Despite what media and politicians say, there is no tangible tech backlash from consumers, who shrug off warnings of a dystopian future and embrace new tech
Worse, we think there is one. — Mr. Walker is the author of “The Art of Noticing.” — It's fun, and increasingly fashionable, to complain about technology.
New York TimesRob Walker
Context & Ripple Effects
Walker's argument lands in the middle of a crowded 2018-2019 critique cycle: three recent books had already reframed big tech's power as coming from ducking regulation and squeezing workers rather than software genius, and the tech community itself had turned cynical, replacing startup enthusiasm with weariness. Against that backdrop, his claim that ordinary consumers feel no backlash at all is a provocation aimed at his own class of commentators.
The gap he identifies is exactly what Benedict Evans later traced: tech became a crucial part of society while events in 2016 polarized the conversation, producing a rush for easy regulatory answers that ran ahead of any visible shift in user behavior. The persistence of this tension is confirmed by how far forward it echoes — [[a:893083|Paulina Borsook's Cyberselfish warnings about techno-libertarianism found new interest decades after publication]], suggesting the critique genre thrives regardless of what consumers do.
First-order effects
Tech journalists who have embraced a watchdog role are writing for an audience that has not stopped adopting the products being criticized — CJR's call to focus on solutions over villains reads differently when readers show no appetite for abstention.
Politicians pushing regulatory answers cannot claim a consumer mandate from usage data, since the people voting keep buying and using the platforms under scrutiny.
Second-order effects
If consumer behavior stays decoupled from elite sentiment, pressure for change shifts entirely onto regulators and press scrutiny, raising the stakes of the polarized regulatory debate Evans describes.
Companies gain cover to dismiss criticism as a media phenomenon rather than a market signal, weakening the leverage of boycott-style accountability campaigns.
Third-order effects
A durable split between critical discourse and consumer adoption would make tech accountability structurally dependent on regulation and journalism rather than market punishment — which explains why critique persists as a genre, from Cyberselfish onward, without changing purchasing patterns.
If the pattern holds, the meaningful battleground moves from persuading users to persuading lawmakers, concentrating power over tech's direction in political institutions rather than consumer choice.
The trend: Elite tech criticism and actual consumer behavior are diverging, shifting accountability from market signals toward regulators and the press.
Oof, I completely disagree with this. Just because people are not abandoning technology en masse does not mean that there has not been a significant shift in how people think about and approach tech: https://www.nytimes.com/...
A very weird straw-man column from @notrobwalker, who seems to think that a tech backlash must come only from some kind of spontaneous mass consumer boycott. Rather than consumers demanding and receiving government action and regulation. https://www.nytimes.com/...
“It's easy to believe that there really is a roiling tech backlash that will somehow head off any dystopian outcomes, while we lean back and ask Alexa whether it's raining.” My argument, for @nytopinion in today's paper, that there is no tech backlash. https://www.nytimes.com/...
There was no massive consumer backlash against cigarettes, sugar and all kinds of stuff that has been damaging anyway. But whatever, Rob. Opinion | There Is No Tech Backlash - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/...
No buying this techlash denial. Like misreadings of the privacy paradox, the issue is behavior ≠ align with informed preferences. It's about valorizing choice while limiting it. And re-engineering dispositions, while pretending they organically emerge. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@CaseyNewton @HowardKushlan I don't feel major protests, petitions, or sustained consumer backlash drove these gov investigations into anti-trust/privacy. #DeleteUber was one of the few consumer-driven movements but it was about a more tangible service. That doesn't mean these in…
We all know people who have theatrically quit this or that social media service, or announced digital sabbaticals. But the evidence suggests that we love our devices as much as ever, writes @notrobwalker. https://www.nytimes.com/...
‘No tangible tech backlash’? There are 16 active state and federal investigations into privacy and antitrust issues in the United States alone. But go off I guess! https://twitter.com/...
My god, this is the most self-aware article the NYT has ever published. One of their writers has finally figured out the entire last two years of Pulitzer baiting has been about an invented narrative. https://twitter.com/...
Despite all the anecdotes you've heard about people deleting their Facebook accounts, the company's flagship app added about a million new daily users in the United States alone, writes @notrobwalker. https://www.nytimes.com/...
The growth of companies like Facebook is bolstered by users in countries for whom the platform is, quite literally, the Internet, as I wrote for @folha this spring: https://medium.com/...
None of the many users of the preposterous ‘surveillance capitalism’ term will ever walk all this back. The (self-catalyzed) media storm around social media will subside, everyone will treat it like a utility, and the same moral-panic playbook will be used with whatever's next.
For all the critiques of social media creating a mirage removed from reality, those most often deceived by the mirage are journalists involved in creating it. There's no tech backlash, because nobody other than journalists and activists care about privacy enough to quit tech. pic…
Scream long enough into the tornado, and you'll live long enough to see the NYT publish your years-old claim as if it were an epiphany. https://www.nytimes.com/...
People love technology. Only those who write about it and regulate it do not. Reading “The Privacy Project” is watching the @nytimes slowly come to terms with modernity, and it's both fascinating and painful to read. https://www.nytimes.com/...
The smart contrarian case from @notrobwalker, and Exhibit A for the Big Tech defense. We're massively pro-consumer, just look at 'em all. Then again, that's exactly what Microsoft said in the 1990s. Angst or an antitrust case? We'll see. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Social media companies are routinely criticized as toxic swamps full of trolls, liars and bots. But there's no evidence of any exodus, writes @notrobwalker. https://www.nytimes.com/...