While airport-stranded travelers from an apparently arbitrary list of Muslim-majority countries were being kept in handcuffs as a result of President Trump’s stunning immigration ban, the leaders of America’s most powerful tech firms stared at their feet and mumbled. Maybe this weekend’s milquetoast statements shouldn’t have come as a surprise — and there were a few Silicon Valley voices willing to castigate Trump — yet the failure of so many of the U.S. economy’s most influential players to say anything of substance or actually do anything at all to back up their words of dissent was still a great letdown.

The likes of Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook have (like any large corporation) refused to oppose head-on Trump’s widely outrageous, often-illegal agenda. But unlike most other large corporations, Silicon Valley has long draped itself in language of principle, to Make the world a better place — Facebook’s mission statement remains the effort to “make the world more open and connected,” and one can almost remember a time when Google was proudly associated with the phrase “don’t be evil.”

Immediately after Trump seized Election Day, CEOs yearning for a friendly tax repatriation policy lined up to wish him the best, tentatively supporting the new president in tones of Well, let’s just wait and see, while some offered their services to the man directly. Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and SpaceX/Tesla CEO Elon Musk all have formal advisory positions with the Trump administration.

In a long Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg said, “I’m concerned about the impact of the recent executive orders signed by President Trump,” while adding, “That said, I was glad to hear President Trump say he’s going to ‘work something out’ for Dreamers,” and “I’m also glad the President believes our country should continue to benefit from ‘people of great talent coming into the country.’” Zuckerberg concluded, “I hope we find the courage and compassion to bring people together and make this world a better place for everyone.” This is a statement inoffensive to the point of meaninglessness. A Facebook spokesperson later added, “We are assessing the impact on our workforce and determining how best to protect our people and their families from any adverse effects.” The fact that PayPal founder and Trump adviser Peter Thiel sits on Facebook’s board was not addressed.

This concern for immigrants insofar as they are employees but not insofar as they are humans was echoed by other companies: Microsoft said, “We share the concerns about the impact of the executive order on our employees from the listed countries, all of whom have been in the United States lawfully, and we’re actively working with them to provide legal advice and assistance.” Google did the same: “We’re concerned about the impact of this order and any proposals that could impose restrictions on Googlers and their families, or that could create barriers to bringing great talent to the U.S. We’ll continue to make our views on these issues known to leaders in Washington and elsewhere.” Only six years ago, Google changed the design of its homepage to protest a controversial anti-piracy bill, and urged visitors to petition Congress.

In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos expressed his own economic anxiety: “As we’ve grown the company, we’ve worked hard to attract talented people from all over the world, and we believe this is one of the things that makes Amazon great — a diverse workforce helps us build better products for customers.”

Elon Musk issued perhaps the most polite statement of protest in history: