Silicon States

by Lucie Greene

  HoneyBook, a platform for self-employed creative-industry workers (designers, florists, photographers), released results from a sexual harassment survey in December 2017 that shed light on the issues faced by gig economy employment. In the survey of its members, it found that 54 percent of women freelance creatives had experienced sexual harassment, compared to 48 percent of women in the overall workforce. But this could be only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to self-employment overall. Honeybook’s user base, one would assume, is more affluent, vocal, and empowered in industries that while dominated by freelancers are still to some degree formalized and public. Women at the sharp end of the gig economy, working in low-income, isolated, and transient positions, would likely have far worse stories to tell. But there are potentially universal findings in Honeybook’s study. Of women who experienced sexual harassment, 77 percent said they’d experienced unprofessional comments on their appearance. Demeaning nicknames accounted for 76 percent of the harassment, and 60 percent had fallen victim to physical intimidation. The issue of reliance on reviews, recommendations, and good feedback was universal. Sixty-five percent of respondents in Honeybook’s survey were sexually harassed by an attendee of an event they were working. Eighty-three percent did not report the sexual harassment to anyone. When it was reported to the authorities, the study found no action was taken 51 percent of the time. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they did not have a sexual harassment clause in their contract. Staggeringly, 18 percent of victims have been harassed by the same person/people more than four times.

  “Professionally, these creatives are faced with a choice: continue with the project and earn their desired rate at the risk of another instance of harassment, or report it and sacrifice the client and rate and possibly future business,” said Honeybook.

  Eighty-two percent of creatives who experienced sexual harassment chose to continue with a project in spite of the harassment. Of the 18 percent who reported an incident, less than half were paid for that project. Forty-one percent even kept working in similar environments. “Forfeiting business opportunities for their own safety, 34 percent of creatives did not work with the client again because of the experience of sexual harassment.”

  Again, the mind boggles at the scope of this when applied to the altogether more lax world of the on-demand gig economy.

  Large institutions and corporations are experiencing a torrent of threats from the #MeToo groundswell and are being forced to address issues from abuse of power to sexual harassment to inappropriate behavior. Of course, it’s not always quite so simple. Let’s not forget the #MeToo backlash, the “Witch Hunt” outcries. And let’s not forget that when it comes to financial resources, collective influence, structural power, and frankly the misogynist skew embedded in a lot of popular media discourse about abuse and rape culture, women continue to be in the firing line. The ability to do anything about abuse is deeply intertwined with class, agency, and income level. Not everyone—unlike Uma Thurman, Rose McGowan, and many others embroiled in sexual harassment and abuse claims—can reach a mass audience with social media or afford to blow up their life to expose injustice.

  Pop culture is catching up to these layered issues. The 2018 Women’s March drew attention to the ethnic and economic divide when it comes to female empowerment (perhaps in response to popular criticism that the 2017 march skewed toward what was charged as being a white, exclusive form of feminism). In her headlining speech at the 2018 march, actress Viola Davis addressed the crowd: “I am speaking today, not just for the #MeToo’s, because I was a #MeToo . . . But when I raise my hand I am aware of all the women who are still in silence. The women who are faceless. The women who don’t have the money. And don’t have the constitution. And who don’t have the confidence. And who don’t have the images in our media that give them a sense of self-worth. Enough to break the silence that’s rooted in the shame of assault . . .” She concluded: “We’ve got to bring up everyone with us.”

  Will Silicon Valley bring everyone up with it? Will they buck their own trends and embrace inclusivity as tech moves into philanthropy at an unprecedented scale, with promises to save us from disease and more? If its efforts in correcting diversity issues in its own backyard are anything to go by, the results will likely be equally disappointing.

  10

  Hacking Philanthropy

  It started at industry networking events, as these things tend to. Social good. Social good. Social good. It became the whisper. “We’re trying to ‘bake in’ social good to our business model” became the earnest refrain of skinny-jeaned startup founders on evening panels. “We’re trying to solve problems, you know?” Tables at the back of warehouse spaces, draped in white paper with wilting grapes, stale crackers, and sweaty cheese. As crowds nodded reverently.

  By 2015 this had reached critical mass, not just at every technology conference but every entrepreneurship conference in general. Millennials weren’t just in search of money—no. They wanted meaning. All the better if it were possible to find both in one convenient package.

  On cue, one of SXSW Interactive’s core themes that year was social good enterprise with tie-ups between the United Nations and Google. A plethora of new business models has emerged, baking social good into their output. There’s even a book, Good Is the New Cool: Market Like You Give a Damn by Afdhel Aziz and Bobby Jones.

  The terminology has also evolved. Today, the buzzword is “purpose.” The word was scattered through Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard address. It’s become a social media meme—five million #purpose Instagram hashtags and counting (though that could also be because it was the name of Justin Bieber’s tour). The power of “purpose” is being touted around tech conferences.

  There’s “a big focus on the triple bottom line: People, Profit, Planet,” Elizabeth Gore, Dell’s entrepreneur-in-residence at the time, told me as this was emerging. “It’s being driven by a number of things. There’s so much idealism among millennial entrepreneurs. It used to be that you made your money then you entered philanthropy. Millennials want to start doing good through their businesses right away and find new ways to give money while still being profitable.”

  Gore was in many ways articulating what has become a cultural movement among millennial startups, giving way to lifestyle brands pledging to donate underwear to women in Africa for every bottle of water sold, to send a new pair of shoes whenever one is sold here, or to donate glasses when you buy a pair for yourself online. Commerce driven by aspirational, demonstrable benevolence, in other words, though often tackling the more desirable and marketable problems as a result. But she was also describing a broader philosophy that has become endemic in modern business culture and an essential talent-acquisition tool for business—all new companies must incorporate social good in some form into their mission.

  This has become emblematic of Silicon Valley’s approach to philanthropy, which it’s quickly embracing as it models itself on the great Industrial philanthropists of history. Except, as with everything this group does, it’s on steroids, promising to “reinvent” everything, to fix old problems in new ways.

  Call it Philanthropy 2.0. Silicon Valley is moving into philanthropy at a scale unseen since the Gilded Age, and it has moonshot goals in mind. Giving by individuals is now at a record high. Charitable donations reached an estimated $390 billion in 2017, according to a report by Giving USA. Individual giving accounted for a staggering $281 billion, and the study found that growth in giving is outpacing growth in America’s GDP. Individual giving has increased almost five times since the 1950s, also according to Giving USA. But the giving is different. This group is using all the tools in their arsenal—data, technology, and science—to demonstrate tangible results and solve problems with a solution and maximum press exposure in the process.

  Sean Parker, founder of Napster, has described the Valley’s approach to giving as “Philanthropy for Hackers.” With this approach they are applying many of the tools that made them
big in business, setting up VC funds over traditional charities. In this new version of philanthropy, social good and profitability are not at odds. In fact, the combination makes the effort faster, leaner, and more effective. It’s altruism with impact.

  Organized philanthropy has historically been a third pillar to government and business in the U.S. It acts as a balance to capitalism and extreme wealth (which today is more extreme than ever), with funding doled out strategically by powerful individuals. It’s another power center with a civic outlook and the potential to affect public policy.

  Silicon Valley’s philanthropic endeavors are worth examining for this reason. Whether it’s setting up new social good enterprises, or growing (even more) its outsize philanthropic organizations, or funding charities in a narrow vertical, Silicon Valley’s philanthropic activities are in line with its value systems and priorities, which could have big ramifications if it becomes the single biggest force in philanthropy in the future. (How many other wealth centers will compete? More railroad billionaires are surely unlikely . . .)

  As ever, Silicon Valley’s souped-up version is seductive and radically improved, with a disruptive veneer. But is it actually any better? Or a Trojan Unicorn?

  Barely a day passes without a headline about another Silicon Valley donation. In 2017, Jeff Bezos gave $35 million to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle—one of the largest single gifts in the institution’s history. In early 2018, Bezos, now named the world’s richest man with a net worth of $105 billion, created a $33 million college scholarship for Dreamers—undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children—in tribute to his Cuban stepfather, a U.S. immigrant.

  Mark Zuckerberg has emerged as a major philanthropist in recent years, pledging to donate 99 percent of his Facebook shares toward education and poverty, as well as health issues, including the goal of curing all disease. He has set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with his wife, Priscilla Chan, and cohosted a 2016 summit with Stanford University and the White House on poverty and opportunity, looking at the role of technology and innovation in addressing poverty, inequality, and economic mobility. Zuckerberg’s approach has been a combination of investing in research institutes, venture-capital-type investments in social enterprises, and policy. Sean Parker launched the Parker Foundation, with $600 million dedicated to life sciences, global public health, and civic engagement. Apple CEO Tim Cook has pledged to give his entire fortune to charity. Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff has donated $10 million to alleviate family homelessness in San Francisco. LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman has donated $20 million to fund the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s Biohub.

  In this new era, philanthropic double-downs have almost become obligatory to those joining the ultra-rich tech crowd. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet started the Giving Pledge in 2010, encouraging billionaires to donate the majority of their wealth to charity. Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, thirty-four, Joe Gebbia, thirty-four, and Nathan Blecharczyk, thirty-two, and his wife, Elizabeth Blecharczyk, thirty-two, are among the newest (and youngest) members to join the group, which now has more than 150 members. Each Airbnb cofounder is said to be worth $3.3 billion. (Mark Zuckerberg, thirty-two, and Priscilla Chan, thirty-one, are also members.)

  Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have given away a staggering $28 billion since 2007, 48 percent of Gates’s net worth, and the couple has helped to save millions of lives through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which aims to eradicate malaria from the world. Gates too has pledged to leave his $70 billion fortune to charity when he dies. Theirs is a more stately precursor to this trend, but many of its values are threading into these newer iterations.

  “Philanthropy for Hackers,” Sean Parker’s 2015 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, in many ways evokes the tone for Silicon Valley’s new rad “hacker” view on traditional philanthropy—though it does vary by individual and organization. “The techno-utopianism of hackers has already transformed our lives. But the greatest contribution that hackers make to society may be yet to come—if we are willing to retain the intellectual and creative spirit that got us this far,” says Parker.

  Parker writes that “a new global elite, led by pioneers in telecommunications, personal computing, internet services, and mobile devices, has claimed an aggregate net worth of almost $800 billion of the $7 trillion in assets held by the wealthiest 1,000 people in the world. The barons of this new connected age are interchangeably referred to as technologists, engineers, and even geeks, but they all have one thing in common: they are hackers.”

  So, says Parker, it’s no wonder they’re applying a hacker’s perspective to philanthropy. “This newly minted hacker elite is an aberration in the history of wealth creation. They are intensely idealistic, so as they begin to confront the world’s most pressing humanitarian problems, they are still young, naïve, and perhaps arrogant enough to believe that they can solve them,” he says. He takes aim at older philanthropic institutions, launched by early-twentieth-century industry barons as havens for tax-free funds, noting that “no one knows how much money is stored within these institutions, which are the tax-exempt vehicles of private foundations and endowments.”

  He is, presumably, missing the irony that Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Cisco, and Oracle now have $504 billion in offshore funds. If taxed at 40 percent, this would theoretically inject $200 billion back into the state, which would, one would hope, help citizen services.

  Parker continues: “An additional $300 billion a year is given to private foundations and public charities, which offer little in the way of transparency or accountability. This is not entirely their fault. Philanthropy isn’t subject to normal market forces. From an economic perspective, it may be the most distorted market in the world, the only one where the buyer of a good or service—the ‘donor’—isn’t the ultimate recipient of the value that good or service has to offer.”

  Like many tech philanthropists, Parker’s biggest beef with these institutions is impact. And he believes philanthropy, like the government, is a dusty old model ripe for reframing. Parker recommends that, above all, hacker philanthropy should remain small and agile, not bloated and slow, “taking on the worst characteristics of government. Hacker philanthropists must resist the urge to institutionalize and must never stop making big bets.”

  While approaching it in new ways, Silicon Valley individuals are following a long tradition in American history among its industrial leaders by moving into philanthropy. Andrew Carnegie wrote the article “The Gospel of Wealth” in 1889 about the responsibility of philanthropy for those of self-made wealth, and John D. Rockefeller set up his foundation in 1913 “to promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world.”

  Social good enterprise and the idea of being good and profitable at the same time aren’t totally new either. Many historic leaders simply saw keeping a town employed as a form of benevolence. Rockefeller, in his autobiography, said his biggest philanthropic achievement was providing employment, notes Ben Soskis, research associate at the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, George Mason University. Though Silicon Valley’s approach is more intertwined, he says. “The idea of marrying capitalism with philanthropic good work was there, but there were still boundaries; Rockefeller wasn’t calling it Standard Oil philanthropy. It was notional, not operationalized in the same way as with the Silicon Valley guys.”

  Henry Ford had a similarly pragmatic approach. “If you go back through Ford’s papers, it was very clear that, in order for him to be successful at building his large-scale car manufacturing structures, he needed to sustain the entire city of Detroit because, when the city wasn’t functional, his workers weren’t functional, the cars weren’t made, and he couldn’t make a profit,” says Danah Boyd. “You hear these classic tropes that he wanted to make it so his workers could afford a Ford, and that was one of the shticks. A lot of it, however, was what we would look at now as a double bottom line, because he was so commit
ted to making certain that Detroit was stable while he was alive, even at the expense of short-term profits, that he did all of this work on education and communities. It was necessary for his capitalist infrastructure.”

  Where America in the early twentieth century was a blank canvas in need of many public services (such as libraries), now poor developing markets from Africa to Myanmar—struggling with scant infrastructure, disease, and access to technology, or being hit hard by natural disasters—are luring Silicon Valley titans. Here they’re moving in with promises to eradicate disease, improve education, provide internet access, and more.

  “There’s definitely a strong element of self-interest and of imperialism in those kinds of efforts,” says Aaron Dorfman, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. “Will those projects help people and make their lives better? Absolutely. Will those projects help enrich the very people who have been funding the projects? Absolutely. It’s a troubling paradox. When we concentrate so much wealth in the hands of so few, they are able to pull so many more levers to try and influence how the world works. I think that can be a real danger for democracy.”