Speaker 1: A Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed
Speaker 2: ze Tron. It's been a hard couple of weeks. It's
Speaker 2: been pretty hard to focus. I've written a few newsletters,
Speaker 2: I've gone to Portugal, I've done a bunch of shit
Speaker 2: just trying not to think about everything happening outside. But
Speaker 2: it's time to do so. Seemingly every single person on
Speaker 2: Earth with a blog or a podcast, or even a
Speaker 2: Twitter account or XD everything, Apple whatever it's called now,
Speaker 2: they've all tried to drill down into what happened on
Speaker 2: November fifth, to find the people that blame, to explain
Speaker 2: what could have gone differently, really looking for who to
Speaker 2: blame though, and find out why so many actions led
Speaker 2: to a result that will overwhelmingly home woman, minorities, immigrants,
Speaker 2: LGBTQ people, and lower income work. Because it's terrifying. It
Speaker 2: fucking sucks. I'm not going to mince words, not that
Speaker 2: I would usually anyway, and I don't feel fully equipped
Speaker 2: to respond to the moment. I don't have any real answers,
Speaker 2: at least not political ones. I'm not a political analyst,
Speaker 2: and I'd feel disingenuous trying to dissect either the Harris
Speaker 2: or the Trump campaigns, because I just feel like there's
Speaker 2: a take Olympics right now. It's the Dunning Kruger Festival
Speaker 2: out there. Everyone is trying to rationalize and intellectualize these
Speaker 2: events that ultimately come down to something quite simple. People
Speaker 2: don't trust authority, and yet it's pretty ironic that this
Speaker 2: often leads them towards authoritarianism. Now, I don't want to
Speaker 2: give you the impression that I'm going to go on
Speaker 2: my crank mode that and somehow against institutions on their face,
Speaker 2: I'm not. But at the same time, understanding this moment
Speaker 2: requires us to acknowledge that institutions have failed us and
Speaker 2: failed most people, and how certain institutions missteps have led
Speaker 2: us to exactly where we are today. Legacy media, and
Speaker 2: while oftentimes they're staffed by people who truly love their
Speaker 2: readers and care about their beats, they're weighed down by
Speaker 2: this hysterical, nonsensical attachment to the imaginary concept of objectivity
Speaker 2: and the will of the markets. Case in point, regular
Speaker 2: people have spent years watching the price of goods increase
Speaker 2: due to inflation, despite the fact that the increase in
Speaker 2: pricing was mostly driven by get this corporations raising their prices. Now,
Speaker 2: that's not to say that external factors like the war
Speaker 2: in Ukraine or lingering COVID restrictions in China, these things
Speaker 2: did play a role in it. They did. But the
Speaker 2: bulk of these price increases were caused by these fucking
Speaker 2: companies raising the prices. It was in their earnings. It
Speaker 2: was right there, Pepsi Cola said it on the news.
Speaker 2: Yet some parts of the legacy media spent an alarming
Speaker 2: amount of time chiding their readers for thinking otherwise, even
Speaker 2: going against their own reporting. And there will be links
Speaker 2: in the episode notes I promise as a means to
Speaker 2: provide balanced coverage, insisting again and again that the economy
Speaker 2: is actually good, contorting their little bodies to prove that
Speaker 2: prices aren't actually higher, even as companies literally boasted about
Speaker 2: raising their prices on earnings. In fact, the media spent
Speaker 2: years debating with itself whether the price scuging was actually happening,
Speaker 2: despite years of proof that it was. Some of them
Speaker 2: even reported that the price gouging was happening. So like,
Speaker 2: get this, I just don't think people trust authority, and
Speaker 2: they especially don't trust the media, especially the legacy media.
Speaker 2: It also probably didn't help. The legacy media implored readers
Speaker 2: and viewers to ignore what they saw at the supermarket
Speaker 2: or at the pump and the growing hits that their
Speaker 2: wallets from the daily necessities of life. It was just
Speaker 2: a national level gas lighting and it was disgusting. And
Speaker 2: I know some of you might say, you know where
Speaker 2: to email me. Oh, it's not just this. No, of course,
Speaker 2: it's not just this asshole, but I think this is
Speaker 2: a big thing. Now, before I go any further, I've
Speaker 2: used the termgacy media here repeatedly, but don't completely intend
Speaker 2: for it to come across as a pejorative. Despite my criticisms,
Speaker 2: and believe me, I've got a few of them, there
Speaker 2: are people in the legacy media doing a good job.
Speaker 2: They're reporting the truth, they're doing the kinds of work
Speaker 2: that matters, and they're actually trying to teach their reader's
Speaker 2: stuff and tell them what's happening and giving them context.
Speaker 2: I read and pay for several legacy media outlets. I
Speaker 2: think the world is a better place for them existing,
Speaker 2: despite their flaws. The problem is, as I'll explain, is
Speaker 2: this editorial industrial complex and how these people are writing
Speaker 2: about the powerful don't seem to be able to, or
Speaker 2: maybe they don't want to actually interrogate the powerful. This
Speaker 2: could be an entire episode on its sign, but I
Speaker 2: don't think the answer to these failings is to simply
Speaker 2: discard legacy media entirely. But I want to implore them
Speaker 2: to do better and to strive for the values of
Speaker 2: truth hunting and truth telling and actually explaining what's happening
Speaker 2: and criticizing the people that don't have PR firms and
Speaker 2: lobbying groups and lawyers and the means to protect them
Speaker 2: cells from the world. The time for fucking around is over,
Speaker 2: and we're currently finding out now. Anyway, as you know,
Speaker 2: as a person existing in the real world, the price
Speaker 2: of everything has kept increasing despite the fact that wages
Speaker 2: are stagnating. It's forcing many of the poorest people to
Speaker 2: choose between food and fuel or I don't know, eating
Speaker 2: and having heat simultaneously. Businesses have spent several years telling
Speaker 2: workers they're asking for too much and doing too little,
Speaker 2: telling people a few years ago they were quiet quitting,
Speaker 2: which is a fucking stupid term that just means going
Speaker 2: to your job and doing the thing you're paying to do. Anyway,
Speaker 2: and a year later, in twenty twenty three, they insisted
Speaker 2: that the years of remote work were actually bad because
Speaker 2: profits didn't reach the same profit levels of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: which was something to do with remote work. Now, did
Speaker 2: anyone actually prove this, did anyone actually going No, they didn't.
Speaker 2: They just well, I just listened to Mark Benioff, who's
Speaker 2: one of the more evil people alive. Now. I also
Speaker 2: think a lot of these problems come to twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one a year that we really need to dig into more.
Speaker 2: We might not do so today, but we will in
Speaker 2: the future. But one of the big things that punish
Speaker 2: workers and led to so many layoffs in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three was the fact that we couldn't get back to
Speaker 2: the post lockdown boot of twenty twenty one, when everyone
Speaker 2: bought everything always as they left the house for the
Speaker 2: first time in a while. Now, any corporation would be
Speaker 2: smart enough to know that that was a phase, that
Speaker 2: that was not going to be forever. Except every single
Speaker 2: big company seemed to make the same mistake and say
Speaker 2: number going up forever, line go up forever. When it didn't, Well,
Speaker 2: they started punishing workers and they started thinking, well, could
Speaker 2: it be that we as companies, We set unrealistic expectations
Speaker 2: for the markets and we just thought that we'd keep
Speaker 2: growing forever. Or maybe it was the people using the
Speaker 2: computer at home. Yeah, that seems way better anyway. Well,
Speaker 2: the majority of people don't work remotely. From talking to
Speaker 2: the people I know outside of tech or business, there's
Speaker 2: this genuine sense that media has allied itself with the bosses,
Speaker 2: and I imagine it's because of the many articles that
Speaker 2: literally call workers lazy and have done so for years.
Speaker 2: Yet when it comes to the powerful legacy, media doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to have that much pisson vinegar. They just have
Speaker 2: much more guarded critiques. The appetite for shaming and finger wagging.
Speaker 2: It's always directed that middle and working class workers and
Speaker 2: seemingly disappears what a person has a three character job
Speaker 2: title like CEO. It's fucking stupid, it's insulting, and yes,
Speaker 2: it's demoralizing for the average person. Despite the fact that
Speaker 2: Elon Musk has spent years telegraphing is intent to uses
Speaker 2: billions of dollars to wild power equivalent to that of
Speaker 2: a nation state. As you may remember from my first
Speaker 2: episode of Anything over On, it could happen here too.
Speaker 2: Much of the media, both legacy and otherwise, responded slowly, cautiously,
Speaker 2: failing to call him a liar, a con artist, and aggressor,
Speaker 2: a manipula of rasis the deadbeat dad, you know all
Speaker 2: the thing's actually happening. No, no, no. They kind of
Speaker 2: danced around him. They reported stories that might make you
Speaker 2: think that they may be noticed it. But there's this
Speaker 2: desperation to guard objectivity, and it was just it lacked
Speaker 2: any real intent, It lacked any interest in calling account
Speaker 2: to a man who has pretty much bought an election
Speaker 2: for Donald Trump, a racist billionaire using his outsized capital
Speaker 2: the ben society to his will. Just isn't a fucking
Speaker 2: problem for the media, or at least not as much
Speaker 2: of a problem as a worker who might not work
Speaker 2: fifty to one hundred hours a week for a boss
Speaker 2: who makes one hundred and thirty times what they do.
Speaker 2: The news, at least outside of the right wing, is
Speaker 2: always separate from opinion, always guarded, always safe for fear
Speaker 2: that they might piss somebody off and be declared biased,
Speaker 2: something that happens anyway, And while there are columnists are
Speaker 2: given some space to have their own thoughts. Sometimes in
Speaker 2: the newspaper sometimes online, The stories themselves are delivered with
Speaker 2: the kind of reserved hmmmm tone that often fails to
Speaker 2: express any actual consequences or context around the news itself,
Speaker 2: and just doesn't seem to care about making sure or
Speaker 2: that the reader or listener learns something. My mate Casey
Speaker 2: has a good point about podcasts, and I apply it
Speaker 2: to some of the news too, that there's too much
Speaker 2: stuff out there that is there to make you feel
Speaker 2: intelligent rather than make you intelligent. I think this falls
Speaker 2: into it. Now. This isn't to say that outlets are
Speaker 2: incapable of doing this correctly. I love the Washington Post.
Speaker 2: They've done an excellent job on analyzing major text stories.
Speaker 2: But a lot of these outlets feel custom built to
Speaker 2: be bulldozed the moment an authoritarian turns up this force
Speaker 2: that exists to crush those desperately attached to norms and objectivity.
Speaker 2: Authoritarians know that they're ideologically charged. Words we quoted adverbatum
Speaker 2: with the occasional ah, this could mean little dribble, this drizzle,
Speaker 2: this spunk of context that's lost in the headline, that
Speaker 2: repeats exactly what the fucking authoritarian wants them to and
Speaker 2: guess what. Some people don't read the article, they just
Speaker 2: read the headline, and Musk is the most brutal example
Speaker 2: of this. By the way, despite the fact that he's
Speaker 2: turned Twitter into a website pump full of racism and
Speaker 2: hatred that literally helped make Donald Trump president, Musk was
Speaker 2: still able to get mostly positive coverage from the majority
Speaker 2: of the mainstream media for his fucking robotaxi nonsense, despite
Speaker 2: the fact that he spent the best part of a
Speaker 2: decade lying about what Tesla will do next. There are
Speaker 2: entire websites just based on how much Elon Musk lies,
Speaker 2: yet they still report this shit. It makes me very upset.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't matter that some of these outlets, by
Speaker 2: the way, had a company in coverage that suggested that
Speaker 2: the markets weren't impressed by Tesla's theoretical robotaxi plans or
Speaker 2: their fakeass robots run by people. Musk is still able
Speaker 2: to use the media's desperation for objectivity against them, and
Speaker 2: he knows that they never dare to combine reporting on
Speaker 2: stuff with thinking about stuff for fear that Elon Musk
Speaker 2: might say their bias, which he has been doing for years.
Speaker 2: Do you see my goddamn point. Yet, and this, by
Speaker 2: the way, is not always the fault of the rayers.
Speaker 2: There are entire foundations of editors that have more faith
Speaker 2: in the market and the powerful than they do the
Speaker 2: people writing or the people reading their fucking words. And
Speaker 2: above them are entire editorial superstructures that exist to make
Speaker 2: sure that the editorial vision never colors too far outside
Speaker 2: the lines or informs people a little too much. I'm
Speaker 2: not even talking about Jeff Bezos or Lauren Powell Jobs
Speaker 2: or any number of billionaires who are in any number
Speaker 2: of publications, but the editors editing business and tech reporters
Speaker 2: who don't know anything about business and tech, or the
Speaker 2: senior editors there terrified of any byline that might dare
Speaker 2: get the outlet under fire from somebody who could call
Speaker 2: their boss it's fucking cowardice. There are, however, I should add,
Speaker 2: also those who simply defer to the powerful, that assume
Speaker 2: that this much money can't be wrong, even if said money,
Speaker 2: in the case of Elon Musk, is repeatedly wrong. And
Speaker 2: there's an entire website about the wrongness and the lies
Speaker 2: and the bullshit, and I'm talking about Elon Musk still Obviously,
Speaker 2: these editors are the people that look at the current
Speaker 2: crop of powerful tech companies that have failed to deliver
Speaker 2: any truly meaningful innovation in years, and they go ooh oh,
Speaker 2: send me more. Daddy showed me more of the apps.
Speaker 2: It's fucking disgraceful. Just look at the coverage of Sam
Speaker 2: Mortman from the last year. You know, the guy who
Speaker 2: spent years lying about what AI can do, and tell
Speaker 2: me why every single thought he says must be uncritically cataloged,
Speaker 2: His every goddamn decision, applauded, his every claim, trumpeted as
Speaker 2: certain his brittle little company that burns five billion dollars
Speaker 2: a year talked about like it's a fucking living god.
Speaker 2: Sam Altman is a liar who's been fired from two companies,
Speaker 2: including open Ai, and yet because he's a billionaire with
Speaker 2: a buzzy company, he's left totally unscathed. The powerful get
Speaker 2: a completely different set of rules to live by and
Speaker 2: exist in a totally different media environment. Their geniuses, entrepreneurs,
Speaker 2: fire brands. Their challenges are framed as missteps and their
Speaker 2: victories framed as certainties by the same outlets that told
Speaker 2: us that we were quiet, quitting and that the economy
Speaker 2: is actually good and that we're the problem for high prices. Well,
Speaker 2: it's correct to suggest that the right wing is horrendously
Speaker 2: ideological and they're terribly biased. It's very hard to look
Speaker 2: at the rest of the media and claim that they
Speaker 2: are not. The problem is that the so called left media,
Speaker 2: which usually is just the center, isn't biased towards what
Speaker 2: we may consider left wing causes like universal health care,
Speaker 2: strong unions, expanded social safety and that's you know, the
Speaker 2: stuff that would actually be helpful. Now they're biased in
Speaker 2: favor of pilating an ever growing carousel of sociopathic billionaire assholes,
Speaker 2: elevating them to the status of American royalty, where they
Speaker 2: exist above expectations and norms that you and I must
Speaker 2: live by. This is the definition of elitism. The media
Speaker 2: has literally created a class of people who can lie
Speaker 2: and cheat and steal, and rather than condemn them for it,
Speaker 2: they're celebrated. While it might feel a little tangential to
Speaker 2: bring technology into this, I truly believe that everybody is
Speaker 2: affected by the rot economy, the growth or costs ecosystem
Speaker 2: where number must always go up because everybody is using technology.
Speaker 2: All that and the technology in question is getting worse.
Speaker 2: This election cycle saw more than twenty five billion text
Speaker 2: messages sent to potential voters, and seemingly every website was
Speaker 2: cram full of random election advertising. Here's the thing about elections.
Speaker 2: They're not really always about policy. No, they're a referendum
Speaker 2: on the incumbent party or president, and by proxy, a
Speaker 2: poll on how people feel. And the reality is that
Speaker 2: most people are fucking miserable. There's this all encompassing feeling
Speaker 2: that things are just harder now. It's harder to pay
Speaker 2: your bills, it's harder to keep in touch with your friends,
Speaker 2: it's harder to start a family, it's harder to buy
Speaker 2: a house, it's harder to fall in love, it's harder
Speaker 2: to do everything. And what we're seeing is an in
Speaker 2: shitification of existence. To use mister doctor Roe's phrase, everything
Speaker 2: just I don't want to be this much of a commudgeon,
Speaker 2: but everything just kind of sucks. It's all terrible, it's miserable,
Speaker 2: and hardly anyone thinks it's going to get better. And
Speaker 2: this creates the kind of fertile conditions for a strong
Speaker 2: man to have emerged, one who arises and says that
Speaker 2: only he can fix thing, even if he spent four
Speaker 2: years proving how he could not. And the problem for
Speaker 2: democrats and for institutions more broadly is that the all
Speaker 2: encompassing nature of this milieu is kind of hard to solve.
Speaker 2: It's hard to change the perception that everything's terrible when
Speaker 2: you're reminded of it when you're trying to do the
Speaker 2: most basic of tasks. Our phones are full of notifications
Speaker 2: trying to growth hack us into doing things that companies want.
Speaker 2: Our apps are full of micro transactions. Our websites are
Speaker 2: slower and harder to use, with endless demands of our
Speaker 2: emails and our phone numbers, and the need to log
Speaker 2: back in because they couldn't possibly lose a dollar to
Speaker 2: someone who dared to consume a Washington Post article. And yes,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about the Post, which I fucking pay for,
Speaker 2: despite the fact that it logs me out all the time.
Speaker 2: Our social networks are so algorithmically charged that they barely
Speaker 2: show us the things who want them to anymore. With
Speaker 2: executives dedicated to filling our feeds full of AI generated
Speaker 2: slop because despite being the customer, were also the revenue mechanism,
Speaker 2: our search engines do less as a means of making
Speaker 2: us use them more. Our dating apps have become vehicles
Speaker 2: of private equity to add a toll to falling in love.
Speaker 2: Our video games are constantly nagging us to give them
Speaker 2: more money, and despite it costing money and being attached
Speaker 2: to our account, we don't actually own any of the
Speaker 2: streaming media we purchase. We're drowning in spam, both in
Speaker 2: our emails and our phones, and at this point in
Speaker 2: our lives, we've probably agreed to three million pages of
Speaker 2: privacy policies allowing companies to use our information as they
Speaker 2: see fit. We get one value transaction with every company
Speaker 2: they get eleven, they get one hundred. We really actually
Speaker 2: don't know because there's no legislation to tell us what
Speaker 2: they're fucking doing. And these are the issues that hit
Speaker 2: everything we do all the time, constantly, unrelentingly. Technology is
Speaker 2: our lives. Now. We wake up, we use our phone,
Speaker 2: we check our text, three spam calls, two spam texts.
Speaker 2: We look at our bank balance, two factor authentication check.
Speaker 2: We're riad the news. A quarter of the pages bot
Speaker 2: bone advertisement asking for our email that's deliberately built to
Speaker 2: hide the button to get rid of them and then
Speaker 2: we log into slack and feel a pang of anxieties.
Speaker 2: Fifteen different notifications appear in a way there is really
Speaker 2: not built for us to find what we need, just
Speaker 2: to let us know something happen. Modern existence is just
Speaker 2: engulfed in sludge. The institutions that exist are cut through.
Speaker 2: It seem to bounce between the ignorance of their masters
Speaker 2: and this misplaced duty to objectivity. Our mechanisms for exploring
Speaker 2: and enjoying the world are interfered with by powerful forces
Speaker 2: that are just basically left unchecked. Opening our devices is
Speaker 2: wilfully subjecting us to attack after attack after attack from applications, websites,
Speaker 2: and devices that are built to make us do things
Speaker 2: for them, rather than operate with dignity and freedom that
Speaker 2: much of the Internet was actually founded upon. These millions
Speaker 2: of invisible acts of terror are too often left undiscussed
Speaker 2: because accepting the truth requires you to accept that most
Speaker 2: of the tech ecosystem is rotten, and that billions of
Speaker 2: dollars are made harassing and punishing billions of people every
Speaker 2: single day of their lives through the devices that we're
Speaker 2: required to use in order to exist in the modern world.
Speaker 2: Most users suffer the consequences, and most of the media
Speaker 2: fails to account for them, and in turn, people walk
Speaker 2: around knowing something is wrong, but not knowing who to
Speaker 2: blame until somebody provides a convenient excuse, like immigrants, the Democrats,
Speaker 2: like whatever fucking works, because we can't actually call the
Speaker 2: people out, the corporations crushing our existence. Why wouldn't people
Speaker 2: crave change? Why wouldn't people be angry living in the
Speaker 2: current world? Absolutely fucking sucks. Sometimes it's miserable, it's bereft
Speaker 2: of industry and filthy with manipulation. It's undignified, it's disrespectful,
Speaker 2: and it must be crushed if we want to escape
Speaker 2: this depressing, goddamn world we've found ourselves in. Our media
Speaker 2: institutions are fully fucking capable of dealing with these problems,
Speaker 2: but it starts with actually evaluating them and aggressively interrogating
Speaker 2: them without fearing accusations of bias that, as I've said, repeatedly,
Speaker 2: happen either way. The truth is that the media is
Speaker 2: more afraid of accusations of bias than they are of
Speaker 2: misleading their readers. And while that seems like a slippery slope,
Speaker 2: and it may very well be one, there must be
Speaker 2: room to inject the writer's voice back into their work,
Speaker 2: and a willingness to call out bad actors as such,
Speaker 2: no matter how rich they are, no matter how big
Speaker 2: they're products are, no matter how willing they are to
Speaker 2: bark and screen that things are unfair as they accumulate
Speaker 2: more power and money. We need context in our news.
Speaker 2: We need it, We need it now. We need opinion,
Speaker 2: we need voice, we need character, we need life, because
Speaker 2: as long as we follow this bullshit objectivity path, we're screwed.
Speaker 2: And if you're in the tech industry and hearing this
Speaker 2: and saying, oh, the media is teed creticill of tech,
Speaker 2: you flat fucking wrong, kiss my asshole. Everything we're seeing
Speaker 2: happening right now is a direct result of a society
Speaker 2: that let technology in the ultra rich run rampant, free
Speaker 2: of both the governmental guardrails that might have stopped them
Speaker 2: and the media ecosystem that might have actually held them
Speaker 2: in check. Our default position in interrogating the intentions and
Speaker 2: actions of the tech industry has become that they will
Speaker 2: work it out as they continually redefine what work it
Speaker 2: out means and turn it into make their products worse,
Speaker 2: but more profitable. Covering Meta, Twitter, Google, open Ai, and
Speaker 2: other huge tech companies as if the products they make
Speaker 2: are remarkable and perfect is disrespectable to the reader's intelligence
Speaker 2: and a disgust abdication of responsibility, as their products, even
Speaker 2: when they're functional, are significantly worse, more annoying, more frustrating,
Speaker 2: and more convoluted than ever. And that's before you get
Speaker 2: to the ones like Facebook and Instagram that are out
Speaker 2: right broken. I don't give a shit if these people
Speaker 2: have raised a lot of money unless you use that
Speaker 2: as proof that something is fundamentally wrong with the tech industry.
Speaker 2: Meta making billions of dollars of profit is a sign
Speaker 2: that something is wrong with society, not proof that it's
Speaker 2: a good company or anything that should grant Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 2: any kind of special treatment. Shove your chains up your ass.
Speaker 2: Mark open Ai being worth one hundred and fifty seven
Speaker 2: billion dollars for a company that burns five billion or
Speaker 2: more a year to make a product that destroys our environment,
Speaker 2: for a product yet to find any real meaning, isn't
Speaker 2: a sign that it should get more coverage or be
Speaker 2: taken more seriously. No, it should be a sign that
Speaker 2: something is broken, that something is wrong with society. Whatever
Speaker 2: you may feel about chat GPT, the coverage it received
Speaker 2: is outsized compared to its actual utility and the things
Speaker 2: built on top of it. And that's a direct result
Speaker 2: of a media industry that seems incapable of holding the
Speaker 2: powerful accountable or actually learning about the subject matter in question.
Speaker 2: It's time to accept that most people's digital life fucking sucks,
Speaker 2: as does the way we consume our information, and that
Speaker 2: there are people directly responsible. Be as angry as you
Speaker 2: want at Jeff Bezos, whose wealth and the inherent cruelty
Speaker 2: of Amazon's labor practices makes him an obvious target, but
Speaker 2: please don't forget Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sander Peshai, Tim Cook,
Speaker 2: and every single other tech executive that has allowed our
Speaker 2: digital experiences to become fucked up through algorithms that we
Speaker 2: know nothing about. Similarly, governments have entirely failed to push
Speaker 2: through any legislation that might stop the row, both in
Speaker 2: terms of dominance and a patness of algorithmic manipulation and
Speaker 2: the ways in which take products exist with few real
Speaker 2: quality standards. We may have, at least for now, consumer
Speaker 2: standards for the majority of consumer goods, but software is
Speaker 2: left effectively untouched, which is why so much of our
Speaker 2: digital lives are such unfettered. Doug shit. And if you're
Speaker 2: hearing this and say I'm being a hater or a pessimists,
Speaker 2: shut the fuck up. I'm tired of you. I'm so
Speaker 2: fucking tired of being told to calm down about this
Speaker 2: as we stare down the barrel of four years of
Speaker 2: authoritarianism built on top of the decay of our lives,
Speaker 2: both physical and digital, with a media ecosystem that doesn't
Speaker 2: do a great job explaining what's being done to the
Speaker 2: people in an ideologically consistent way. There's this extremely common
Speaker 2: assumption in the tech media based on what I'm really
Speaker 2: not sure, that these companies are all doing a good job,
Speaker 2: and that good job means having lots of users and
Speaker 2: making lots of money, and it drives tons of editorial
Speaker 2: decision making. If three quarters of the biggest car manufacturers
Speaker 2: were making record profits by making half of their cars
Speaker 2: or the break that sometimes didn't work, that'd be international news.
Speaker 2: Government inquiries would appen, people will go to prison. And
Speaker 2: this isn't even conjecture. It actually happened after Volkswagen was
Speaker 2: caught deliberately programming its engines to only meet emission standards
Speaker 2: during laboratory testing. They were left to spew excessive pollution
Speaker 2: into the real world, but once lawmakers found out, they
Speaker 2: responded with civil and criminal action. The executives and engineers
Speaker 2: responsible were indicted. One received seven years in jail, and
Speaker 2: their former CEO is currently being tried in Germany and
Speaker 2: being indicted in the US too. And here we are
Speaker 2: in the tech industry. Facebook barely Works used to nigenocides
Speaker 2: and bullied people and harassed teen girls. Pedophiles run rampant
Speaker 2: on there. There was a Wall Street Journal about story
Speaker 2: about it. They're fine. So much of the tech industry
Speaker 2: consumer software like Google or Facebook, Twitter and even chat GBT,
Speaker 2: and business software from companies like Microsoft and Slack. It sucks.
Speaker 2: It sucks. It's bad. You use it every day. You've
Speaker 2: been listening to Ramble for fifty episodes. Now you know
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about. It's everywhere. Yet the media covers
Speaker 2: it just like, ah, you know, it's just how things
Speaker 2: are mate now. Meta, by the admission of its own
Speaker 2: internal documents, makes products that are ruinous to the mental
Speaker 2: health of teenage girls, and it hasn't made any substantial
Speaker 2: changes as a result, nor has it received any significant
Speaker 2: pushback for failing to do so. Little bit of a
Speaker 2: side note, big shout out to Jeff Horwitz and the
Speaker 2: rest of the Wall Street General people who did the
Speaker 2: Facebook files. There are are legacy media people doing a
Speaker 2: good job on this. Nevertheless, Meta exercises this reckless disregard
Speaker 2: for public safety, kind of like the auto industry in
Speaker 2: the sixties, and that was when Ralph Nader wrote Unsafe
Speaker 2: at Any Speed in his book. It actually brought about change.
Speaker 2: It led to the Department of Transportation and the passage
Speaker 2: of seat belt laws in forty nine states, and a
Speaker 2: bunch of other things that can get overlooked. But the
Speaker 2: tech industry is somehow inoculated against any kind of public
Speaker 2: pressure or shame because it operates in this completely different
Speaker 2: world with this different rule book and a different criteria
Speaker 2: for success, as well as this completely different set of expectations.
Speaker 2: By allowing the market to become disconnected from the value
Speaker 2: it creates, we enable companies like I don't know in
Speaker 2: video that reduced the quality of services they make more
Speaker 2: money for their g Force now service or Facebook. They
Speaker 2: can just destroy our political discourse, so they can facilitate
Speaker 2: genocide in Myanmar, and then well they get headlines about
Speaker 2: how good a CEO Mark Zuckerbig is and how cool
Speaker 2: his chains are, and how how everything's just fine with
Speaker 2: Facebook and they're making more money. No. No, I actually
Speaker 2: want to take a step back, though. I want to
Speaker 2: take a little bit of step back. I previously mentioned
Speaker 2: I said it twice now, Oh, Meta enables genocide and
Speaker 2: it destroys our political discourse. I want to be clear
Speaker 2: when I say that everything is justified at Meta, I'm
Speaker 2: actually quoting their chief technology officer. That's quite literally what
Speaker 2: Andrew Bosworth said in an internal memo from twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: where he said that and I quote ahem, all the
Speaker 2: work Facebook does in growth is justified, even if that includes,
Speaker 2: and I'm quoting him directly, somebody dying in a terrorist
Speaker 2: attack coordinating using Facebook's tools. A mere mention of violent
Speaker 2: crime is enough to create dreams of articles questioning whether
Speaker 2: society is safe and whether we need more plastic in
Speaker 2: our walgreens. Yeah, our digital lives are this wasteland that
Speaker 2: people still discuss like a utopia, seriously putting aside the
Speaker 2: social networks. Have you visited a website on the phone recently.
Speaker 2: Have you tried to use a new app? Have you
Speaker 2: tried to buy something online starting with a Google search?
Speaker 2: Within those experiences, sis, has anything gone wrong? You know it,
Speaker 2: I know it has, you know it has. It's time
Speaker 2: to wake up. We the users of products. We're at
Speaker 2: war with the products we're using and the people that
Speaker 2: make them, and right now we are losing. The media
Speaker 2: must realign to fight for how things should be. This
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that they can't cover things positively, or give
Speaker 2: credit where credit is due, or be willing to accept
Speaker 2: that something could be something cool. But has the change
Speaker 2: is the evaluation of the products themselves, which have been
Speaker 2: allowed to decay to a level that has become at
Speaker 2: best annoying and at worst actively harmful for society. Our
Speaker 2: networks are rotten, Our information ecosystem is poisoned, with its
Speaker 2: pure parts ideologically and strategically concussed. Our means of speaking
Speaker 2: to those that we love and making new connections are
Speaker 2: so constantly interfered with that personal choice and dignity is
Speaker 2: all but removed. But there is hope. There really is.
Speaker 2: Those covering the tech industry right now have one of
Speaker 2: the most consequential jobs in journalism if they choose to
Speaker 2: fucking do it. Those willing to guide people through the wasteland,
Speaker 2: those willing to discuss what needs to change, how bad
Speaker 2: things have gone, and hold the powerful accountable and say
Speaker 2: what good might look like, have the opportunity to push
Speaker 2: for a better future by spitting in the faces of
Speaker 2: those ruining it. I don't know where I sit, by
Speaker 2: the way, I don't know what to call myself. Am
Speaker 2: I legacy media? I got my start writing in print magazines.
Speaker 2: Am I an independent contractor? Am I an influencer? Am
Speaker 2: I content? I truly don't know, and I don't know
Speaker 2: over care. But all that I know is that I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm at war two and that we, if
Speaker 2: I can be considered part of the media, are at
Speaker 2: war with people that change the terms of innovation so
Speaker 2: that it's synonymous with value extraction. Technology is how I
Speaker 2: became a person, how I met my closest friends and
Speaker 2: loved ones. And without it, I wouldn't be able to write,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be able to read this podcast. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: have got this podcast. And I feel this poison flowing
Speaker 2: through my veins as I see what these motherfuckers have
Speaker 2: done and what they're continuing to do, And I see
Speaker 2: how inconsistently and tipidly they're interrogated. Now is the time
Speaker 2: to talk bluntly about what is happening. The declining quality
Speaker 2: of tech products, the scourge of growth, hacking, the cancellor
Speaker 2: us growth at all cost mindset. These are all the
Speaker 2: things that need to be raised in every single piece,
Speaker 2: and judgments must be unrelenting. The companies will.
Speaker 1: Squeal ooh that they're being so unfairly treated by the
Speaker 1: biased legacy media. Oh oh, save me, hey, Nell Patel
Speaker 1: interview with Sondar Pishai. This is how you sounded when
Speaker 1: you handed him your phone.
Speaker 2: It was pathetic. They should be scared of you, Nile.
Speaker 2: The powerful should be scared of the media. They shouldn't
Speaker 2: be sitting there sending letters to the editor like fucking
Speaker 2: customer support. No, they should see this podcast, They should
Speaker 2: see these news letters. They should see everything published by
Speaker 2: the tech media and go uh oh. And there can
Speaker 2: be good people. There can be good boys and girls
Speaker 2: than others. There can be plenty of people that make
Speaker 2: good products and get great press for it. But do
Speaker 2: you really think meta Google, Apple to an extent. Frankly,
Speaker 2: do you think Amazon looks good right now? Do you
Speaker 2: think it's easy to find stuff? Or do you think
Speaker 2: it's slop full of more slop? Mark Zuckerberg said on
Speaker 2: an earning score the other day that he intends there
Speaker 2: to be an AI specific slop feed that should These
Speaker 2: are harmful things. This is pouring vants of oil into
Speaker 2: rivers and then getting told you're the best boy in town.
Speaker 2: These companies, they're poisoning the digital world, and they must
Speaker 2: be held accountable for the damage they're causing. Readers are
Speaker 2: already aware. But ah, and this is really thanks to
Speaker 2: members of the media, by the way, the gaslighting themselves
Speaker 2: into believing that, oh, I just don't catch I don't
Speaker 2: keep up with technology. He is getting away from me.
Speaker 2: I'm not technical enough to use this, when the thing
Speaker 2: that they don't get, that the average person doesn't get,
Speaker 2: is that the tech industry has built legions of obfiscations,
Speaker 2: legions of legal tricks, and these horrible little user interface
Speaker 2: traps specifically made to trick you into doing things, to
Speaker 2: make the experience kind of subordinate to getting the money
Speaker 2: off of you. And I think that this is one
Speaker 2: of the biggest issues in society. And yes, of course
Speaker 2: I'm biased. I'm doing a podcast about tech, but for real, though,
Speaker 2: billions of people use smartphones, billions of people are on
Speaker 2: the computer every day. It's how we do everything. And
Speaker 2: it stinks. It stinks so bad. This is the rot economy.
Speaker 2: We're in the rot society. But things can change, and
Speaker 2: for them to change, it has to start with the
Speaker 2: information sources, and that starts with journalism. And the work
Speaker 2: has already begun and we'll continue, but it must scale up,
Speaker 2: and it must do so quickly. And you, the user,
Speaker 2: have the power. Learn to read a privacy policy. And
Speaker 2: the link there is to the Washington Post. Yes, there
Speaker 2: are plenty of great reporters there. Fuck Bezos. You can
Speaker 2: move to Signal, which is an encrypted messaging app that
Speaker 2: works on just about everything. Get a service like delete me,
Speaker 2: and by the way, I pay for it, I work
Speaker 2: from four years ago. I have no financial relationship with them,
Speaker 2: but they're great for removing you from data brokers. Molly White,
Speaker 2: who's a dear friend of mine and even better right
Speaker 2: you might remember from one of the early episodes about Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: She's also written this extremely long guide about what to
Speaker 2: do next that are linked to in the notes, and
Speaker 2: it runs through a ton of great things you can
Speaker 2: do unionization, finding your communities, dropping apps that collect and
Speaker 2: store sensitive data, and so on. I also heartily recommend
Speaker 2: Wired's guide to Protecting Yourself from Government Surveillance, which is
Speaker 2: linked in the show notes. Now, before we go, I
Speaker 2: want to leave you with something that I posted on
Speaker 2: November sixth on the Better Offline redditpp the last twenty
Speaker 2: four hours of felt bleak, and we'll like feel more
Speaker 2: bleak as the months and years go on. It'll be
Speaker 2: easy to give into doom, to assume the fight is lost,
Speaker 2: to assume that the bad guys are permanently won and
Speaker 2: there will never be any justice or joy again. Now's
Speaker 2: the time for solidarity to crystallize around ideas that matter,
Speaker 2: even if their a position in society is delayed. Even
Speaker 2: as the clouds darken and the storm's brew and the
Speaker 2: darkness feels all encompassing and suffocating, reach out to those
Speaker 2: you love and don't just commiserate. Plan It doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be political, it doesn't even really have to matter.
Speaker 2: Put shit on your fucking calendar. Keep yourself active and busy,
Speaker 2: and if not distracted at very least animated. Darkness feeds
Speaker 2: an idleness. Darkness feasts on a sense of failure and
Speaker 2: a sense of inability to make change. You don't know
Speaker 2: me very well, but know that I'm aware of the
Speaker 2: darkness and the sadness and the suffocation of when things
Speaker 2: feel overwhelming. Give yourself some mercy and then the days
Speaker 2: to come. Don't castigate yourself a feeling gutted. Then keep going.
Speaker 2: I realize it's little solace to think, well, if I
Speaker 2: keep saying stuff out loud, things will get better. But
Speaker 2: I promise you do it so as an effect and
Speaker 2: actually matters. Keep talking about how fucked up things are,
Speaker 2: Make sure it's written down, make sure it's spoken cleanly,
Speaker 2: and with the rage and fire and piss and vinegar
Speaker 2: it deserves. Things will change for the better, even if
Speaker 2: it takes more time than it should. Look. I know
Speaker 2: I'm imperfect, emotional, off kilt At times I get emails
Speaker 2: saying that too angry. I'm sorry if it's ever triggered.
Speaker 2: You really do mean that. It's not intentional. I just
Speaker 2: I feel this in everything I do. I use technology
Speaker 2: all the time, and it is extremely annoying. But also
Speaker 2: I'm aware that I have privilege, and the more privilege
Speaker 2: you have with intake, the more you're able to escape
Speaker 2: the little things. Go and buy a cheap laptop today.
Speaker 2: Try and see what two hundred, three hundred dollars laptop is.
Speaker 2: It's slow, It's full of eighteen pop ups trying to
Speaker 2: sell you access to cloud storage, to shit that you'll
Speaker 2: never use, tricking grannies and people who can't afford laptops,
Speaker 2: so people that just don't know. When I see this stuff,
Speaker 2: it enrages me. Not just for me, but because I
Speaker 2: know that I'm at least lucky enough to know how
Speaker 2: to get around this shit. Spent most of my life online,
Speaker 2: spent most of my life playing with tech and now
Speaker 2: how it works. And I know I have my tangents
Speaker 2: and my biases, but I wear them, can't let my
Speaker 2: heart on my sleeve. I care about all this stuff
Speaker 2: in a way that might be a little different to some.
Speaker 2: And it's because I've I've watched an industry that really
Speaker 2: made me as a person, that allowed me to grow
Speaker 2: as a person, to actually meet people, to not feel
Speaker 2: as alone. And I imagine some of you feel like
Speaker 2: this too, And then watching what happens to it every day,
Speaker 2: watching the people who get so rich off of making
Speaker 2: it so much worse, and then seeing what happen on
Speaker 2: November fifth, and you can draw a line from it.
Speaker 2: People are scared, they're lost, Their lives are spent digitally,
Speaker 2: and your digital lives are just endless terrorism, endless harm.
Speaker 2: Some of you know your way around takes, so you
Speaker 2: can escape some of it, but it's impossible to escape
Speaker 2: all of it. Try meeting people these days, you can't.
Speaker 2: Everything is online, and everything online, everything on your phone
Speaker 2: is mitigated and interfered with. It's an assault on your senses,
Speaker 2: one deprived of dignity. And I see the people doing
Speaker 2: this and it feels me full of fucking rage, and
Speaker 2: it makes me angry for you and for me, for
Speaker 2: my son growing up, and what will probably be a
Speaker 2: worse world, for my friends and loved ones who are
Speaker 2: harder to see, harder to speak to, whose lives too
Speaker 2: are interfered with. And there are the millions and millions
Speaker 2: of people who have no fucking idea it's happening, that
Speaker 2: just exist in this swill, in this active digital terrorism,
Speaker 2: poked and prodded and nagged and notified constantly. And I
Speaker 2: don't want. Early on in this I got a message
Speaker 2: saying don't tell people to be angry, and I stick
Speaker 2: by that. But I'm not going to hide that I am.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to hide the pain I feel. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to hide the pain I feel seeing this
Speaker 2: shit happen. And I've watched this thing that I love technology,
Speaker 2: Really do love tech, I really do deeply. I've watched
Speaker 2: it corrupted and broken and the people breaking it. They
Speaker 2: don't just make billions of dollars. They get articles in
Speaker 2: they get interviewed on the news. Mark Zuckerbug, he wears
Speaker 2: a chain and there's articles about how cool he is.
Speaker 2: He should be in fucking prison. He should be on
Speaker 2: a prison on a boat that just circles the world,
Speaker 2: and he shouldn't have air conditioning or heat depending on
Speaker 2: how the weather is. And I know that I'm kind
Speaker 2: of errant, and again, tons of tangents, but look, the
Speaker 2: reason I'm like this is because I really care. And
Speaker 2: I think caring, I think being angry at the things
Speaker 2: that actually matter and giving context as a result. I
Speaker 2: think that's deeply valuable. And I realize I do fla
Speaker 2: to handle a lot, but it really is because I care,
Speaker 2: I care about you, I care about the subject matter.
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful and so honored that you spend your
Speaker 2: time listening to me every week, and I hope you'll
Speaker 2: continue to do so. So I'm not going anywhere. Thank
Speaker 2: you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer
Speaker 2: of the Better Offline theme song is Metasowski. You can
Speaker 2: check out more of his music and audio projects at
Speaker 2: Matasowski dot com, M A T T O S O
Speaker 2: W s ki dot com. You can email me at
Speaker 2: easy at Better Offline dot com, or visit Better Offline
Speaker 2: dot com to find more podcast links and of course,
Speaker 2: my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat
Speaker 2: dot Where's youreaed dot at to visit the discord, and
Speaker 2: go to our slash Better Offline to check out our reddit.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a
Speaker 2: production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 2: visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com to check us
Speaker 2: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts.