Back in August 2014, Mike Bulajewski, a Seattle-based designer with a penchant for psychoanalysis, published a fascinating essay. In The Cult of Sharing, he argued that the best way to understand why so many users feel emotionally attached to such companies as Uber and Airbnb – even earning them the feel-good moniker “the sharing economy” – is by treating such communities as cults.

Like all good cults, such firms tap into our inner quest for solidarity and belonging, promising to fill our lives with meaning. By presenting their foes as enemies of innovation who want to destroy the new and deviant class of entrepreneurs, technology companies play on the perennial theme of persecution. And they stoke fears of conspiracy – involving governments, trade unions and big corporations – out to suppress all disruptive ideas.

That corporations strive to manipulate our aspirations is, of course, not news. Big brands have been dabbling in practices such as “greenwashing”, convincing customers that buying their green products is the way to fight global warming.

But the sharing economy craze, argued Bulajewski, is far more pernicious: while greenwashing simply gives us the erroneous impression that we are saving the world through shopping, “sharewashing” turns us into everyday lobbyists for our favourite startup-cum-church.

Bulajewski’s essay is useful in making sense of some recent efforts by technology companies to mobilise customers to fight government regulation. In fact, we might be witnessing the birth of a new, powerful and highly decentralised approach to lobbying, where citizens merge with the algorithms to neutralise any threat to their cult. By taking advantage of their superb technical knowhow and their unmatched ability to reach and mobilise millions of people in a matter of seconds, technology companies enjoy a definite advantage over the hapless regulators.

Consider last summer’s high-profile public relations battle between Uber and Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York, when the latter tried to limit the number of cars that Uber could operate in the city. Uber deployed all the conventional arguments, stating – not without some merit – that the mayor acted on behalf of the taxi industry and that Uber was good for minorities.

But Uber also added a De Blasio feature to its app – an unmissable “NO CARS – SEE WHY” sign placed on New York’s map. On clicking it, users were told Uber would look like this if De Blasio won. Users were encouraged to email the mayor and the city council with a handy “EMAIL NOW” link. Eventually, De Blasio capitulated.

Facebook has recently deployed a similar tactic. Having run into trouble with the rollout of its Free Basics initiative in India – Free Basics is part of its controversial Internet.org efforts to connect the whole world on its own terms – Facebook called on its users to “save Free Basics”. Presumably it was to be saved from its numerous critics, who argue that Free Basics violates net neutrality.

And Facebook was quick to offer its users a platform for saving it: its users in India saw a message that already contained a complaint – along with their name – that, at the click of a button, would be sent to the Indian government.

Of course, companies have been trying to mobilise their customer base – with the help of think-tanks, journalists and PR firms – for decades. Today, however, Uber and Facebook have the technology to generate immense popular support that would overwhelm any government. Facebook could do much more: by manipulating what news you see in your newsfeed, it can also “curate” your mood and make it more likely that you’ll agree with a particular petition.

With such power to mobilise the masses, it’s no wonder that these firms like to portray themselves as spiritual movements. Their religion is innovation and anyone who stands in its way must be either a heretic or have sold out to special, yet undisrupted, interests: mayors are said to be in bed with the taxi and hospitality industries; government regulators with the telecoms industry; European courts with the media industry.

In Silicon Valley’s conception of the universe, everything is already rotten and corrupt and the only source of purity is to be found in Californian basements, where the hardworking and hoodie-wearing saints are toiling to accelerate progress.

Ideologically, Silicon Valley is rapidly coming to occupy the space traditionally reserved for the radical populists of the right. In a sense, Silicon Valley is like the cosmopolitan and tech-savvy equivalent of the Tea Party: the startup contingent wants us to believe that, while capitalism works in theory, today’s practice is, in fact, very different.

Thus, public institutions have been co-opted by big (or, rather, bigger and older) business and it’s now the citizens who have to pay the price – quite literally – through higher transportation and housing fares, restrictions on what they can do with their property and time, and so on. Worse, all those public institutions are a drag on entrepreneurs – the only class worth defending.

Hence Silicon Valley’s policy proposals: once we deregulate most industries and let the disrupters in, this will lower the prices, unleash entrepreneurs, and awaken the masses from their sloth and slumber – the products of useless government interventions that took responsibility away from individuals. And the tech firms will push for that policy agenda with the extremely effective toolkit spanning every single innovation from online petitions to apps.

That such petitions might not matter in the long run is irrelevant: what matters is that they are being signed by the people, giving a populist feel to the overall effort. Old-school lobbyists, generously funded by venture capitalists, will do the rest.

Intriguingly, Silicon Valley’s despair about the health of our public institutions is shared by the insurgent populists of the left, at least across Europe. The new political parties that sprang up in the past few years are a best testament to that.

From Podemos in Spain to Italy’s Five Star Movement, they, too, have developed a robust communications machine that lets them mobilise their supporters.

These new parties do not share the deregulatory, highly individualistic agenda of Silicon Valley’s right. Nor do they agree with its vision of the state as a mere bystander to the eternal disruption wreaked by technology companies.

Traditional parties, on the other hand, seem to be trapped in a host of prior commitments and missteps; the recent Spanish election is a case in point.

Unable to deviate from the standard neoliberal line of more labour market reforms and more privatisation, they can’t offer a counter-programme to that of Silicon Valley, which simply pushes the logic of both privatisation and employment flexibility to their ultimate conclusions. Nor do they have the necessary infrastructure to mobilise their base.

The global fight to watch, then, is between two high-tech populisms – those of the left (represented by the new political parties) and those of the right (represented by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs).

Either way, it’s clear that whoever controls the technology for mobilising our attention will eventually set the terms of the political debate – yet another argument for not surrendering it completely to Silicon Valley.