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The group chats that changed America
A loose private network on Signal and WhatsApp helped usher in the new alliance between Silicon Valley and Donald Trump’s new right.
The group chats are “the memetic upstream of mainstream opinion,” wrote one of their key organizers, Sriram Krishnan, a former partner in the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (typically styled a16z) who is now the White House senior policy adviser for AI. “People during 2020 felt that there was a monoculture on social media, and if they didn’t agree with something, group chats became a safe space to debate that, share that, build consensus, feel that you’re not alone,” said Erik Torenberg, an entrepreneur who was the first employee of the tech community hub Product Hunt. As requested, he assembled eight or ten people — elite law students and federal court clerks, as well as Torenberg and Katherine Boyle, a former Washington Post reporter then at a16z and focused on investing in “American Dynamism.” Later, Hanania added the broadcaster Tucker Carlson.
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