A deep look at the rift between some prominent SV figures and the journalists increasingly critical of the tech industry, based on Slate Star Codex vs. The NYT
Long, angry LRB essay by Pankaj Mishra. Tweets: Balaji S. Srinivasan / @balajis : Had a fun chat just now with Lewis-Kraus on positive sum ways to build a new relationship between tech & media. He recommended this piece, which I also endorse. Insults for both sides aside, it nails the key question: do you have sincerity? Or only irony? https://fredrikdeboer.com/... https://twitter.com/... Ben Thompson / @benthompson : I should clarify: the New Yorker certainly understood the explicit meaning, but not the meta meaning. To put it another way, if the New Yorker article had a section like the final section of the outgroup essay, it would have been elevated from a good article to a great one. Ben Thompson / @benthompson : If you read that New Yorker article about Slate Star Codex, you owe it to yourself to read the blue/red/gray tribe post referenced (I don't think the New Yorker understood it). It's very long, but worth it. Make it to the end! https://web.archive.org/... Nathan Baschez / @nbashaw : I tweeted this while reading the New Yorker article on SSC He never says “rationalists are irrationally suspicious of journalists,” but he implies it. And it works really well. https://www.newyorker.com/... https://twitter.com/... Nick Riccardi / @nickriccardi : What a great look at the whole Slate Star Codex imbroglio https://www.newyorker.com/... David Cohn / @digidave : On Media vs. Silicon Valley. In this essay it comes down to irony vs Principle. You might disagree with it. But this is how many people view journalists on twitter. https://fredrikdeboer.com/... https://twitter.com/... Edmund Lee / @edmundlee : The @NewYorker unmasks @slatestarcodex ... don't worry, it doesn't name him, just exposes him: https://www.newyorker.com/... Mathew Ingram / @mathewi : This New Yorker piece is a great overview of Slate Star Codex and how it became a centerpiece of the “rationalist” community in Silicon Valley — it even describes the Roko's Basilisk paradox, although it doesn't use that name https://www.newyorker.com/... Nathan Bernhardt / @jonbernhardt : it owns that something like half of this massive article about scott alexander and SSC by someone who obviously personally loathes them (and takes shots at them in journalist-speak throughout) is dedicated to...disseminating his philosophy https://www.newyorker.com/... Alan Henry / @halophoenix : “sure i'm complicit in building a dystopian surveillance state run by billionares eager to consume all the everything on the planet but my girlfriend deserves a cookie and besides why won't anyone think of the *spirit* of silicon valley” https://twitter.com/... @newyorker : How a controversial rationalist blogger became a mascot and martyr in a struggle against the New York Times. https://nyer.cm/fFFmhqU Lance Ulanoff / @lanceulanoff : Fascinating on so many levels. Many thoughts, which I think I'll keep to myself https://www.newyorker.com/... Julia Carrie Wong / @juliacarriew : By my count there are 34 named individuals in this article and 32 of them are men. The other two are Hillary Clinton (mentioned by way of the fact that a man voted for her) and Taylor Lorenz (mentioned in the third to last paragraph). https://www.newyorker.com/... @can : Reminds me how Reddit used to call itself the front page of the internet https://twitter.com/... @can : Agree with the “scare quotes” here in that there are a lot of people in tech, like me, who don't have this inherent distrust in journalists and consider the current negativity from a select but influential few in tech towards journalists a worrying and a childish trend. https://twitter.com/... Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : Agreed. So well done https://twitter.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : If you want to understand “tech vs. journalism” AS “tech vs. journalism,” this is the piece to read https://www.newyorker.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece sits at the center of an arc that ran from the original New Yorker examination of the Slate Star Codex–New York Times clash through a year of escalation: by mid-2021 the dispute had widened into what New York Magazine described as an online battle between a16z partners, Balaji Srinivasan, and the journalists covering their industry. The description shows the piece landing on both sides — Balaji endorsing it after a call with its author, Ben Thompson quibbling about what the New Yorker missed — which is itself evidence of how personally this cohort treats coverage.
Two later developments frame why the rift matters rather than being mere Twitter noise: critics argued the Times had overstated Slate Star Codex's influence and mischaracterized the industry's politics, while Andreessen Horowitz responded structurally by launching its own opinion section for outside contributors — capital building a publishing channel instead of negotiating with existing ones.
First-order effects
- Prominent Valley voices are forced onto the record: Balaji Srinivasan publicly endorses the essay and Ben Thompson critiques its framing, meaning the subjects can no longer dismiss mainstream write-ups as beneath engagement.
- Slate Star Codex's community shifts from obscure blog subculture to a named party in a national press story, with the Times' portrayal now subject to public contestation by writers like Noah Smith.
Second-order effects
- Andreessen Horowitz's decision to stand up an in-house opinion section reads as a direct consequence: when coverage feels hostile, fund your own megaphone rather than pitch reporters.
- Beat reporters like Casey Newton end up interrogating their own incentives, as his OneZero Q&A on why tech hates the tech press shows the media side treating the antagonism itself as a story worth explaining.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the industry–media relationship restructures from interdependence (access traded for scrutiny) toward parallel publishing systems, where venture-backed outlets and Substack-era writers compete directly with legacy papers for narrative control.
- How accurately legacy outlets characterize niche online communities becomes a recurring credibility test for the press, since overstated portraits hand the criticized side a legitimate grievance to organize around.
The trend: Silicon Valley is answering critical mainstream coverage by building its own publishing infrastructure and elevating sympathetic independent writers, fracturing the single-narrator model of tech journalism.