Why Kamala Harris could be the first “Zoom president”

Since the days of Zoom parties in worldwide lockdowns, Zoom has struggled to maintain its foothold in terms of both revenue and headline grabbing – but it’s had a boost on the latter from US presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

The same day that Harris was announced as the presumptive candidate following President Biden stepping out of the race, an activist group called Win With Black Women held a Zoom call – and 44,000 people showed up. That was followed by similarly massive calls from Win With Black Men and White Women: Answer the Call. Zoom meetups for White Dudes for Harris and Cat Ladies for Kamala continued the trend.

These conference calls posted numbers above 190,000, though in some cases they were more livestreams than web chats. Slate reported that managing the technical side of such massive calls required working closely with Zoom, with engineers on hand to keep the “White Women” call up and running. Behind the scenes, Zoom, the organisers and external tech support were all chatting via group texts and Slack. Still, Zoom repeatedly crashed, so the call was eventually also livestreamed via YouTube.

It sounds stressful, but more fundraising and organising calls are in the works: “Zoom is going to have to figure out how to take that 100,000 number up, because this is only going to continue to get bigger,” one organiser told Slate.

Could that make Harris the first Zoom president? She’s had success with social media and memes – feel free to Google whether Kamala is “brat” and the coconut tree story on your own time – but so too has the Republican candidate, of course.

What a Kamala Harris presidency would mean for Big Tech

So Harris can use tech – but what does her candidacy mean for Big Tech?

Over the past few years, with Biden as President and Harris as VP, the Democrats have been accused of more talk than action when it comes to regulating Big Tech. With Harris at the helm, would that change?

Some commentators see her as softer than Biden on the antitrust front, suggesting a Harris presidency may herald easier times for larger corporations.

“You would expect a close alignment with the current approach under Biden with potentially some tweaks,” Tech Analyst Paolo Pescatore told Euronews.

Harris’ VP pick is Tim Walz. Perhaps best known for calling Republican rivals “weird” – suggesting he may prove as equally meme-able as Harris – Walz is considered pro-labour, which may not be to the liking of many in Silicon Valley.

Perhaps the leadership on tech topics would come from elsewhere, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Amy Klobuchar both pushing harder for regulator action.

Harris given boost by VCs and Silicon Valley

Either way, her candidacy has been generally welcomed Silicon Valley, not massively surprising as she’s spent much of her career in California.

She has been backed by LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Netflix’s Reed Hastings and even a group of VCs – though perhaps not as loudly as Trump’s contingent, which includes Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen. Harris has previously spoken out about online harassment, so perhaps the X.com owner and other social media titans may face pushback there.

In short, if Harris wins, it’s as yet unclear if that’ll be good news or not for Silicon Valley – even if it has been positive for Zoom.

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