Shut Up With Your God Damn Tech Angle

UPDATE: I finished writing this before Marc Benioff went full Dril and removed the tweets. However, he’s spent a lot of time apologizing for the comment to an endless stream of people. I (personally) wish he’d apologize in general (and especially to DeRay) for not naming McKesson. However, he is legitimately apologetic and intent on making things right, which is a rarity. I’m gonna leave what I wrote up before, but it’s worth reading it knowing his reaction.

Also, on further reflection, I’m not feeling right about my criticism of Recode. I apologize to Kara Swisher for what I originally wrote which I’ll leave up as to not try and whitewash my own story, but I didn’t ask her or Recode for comment. I should have, and for that along with what was my own ill-researched/reported work and half-assed criticism, I apologize to her/Recode.

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I’m going to try not to have some lede with some overwrought thing. Let’s just put it bluntly — black people are regularly shot and killed by police for no reason, they are mistreated, they are antagonized and there are hundreds of years of reasons for it. There is an inherent racism in America and it’s been breeding for a long time. It’s disgusting and horrifying and I am worried writing this that someone will say I didn’t word it write, if I didn’t I’m sorry. If you want to say the words “all lives matter” and have a debate about that go eat a bag of shit, I don’t care.

Anyway, one thing is for certain is that tech is really horny for this issue because it’s a great way to assert their self importance.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, someone who has done real good in the world and is a total dope for posting this, decided to hop on the not remotely new train of “how can we get a tech angle here”:

What we see here is DeRay McKesson, a well-known activist, arrested for basically standing in the street and raising his voice in a non-violent way to decry the shooting of Alton Sterling by the police. What Marc sees is a Twitter shirt.

You know what Marc? If anything you’ve proving the lack of relevancy and power Twitter can have when a person decides to remove the name and the story from the thing and just posts a picture of a black guy getting arrested by the police in a Twitter shirt.

But who cares, right? It proves “Twitters (sic) relevancy & power.” Clearly in his masturbatory glee at the chance to show how Twitter is a powerful whatever for whoever he just glossed over the fact that the police have such a disregard and myopia when it comes to the Black Lives Matter movement that they’d arrest someone who has been risking his life to fight for basic human rights for people of colour.

You didn’t even name him, man. What the hell?

But wait, there’s more!

Recode, an outlet I have a lot of respect for, even managed to weirdly take advantage of the situation.

Now, at first Recode reporting on that “#BlackLivesMatter activist DeRay Mckesson Periscopes his arrest in Baton Rouge protest” might seem like a good thing — and it still is I suppose — because it’s getting a big issue in front of people who might not have seen it (as Recode covers tech mostly, but has bridged out a bit) — it immediately deflates any chance of me believing it was truly just reporting by having a subheadline of Here’s the full interview with him at Code in June.

The ironic thing is this piece even does reporting well — it makes a relevant yet short point that “…the use of social video has been a key role in the social media movement over excessive use of police force, with disturbing live imagery being distributed widely. That includes the death of another man, Philando Castile, whose death was streamed on Facebook Live by his fiancée, Diamond Reynolds.”

But what bothers me is the need for that subhed, followed by:

Until there’s more news, here’s the full interview with Mckesson and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that took place at the Code conference in June, in which McKesson talks about using social media for his activism.

It makes me think one thing, whether intention or not: That this was posted to talk about how tech did a thing and promote the Code Conference at the expense of reporting a thing happening. The video from Code was good. It’s good that a tech conference brought DeRay on stage to discuss this issue and his activist work. Why they had to post that piece for any other reason is beyond me. Would the issue have been covered had it not been live-streamed?

I see why they did it — it has relevance to tech that tech was part of the story, sort of, in the same way that people have made calls that are important using iPhones. I suppose this might be when we might be facing a point where tech is so pervasive that it’s actually not relevant based on how pervasive it is.

Regardless, this is far better than the vomit-inducing Brian Stelter piece “Facebook Live’s big moment raises even bigger questions,” which is so fundamentally sickening in that it co-opts a gigantic, horrifying social issue and turns it into a gross navel-gazing expedition into why Facebook Live and Live Streaming Is Important. Facebook Live did not have a big moment here, Philando Castile had his last few. I realize you need clicks man, but god.

Over the next few days you are going to (if you have not already) see a bunch of the hottest takes in tech about how tech is allowing us to see the tragedies of yadda yadda yadda and create social change in bla-de-bloo-blah. The truth is that this is not to me likely to change anyone’s views of anything.

The horrible fact many need in tech need to face is that the world doesn’t really care about tech in the same way as people in tech do. The world might be on Facebook, but had the “old” media like TV and newspapers that people want to so quickly declare dead not reported this story, there would be no reporting on it. Yes, the video got out there because of Facebook, and yes, because a man’s death was streamed on Facebook Live it was reported.

When tech succeeds it becomes invisible and thus unimportant beyond “does it work or not.” People aren’t thinking “hm this divisive new technology is a tool for social change.” They’re doing a thing with tech. Ask a random person in Baton Rouge who Jack Dorsey is and I bet there’s a low chance they’d know, and an even lower one they’d know who Marc Benioff was. Or Drew Houston. Wait, how is Drew Houston doing? Let’s find out.

This piece from USAToday also shows the awful ambulance chasing of the tech industry. I quote:

• Dropbox CEO Drew Houston tweeted, “What a terrible time for this country. #BlackLivesMatter” Through a spokeswoman, Houston said he tweeted because he and Dropbox care about these issues deeply.

​• Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted, “Senseless killings this week remind us that justice is still out of reach for many.”

• “We join the millions mourning in Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights and Dallas and we stand with those committed to change around the world,” tweeted Microsoft.

What’s wrong here is anyone saying that they’re doing a big thing by making them. Microsoft doesn’t “join” anyone. They made a tweet. It’s a tweet. Dropbox’s CEO having his spokesperson tell someone that Dropbox cares is about the absolutely most pathetic thing ever. That’s a big difference between Drew Houston typing “fuck. This is horrible” on his personal Twitter. It’s a company making a statement knowing full well it’s built to make the world nod and hopefully say “hm, Dropbox cares about these issues.” Not enough to take that $100,000 they spent on the Chrome Panda and instead have donated it to Black Lives Matter, because that might be taking a stand on an issue.

And Swartz puts it well, with the key point that they’ve gladly picked and chosen their issues that they want to help with:

But while tech leaders have been strong with their words, actions have been absent.

Save for Google, which has contributed more than $5 million in grants to racial justice organizations the past year, most tech companies have taken few tangible steps to address the issue. That’s in contrast to how they’ve used their clout as sought-after employers and cash-rich companies to influence other issues, from bills that impact LGBTQ people to immigration reform.

What I see is a lot of people who want to seem like Good People (TM) who also want to show that tech is both good and very, very important, so that they can edify their own existence. Who even knows.