details regarding the reason for the contribution.During the dinner last month at Mar-a-Lago, the Meta CEO reportedly congratulated the president-elect on his victory and the two “largely exchanged pleasantries”, according to the New York Times.Zuckerberg also reportedly met with Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, the Wall Street Journal reported, and other incoming White House advisers, such as Stephen Miller.A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, told the BBC at the time that Zuckerberg was “grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration”.“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.Zuckerberg’s team informed Trump’s inaugural team about Meta’s plans to contribute to the inaugural fund before meeting the president-elect for dinner at Mar-a-Lago, according to the Wall Street Journal.The donation by Meta seems to mark a shift for the company, as Meta did not make any contribution to Trump’s 2017 or Biden’s 2021 inaugural fund.Over the last several years, the relationship between Trump and Meta has been strained. Trump has accused the company of unfairly censoring him and other conservative voices on its platforms.In March of this year, Trump referred to Facebook as “an enemy of the people” during an interview with CNBC. He stated: “I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially concerning elections.”After the January 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021, Meta suspended Trump from posting on its platforms. Two years later, in 2023, the company restored his account with certain restrictions in place. However, in July of this year, those restrictions were lifted.Earlier that month, in a post on Truth Social, Trump said that if he’s elected in November, “election fraudsters” would be imprisoned, and referred to Zuckerberg.“If I’m elected President, we will pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time” Trump wrote. “We already know who you are. DON’T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!”.And in a book titled Save America, Trump accused Zuckerberg of “plotting” against him during the 2020 election and “steering” Facebook against him.But over the summer, the New York Times reported that Mark Zuckerberg and Trump had several private phone calls. In one of those calls, Zuckerberg reportedly wished Trump well following the assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, and expressed that he was “praying” for him.In a July interview with Bloomberg, Zuckerberg publicly praised Trump’s reaction to the Pennsylvania assassination attempt – when he stood up and began pumping his fist in the air – and described the moment as “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life”.Zuckerberg expressed regret around some of his past political activities in a letter to Congress in late August and accused the Biden administration of pressuring Meta in 2021 into censoring more Covid-19 content than he was comfortable with.He did not endorse any candidate for the 2024 election, and has stated that he wants to stay away from politics.Trump told a podcast in October that he liked Zuckerberg “much better now”, adding: “I actually believe he’s staying out of the election, which is nice.”After Trump’s election victory in November, Zuckerberg congratulated him and said he was looking forward to working with the president-elect.“We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration,” he wrote.Earlier this month, reports indicated that Zuckerberg was seeking an “active role” in the Trump administration’s tech policy decisions.Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, who is also a former UK deputy prime minister, also added that Zuckerberg wanted to participate in “the debate that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere”. More

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      Mark Zuckerberg seeks ‘active role’ in Trump tech policy

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      Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump, who have previously engaged in bitter public feuds, are now warming to each other as Zuckerberg seeks to influence tech policy in the incoming administration.The Meta CEO dined at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida last week, talking technology and demonstrating the company’s camera-equipped sunglasses, Fox News reported.“Mark Zuckerberg has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of and a participant in this change that we’re seeing all around America,” Stephen Miller, a top Trump deputy, told Fox.Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, agreed with Miller. Clegg said in a recent press call that Zuckerberg wanted to play an “active role” in the administration’s tech policy decisions and wanted to participate in “the debate that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere,” particularly on artificial intelligence. Meta declined to provide further comment.The weeks since the election have seen something of a give-and-take developing between Trump and Zuckerberg, who previously banned the president-elect from Instagram and Facebook for using the platforms to incite political violence on 6 January 2021. In a move that appears in deference to Trump – who has long accused Meta of censoring conservative views – the company now says its content moderation has at times been too heavy-handed.Clegg said hindsight showed that Meta “overdid it a bit” in removing content during the Covid-19 pandemic, which Zuckerberg recently blamed on pressure from the Biden administration.“We know that when enforcing our policies, our error rates are still too high, which gets in the way of the free expression that we set out to enable,” Clegg said during the press call. “Too often, harmless content gets taken down, or restricted, and too many people get penalized unfairly.”Meta and Zuckerberg personally have shown other signs of softening towards Trump. The company lifted its ban on Trump ahead of the election, and Zuckerberg called the president-elect a “badass” for defiantly pumping a fist after being shot in July.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionZuckerberg was also among the tech leaders quick to publicly congratulate Trump following the November election – and seemed to anticipate years of collaboration ahead.“We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country,” he said in a 6 November post on Threads. “Looking forward to working with you and your administration.” More

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      AI expert Marietje Schaake: ‘The way we think about technology is shaped by the tech companies themselves’

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      Marietje Schaake is a former Dutch member of the European parliament. She is now the international policy director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence. Her new book is entitled The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley.In terms of power and political influence, what are the main differences between big tech and previous incarnations of big business?The difference is the role that these tech companies play in so many aspects of people’s lives: in the state, the economy, geopolitics. So while previous monopolists amassed a lot of capital and significant positions, they were usually in one sector, like oil or car production. These tech companies are like octopuses with tentacles in so many different directions. They have so much data, location data, search, communications, critical infrastructure, and now AI can be built on top of all that assembled power, which makes these companies very different animals to what we’ve seen in the past.Peter Kyle, the UK’s technology secretary, recently suggested that governments need to show a “sense of humility” with big tech companies and treat them more like nation states. What are your thoughts on that? I think it’s a baffling misunderstanding of the role of a democratically elected and accountable leader. Yes, these companies have become incredibly powerful, and as such I understand the comparison to the role of states, because increasingly these companies take decisions that used to be the exclusive domain of the state. But the answer, particularly from a government that is progressively leaning, should be to strengthen the primacy of democratic governance and oversight, and not to show humility. What is needed is self-confidence on the part of democratic government to make sure that these companies, these services, are taking their proper role within a rule of law-based system, and are not overtaking it.What do you think the impact will be of Donald Trump’s presidency? The election of Donald Trump changes everything because he has brought specific tech interests closer than any political leader ever has, especially in the United States, which is this powerful geopolitical and technological hub. There’s a lot of crypto money supporting Trump. There’s a lot of VCs [venture capitalists] supporting him, and of course he has elevated Elon Musk and has announced a deregulatory agenda. Every step taken by his administration will be informed by these factors, whether it’s the personal interests of Elon Musk and his companies, or the personal preferences of the president and his supporters. On the other hand, Musk is actually critical of some dynamics around AI, namely existential risk. We’ll have to see how long the honeymoon between him and Trump lasts, and also how other big tech companies are going to respond. Because they’re not going to be happy that Musk decides on tech policy over his competitors. I’m thinking rocky times ahead.Why have politicians been so light touch in the face of the digital technological revolution? The most powerful companies we see now were all rooted in this sort of progressive, libertarian streak of counterculture in California, that romantic narrative of a couple of guys in their shorts in a basement or garage, coding away and challenging the big powers that be: the publishers of the media companies, the hotel branches, the taxi companies, the financial services, all of which had pretty bad reputations to begin with. And surely there was room for disruption, but this kind of underdog mentality was incredibly powerful. The companies have done a really smart job of framing what they are doing as decentralising, like the internet itself. Companies like Google and Facebook have consistently argued that any regulatory step would hurt the internet. So it’s a combination of wanting to believe the promise and not appreciating how very narrow corporate interests won out at the expense of the public interest.Do you see any major politicians who are prepared to stand up to big tech interests? Well someone like [US senator] Elizabeth Warren has the most clear vision about the excessive power and abuse of power by corporations, including the tech sector. She’s been consistent in trying to address this. But broadly I’m afraid that political leaders are not really taking this on the way they should. In the European Commission, I’m not really seeing a vision. I’ve seen elections, including in my own country, where tech didn’t feature as a topic at all. And we see those comments by the UK government, although one would assume that democratic guardrails around excessively powerful corporates are a no-brainer.Have politicians been held back by their technological ignorance? Yes, I think they are intimidated. But I also think that the framing against the agency of governments is a deliberate one by tech companies. It’s important to understand the way in which we are taught to think about technology is shaped by the tech companies themselves. And so we get the whole narrative that governments are basically disqualified to deal with tech because they’re too stupid, too outdated, too poor in service delivery. The message is that if they can’t even process the taxes on time, what do you think they’re going to do with AI? It’s a caricature of government, and government should not embrace that caricature.Do you think the UK has been weakened in its position with big tech as a result of leaving the EU? Yes and no. Australia and Canada have developed tech policies, and they’re smaller in numbers than the UK population. I don’t know if it’s that. I think it’s actually much more of a deliberate choice to want to attract investment. So maybe it’s just self-interest that transcends Conservative and Labour governments, because I don’t see much change in the tech policy, whereas I had anticipated change. I was obviously overly optimistic there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYou talk about regaining sovereignty. Do you think most people even recognise that any sovereignty has been lost? One of the reasons why I wrote this book is to reach average news readers, not tech experts. Explaining that this is a problem that concerns people is a huge undertaking. I’m curious to see how the impact of the Trump government will invite responses from European leaders, but also from others around the world who are simply going to think we cannot afford this dependence on US tech companies. It’s undesirable. Because, essentially, we’re shipping our euros or pounds over to Silicon Valley, and what do we get in return? More dependency. It’s going to be incredibly challenging, but not doing anything is certainly not going to make it better.

      The Tech Coup by Marietje Schaake is published by Princeton University Press (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply More

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      Mark Zuckerberg dines with Trump at Mar-a-Lago despite former feud

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      Mark Zuckerberg has become the latest former Donald Trump critic to make his way Mar-a-Lago to break bread with the incoming US president.The tech mogul had banned Trump from the social media sites Instagram and Facebook, which he owns, following the January 6 riot that the president-elect egged on in an attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election.On Wednesday, however, the incoming White House deputy chief of policy, Stephen Miller, told Fox News that Zuckerberg, 40, had dined with Trump at his Florida compound.“Mark, obviously, he has his own interests, and he has his own company, and he has his own agenda,” Miller said. “But he’s made clear that he wants to support the national renewal of America under President Trump’s leadership.”Zuckerberg, whose personal fortune is estimated at $200bn, has previously indicated a thawing of relations between himself and the president-elect.After Trump survived an assassination attempt in July and pumped his fist saying “fight, fight, fight”, Zuckerberg called it “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life”.A month later, in a book called Save America, Trump still accused Zuckerberg of “plotting” against him during the 2020 election by “steering” Facebook against his campaign. He threatened Zuckerberg that if it happened again he would “spend the rest of his life in prison”.In the book Trump also noted that Zuckerberg would visit him at the White House “with his very nice wife, be as nice as anyone”, but then claimed the CEO turned Facebook against his 2020 campaign – possibly referring to a $420m donation Zuckerberg’s charity made to fund election infrastructure in 2020.“He told me there was nobody like Trump on Facebook. But at the same time, and for whatever reason, steered it against me,” Trump wrote in the book. “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison – as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, told the BBC: “Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration.“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.Meta is among several of the tech giants to hold contracts with the federal government. Earlier this month, the company announced it had approved a collaboration to integrate its Llama AI division into government operations. More

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      Will the Democrats finally realize that Big Tech is not an ally? | Zephyr Teachout

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      As Democrats think about how to counter the Trump administration, they need to accept a very simple lesson from the last eight years. Big tech and big business are part of the political opposition working on behalf of Donald Trump, not the Democrats’ allies working against Trump and Trumpism.It shouldn’t seem necessary to point out what seems to be an obvious fact. Nonetheless, there are some Democrats trying to stay close to big tech, or downplaying the importance of anti-monopoly policy when it comes to authoritarian risks. For example, a few days ago, Priorities USA, the largest Democratic party Super Pac, held a big resistance strategy session hosted by “our friends at Google”.As another example, Adam Jentleson, a political writer and a former chief of staff for US senator John Fetterman, wrote a recent piece for the New York Times that among other things criticized fighting monopolies as a “niche issue”. He argued that there’s a dichotomy between kitchen table issues and challenging corporate power, and we should focus on the former.The belief that big tech, and more broadly big business, is helpful to Democrats has already been tried – and found to be untrue.When Trump was elected in 2016, one central pillar of the Democratic resistance involved using big tech platforms as a counterweight. If you remember, the CEO of Google even joined anti-Trump protests. Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and pre-Elon Musk Twitter were scolded for using technologies that enabled extremism, but instead of aggressively moving to regulate the algorithmic design, change liability rules or break them up, Democrats focused on nudging platforms on editorial policy.The assumption was they could be corralled into the “right” set of editorial practices, ones that would help defeat Trump and Maga-ism, and limit the reach of his rhetoric in the short term. This was the context in which the “misinformation and disinformation” framework was born.We use the phrases all the time now, but it is worth reflecting on how strange they are. Sometimes misinformation refers to inadvertent lies, and disinformation describes purposeful lies, but sometimes the terms encompass factually correct but misleading information, or as Barack Obama argued in 2022, the “suppression of true information” if such suppression was done for, among other things, “political gain” or “targeting those you don’t like”.Not only did these new categories infuriate those who were caught in the broad, fuzzy definitions, but they focused Democratic attention away from questions of power. The mis/disinformation framework fit part and parcel with joining with big tech as an anti-fascist alliance. “We”, the science-grounded Democrats, would successfully work hand in hand with the biggest tech companies in the world to protect America.Eight years later, the Democrats have lost the White House, House of Representatives and Senate. The big tech platforms are awash in extremist content. Big tech should not look like the ally anymore. Not only is Musk fully ensconced at the head of the power table, right next to Trump, but the CEOs of Meta, Alphabet, Apple and Amazon all reached out to Trump before the election, perhaps taking seriously his threat to put Mark Zuckerberg in jail if he opposed him, perhaps just realizing that Trump is a deregulatory juggernaut.Musk reportedly joined a recent phone call between Trump and the CEO of Google. We can anticipate dozens of such meetings at the highest levels, and strong relationships being born. And instead of repeatedly insisting that tech titans have too much power, we have spent eight years arming them with language that can be used to suppress dissent.Repeated polling has shown that voters actually hate corporate monopolies, and antitrust politics are extremely popular. I don’t want to overclaim the point – antitrust politics disappeared in America for the 30 years between 1980 and 2020, and it is fair to argue that anti-monopoly policy, especially against big tech, can use more experimentation in how we talk about it. On the substance, however, we should be very concerned.Facebook, Google and Amazon have destroyed the actual bulwark against autocratic leaders – local journalism – while cozying up to actual autocracy. They now control the digital ad industry. According to one recent research report, if they paid news organizations what they make off them by standing as a middleman between readers and writers, they would be handing over between $12bn and $14bn a year. The very journalists and news organizations we rely on for fact-finding and fact-checking are scared of being shadowbanned – Jeff Bezos’s fear of Trump being exhibit A of how that can impact editorial content.Google, thankfully, has officially been called an illegal monopolist by a court, thanks to the work of the Department of Justice under assistant attorney general Jonathan Kanter, and other antitrust cases regarding Facebook and Amazon are winding their way through the court system. But even if Google is forced to divest Chrome, which seems possible, the failure of Democrats in power to put serious tech-busting legislation to a vote now seems grotesque. It looks like we didn’t even try to stop the incoming power couple of Trump and tech.While pundits are trying to sort through the messaging lesson of how Kamala Harris lost what seemed like a winnable election, we would do well to look further back, and remember the real lessons from 2016: joining hands with big tech oligarchs is joining hands with the destruction of the Democratic party and democracy.

      Zephyr Teachout is a professor at Fordham Law School and the author of Break ’Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money More