Is Tech Neutral? Can We Trust Silicon Valley? After 2018, the Illusion May be Shattered
There were a lot of leaks and controversies in the tech industry in 2018. Whistleblower Christopher Wylie rang the alarm about Cambridge Analytica — the company that used Facebook data to manipulate voters during the 2016 U.S. Election and UK Brexit vote. A highly censored version of Google approved by the Chinese Government known Project Dragonfly leaked to the public and their employees protested it. Evidence revealed that Facebook knew about Russian meddling and did nothing. Amazon’s facial recognition software was scrutinized by US lawmakers for being racially biased and harmful to free expression. Employees leaked internal discussions at Google about the company’s work developing AI to help Department of Defense drones classify images. #MeToo -style revelations across Silicon Valley shook up power structures, and political uproars on the right about alleged secret censorship on social media — the so called “Shadow Banning”.
These cases (and others like them) poked gaping holes in Silicon Valley’s narrative about them being either a good or neutral force. Despite being mostly led by left-learning white male venture capitalists, Silicon Valley has long maintained a myth of technological neutrality. This myth basically says: “Our products are the results of mathematics and science: the numbers…
