Comment by Arainach
5 days ago
Society, in its grand equality, gives rich and poor alike the ability to spend their money on billboards and full page ads.
This is ignoring all of the actual algorithm changes and Elon-induced censorship of specific topics on Twitter that make Paul's point just flat-out wrong, of course.
I'm sorry, but "wokeness" until recently was on the agenda of multi-billion dollars companies such as Google, Meta, Apple and the rest of Fortune 500. Implying that left-leaning people can't afford to pay for their Twitter/X profiles is laughable.
What was that agenda exactly? The only ones that come to mind are good, actually: - Allowing more free speech internally and working towards providing a safe space for everyone to provide their ideas. - Investing in under-served communities to try and build talent to hire from.
> Allowing more free speech internally and working towards providing a safe space for everyone to provide their ideas.
As long as your ideas conform with the rest of the group. Don't you start thinking of making this an unsafe space bucko!
> The only ones that come to mind are good, actually
It's funny you say that, because my impression is that DEI allows companies to avoid criticism of their oppressive policies with token investments in a few diverse staff.
- Running sweatshops in SEA [1]? "NIKE, Inc. is building more equitable and inclusive practices to empower our employees and create the workforce of the future." [2]
- Repeated oil spills in Nigeria? [3][4] Shell's vision is to become "a place where everyone—from employees, to our customers, partners and suppliers—feels valued, respected and has a strong sense of belonging." [5]
- Exploiting unaccompanied, undocumented children in factories that make Cheerios? [6] General Mills is "committed to advancing our culture of inclusion, equity and belonging for our people, business and communities." [7] They are also happy to look the other way when their subcontractor Hearthside Food Solutions hires children to work in their factories, as long as they have plausible deniability.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_sweatshops [2] https://about.nike.com/en/impact/focus-areas/diversity-equit... [3] https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/25/africa/shell-oil-spills-niger... [4] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/12/21/timeline-oil-s... [5] https://www.shell.com/who-we-are/diversity-equity-and-inclus... [6] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-... https://archive.is/1sDWO [7] https://www.generalmills.com/how-we-make-it/putting-people-f...
I hope that's enough to reveal that a lot of these so-called DEI initiatives are only there to performatively assuage investors and activists, while the companies involved continue preying on the marginalized.
Pretty much any billionaire I can name has taken an "anti-woke" stance: Musk, Trump, Thiel, Graham, Zuckerberg, Andreesen, Ramaswamy... Money is definitely not on the side of the "woke", whoever they may be.
Seems like the only billionaires you can name are the ones that made the news in the past week... How about the "silent majority" of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Sergiey Brinn, Lary Page, Warren Buffet, Steve Ballmer, etc? Are they all "anti-woke" as well?
I guess my point here is: until recently "wokeness" was the mainstream ideology, basically the default setting for all the rich and powerful. Yes, recently half a dozen of billionaries switched sides, but that does not mean that wokeness doesn't still have trillions of dollars behind it.
A friend of mine pointed out that in societies like Russia and China, it is the oligarchs who are most directly under the thumb of the strongmen. They're visible and are the first to "fall" out a window, whereas if you're some nobody you might be able to get away with dissent.
Bezos's quashing of dissent at The Washington Post might not (just) be the solidarity of a real billionaire with a fake billionaire but rather the very real fear he won't get a permit for anything for the next four years. If Zuck plays along with Trump, Trump eliminates competition from a better alternative, etc.
A counterexample is Bloomberg Businessweek which trivializes racism with the mindlessly woke policy of always writing "black" (as in African-American) with a capital B right next to reviews of $350 bottles of booze and $3000/night hotel rooms.
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