What Big Tech’s Kowtowing to Trump Means for the Future
When Donald Trump lost the election in 2020, many thought that that would be the end of the former Apprentice host.
The fact that his followers seemingly attempted to start an insurrection, to say nothing of being impeached and found liable of sexual abuse, meant that most people couldn’t envision a world in which he’d be allowed back in. His victory in the 2024 election, therefore, has led many to fear what the future holds, with the fact that Big Tech has shown him fealty hardly serving to assuage those fears.
The question is, what does that mean for normal people?
It Isn’t Good News for Minorities
Not long after Donald Trump won the Presidential election, he signed an executive order that looked to dismantle Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. By the February, Google had decided to drop its goals for diverse recruitment, which will hit minorities hard.
Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder who donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, confirmed that the Washington Post, which he had bought in 2013, would publish articles that support the defence of ‘personal liberties’, hiring three conservative columnists, leading to far more anti-immigrant articles being published.
Meta, the company behind Facebook, said that it would remove third-party fact-checkers on both that platform and Instagram. Instead, community notes similar to those used on Elon Musk’s new-look Twitter, now known as ‘X’, will be used.
It also changed the hate speech rules that were in place, which means that Facebook users can refer to those in the LGBTQ+ community as ‘mentally ill’ without facing any consequences. Zuckerberg’s charity also removed any references to ‘diversity or promoting scientific research from underrepresented groups’, putting those in any of the minority groups under further pressure.
They’re All Bending the Knee Financially
There is barely a major tech company out there that hasn’t decided to donate large sums of money to Trump in one form or another. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, agreed to pay $24.5 million in order to settle Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the fact that YouTube had suspended his account in the wake of the riots on the sixth of January.
Of that, $22 million went to Trump, whilst the other $2.5 million was paid to ‘additional plaintiffs’, which included rioters that stormed the Capitol. They also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, similar to Amazon, Meta and Apple’s Tim Cook.
Microsoft is also on the list of companies that gave the inauguration fund $1 million, whilst Musk paid Trump $10 million in order to settle the law suit that Trump had initiated in the wake of being kicked of Twitter by the previous owners.
That is just the major tech organisations, but there are other smaller ones that have also paid fealty to Trump via various means, such as the Chief Executive Officer OpenAI, Sam Altman, posted on X that Trump will be ‘incredible for the country in many ways’, with all of the various technology companies fearing what it might mean if they don’t kowtow to the new President.
It is Good News for Big Tech Shareholders
Ultimately, the decision of the various Big Tech companies to support Trump has been taken in order to appease the President. That has been done with an aim of ensuring that he doesn’t look to punish any of them financially, which can only be seen as for the benefit of the shareholders of the various firms. It is certainly the case that millions of dollars are poured into lobbying every time an election comes around, but the desire of Big Tech to fall over itself in order to prove fealty to Trump was largely done with the aim of trying to appease their shareholders.
From Google’s decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America on Google Maps through to Amazon providing up to $1 billion in credit to the Trump administration, Big Tech has been unashamed in its desire to ensure that Trump doesn’t turn against any of their companies. Although Tim Cook has largely leant to the left politically, even he has ensured that Apple has looked to do its bit by announcing that it plans to invest $500 billion into the American economy over the course of Trump’s second term in office, largely to try to avoid possible tariffs against its products.
Cook even gave Trump a 24-karat gold plaque, which was rewarded by Trump declaring that Cook is ‘one of the great and most esteemed business leaders and geniuses and innovators anywhere in the world’. That it came in the wake of Trump’s announcement that tech companies producing their various products in the US would avoid a 100% tariff on imported semi-conductors and chips.