The internet is what makes Silicon Valley go round. Everyone, including Sam Altman, needs to be an activist. Asking for someone else to take point on something so fundamental is like asking Natives to take point on water prot-- wait.
Everyone needs to take action, even if it's the smallest possible action. Take a minute to donate to the EFF or tweet about the issue, or five minutes to write a blog post that actually rallies and informs people. What can we start building now to prepare for when this threat starts manifesting as legislation?
Thankfully, someone else saw the need for a group of people dedicated to fighting for everybody's rights online, back in 1990. I'm talking, of course, about the EFF.
So you can donate.
The head of the FCC doesn't believe in net neutrality, so it's going to be a long fight so they could use your support.
For that matter, maybe this is a chance to you yourself reach out to Trump on an issue and invite him to meet at the White House or come to the Bay Area to meet the next batch of YC startups.
Beyond that, point of engaging Trump would be on a topic I would assume everyone agrees is important - and if you think hidding and hoping things will magically get better, well, good luck!
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-meeting-photo-jeff-bezo...
Uber CEO had to stop his collaboration as Lyft started catching up for the first time in a long time.
Elon also faced a lot of heat and had to qualify his statements. Negative reactions towards him were counteracted by his accomplishments and clean energy contributions.
I think people should collaborate but in a clandestine fashion.
Inviting Trump to Bay area would unleash all the rage against Trump towards the startup community. I'm just afraid it would be a bigger "throw stones at Google buses"
Thiel knew he'd be attacked, took a risk, and there's zero reason to believe he's not happy with the results; if you think Thiel cares what the "Bay Area" thinks, I'd be interested in your reasoning.
Uber's not even worth covering, they're currently a cluster F$&@ waiting to happen and the idea that it was somehow born of talking with Trump is what it is.
Bay Area and for the matter the greater tech community needs to engage the world, not withdraw from it.
> Be afraid all you want, doesn't matter to me.
One of these things is not like the other.
What am I missing?
A pair of riots in Berkeley within a month, San Jose during the election, the Brendan Eich situation, myriad letters from CEOs post election. To quote sama's recent post [1], "Almost everyone I asked was willing to talk to me, but almost none of them wanted me to use their names—even people from very red states were worried about getting “targeted by those people in Silicon Valley if they knew I voted for him”. One person in Silicon Valley even asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement before she would talk to me, as she worried she’d lose her job if people at her company knew she was a strong Trump supporter."
Care as much or little about the concerns of people not like you as you want, just don't act like you want to have a conversation with them too in the same breath.
1. http://blog.samaltman.com/what-i-heard-from-trump-supporters
Do you think this is reasonable in the context of expressing your support for the leader of your nation at your workplace? I certainly don't think so.
The fact that people can't even meet to have a discussion is just simply wrong.
Without communication between parties almost nothing will happen.
There is no way private companies are going to be able to keep the internet open for long. What's their incentive to keep it open? Assume they are against you, and deal with it from there.
And we should be using 40Gbps internet right now, enabling live low-latency video, but we can't because there's no competitive reason for local ISPs to upgrade.