The NYT overstated the influence of both Slate Star Codex and the Rationalist community on Silicon Valley, and falsely portrayed the tech industry as right-wing
Stereotyping the tech industry as a bunch of secretive right-wingers isn't correct, and it isn't helpful. — 11 hr ago Tweets: @noahpinion , @brianfagioli , @martinsfp , @ericnewcomer , @noahpinion , @delong , and @rezendi Tweets: Noah Smith / @noahpinion : A New York Times article about Slate Star Codex advanced the stereotype that Silicon Valley is full of fascists. That stereotype is wrong. Almost everyone out here is just a standard liberal nerd. https://noahpinion.substack.com/ ... Brian Fagioli / @brianfagioli : Is the NYT the most important paper in the world? Yes. Is any paper better? No. Is there a trend of weirdness and poor decision coming from it lately? Absolutely. Not sure what's going on over there. They need to tighten things up ASAP. https://twitter.com/... Martin Sfp Bryant / @martinsfp : I have to say, that other than the final sentence being a reading test for people claiming the NYT doxed the blog's author, I struggled to find any kind of strong ‘point’ to that NYT article. https://twitter.com/... Eric Newcomer / @ericnewcomer : I thought the NYT article threaded the needle fine on who it thought the article reflected on. besides that Noah makes fair points. But isn't it well understood by everyone that Silicon Valley is mostly Democrats. Media wrote stories of masses of Bernie donors https://twitter.com/... @noahpinion : My response to the Times article about Slate Star Codex: 1. There's no evidence it was very popular or influential in the tech world 2. Techies (including founders) are OVERWHELMINGLY liberals 3. Rationalists care mostly about esoterica, not politics https://noahpinion.substack.com/ ... @delong : @karaswisher @nbashaw @CadeMetz Since the _New York Times_ does not have an ombudsman to ask about this, I am going to go with my friend Noah Smith's judgment on @CadeMetz: strongly negative: **Noah Smith**: _Silicon Valley Isn't Full of Fascists_ <https://noahpinion.substack.com/ ...>: ': 'Eight months later, that 1/ Jon Evans / @rezendi : “There's a small, lonely-looking lump of conservatives over on the right. That undoubtedly includes Peter Thiel and a few other prominent conservatives. But they are iconoclasts within an industry that leans very strongly to the left.” https://noahpinion.substack.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
The article sits within an escalating dispute between prominent Silicon Valley voices and reporters critical of the industry, previously examined through the Slate Star Codex–New York Times rift. Its central claim is not merely about one community’s influence, but about whether media shorthand can credibly stand in for Silicon Valley’s broader politics.
Related coverage later tracks an online battle between tech figures and industry journalists, while workplace tensions over social issues show that political conflict in tech was already being fought across both public narratives and company management.
First-order effects
- The New York Times’ portrayal is publicly challenged by Noah Smith and other commentators, placing its characterization of Slate Star Codex, rationalists, and Silicon Valley under direct scrutiny.
- Slate Star Codex and the Rationalist community become the contested symbols through which critics and journalists argue over who represents the tech industry.
Second-order effects
- The dispute gives tech investors, founders, and journalists another incentive to contest each other’s framing in public, rather than treating reporting disagreements as isolated editorial disputes.
- Companies already trying to limit workplace discussion of social issues face a more polarized external backdrop, as broad political labels attached to tech can spill into employee and management conflict.
Third-order effects
- If this pattern persists, media coverage of technology will increasingly be judged not only on company reporting but on whether it can distinguish influential subcultures from the industry at large.
- The recurring press-versus-tech dynamic points toward political identity becoming a durable fault line in industry legitimacy debates, alongside disputes over business power and workplace governance.
The trend: Silicon Valley’s relationship with the press is shifting from episodic criticism toward a continuing contest over who gets to define the industry’s political identity.