I follow you for tech, not politics

Every now and then, someone brings up Brave as a browser. And when they do, I point out to them that Brave founder Brandon Eich is a homophobe who contributed to prop 8 in CA to ban gay marriage, and an anti-masking, anti-science, covid-minimizer.

Yes, he also founded Firefox and JavaScript. But he doesn’t directly benefit economically from either of those (his prop 8 support is what got him booted from Mozilla), whereas he’s still a leader at Brave.

Without fail, I get at least one response like…

I follow you for tech, no politics.

My friend, all tech is political. All technology either reinforces or fights against existing social systems.

Being apolitical? That’s also political. It’s a choice to maintain status quo systems of repression because they don’t affect you in a negative way.

In a modern capitalist society, nearly all technology requires ethical concessions. But that doesn’t mean we should just give up and support obviously bad shit.