Is Big Tech Breaking Up With the Left?

Open Markets, a division at the public policy think tank the New America Foundation, had been an intellectual force in progressive circles in recent years, leading to a heightened awareness of the damaging effects that monopolization is having on both consumers and businesses. Its work focused on everything from hyper-consolidation in the airline industry to a growing concentration of book publishers, but where it really stirred things up was by targeting America’s giant tech companies, particularly Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet (the umbrella company for Google). Now, Google has apparently struck back, revealing a growing divide between progressives and an industry that has long claimed a home in the Democratic Party. On Wednesday, The New York Times’s Ken Vogel reported that New America had parted ways with Open Markets following complaints from Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Alphabet, a major New America donor. (Schmidt has also made personal donations to New America, and was its chairman until 2016.) In an email reviewed by the Times, Anne-Marie Slaughter, who leads New America, informed Barry Lynn, the head of Open Markets, that “the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways.” Slaughter told Lynn that the decision was “in no way based on the content of your work,” but that Lynn was “imperiling the institution as a whole.” In a statement released after the Times published its story, Slaughter said Lynn has been let go for insubordination—for failing “to adhere to New America’s standards of openness and institutional collegiality.” -- More...