[saalweachter]

So the cornerstone of one of the most common types of scam, affinity fraud, as well as a cornerstone of salesmanship, is convincing an audience that you're just like them. You have the same likes and dislikes, the same hobbies, the same cultural references, the same beliefs and values and hopes and dreams.

And then you use that affinity to manipulate them, to get them to do what you want, to get them to give you money.

I think the tech worker / engineering / online crowd has really let themselves get duped.

Sure, maybe some tech billionaires did start out in a similar place as many of us.

But a lot of what they tell us as part of selling us their brand is just affinity fraud, telling us they're just like us with the same values of privacy and open source and some hippie notion of peace, love and understanding.

But it's just a trick, and they just want money, power and fame.

It's not so much as the billionaires capitulating, it's that they never were the people they pretended to be, and keeping up the act is no longer how they get what they want.

[throw__away7391]

I basically agree here, but I would add that the framing here can sometimes sometimes be better described as “extortion”. Politicians have tremendous power and influence over many industries, I’ve seen the inside of a few situations where the politicians framed themselves as “taking on big business” where behind closed doors they were 100% calling the shots and handing executives directives on what they could or could not say publicly. The companies had no choice but to play along. When I see a big company take exactly the same public position as the current regulatory regime or administration in power, I don’t assume that they necessarily have any choice in the matter.