Marc Andreessen Touted the Open Web. Now He Lives Life in Exclusive Group Chats

Once upon a time, the titans of tech promised us a future of radical openness. Investor Marc Andreessen and his peers sold a vision of the internet as the ultimate democratizer—an endless frontier where, as Andreessen once put it “people will have full access to the world’s information, free communication everywhere.”

But the same venture capitalists, founders, and executives who made their fortunes touting the gospel of openness have now retreated to their own private digital bunkers in the form of an interconnected network of exclusive group chats designed for and by the business and political world’s self-styled intellectuals.

On Sunday, Semafor’s Ben Smith reported on the inner workings of these chats, many of which seem to orbit around Andreessen himself. It’s these chats, Smith writes, that facilitated the tech sector’s lurch toward Donald Trump, forging a kind of group think that, until recently, tech leaders were wary of airing in the open. “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,” Erik Torenberg, an entrepreneur and one of the creators of the chats told Semafor.

Some chats cut across the political spectrum. One called Chatham House reportedly includes Democrats like billionaire Marc Cuban and economist Larry Summers as well as conservatives like Daily Wire editor Ben Shapiro, Palantir co-founder and Trump booster Joe Lonsdale, Andreessen, and more. Others have become breeding grounds for pushing tech elites to the right, conservative activist Chris Rufo told Semafor. “I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high-impact new coalition partners for the right,” Rufo said.

That investment appears to have paid off—at least, for a time. But now, there’s growing evidence that the same pushback that discourages these powerful people from having these conversations out loud on social media is happening again behind their closed digital doors. After investor and White House official David Sacks accused some members of a group chat of turning on Trump (“TDS,” or Trump Derangement Syndrome, he called it), according to one screenshot shared by Semafor, another member wrote back, “I think we – Republicans who supported Trump – are seeing that this is a failed administration.”

The screenshot also shows that, soon after this exchange, three members of the group, Tucker Carlson, Tyler Winklevoss, and investor Shaun Maguire, appear to have left the group.

Beyond these internecine battles, though, these chats reveal just how far some conservative voices and tech luminaries have strayed from the ideals of openness and free speech they profess to hold dear. The same people who teased liberal snowflakes for their safe spaces and intolerance have now built their own insular echo chambers where dissent is quietly sidelined and ideological conformity is rewarded.