Trump was re-elected with Big Tech’s help

I don’t want to be writing this and I’m guessing most of you don’t want to be reading it, but here we are: staring down the path to another Trump presidency. In our pre-election guide, we laid out what a Trump presidency could mean for tech justice issues (you can read that here). But now that we need to get ready for another 4 years of Trump and friends, here’s just a bit of how we got here and what to expect going forward.

Big Tech played a huge role in creating this moment and they are ready for a Trump presidency.

Elon Musk dumped millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign and intentionally turned X (formerly Twitter. major RIP) into what NBC News aptly describes as a “pro-Trump echo chamber.” In the lead-up to the election, all you could find on X was voter-fraud disinformation, racist conspiracy theories, and smears against the Harris campaign. The transformation of X from a global town square into a disinformation machine is just one example of how the billionaire takeover of our digital media platforms is supercharging the demise of the information ecosystem.

Meanwhile, over at Meta, Mark Zuckerberg is making friends with Trump and it’s working in his favor. In July, Zuckerberg praised the former president as a “badass” after he was shot at a campaign rally. Earlier in the same month, Meta announced it was getting rid of the monitoring tool used to track mis- and disinformation on Facebook and Instagram. Trump likes Zuckerberg “much better now” — which is a red. flag.

And just last week Elon Musk was allegedly given a semiofficial position in the Trump Administration in a proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), along with Vivek Ramaswamy. Although it’s unclear how all of this will work right now, Trump stated that DOGE could be the “Manhattan Project” of our time and that Musk would be “advising” from outside the government on how to restructure government agencies. 

It’s important to read that restructuring here actually means gutting or bending agencies into shapes that only serve the interest of corporations over people. It will look like cutting trillions of dollars from essential government services to further push to prioritization of areas like healthcare and housing.

From blocking newspapers from endorsing candidates to unchecked growth over climate promises, Big Tech executives did pretty much whatever they could to support the Trump campaign and agenda. And it’s clear from all the congratulatory post-election tweets that the entire industry and the incoming administration are building up systems that are aimed at serving themselves, not us.

So what now? 

Our core fights don’t change, even as our people will be under increased and immediate attack, from mass deportations to the rollback of climate policies to attacks on trans communities. Technology and corporate power are at the core of so many harms we experience on a daily basis—from our climate, to policing, to immigration, to prioritizing weapons shipments over FEMA responses.

However, the way we fight for these things might change. Under a Trump administration, we know we will have to manage immediate attacks while not losing sight of long-term goals. It’s time to reassess our organizing terrain and decide what avenues are the most strategic. We need to double down on local and state fights, while not giving up fights on the national level for our climate and communities.

We still have a lot to fight for and a lot of people to fight alongside.