"The Group Chat Era depended on part of the American elite feeling shut out from public spaces, and on the formation of a new conservative consensus. Both of those are now fading (though Torenberg has invested in a company called ChatBCC that wants to commercialize the heady experience of sitting in on texts among the power elite).
Since Elon Musk turned X to the right and an alternative media ecosystem emerged on Substack, “a tremendous amount of the verboten conversations can now shift back into public view,” Andreessen told Fridman. “It’s much healthier to live in a society in which people are literally not scared of what they’re saying.”
And Trump’s destabilizing “Liberation Day” has taken its toll on the coalition Andreessen helped shape. You can see it on X, where investors joke that they’ll put pronouns back in their bios in exchange for a return to the 2024 stock prices, and where Srinivasan has been a leading critic of Trump’s tariffs.
“Group chats have changed on the economy in the last few weeks,” said Rufo. “There’s a big split on the tech right.”
The polarity of social media has also reversed, and while participants used to keep their conservative ideas off social media, “now the anti-Trump sentiment is what you’re afraid to say on X,” one said.
By mid-April, Sacks had had enough with Chatham House: “This group has become worthless since the loudest voices have TDS,” he wrote, shorthanding “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Then he addressed Torenberg: “You should create a new one with just smart people.”
Signal soon showed that three men had left the group: The Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, the bitcoin billionaire Tyler Winklevoss, and Carlson."
https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america
ResearchBuzz: Firehose
