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Thursday November 05, 2020 |Big tech trends

Trends vs aberrations and the direction of tech

There's a tendency in humans to reason away unexpected results as aberrations. Rather than recalculating and treating the outcome as an indication of a trend, it's viewed a one-time event where fault can be blamed on some exogenous events. wrong. Regardless of the specific outcome of the election, there results indicate some significant trend shifts.

Four years ago, a Trump victory was not predicted by any major media source and the likelihood was thought to be incredibly low. When he won, there was immediate scapegoating where blame was cast upon people voting for third party candidates, foreign inference, and negligence by tech platforms. At the time, it seemed outlandish to some (ahem) that social media platforms actually swayed the results of the election any more than voting suppression tactics and other more direct methods.

Over the past four year, there's been an enormous focus on tech platforms and politics. This focus has often distracted from real societal changes by seeking to blame the platforms for the results. This is glaringly obvious on the national political spectrum, and there are signs of changes on far more local levels.

Well-funded, incumbent tech companies have successfully begun to set national precedent with the passage of Prop 22 in California. And despite what is vowed to be a win for consumers, Prop 24 has passed and will make it more difficult for new companies to compete with the existing giant.

Generally speaking, propositions in California are far too easy to pass, and much to difficult to overturn. That's especially meaningful because California is home to many of the biggest tech companies and often sets a nationwide precedent. The results show that tech companies can successfully pass strong regulations that cement positions. While California may be a strong "blue" state, the people are showing that big tech is favored.

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