Part of the problem with tech companies in general is that they don’t actually have to exist and I think everyone knows it, like in their soul. Tech, particularly Silicon Valley tech, is not actually valuable in any intrinsic way, and so if the Internet were to suddenly vanish, and everyone who knows how to build an Internet vanished too, life would go on. Worse for some, better for some, but on average, just about the same.
I thought the first episode of Silicon Valley kind of hammered that home with the running gag about how tech company execs were always saying their companies were “making the world a better place”. It’s a lie, of course, and they just want to get and stay rich and powerful. But to get other people to work for them, they have to get them to simultaneously know it is a lie and believe the lie because they think it will make them rich and powerful, too.
And I think that what the last two years have really done is move “rich and powerful” from a place of honor to a place of shame, which really screws up the social model of tech companies.