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Fortnite CEO Slams Big Tech Bosses for 'Currying Favor' With Donald Trump
Newsweek ^ | Jan 13, 2025 at 10:34 AM EST | Flynn Nicholls

Posted on 01/13/2025 8:54:34 AM PST by Miami Rebel

Tim Sweeney, the founder and chief executive of Fortnite parent company Epic Games, has accused Big Tech leaders of shifting political allegiances to "curry favor" with President-elect Donald Trump.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday, Sweeney warned that Silicon Valley's most powerful bosses would be feigning political allegiance to the MAGA movement to push a "scummy monopoly campaign" with the incoming administration.

Newsweek reached out to Epic Games, Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, OpenAI, Tesla, and the Trump transition team via email for comment.

Sweeney's accusations come after several tech chief executives who did not publicly support Trump before the election have donated or met with him following his victory, including the bosses of Amazon, Apple, Open AI, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet, which owns Google.

Trump's alliances with right wing tech moguls like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel suggest a potential pivot toward deregulation and policies favorable to major tech firms.

Sweeney' wrote that the chief executives were acting cynically to advance their own companies' agendas rather than out of true political allegiance.

"After years of pretending to be Democrats, Big Tech leaders are now pretending to be Republicans, in hopes of currying favor with the new administration. Beware of the scummy monopoly campaign to vilify competition law as they rip off consumers and crush competitors," he wrote on X.

Sweeney has long been critical of Big Tech for what he sees as monopolistic practices. In 2023, Epic Games won a lawsuit against Google after a judge ruled Google's Play app store acted as an illegal monopoly.

(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: bigtech; dealwithit
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If you didn't trust Big Tech 6 weeks ago, 6 months ago, or 6 years ago, now's a good time to remember why you didn't.
1 posted on 01/13/2025 8:54:34 AM PST by Miami Rebel
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To: Miami Rebel

“Curry”


Sounds kinda racist.


2 posted on 01/13/2025 8:55:17 AM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Miami Rebel

Return to normalcy.

Was going to happen with or without Trump.

Sooner or later.


3 posted on 01/13/2025 8:57:57 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion, or satire, or both.)
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To: Miami Rebel

“Slams” - whines like little bitch.


4 posted on 01/13/2025 8:58:12 AM PST by TigerClaws
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To: Miami Rebel

Timmy sounds like he needs to restock the Fortnite men’s rooms with Tampons.


5 posted on 01/13/2025 8:58:57 AM PST by FlingWingFlyer (Florida Felons "convicted" in New Yawk Kangaroo Courts by bozos make the best presidents!!!)
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To: Miami Rebel
Not to be confused with the old Epyx games from the late 70's into the 80's.


6 posted on 01/13/2025 9:00:51 AM PST by Tell It Right (1 Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: Miami Rebel

So stop monopolistic bullying companies by stopping moves towards a free-market economy. Got it! Sounds like a beneficiary of the regulatory state is whining.


7 posted on 01/13/2025 9:01:37 AM PST by AndyJackson
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To: Miami Rebel

Epic Games is a Woke disaster. They have games that allow you to put trans surgery scars on characters and they wanted inclusive language in coding. I’d be surprised if Epic Games still is in business by the end of Trump’s term.


8 posted on 01/13/2025 9:04:33 AM PST by Opinionated Blowhard (When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.)
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To: Miami Rebel

“”After years of pretending to be Democrats, Big Tech leaders are now pretending to be Republicans, in hopes of currying favor with the new administration. “

Not what some here want to hear, but it’s hard to disagree with the man’s point here. It’s not like Zuck, Bezos et al. have suddenly “seen the light” as to the virtues of MAGA, conservatism et al. Rather, this is opportunism. Period.


9 posted on 01/13/2025 9:05:12 AM PST by irishjuggler
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To: Miami Rebel

Sweeney’ wrote that the chief executives were acting cynically to advance their own companies’ agendas rather than out of true political allegiance.

“After years of pretending to be Democrats,
.......

So, they were pretending to be Democrats?

Boy they really fooled those Democrats!
/s

Didnt know crony capitalism was so hard on these Big Tech folks to make them have to pretend to be Democrats

The horror


10 posted on 01/13/2025 9:06:01 AM PST by delchiante
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To: Miami Rebel

They didn’t curry favor. They bent the knee.


11 posted on 01/13/2025 9:07:15 AM PST by Publius
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To: Opinionated Blowhard

A month long celebration of Juice Wrld…. A junkie rapper who died hiding drugs on a plane by eating them all


12 posted on 01/13/2025 9:16:11 AM PST by MrRelevant
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To: Miami Rebel

Who cares what he says.


13 posted on 01/13/2025 9:16:21 AM PST by Fido969
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To: Opinionated Blowhard

I have no clue about any online games beyond Words With Friends.

This guy and whatever games he’s produced are immaterial to the argument that Big Tech has built a stranglehold on American consumers and has used every weapon in its political and legal arsenals to squelch competition and to invade privacy.

(As an aside, how do you figure that Epic Games would get put out of business?)


14 posted on 01/13/2025 9:18:44 AM PST by Miami Rebel (pro-)
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To: Publius

“They didn’t curry favor. They bent the knee.”

You don’t think tech oligarchs are capable of being two-faced?

And what it their knee-bending results in giving them license to steal data and to exploit consumers even more than they do already?


15 posted on 01/13/2025 9:21:19 AM PST by Miami Rebel (pro-)
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To: Opinionated Blowhard

The woke cancer has infected 90% of western game devs and they have lost hundreds of millions on games laced with leftist BS. They used the Hollywood doctrine. That is, if you put this BS in every game consumers won’t have a choice they will have to accept it.. wrong.


16 posted on 01/13/2025 9:22:02 AM PST by iamgalt
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To: Miami Rebel

So it was alright to curry favor with biden?


17 posted on 01/13/2025 9:26:28 AM PST by I want the USA back (7 days until the mean bitter old fart is sent to his basement in Delaware to write his 'memoirs'.)
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To: Fido969

Not me.


18 posted on 01/13/2025 9:27:59 AM PST by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: Miami Rebel

19 posted on 01/13/2025 9:28:43 AM PST by smokingfrog ( sleep with one eye open (<o> --- )
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To: iamgalt

As I said, I’m happily ignorant about gaming.

But your proposition is, to put it politely, nuts.

Game programming is wide open to innovators. It’s not as though there is a secret council hidden in Mount Thunder dictating wokeness in games. The free market determines what succeeds. Just like overtly PC movies usually fail BECAUSE THEY”RE NOT ENTERTAINING, so too would PC games that are preachy and boring.

I’m pretty sure that Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty aren’t blockbusters because of their political messages.

But let’s take a break from the world of games and circle back to the main point: Big Tech has exploited consumers and mined personal data thanks to its political and legal muscle. It has been a threat to the American people, and giving it more power (through removing anti-trust restrictions, among other measures) is a formula for disaster.

Apple and Meta and Google and Amazon will be around long past the incoming administration and the power they acquire today won’t evaporate as the political winds shift in the future.


20 posted on 01/13/2025 9:37:00 AM PST by Miami Rebel (pro-)
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