the only important thing is ensuring that these weirdos don’t get status
Seems too self-centered to be the real explanation. (Most of the time, people who do things that hurt you aren’t doing it because they hate you; it’s because you’re in the way.)
As a technology reporter whose job is to cover what rich and powerful people in Silicon Valley are up to, the fact that companies your readers have heard of (DeepMind and OpenAI and Anthropic) are causally downstream of this internet ideology that no one has heard of, is itself an interesting story that the public deserves to hear about.
It is a legitimate and interesting story that the public deserves to hear about! The problem, from our perspective, is that he doesn’t accept that the object level is a relevant part of the story. He’s correct to notice the asymmetry in vibes between people at MATS trying to save the world and people at Meta trying to make money as being “a key part of the debate” as far as the psychology of the participants goes—and by writing a story about that observation, he’s done his job as a technology reporter. Simulacrum 1 isn’t in scope.
People might think Matt is overstating this but I literally heard it from NYT reporters at the time. There was a top-down decision that tech could not be covered positively, even when there was a true, newsworthy and positive story. I’d never heard anything like it. https://x.com/mattyglesias/s/mattyglesias/status/1588190763413868553
The original Matt Yglesias tweet has been deleted, but the Internet Archive has it:
I think a lot of people are totally ignorant of the background dynamic driving the drama around the checkmarks.
But what happened is that a few years ago the New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage.
Instead of covering the industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair.
Almost never curious about technology or in awe of progress and potential.
This was a very deliberate top-down decision.
They decided tech was a major power center that needed scrutiny and needed to be taken down a peg, and this style of coverage became very widespread and prominent in the industry.
Seems too self-centered to be the real explanation. (Most of the time, people who do things that hurt you aren’t doing it because they hate you; it’s because you’re in the way.)
As a technology reporter whose job is to cover what rich and powerful people in Silicon Valley are up to, the fact that companies your readers have heard of (DeepMind and OpenAI and Anthropic) are causally downstream of this internet ideology that no one has heard of, is itself an interesting story that the public deserves to hear about.
It is a legitimate and interesting story that the public deserves to hear about! The problem, from our perspective, is that he doesn’t accept that the object level is a relevant part of the story. He’s correct to notice the asymmetry in vibes between people at MATS trying to save the world and people at Meta trying to make money as being “a key part of the debate” as far as the psychology of the participants goes—and by writing a story about that observation, he’s done his job as a technology reporter. Simulacrum 1 isn’t in scope.
I’m guessing you remember this?
The original Matt Yglesias tweet has been deleted, but the Internet Archive has it:
I forget, have you asked Metz about this?