Skip to main content

The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Join now

Airbnb’s, Salesforce’s and Etsy’s CEOs are the latest tech leaders to speak out against Trump’s Muslim ban

Sometimes muted, other times outraged, but all protesting the appalling new immigration rules.

President Trump Signs Executive Orders In The Oval Office
President Trump Signs Executive Orders In The Oval Office
Look, I can write.
Pete Marovich - Pool/Getty Images

After weeks of silence about President Donald Trump’s new administration, tech companies like Facebook, Google and Apple are up in arms about his appalling immigration ban on some Muslim countries.

Right now, among the larger tech companies, only IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle have not commented.

Trump issued the executive order Friday and the response from digital leaders since then has been growing, along with protests at airports across the nation. In fact, Google co-founder Sergey Brin showed up at protests at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday night.

While many tech reactions have been muted and largely focused in how to deal with hardships that could result for employees because of the ban, some tech leaders — such as Netflix’s Reed Hastings — have issued strong challenges to Trump’s action.

“Trump’s actions are hurting Netflix employees around the world, and are so un-American it pains us all,” wrote Hastings in a personal statement on Facebook. “Worse, these actions will make America less safe (through hatred and loss of allies) rather than more safe.”

Here’s more responses from tech leaders, although I am leaving a lot out (and will add more as I see them):

Doordash

Tony Xu, founder and CEO of DoorDash, tweeted Sunday that his company was going to give food to “any lawyers or advocates working this weekend to support immigrants, refugees.” He also said that “At best President Trump’s #muslimban is a misguided, blunt solution to a complicated, nuanced problem” and “at worst, it is a racial attack that only further divides the country.”

Elon Musk

Airbnb

Lyft

Lyft’s co-founders sent an email to their users Sunday announcing that they were donating a million dollars to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Uber

After facing strong pushback from a #DeleteUber social media campaign, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said he was starting a $3 million legal defense fund for any driver affected by the immigration ban. He also took to Twitter saying, “I’m going to use my position on Pres economic council to stand up for what’s right.”

VCs

VCs Fred Wilson, Joanne Wilson, Amy Batchelor and Brad Feld announced that they are doing a $20,000 match for donations to the ACLU.

Box

Twitter

Salesforce

Stripe

Etsy

Former Nest founder Tony Fadell

Google co-founder (and refugee) Sergey Brin

eBay founder Pierre Omidyar

Mozilla

The executive order ignores the single truth that we have come to know; talented immigrants have had outsized contributions to the growth and prosperity of the United States and countries around the world. Diversity in all of its forms is crucial to growth, innovation and a healthy, inclusive society.

Amazon

From the very beginning, Amazon has been committed to equal rights, tolerance and diversity—and we always will be. As we’ve grown the company, we’ve worked hard to attract talented people from all over the world, and we believe this is one of the things that makes Amazon great—a diverse workforce helps us build better products for customers.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

More in Technology

Podcasts
Are humanoid robots all hype?Are humanoid robots all hype?
Podcast
Podcasts

AI is making them better — but they’re not going to be doing your chores anytime soon.

By Avishay Artsy and Sean Rameswaram
Future Perfect
The old tech that could help stop the next airborne pandemicThe old tech that could help stop the next airborne pandemic
Future Perfect

Glycol vapors, explained.

By Shayna Korol
Future Perfect
Elon Musk could lose his case against OpenAI — and still get what he wantsElon Musk could lose his case against OpenAI — and still get what he wants
Future Perfect

It’s not about who wins. It’s about the dirty laundry you air along the way.

By Sara Herschander
Life
Why banning kids from AI isn’t the answerWhy banning kids from AI isn’t the answer
Life

What kids really need in the age of artificial intelligence.

By Anna North
Culture
Anthropic owes authors $1.5B for pirating work — but the claims process is a Kafkaesque messAnthropic owes authors $1.5B for pirating work — but the claims process is a Kafkaesque mess
Culture

“Your AI monster ate all our work. Now you’re trying to pay us off with this piece of garbage that doesn’t work.”

By Constance Grady
Future Perfect
Some deaf children are hearing again because of a new gene therapySome deaf children are hearing again because of a new gene therapy
Future Perfect

A medical field that almost died is quietly fixing one disease at a time.

By Bryan Walsh