A look at how tech products aimed at civic engagement made by technologists from Silicon Valley have mostly failed to have any long term impact
Joshua Brustein / Bloomberg : Tweets: @profmichelson , @bradstone , and @shiraovide Tweets: Dr. Melissa R Michelson / @profmichelson : As a local, I often have Silicon Valley startup folks come ask me for advice about their civic engagement app ideas. They always leave disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm. http://twitter.com/... Brad Stone / @bradstone : Why Silicon Valley-led political efforts like Win the Future have, so far, utterly failed to make an impact. by @joshuabrustein http://www.bloomberg.com/... via @technology Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : There wasn't product-market fit for tech folks' efforts in civic minded technology. “Enthusiasm lacking expertise isn't going to get us a lot.” by @joshuabrustein https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Joshua Brustein's Bloomberg piece, amplified by Brad Stone and Shira Ovide, documents how products like Win the Future never found what Ovide bluntly calls product-market fit — political scientist Melissa Michelson's account of startup founders leaving her office disappointed captures the gap between app logic and civic reality. The piece extends a lineage of solutionism critiques: as far back as 2015, failed tech projects in developing markets showed high-tech tools break down when the surrounding institutions are missing.
First-order effects
- Civic-tech founders like those behind Win the Future confront a market that doesn't behave like consumers: Michelson and other local political scientists become the gatekeepers whose unenthusiastic verdicts signal why the products stall.
Second-order effects
- With civic apps discredited as an impact vehicle, the industry's reputation-seeking energy migrates to other channels — the same impulse that later drove a rapid pivot to pandemic remedies framed as public service.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, civic influence shifts from products to people: by 2022, frustration with Covid policies and crime had tech workers in San Francisco engaging in local politics directly rather than through apps, while renewed interest in Paulina Borsook's Cyberselfish critique of techno-libertarianism keeps the structural question of Valley civic culture alive.
The trend: Silicon Valley's recurring attempt to productize civic participation keeps failing because political change runs through institutions and individuals, not apps — pushing technologists toward direct engagement instead.