Silicon Valley may be a "state of mind," but it's also very much a real enclave in Northern California. Now, a growing faction of the tech industry is boycotting it, Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva reports.

Why it matters: The Bay Area is facing for the first time the prospect of losing its crown as the top destination for tech workers and startups — which could have an economic impact on the region and force it to reckon with its local issues.

While the pandemic's arrival sent tech workers to toil from home just as the Bay Area's housing crisis and mounting quality of life problems bubbled over, some are taking the opportunity to move to cities that better suit their lifestyles.

• As many as an estimated 89,000 households have left San Francisco.
• "The majority of people I've spoken with ... are doing it not because of COVID-19 directly but because of the resulting degradation of public safety," says venture capitalist and former San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell.
• City Hall's tech relationship has also drastically changed. While then-Mayor Ed Lee in 2011 brokered a payroll tax break for Twitter and others to keep their jobs in the city, today that move is deeply despised by officials who don't believe the industry is paying its fair share.

Recently a small-but-vocal group of investors, workers, and entrepreneurs like Keith Rabois and Joe Lonsdale have been loudly advertising their exits from the Bay Area and other high-priced cities like New York, and encouraging others to follow suit.

• Miami and Austin are being praised as the new tech hot spots. While it hasn't caused a bump in startup funding in those cities, according to Pitchbook data, investors from influential firms like Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz have set up shop there.

Between the lines: Those who never wanted to live in San Francisco (or the greater Bay Area) are finally getting the permission not to. The debate is equally (and perhaps even more) a referendum on the state of California.

• "If California decides to up their income tax a bit more, people are going to start flying like crazy," says Drive Capital managing partner Mark Kvamme, a Silicon Valley native who set up shop in Ohio nearly a decade ago.
• The tech industry also took the passage of A.B. 5, a law that imposed stricter requirements for classifying workers as contractors, as yet another attack on business and tech companies like Uber and DoorDash.
• Further, some have been unhappy with the state restrictions during the pandemic and its slow roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines. As of this week, California is lagging behind nearly all states in vaccinations.

Yes, but: Austin has already shown it's willing to push back on tech, as evidenced by its year-long showdown with Uber and Lyft over fingerprinting. Miami is also likely to get scrutiny over how it ensures that its diverse communities do not get trampled over.

The other side: "What I take issue with is our leaders — people of means — abandoning our community when it needs us most," Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson recently tweeted. "Reaping the benefits of Silicon Valley's talent, tech incubators, mentors, professional network and culture until they no longer need it."

Twenty million U.S. seniors lack a high-speed wired connection to the internet, according to a new study by the nonprofit Older Adults Technology Services (OATS), which works to get seniors access to the internet.

Why it matters: Internet access has long been critical for seniors, but has become absolutely essential during the pandemic for access to healthcare, online shopping, social outlets and more.

By the numbers:

• Black seniors are 2.5 times likelier and Latinos more than 3.3 times likelier than whites to lack fixed internet access.
• Medicaid enrollees are more than 2.7 times likelier to lack fixed Internet access.
• Rural Americans are 1.6 times likelier to lack fixed internet access.

Between the lines: While many of those without wired internet have a smartphone, the group notes that a larger screen is often needed to fully utilize internet-based services.

What they're saying: "Getting older adults online has never been more urgent," OATS said in its report. "The COVID-19 crisis has disrupted our nation's systems for social support, communications, and health care, demonstrating that home-based internet and digital skills are an essential lifeline for older adults."

What's next: OATS has a goal to get 1 million more seniors online this year.

The next generation of college-educated Americans thinks social media companies have too much power and influence on politics and need more government regulation, according to a new survey by Generation Lab for Axios.

Why it matters: The findings follow an election dominated by rampant disinformation about voting fraud on social media; companies' fraught efforts to stifle purveyors of disinformation including former President Trump; and a deadly Jan. 6 insurrection over the election organized largely online, Axios' Stef Kight reports.

By the numbers: A majority of young Democrats (52%) said major tech companies should be regulated more by the government. A plurality of young Republicans (43%) said the same.

• Clear majorities (96% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats) also agreed that social media companies have too much power and influence in politics.

The big picture: The national survey of 852 two-year and four-year college students, conducted Jan. 22–25, is one of the earliest looks at how young people are reacting to the end of the Trump era, the Biden administration's early days and the related challenges of governance.

The bottom line: Gen Z and young Millennials live and breathe social media and technology and are confident in their own ability to use these platforms and detect misinformation. Yet, with notable bipartisan agreement, they think Big Tech's power must be checked.

Bill and Melinda Gates warned in their annual letter Wednesday that the lasting legacy of the coronavirus pandemic could be "immunity inequality" — a wide and deadly gap between wealthy people, with easy access to coronavirus vaccines, and everyone else, Axios' David Nather reports.

Why it matters: As long as there are large swaths of the world that can't get vaccinated, they warned, it will be impossible to get the pandemic under control.

"Until vaccines reach everyone, new clusters of disease will keep popping up. Those clusters will grow and spread. Schools and offices will shut down again. The cycle of inequality will continue," Melinda Gates said in the letter.

Bill Gates said the world should prepare better for the next pandemic by spending "tens of billions of dollars per year" — mostly contributed by wealthy countries — to improve the scientific tools for fighting infectious diseases.

• He also called for the creation of a "global alert system" to detect disease outbreaks as soon as they happen, as well as the use of "germ games" to help train first responders.
• Gates, as many have noted, had been calling out the risk of a global pandemic years before COVID-19. I talked with him about it at TED back in 2015.

The backstory: Melinda Gates said in an interview with "Axios on HBO" last year that the coronavirus wiped out global gains in education, poverty eradication, vaccinations, and maternal and child health in a matter of weeks.

The bottom line: The couple said they were "optimistic that the end of the beginning is near" — and that new tests, treatments and vaccines "will soon begin bending the curve in a big way."

On Tap

• Earnings reports include Apple and Facebook.

Trading Places

• The White House named Chris DeRusha as the federal chief information security officer. DeRusha previously held that post in the Biden campaign and also worked in the Obama White House.
• Fintech company Galileo has hired former PayPal executive Archana (Archie) Puri as chief product officer.

ICYMI

• More than a dozen tech companies, including Cisco, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Salesforce and Uber, pledged to take part in a World Economic Forum effort to improve racial justice in the workplace. (Protocol)
• YouTube is extending its ban on Trump, though it did not say for how long. (USA Today)
• A huge jump in revenue from its Azure cloud spurred a better-than-expected earnings report from Microsoft. (CNBC)
• A surge in traffic appears to have been responsible for widespread broadband and online service outages in parts of the U.S. Tuesday. (Bloomberg)
• GameStop shares continue to romp as amateur investors who largely congregate on Reddit — and use Robinhood and other fee-free apps to trade — squeeze short sellers. (Axios)

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