UCLA

This dissertation explores the various methods tech workers employ to shape the industry according to their visions of justice and equality. While it is generally agreed upon in tech activist circles that their industry is sexist, racist, and exploitative, there is less consensus on how these inequalities are deployed, and even less consensus on how to solve them. But through the social justice movements of the 2020s, including Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and anti-fascism and anti-military movements, tech workers across the spectrum have called into question the romanticized notions of Silicon Valley as a diverse and benevolent high-tech industry that solved—not created—societal problems. Using ethnographic and qualitative fieldwork, including semi-structured interviews and participant-observation, I investigated a wide umbrella of progressive and left-leaning activism in the tech industry. I identified three main themes of their activism: 1) addressing workplace racial and gender diversity through empowerment organizations and corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; 2) participating in grassroots labor organizing and social activism against industry practices they deem morally unjust; and 3) creating tech for “good” as alternatives to harmful Big Tech technologies. Through these themes, I explore activists’ different understandings of social change, and interrogate how tech workers across the spectrum—especially white-collar, skilled technologists—identify and use activism to reshape the industry.