Big Tech’s moral inversion

Big Tech has, as a whole, become an industry that opposes human rights internationally. To cover its tracks, it happily inveighs against phony, imagined threats to human rights domestically.

One sign is contained in the internal Twitter documents released on Friday. Before Elon Musk purchased Twitter, the company’s ever-so-woke senior employees censored a factual news story at the request of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Not only that, but they were in the habit of doing this. And the very people who engaged in this un-American and immoral activity are decrying Musk’s takeover of Twitter as a tragedy — the worst thing that could happen to the national conversation.

Here is a second illustration. Amid the latest wave of anti-regime protests in China, Apple has helped the regime suppress dissent by changing AirDrop’s peer-to-peer file-sharing feature for users inside mainland China. This has taken away from the protesters a vital resource for sharing information with strangers outside the supervision of Chinese authorities. This decision by Apple is clearly premeditated and appears to be profit motivated. It also contrasts with Musk’s new Twitter, which has allowed itself to become a resource for the protesters, who can access it with a virtual private network despite China’s ban on the platform.

Here is a third illustration of the same problem. Within weeks of taking over Twitter, Musk has managed to do something that the recently fired management team had been dragging its feet on for years: He acted immediately to cleanse the platform of child prostitution advertisements. Among his first reforms was to introduce two-click reporting for posts involving child sexual exploitation and the quick abolition of hashtags dedicated to such exploitation. Perhaps this is now possible because, under Musk, Twitter wastes less of its time policing users’ political opinions and instead focuses on real threats.

Somehow the abolition of child sex slavery on Twitter was beyond the abilities of the former Twitter employees — again, the very ones who run to the media now at every opportunity to whine and moan about how horrible it is that free speech has returned to the platform for which they formerly worked.

So here is another insight into the ethics of Silicon Valley: Free speech is a grave threat, but child sexual exploitation is not such a big deal.

Musk’s entry on the scene may not save the day, but it has exposed something truly ugly about America’s Big Tech companies. They suffer from a total moral inversion. To them, what is wrong is right, and vice versa. This explains their silly and fake woke politics. It explains their embarrassing obeisance to China’s despotic regime. It explains their lack of commitment to freedom of speech and the press. It explains their censorship of legitimate news stories and their contrastingly permissive attitude toward the sexual abuse of children.

It explains why Apple cites high principles of privacy when refusing to unlock the devices of a mass shooter for U.S. authorities but has no principles at all when it comes to aiding the most murderous regime in the history of humanity. It explains why Twitter went so far to protect those who inappropriately expose children to adult topics and forms of adult entertainment from the name that describes them — “groomers.”

Big Tech has, as a whole, become an industry that opposes human rights internationally. To cover its tracks, it happily inveighs against phony, imagined threats to human rights domestically. This is the very essence of wokeness.

Like the NBA and other institutions that have sold their soul to China in the hope of making money, Big Tech has badly lost its way. With any luck, more people like Musk — people with resources and whose consciences are not yet completely deformed — will move into the tech space and provide a much-needed lesson on how not to be evil.