Tech magnates in the Bay Area recently urged the administration to call off a planned deployment of federal troops. Unsurprisingly, Trump acquiesced. He shared: “friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge” then called off the operation.
Meanwhile, despite public outcry in Southern California and across the country, federal agents have continued to lay siege to our neighborhoods, abduct thousands of our community members and imprison them in detention centers with no due process.
Tech CEOs are not elected officials, yet their political influence is hard to overlook.
Yesterday, Wednesday, November 12, at the Los Angeles Central Library, author, policy advocate and professor at Columbia University professor Tim Wu joined ACLU SoCal senior staff attorney Mohammad Tajsar and discussed the many ways popular technology companies extract the resources from our communities weakening the economic and political power of the people.
In his new book, The Age of Extraction, Wu investigates how today’s dominant platforms manipulate attention, extract wealth and deepen inequality, urging us to recognize the influence of Big Tech and reclaim control to create a balanced economy that works for all.