But those companies play a unique role in 21st-century society. They sit consciously at the nexus of technology and media, in a global network of influential information.
For today's purposes, we're interested in Thiel's view of what a "capitalist" is, and what he thinks entrepreneurs should do, and why so many businesses tell contradictory stories about themselves. "Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding entirely new categories of abundance to the world," he wrote.
"At the other end of the spectrum, what I think everybody who is a founder or entrepreneur should aim to do, is build a monopoly. All the great companies that people have built are monopolies of one sort of another."There has been no shortage of criticism from across the political aisle levelled at tech billionaire Elon Musk for refusing to take down graphic footage in a Sydney church. But this spat is about more than just free speech; it's about power.
Facebook has admitted that it scrapes the public photos, posts and other data of Australian adult users to train its AI models and provides no opt-out option, even though it allows people in the European Union to refuse consent. According to Thiel, since business owners constantly tell these kinds of fictional stories about themselves, it distorts what's going on.
But last week's intrusion into the world of Silicon Valley's capitalists won't be making the government friends there.