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We wanted to be on the side of human rights, free speech and free expression, creativity and equality. At the same time, it was an international platform, and who among us could have articulated a coherent stance on international human rights? We sat in our apartments tapping on laptops purchased f…

As we left the theater in pursuit of a hamburger, I felt rising frustration and resentment. I was frustrated because I felt stuck, and I was resentful because I was stuck in an industry that was chipping away at so many things I cared about. I did not want to be an ingrate, but I had trouble seeing…

“Meritocracy”: a word that had originated in social satire and was adopted in sincerity by an industry that could be its own best caricature. It was the operating philosophy for companies that flirted with administering IQ tests to prospective and existing employees; for startups full of men who lo…

The engineers all read a heavily moderated message board, a news aggregator and discussion site run by the seed accelerator in Mountain View. The message board was frequented by entrepreneurs, tech workers, computer science majors, libertarians, and the people who loved to fight with them. People w…

I had not really thought about that. But I believed in the mission, I told him. I didn’t see the harm. I confessed that I thought the open-source platform had radical potential. Parker was quiet for a moment.

“For me, it’s a dark specter of centralization,” he said. “In a world without it, we co…