In Conversation with Eoin Higgins at Web Summit Vancouver: Where Media Influence Meets Infrastructure

Eoin Higgins is a reporter with IT Brew. His work focuses on cybersecurity, IT jobs, and government tech. His words have appeared in outlets around the country and around the world, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Intercept, the Nation, MSNBC, and many others. Eoin is the author of Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left.

You write about billionaire influence reshaping media ecosystems. Do you think today’s power structures are more dangerous, precisely because they present themselves as anti-elite or anti-institutional? 

I think that anti-elite sentiment is something that is often used by political actors on either side, whether they are populists or elitists. Everyone’s going to try and reach the broader public. It’s not unique or original, but I do think that it is a little dangerous in who they decide are elites. 

You have somebody like Elon Musk who, on paper, is the world’s richest man, who is saying that trans teenagers are elites. It doesn’t make sense, but if you are able to pitch people on that and they believe it, then it will make sense to them. If you’re using that language to then attack marginalized communities, I think it’s dangerous. 

One of Orwell’s sharpest ideas was how language gets manipulated until people can no longer clearly identify truth or hypocrisy. Do you think today’s media environment operates similarly—where terms like “free speech,” “independent journalism,” or “anti-establishment” have been hollowed out as branding tools rather than real principles? 

I think that most terms get diluted over time, but because we live in a 24/7 internet cycle, that happens a lot more quickly. When I started writing 11 years ago, part of what I did was independent journalism, and it meant something different than what it means now. So I think that those terms, it’s important to place them where they belong. But language just gets diluted on its own. And in that regard, that’s just always going to happen. It’s the nature of language. 

In Owned, you focus on media capture through capital and platforms. But increasingly, power seems embedded deeper: in cloud infrastructure, algorithms, data collection, and devices themselves. Are engineers now participating in the shaping of public discourse whether they intended to or not?

This is really interesting. I think that they do. I would be maybe a little sceptical whether or not they don’t know that they are. I talk to engineers all the time for work, and they—the profession—tends to be pretty savvy. You can justify a lot of things to yourself if you compartmentalize it and segment it. This isn’t meant as a negative judgement. I’m just saying that that’s just the way this stuff works for humans. Then the way that these different algorithmic platforms, when you set aside the money component, amplify certain voices and add to how people are. 

Receiving information now presents a new, different challenge, other than just simply cash. It’s just the nature of the beast right now. I think we’re building up to a backlash, but we’re probably still a little ways out on that. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes, because I really can’t even predict what it will look like once that backlash comes, but I think it is coming. 

At the end of the day, if you are working for somebody and they start to interject their own personal politics into this experience or platform or algorithm—everybody has a line. But there’s a lot of nuance and gray area. There’s a reason that, not all, but maybe a majority, maybe it’s a slim majority, but a majority, of people who work on stuff like for like Elon Musk, who are true believers in what he does. He has gotten rid of people who see him for who he really is. You know what I mean? 

[Me: Yeah, you’ve gotta be a yes man to be around him at this point]

Right, exactly. And that has a little bit to do with it as well. And again, any power structure is like that, any hierarchy is like that. What company you’re at says a lot about your values and what you’re trying to do and all those kinds of things. But yeah, it’s one of those things where a lot of people, when they went into engineering, this probably wasn’t even a thought on their mind. Especially if it was like 20 years ago, when the culture around tech was very libertarian, apolitical. Not really interested in the partisan politics stuff. And now… the money’s been introduced.

In Owned, you describe billionaire-backed media ecosystems reshaping public discourse. Does modern power work less like Orwell’s censorship and more like Huxley’s saturation—where people aren’t prevented from accessing truth, just drowned in noise?

Saturation is the perfect way to describe it; that’s what they’re doing. Whether or not this was a planned thing, and I don’t think that it was like that.

[Me: I don’t think they had that forethought] 

But these guys do move fast and break shit and flood the zone, and that’s what they did here. 

[Me: Exactly. And it’s only going to get worse with all the AI content] 

Yeah, they’re just throwing stuff out there, and they’re doing it because they didn’t like the way that this stuff was happening before. It’s really Musk on Twitter with rebellion censorship, but people like Andreessen or Thiel throwing their money into all these different things because they’re just trying to flood the zone. They really do believe on some level that if you do this, then only the good ones will survive. And that’s what they want to happen. They want the good, and the good ones are obviously the ones that support them. 

When we grew up (pre-internet) there were a few big news stations and everyone received the same messages. Now Coinbase is reportedly opening their own media outlet. It seems like we’ve swung in the opposite direction where anyone can set up shop as media now. What do you think of this evolution?

When you don’t like the facts, change the conversation. I think it’s great actually. I think it’s good. It’s better than having just the handful we used to have.

 [Me: It almost seems like we’ve done an overcorrection]

We have done an overcorrection, but I really do believe that this is part of just like an evolution of digital media and like whatever’s coming next is actually going to be better than people are expecting, but you have to go through these growing pains. I’m very much an optimist on this stuff. Unfortunately, in order to get there, you have things like Coinbase having its own media outlet.. it’s overall good, but it’s just a really shitty way of getting there, if that makes sense. 

If Orwell were alive today, would he be more alarmed by governments or by private tech platforms with state-scale influence and little democratic accountability?

He would probably be the latter because these companies are so big, they have so many resources that can make things happen everywhere. So it’s essentially doing the same thing. I feel like the government’s the obvious answer, and it was like, no, no well, then somebody came out of left field at the last second, you know? It’s a good question, but I think that he would probably end up there. 

Is the greatest power in the modern media landscape no longer the ability to persuade people, but the ability to structure the environment in which persuasion happens? 

Because you can structure the environment in which persuasion happens, that gives you the advantage in persuading. If that makes sense. 

[Me: Oh, completely. When you own the framing and the perception as a marketer, that’s basically all of it] 

Yeah, and then you’re incentivizing seeing certain messaging to get out there. And so in that respect, it’s just a ‘one hand washes the other’ kind of situation. 

If you tell engineers and technologies anything, what would it be? 

I would say that there is a real impulse on the part of tech leaders and people who are in front-facing tech industry roles to hype up, catastrophize and present technologies—specifically AI is what I’m thinking of—but in general, as something that they’re just not. AI is a tool. It’s presented as the next biggest thing, the apocalypse, or both. Or the job killer. And like this stuff hasn’t really played out that way. 

But if you talk to engineers about this or even technologists, not people who are trying to get funding, they will just tell you what this stuff does. They’ll be very honest with you about what it does, what it can and can’t do. I love having these conversations because they’re just completely rational. Unfortunately, their voices are not out there that much. As somebody in the media and as somebody who values communication—not communications—but communication and communicating this kind of information, what I would say is that it’s important for engineers and developers to get their voices out there more. I know they don’t tend to want to do this because they prefer playing with the tech, but they present this stuff with a more rational approach, so it really does sort of pierce the illusion. 

What’s one assumption about the future of media that you think people are getting completely wrong right now? 

That we are doomed. Going back to the optimist thing. I don’t think we’re doomed. I think that it’s just a matter of, and look, I have to be really cognizant of where I’m coming from on this: I have a pretty successful career and I understand that. So obviously what I’m saying is coloured by that. I’m not in a situation where I’m seeing doom—personal, professional career doom—and then translating that out to the industry as a whole. So I understand that. But I really don’t believe that we are headed towards the media apocalypse. Things are very difficult right now for a lot of people, the majority of people in this industry. But I do think that if we will look back on this moment in 5, 10, 15, 20 years, and realize that it was like, a very difficult birth. People talk about the media like it’s doomed, but people are on their phones reading all the time. So what does that tell you? It tells you that that’s not really doomed. We’re just not where we’re at yet.

[Me: How refreshing to hear, whew]

Before we let you go, it’s time for a small detour into chaos with Unexpectedly Important Questions. 

Star Wars or Star Trek? 

Wars. 

Mulder or Scully? 

I like the X-Files. I will go with Scully because she’s hot. 

[Me: Everybody loves a redhead]

Backstreet Boys or N*SYNC?

I am too much of an analogue generation kid for that one. New kids on the block.

[Me: Oh my god, classic. You got the right stuff! Step by step, ooh, baby! 🎶] 

Favourite drink

I don’t really have a favourite drink. Water, I guess. 

[Me: That’s very west coast of you, actually]

Favourite meal

Man, I was not expecting this one. My mom’s chicken cacciatore.

[Me: Yum, good choice]

Thanks Eoin and thanks for reading!

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