Why Does Garry Tan Say Little Tech Groups Are Astroturf?

Garry Tan says groups that claim to speak for little tech are paid shills, funded with millions of dollars in astroturf money.

Most tech people stay out of politics, but politics stays interested in them, so three or four years ago he started spending time on it. The groups used almost hired actors who went to Sacramento and D.C. and said the little guy wanted rules that mainly help big tech. Real startups were not talking to people in D.C. He saw a broken system and wanted to fix it. Y Combinator is not a union, he says, but it has union-like characteristics, and it is taking a seat on the billionaire tax in California and on antitrust laws in D.C. and Europe so the golden goose can still exist. The budget is tiny, probably one one-hundredth of what any single big tech firm spends on policy.