Speaker 1: Zone media.
Speaker 2: Fix off look sharp, I'm edzetron, this is better offline.
Speaker 2: In the last episode, I know, I know, we talked
Speaker 2: about something I talk about all the time, the growing
Speaker 2: shittiness of tech, and now the media is kind of
Speaker 2: playing into it. And the fact that all of this
Speaker 2: is caused by the rock economy, which is the growth
Speaker 2: of all costs mindset that means everything must grow, revenue, engagement,
Speaker 2: time on app everything at all costs, at all times.
Speaker 2: And how well the things you change to make growth happen.
Speaker 2: They're pretty terrible, and they hit you everywhere, and they
Speaker 2: hit you in a manifest ways and manifold ways and
Speaker 2: ways that just fill you full of little poisons every day.
Speaker 2: And it's these little things that are mostly overlooked, mostly
Speaker 2: by the media. See the modern tech clash narrative pushed
Speaker 2: by the media hasn't been focused on anything other than
Speaker 2: big MEATI problems like METS Cambridge Analyticals scandal, while ignoring
Speaker 2: the gradual destruction of the products we use every day.
Speaker 2: In the space of a decade, Google made its ads
Speaker 2: on search look near identical to regular search results, and
Speaker 2: only a few websites like search engine Land, for example,
Speaker 2: seemed to take that and the other changes made to
Speaker 2: the algorithm of one of the single most important sources
Speaker 2: of information in the world with any kind of seriousness.
Speaker 2: The fact that I, a part time blogger with a
Speaker 2: podcast that runs a PR firm during the day, was
Speaker 2: the one to on cover and discuss how the ads
Speaker 2: team made Google Search worse for money nine months after
Speaker 2: the associated emails were made public. It's just a glaring
Speaker 2: example of the misalignment of the tech media with what
Speaker 2: actually affects people on a daily basis. But let me
Speaker 2: give you another example. In Nvidia, one of the most
Speaker 2: single covered tech companies of the last year, has effectively
Speaker 2: lied about the launch of its RTX fifty eighty and
Speaker 2: RTX fifty ninety graphics cards, doing something called a paper launch,
Speaker 2: where stores like Microcenter received as few as two hundred
Speaker 2: thirty three RTX fifty ninety graphics cards nationwide, while Nvidia
Speaker 2: did warn of stock shortages. It's laughable to even call
Speaker 2: this a launch, and I'd argue that the tech media
Speaker 2: as well basically no interest in covering it, despite this
Speaker 2: being a very very significant story about how in Nvidia
Speaker 2: is misleading people about its consumer and procemer graphics cards,
Speaker 2: which by the way, make up billions of dollars of
Speaker 2: revenue and a large percentage of it. And that and
Speaker 2: it does not appear to be able to deliver them
Speaker 2: on time or in any kind of value or volume.
Speaker 2: These events hit millions of consumers in a tangible way.
Speaker 2: In Vidia, despite all its financial success selling AI chips
Speaker 2: to companies like Microsoft and Amazon, appears to be spurning
Speaker 2: one of its core customer bases, the one it built
Speaker 2: its name on, by the way, and the response from
Speaker 2: the consumer tech media has been steppit. The Verge covered this,
Speaker 2: by the way, tom Hardware has done it like there
Speaker 2: are people covering it. And this is all despite the
Speaker 2: fact that PC gaming revenue is comparable insights to console gaming.
Speaker 2: It's forty three point two billion in two four compared
Speaker 2: to the fifty one point nine billion dollars the console
Speaker 2: gaming brought in, and according to research from new Zoo
Speaker 2: and PC gaming, by the way, is one of the
Speaker 2: only things that's growing right now. It's growing four percent
Speaker 2: year of a year, compared to a one percent contraction
Speaker 2: in console revenue. This shit's really important. But things are worse.
Speaker 2: Things are worse than I'm even saying in Vidius fifty
Speaker 2: eighty graphics cards, well they kind of suck, and they
Speaker 2: represent how in Video is treating PC gamers in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. According to Paul's Hardware, a fantastic YouTube channel,
Speaker 2: and they skewered in video for slowly reducing the amount
Speaker 2: of performance gains you'll get out of mid range graphics
Speaker 2: cards like the fifty eighty and the previous generation. And
Speaker 2: this is a cynical attempt to make it so that
Speaker 2: anyone looking for a real upgrade to their graphics card
Speaker 2: has to spend upwards of two thousand dollars and a
Speaker 2: fifty ninety A can't that they can't find. And there's more,
Speaker 2: by the way, And I can't really speak to this
Speaker 2: fully as I'm not super into the hardware spaceball. I'll
Speaker 2: include a YouTube right now. There is a massive scandal
Speaker 2: going on that Technedia really isn't jumping on. In Vidos
Speaker 2: few fifty ninety graphics cards may have been poorly load balanced.
Speaker 2: Sounds technical right. It means all the powers going into
Speaker 2: like two wires and literally melting cards. This may lead
Speaker 2: to a recall. This is significant. I don't see anything
Speaker 2: on the new York Times about it. Guess guess something
Speaker 2: else is happening. I guess they're busy. But anyway, this
Speaker 2: is significant. This is really significant. This is like Apple
Speaker 2: slowly over the course of years reducing the efficiency and
Speaker 2: performance of the regular iPhone in the hopes of deucing
Speaker 2: sales of the iPhone Pro. Yet the only people that
Speaker 2: are taking stories like these seriously appear to be video
Speaker 2: creators like Paul's Hardware who I've mentioned, and Game is Nexus.
Speaker 2: Stephen Burke, the fucking legend. Stephen, come on my show please.
Speaker 2: If you know Stephen, email me at my web zone,
Speaker 2: easy at Better offline dot com. There's e Z at
Speaker 2: Better Offline dot com. Please Stephen. By the way, these
Speaker 2: these are not small channels. One point five million subscribers
Speaker 2: on Paul's Hardware, two point four million on Game is Nexus,
Speaker 2: and time and time again. These guys, specifically, they can
Speaker 2: on real stories that affect real consumers, like gaming PC
Speaker 2: builder NZXT creating a PC rental program that actively conned
Speaker 2: consumers with rates worse than a payday loan company. And
Speaker 2: they act like Stephen and Paul. They protect consumers from
Speaker 2: active harm as the mainstream media chases their tales about
Speaker 2: whatever half broken bullshit Sam Moultman has farted out on
Speaker 2: their heads in video, a company discussed by what it
Speaker 2: feels like every single business and tech out there has
Speaker 2: a documented pattern of misleading and shortchanging customers. Why is
Speaker 2: this not everywhere? Huh? It's almost as if the only
Speaker 2: reason that anyone's talking about in video is that there's
Speaker 2: a herd mentality in what stories are important to the
Speaker 2: modern media, rather than any kind of relationship to the
Speaker 2: effects that these companies might have on actual customers. The
Speaker 2: mainstream media, especially when it comes to technology, does not
Speaker 2: seem capable or willing to discuss the real, tangible, obvious
Speaker 2: problems with the modern tech ecosystem, instead choosing to attack
Speaker 2: things piecemeal or blandly, reporting news with as little context
Speaker 2: as necessary, how with as many company quotes as possible. Look,
Speaker 2: people are pissed off at the tech industry because the
Speaker 2: tech industry is actively pissing them off. They are getting
Speaker 2: less value from the products they pay for, and they're
Speaker 2: paying more for them too, and they're aware that the
Speaker 2: free products they use are getting worse as a means
Speaker 2: of making them more profitable. Stories about distrust and big
Speaker 2: tech continually failed to talk about the simplest, most obvious problems.
Speaker 2: Facebook sucks, Instagram sucks, Our apps suck, Microsoft teams sucks,
Speaker 2: Zoom sucks, Google Meet sucks. It sucks. They suck. They're
Speaker 2: all like, I'm not even being polemic here, these are
Speaker 2: factual statements. These products are worse. They are worse. Everything
Speaker 2: feels like it's built to subtly fuck with us. And
Speaker 2: this is a problem that affects billions of people, one
Speaker 2: that's discussed so rarely that I am considered creative for
Speaker 2: writing a thousand words about the literal experience of using
Speaker 2: a shitty laptop, as I did in my newsletter. Never
Speaker 2: forgive them, which are turned into the invisible war criminals.
Speaker 2: You know how the process goes, Folks more fun when
Speaker 2: I read it. Anyway, these problems are everywhere. They're everywhere,
Speaker 2: and they're real, meaningful stories, ones that are more important
Speaker 2: than Dario amideo anthropic farting into a microphone about how
Speaker 2: in maybe two years AI will be smarter than humans.
Speaker 2: These fucking assholes just go on bloviate, and the media
Speaker 2: lines up like fucking idiots to go, Oh, mister Amiday,
Speaker 2: tell me how smart you are? Fuck you. I'm referring
Speaker 2: to AMIDE. I'm not telling the tech need to go
Speaker 2: fuck themselves. Regular people are not really, in my opinion
Speaker 2: from my experience from talking to people, not pissed off
Speaker 2: a big tech for any complex or multifaceted series of
Speaker 2: events that made them pissed off. The shit they pay
Speaker 2: for sucks. The shit they use sucks. The shit they
Speaker 2: trade their data for sucks. The products are broken or
Speaker 2: in the process of actively breaking. And when consumers look
Speaker 2: at to these companies, they're told, yeah, well, what if
Speaker 2: you had some generative AI. What do you think? Do
Speaker 2: you like it? What do you think?
Speaker 3: M M?
Speaker 2: And the customer is like, I fucking hate that? Can
Speaker 2: I take it off? And they go no, But let
Speaker 2: me give you another example, and this one for my listeners.
Speaker 2: By the real Edhead's going back to the beginning. You're
Speaker 2: finally getting it. I'm finally going in on fucking Apple.
Speaker 2: The app store is a complete mess. On loading it up.
Speaker 2: The first ad I received is for truth Social, you know,
Speaker 2: the Donald Trumps social network, followed by popular iPhone apps
Speaker 2: including Bumble, which is a micro transaction heavy dating app,
Speaker 2: Paramount plus Zoom Max that's HBO Max I don't know,
Speaker 2: Amazon Prime Video, and of course Tinder, another micro transaction
Speaker 2: heavy dating app, followed by another micro transaction heavy mobile
Speaker 2: gaming app, madd in NFL twenty five Mobile football, followed
Speaker 2: by another micro transaction heavy mobile game, Clash of Clans,
Speaker 2: followed by another micro transaction game, Artro, followed by helpful
Speaker 2: apps for every day, which included Strava, a fitness at
Speaker 2: that I use, letter Bogs, the social network for people
Speaker 2: to review movies, StoryGraph and app for tracking books you've read,
Speaker 2: Peanut and from others to connect with each other. And
Speaker 2: then some sort of app for discovering irl plans near
Speaker 2: you called Pie and part of Ale, and app for
Speaker 2: planning parties, immediately followed by an ad for Apple's own
Speaker 2: party and by app that specifically competes with them. It'd
Speaker 2: be so cool if we had antitrust now. The next
Speaker 2: carousel is for ten great dating apps, the first of
Speaker 2: which is okay Cupid, a dating app with a one
Speaker 2: out of five star rating on trust Pilot, but the
Speaker 2: first review is saying that and I quote, everything is
Speaker 2: designed to force you into paying, and even when you do,
Speaker 2: you quickly realize it's not worth it. Okay Cupid is
Speaker 2: owned by the publicly traded Match Group, which owns three
Speaker 2: of the other apps on the list, Hinge, Tinder, and
Speaker 2: plenty of Fish. And the reason I'm agonizingly breaking down
Speaker 2: these problems is because that I believe the problems of
Speaker 2: the modern tech industry are far simpler and far more
Speaker 2: pervasive than the media will face. Apple's App Store, a
Speaker 2: trillion dollar marketplace where Apple take thirty percent of almost
Speaker 2: every buck of developer makes, actively promotes and profits off
Speaker 2: of exploitative free to play mobile games that academics believe
Speaker 2: rob consumers of their right to self determination, And an
Speaker 2: online dating industry that has adopted these very same ideas
Speaker 2: to turn romance into its own kind of free to
Speaker 2: play a game. I'm saying ale. By the way, my
Speaker 2: single friends all experience this. These apps are insane. These
Speaker 2: apps are completely bonkers. They are asking you for money constantly.
Speaker 2: They very clearly hide the best matches behind pay wars.
Speaker 2: This is what online dating is now. It's a fucking
Speaker 2: gatcha game. It's a slot machine. It's a mess. It's
Speaker 2: absolutely abominable. And you know who makes a shit ton
Speaker 2: of money off of that abominability. Mister Timothy Cook of Apple.
Speaker 2: The App Store largely promotes apps and their associated features
Speaker 2: from public companies with billions or trillions of dollars in
Speaker 2: market capitalization, and much like Google Search, only functions to
Speaker 2: bring you results that are convenient Apple and they no
Speaker 2: longer highlight apps based on anything other than shadowy partnerships
Speaker 2: and profit incentives. No, I do not believe the App
Speaker 2: Store editorial group is going, huh, what if we advertise
Speaker 2: the literal apps that everyone has, the apps that people
Speaker 2: know about already, or maybe they just want more micro
Speaker 2: transaction revenue. It's that it's so obvious, and this is
Speaker 2: the way that tens, if not hundreds of millions of
Speaker 2: people are introduced to software, and the software they're introduced
Speaker 2: to is inherently exploitative. It's like if every Kroger store
Speaker 2: sold bread that costs an extra three dollars, if you
Speaker 2: wanted to cut it into slices, or bacon that required
Speaker 2: you to subscribe to Bacon Plus, if you kept it
Speaker 2: in the fridge for longer than two days. I'm not
Speaker 2: even being facetious. This is the actual scale of the
Speaker 2: harms being done against actual consumers by a company with
Speaker 2: a market capitalization of three point five trillion dollars. When
Speaker 2: somebody buys a new iPhone, they're not thinking like me
Speaker 2: or you or someone else deeply aware of the incentives
Speaker 2: behind these companies. They blindly, because nobody really explains this
Speaker 2: year or takes it seriously in the media, download whatever
Speaker 2: apps they see promoted by Apple. Consumers trust Apple, and
Speaker 2: as a result, trust the companies that Apple chooses to promote,
Speaker 2: at which point whatever malevolent mechanisms these companies use are
Speaker 2: more effective because consumers believe that Apple, a company with
Speaker 2: a multi trillion dollar market cap, wouldn't allow nakedly explodedive
Speaker 2: apps on their phones. Except they do. They don't just
Speaker 2: let them in. They give them a comfy fucking chair
Speaker 2: to beat the shit out of your wallet. Apple could
Speaker 2: very easily use its unilateral control over the entire app
Speaker 2: store to prevent these companies from existing, or at least
Speaker 2: choose not to promote them. Instead, they choose to both
Speaker 2: ensure and profit from their success by putting them in
Speaker 2: front of millions and millions of consumers every day. And
Speaker 2: I want to be explicit here. Apple could just not
Speaker 2: accept dating apps they use microtransactions. They could say, hey,
Speaker 2: this seems like it's just fucking with consumers. They could
Speaker 2: do the same with these mobile games that use manipulative
Speaker 2: psychological tricks to make you do these things, and it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous because they it's not that they just allow it.
Speaker 2: It's not like this is just a we're being a galitarian.
Speaker 2: We let these companies in. We let everyone in, and
Speaker 2: as long as they apply to our standards. Also what standards,
Speaker 2: that's fine. They're like, yeah, baby, it's it's Apple time.
Speaker 2: Join the Apple wagon. You want to be on the
Speaker 2: front of the app store. Fuck, yeah, I hope you
Speaker 2: scam someone give us that thirty percent. Baby. While micro
Speaker 2: transactions aren't inherently evil when I'm restrained, they naturally lead
Speaker 2: to evil outcomes. As I've repeatedly said, modern dating apps
Speaker 2: effectively require users to buy both a monthly subscription and
Speaker 2: piecemeal items that make your message your profile more prominent
Speaker 2: in an app dominated by spam profiles. Mobile gaming, an
Speaker 2: industry that makes tens of billions of dollars of yearly revenue,
Speaker 2: has become dominated by free to play games that require
Speaker 2: you to spend money to progress, using deceptive psychological techniques
Speaker 2: to push users into spending money in small amounts that
Speaker 2: naturally add up to much more than a triple a
Speaker 2: gaming title and a console or a computer. I hammer
Speaker 2: so hard and repetitively on because they make up the
Speaker 2: majority of the promoted content on Apple's app store. Good Lord,
Speaker 2: good fucking lord. We would scream if a city was
Speaker 2: dominated by people just selling drugs at every corner, if
Speaker 2: our streets were unsafe. Even if they're not unsafe, Republicans
Speaker 2: still go on TV and talk about harn's safe. They
Speaker 2: are somehow this is okay. Though, somehow this is okay,
Speaker 2: despite this being a direct portal into people's lives and
Speaker 2: into people's wallets. It's just disgusting. It pisses me off.
Speaker 2: And as I've said, to be abundantly clear, Apple had
Speaker 2: and has the power to kill any of these industries
Speaker 2: are at the very least limit their harms. Apple controls
Speaker 2: every single thing that goes on the app Store, and
Speaker 2: could very easily make dark patterns that manipulate consumers, which
Speaker 2: are by the way, in the majority of subscription apps.
Speaker 2: You can just make them against the rules and harshly
Speaker 2: penalize the apps that use microtransactions. Apple could do this tomorrow.
Speaker 2: They could do it today. Apple could easily take a
Speaker 2: stand against these companies. The combined micro transactions with loop boxes,
Speaker 2: which are essentially in game content that you don't know
Speaker 2: what you're buying ahead of time. You hit bun, money
Speaker 2: goes in, thing pops out. They could get rid of that.
Speaker 2: And by the way, this is a way of introducing
Speaker 2: kids to gambling. What do you think these kids go
Speaker 2: and use games like Fortnite and they just fucking Fortnite
Speaker 2: have loop boxes. I'm one hundred years old. Nevertheless, Robox
Speaker 2: another title on there principally aimed at children with micro transactions.
Speaker 2: All of this is great. It's so good. I love
Speaker 2: watching this. This makes me happy. And one could argue
Speaker 2: that it's the companies themselves, not Apple, choosing to make
Speaker 2: these decisions. But at the scale at which Apple operates,
Speaker 2: they're effectively a kind of government, and any government regulation
Speaker 2: controls the kinds of products and services that can be
Speaker 2: offered to a consumer. But Apple's app store isn't like
Speaker 2: a regular government or a democracy. It's a kleptocracy where
Speaker 2: sleazy companies like the Match Group who as I mentioned,
Speaker 2: they own Hinge, tinder match dot Com and OkCupid and
Speaker 2: Supercell who makes clash of plans they can make Apple
Speaker 2: billions of dollars in app store fees by tricking and
Speaker 2: hurting consumers. Apple, through sheer scale, dictates exactly how the
Speaker 2: economics of apps and consumer purchasing at large, to an extent, operate,
Speaker 2: and it's their decisions that have allowed these poisonous flowers
Speaker 2: to bloom. This, i'd argue is one of the largest
Speaker 2: scale consumer harms in existence. There are hundreds of millions
Speaker 2: of people with iOS devices, and Apple has perpetuated and
Speaker 2: profited off of economics that are actively harmful, manipulative, and cruel,
Speaker 2: and will continue to do so unless meaningful regulation or
Speaker 2: media pressure makes them do otherwise. The latter would require
Speaker 2: the media to actually discuss this problem. I can find
Speaker 2: no major media outlet that's run anything even close to
Speaker 2: an evaluation of the state of the modern app store,
Speaker 2: Nor can I find any condemnation of the very obvious
Speaker 2: harms perpetuated by Apple or Google with their app stores,
Speaker 2: outside of the lawsuit between Epic and Apple, which hasn't
Speaker 2: so much been about the harms themselves, but the extent
Speaker 2: to which Apple has profited off of them, and stopped
Speaker 2: other people from profiting themselves. Similarly, there's little coverage of
Speaker 2: the destruction of Google Search or the horrifying state of
Speaker 2: Instagram and Facebook. While outlets have had dalliances and little
Speaker 2: flirtations with the collapse of Search, Charlie wallzer that the
Speaker 2: Atlantic was earlier than most myself included. These are usually
Speaker 2: one and dumb features, the momentary hmm in the slop
Speaker 2: of breaking news and hot takes. If these stories even
Speaker 2: happen at all, you might argue that one could not
Speaker 2: simply write these stories again and again, to which I say,
Speaker 2: skill issue the destruction of the products at the core
Speaker 2: of society, the fabric of society. It's real important. It
Speaker 2: should be in the news constantly. And like I said,
Speaker 2: they talk about crime all the time in modern metropolitan areas.
Speaker 2: This is a crime. It's not illegal, but I consider
Speaker 2: it criminal in the zytron justice system. I will now
Speaker 2: be building and please on the Reddit let me know
Speaker 2: other things that need to be in the zitron justice system.
Speaker 2: Companies like Google, Meta and Apple have been allowed to
Speaker 2: expand their wealth and influence to the point that they're
Speaker 2: effectively nation states, and I believe they should be ported
Speaker 2: on As such, the manifold ways in which Mark Zuckerberger's
Speaker 2: manipulated Facebook's users as a means to express growth to
Speaker 2: the public markets is a perpetual act of abuse, globally perpetuated.
Speaker 2: Yet it remains relatively undiscussed because the media refuses to
Speaker 2: discuss technology in a way that actually affects people. The
Speaker 2: same ghost for Apples app store, and the same ghost
Speaker 2: of a Google search and shit, I'd argue most of
Speaker 2: them onder the internet? How is it not a bigger
Speaker 2: story that the mobile browsing experience on most websites ranges
Speaker 2: from awful to impossible to use because your browser crashed.
Speaker 2: And I think this is the thing that really confuses me.
Speaker 2: How the fuck is this not being written about? You
Speaker 2: see it any time you use your phone. It's everywhere, always,
Speaker 2: all the time. There's so many examples, Yet tech coverage
Speaker 2: is always about news or how to do something on
Speaker 2: your computer or phone that isn't obvious without any acknowledgment
Speaker 2: that the reason that that piece has to exist, The
Speaker 2: reason that something isn't obvious is because user interface design
Speaker 2: is terrible. They don't care anymore. And also, you want
Speaker 2: your website to rank high on Google Search, And I'd
Speaker 2: argue that regular people are experiencing these pains at scale,
Speaker 2: and they're so frustrated because they know, beneath the layers
Speaker 2: of abstraction, of worrying incentives and abusive you why choices,
Speaker 2: there's something they want or something they need. And I'm
Speaker 2: not just angry at Mark Zuckerberg for turning Facebook into
Speaker 2: an actively harmful product. I'm angry that he's done so
Speaker 2: in a way that took away something that made the
Speaker 2: Internet magical in the same way, and I despise Probagar
Speaker 2: Ragavan and suned up a Shai for doing the same
Speaker 2: with Google Search. And I'm not just angry at one
Speaker 2: of the many different quarter page sized ads that block
Speaker 2: an article I want to read. I'm angry that one
Speaker 2: of the coolest things on the Internet, access to very
Speaker 2: media sources on the toilet, is literally obfuscated by the
Speaker 2: demands of growth. The Internet allows us to do so
Speaker 2: many things, and what we see today is both a
Speaker 2: technological marvel and a disgrace to humanity. We right now
Speaker 2: have the ability to talk to somebody thousands of miles away,
Speaker 2: to send them a photo of a video of what
Speaker 2: we're doing, to meet people we'd never meet in real
Speaker 2: life and build meaningful relationships with them. As a creator,
Speaker 2: a writer, whatever hell you call me, I'm able to
Speaker 2: shoot the shit with my buddy Casey and Socow or
Speaker 2: my editor Matt Hughes in Liverpool, and I'm able to
Speaker 2: do so about the same speed and as a result,
Speaker 2: right thousands of words of ideas and perform these long
Speaker 2: podcasts where I get extremely mad that well Matt Asowski
Speaker 2: or Matt Hughes ends up editing all with a few clicks,
Speaker 2: and I can distribute my newsletter to fifty five thousand
Speaker 2: people and the podcast to a number larger or smaller
Speaker 2: that I can't say than that it's kind of cool.
Speaker 2: I can go on Boo Sky and shoot the shit
Speaker 2: with people I know well or who I've just met
Speaker 2: or never met in my life and have a blast
Speaker 2: doing so. I can sit in my living room and
Speaker 2: play a video game while I stream music to my
Speaker 2: phone from my phone to a big speaker and a
Speaker 2: few taps, and this technology has become more and more
Speaker 2: accessible as the years have gone on. It's really cool,
Speaker 2: and we live in a time where technology does really
Speaker 2: really cool things that help billions of people these companies
Speaker 2: can innovate, and they can make our lives better. The
Speaker 2: problem is that software may have actually eaten the world,
Speaker 2: and growth hold software's leash. The rot economy sits above
Speaker 2: all things. It's not enough for Apple to make iterations
Speaker 2: of the iPhone that are better and faster. It must
Speaker 2: sell more of them every quarter, and the software sitting
Speaker 2: in those iPhones must continue to generate monthly or quarterly
Speaker 2: revenue or annual revenue imperpetuity. The websites you read that
Speaker 2: have page wide ads, they're all run by people that
Speaker 2: don't read anything and must see revenue numbers increase. And
Speaker 2: they're doing so because they're looking for startup metrics in media,
Speaker 2: which has never ever worked. And that's the same way
Speaker 2: that the Match group must always find new ways to
Speaker 2: increase quarterly revenues for their dating apps, even if they
Speaker 2: way they do so is to make them cost more
Speaker 2: money to connect with people and to officscate the connections
Speaker 2: that we log on to find. Each of these ideas
Speaker 2: a miniature little computer that sits in our and it
Speaker 2: gives us access to the world's information, or an app
Speaker 2: for falling in love. They're extremely cool, Yet the reckless
Speaker 2: incentives of the rot economy and growth of poison them.
Speaker 2: And like I've said, I don't hate this stuff. I
Speaker 2: love it. I'm a broken hearted romantic. The internet made
Speaker 2: me who I am, and it allowed me to thrive
Speaker 2: both this as a person and a professional, and it
Speaker 2: continues to do so every day, except now I have
Speaker 2: the fight seemingly every app and service to get them
Speaker 2: to do what I want. As I've said before, I
Speaker 2: will never forgive these people for what they've done to
Speaker 2: the computer, as I love what the computer has done
Speaker 2: for me, and I hate what the computer now does
Speaker 2: to other people and myself. Because Apple, Google and Meta
Speaker 2: need to increase quarterly revenues. Well, look, it's easy to
Speaker 2: give in too pessimism here, but I'd argue the better
Speaker 2: alternative is to be loud and annoying and extremely verbal
Speaker 2: about the problems you see. Every single website you use
Speaker 2: has a feedback form, and I really encourage you to
Speaker 2: use them, as I encourage you to complain about these
Speaker 2: problems on social media and to regularly say the names
Speaker 2: of the people who cause these problems to everybody you know.
Speaker 2: If you're feeling particularly spicy, perhaps right you're elected officials
Speaker 2: that you believe the quality of digital products you're using
Speaker 2: is getting worse as a means of increasing stock prices,
Speaker 2: and add that doing so is anti democratic, anti competitive,
Speaker 2: and an American and very harmful. But really, just say
Speaker 2: on American, say to them, look like, look, this isn't
Speaker 2: real business, this isn't what America's for. And I realized
Speaker 2: why that might not sound so good right now, But
Speaker 2: maybe you listen to this in the future. And there's
Speaker 2: another idea. I think a lot of these executives have
Speaker 2: email accounts. Why not let them know how you feel.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying be horrible or rude like Jeff Atamazon
Speaker 2: dot Com. I think like, you don't need to. Don't
Speaker 2: be horrible to these people, really please don't. But I
Speaker 2: think you should look them up and let them know
Speaker 2: how bad things have become and mention how long you've
Speaker 2: used them and how bad they are, and how you're
Speaker 2: going to keep emailing them every couple weeks. Let them know.
Speaker 2: You don't want to spam them, you don't want to thrown,
Speaker 2: you don't want to be nasty. You just want to
Speaker 2: very patiently let them know. Because these people, they're insulated,
Speaker 2: they're safe they don't have anything that really scares or
Speaker 2: upsets them. They read their emails. That's the one thing
Speaker 2: I know. But another thing you can do is be
Speaker 2: less useful. If you use Instagram, use it in a
Speaker 2: way that actively generates less engagement. Click through a few stories,
Speaker 2: then drop off the app. Don't use the feed, avoid
Speaker 2: clicking or staying on any ads, go through them quickly,
Speaker 2: and as Jeff Fowler at The Washington Post recommends, reset
Speaker 2: your feed regularly. Delete the data that these companies have
Speaker 2: on you regularly, and they'll be links. By the way
Speaker 2: to this, and anytime a company asks you for feedback
Speaker 2: that isn't about a customer service w app, skip it,
Speaker 2: close the browser. That data is only useful for them.
Speaker 2: In general, engage with apps less, both in the amount
Speaker 2: of time you spend on them and the amount of
Speaker 2: time you interact with their features and obsessively read every
Speaker 2: single privacy policy. These companies make billions of dollars off
Speaker 2: idle muscle memory based use of their software. So get
Speaker 2: used to letrics and work against them. And if you
Speaker 2: really don't use the service, stop using it. By the way,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to judge you for staying on an
Speaker 2: oath of them. I'm still on Instagram because it's where
Speaker 2: a lot of my friends are and I like seeing
Speaker 2: what they're up to. Again, not against these products in principle,
Speaker 2: I just hate what they've become. But more importantly, I
Speaker 2: want you to find solidarity with others against the rot economy.
Speaker 2: Every single person you meet is a victim. Every single
Speaker 2: person you meet faces similar problems to you, and every
Speaker 2: single person you know is likely pissed off at email spam,
Speaker 2: the collapse of social networks and Google, and or the
Speaker 2: abulnerable state of modern business software. We all have this.
Speaker 2: This is a thing that all of us deal with.
Speaker 2: It's bipartisan, it's cross culture, it's cross class. Though I
Speaker 2: would argue it hurts people the lower their income is
Speaker 2: much like most of America, and this is something we
Speaker 2: all face. I know it sounds kind of smaltzy' to
Speaker 2: be like, oh, you're fellow man, but really it is.
Speaker 2: I don't know how else you connect with people, but
Speaker 2: I guarantee their software pisces them off. But the reason
Speaker 2: that these companies have been able to penetrate and poison
Speaker 2: so many things using software as a combination of lacks
Speaker 2: regulation and a dose style society or approach to technology.
Speaker 2: They want no no, They need you to feel hopeless.
Speaker 2: They need you to think that they're too big, that
Speaker 2: they can grow oh forever, or do whatever they want
Speaker 2: to you, and that there'll never be enough negative sentiment
Speaker 2: to change their ways. The reality is these people are
Speaker 2: extremely vulnerable, extremely unprepared, and they don't know how to
Speaker 2: deal with pushback. Tech executives are poorly media trained, thin skinned,
Speaker 2: and have never faced any meaningful negative consumer sentiment, largely
Speaker 2: because they've never faced any meaningful competition. They simply do
Speaker 2: not believe you will act in a way that doesn't
Speaker 2: benefit them, because they've done literally everything they can to
Speaker 2: make it difficult to avoid or leave their systems. They
Speaker 2: need you to think that things will always be this bad,
Speaker 2: or that they'll get worse, and for you to just
Speaker 2: sit there and take it, rather than screaming in their
Speaker 2: fucking faces about what they're doing and saying it's unacceptable.
Speaker 2: They want you to give up. Don't let them destabilize you.
Speaker 2: Do not let them pump you full of cynicism, of pessimism,
Speaker 2: of the belief that there's nothing good and thus that
Speaker 2: there can be nothing that will ever change that we're
Speaker 2: in this unchanging hell. We are not going forward. One
Speaker 2: of my missions with this podcast is to give you
Speaker 2: the language to describe what is being done to you
Speaker 2: and the names of those responsible for doing it to you.
Speaker 2: I fundamentally believe that anyone can understand the stuff I'm
Speaker 2: talking about, and that the tech behind it is not magic,
Speaker 2: and that the terrible things being done to you are
Speaker 2: being done in the name of the rot economy and
Speaker 2: perpetual growth, and that none of these things are mystical
Speaker 2: or requires some insane background. You can do this. I
Speaker 2: talk to so many of you over email, and it's
Speaker 2: awesome because your teachers, robbers, your people that drive into
Speaker 2: banks and with a big car. No no, no, no
Speaker 2: more criminal stuff. Please keep that off the Reddit. But
Speaker 2: generally most of the people that contact me, and non
Speaker 2: tech people, you all seem to fucking get out. I
Speaker 2: don't know what the problem is, and I want you
Speaker 2: to understand this stuff so you can make better decisions
Speaker 2: and also understand that you are the victim of a
Speaker 2: con where you've been convinced that you were behind the times,
Speaker 2: when the tech industry just actually gave up on serving you.
Speaker 2: Our economy and the majority of public companies are run
Speaker 2: by people who do not face any real problems or
Speaker 2: do any real work, and the tech industry, run by
Speaker 2: similar people, has oriented itself around building products and services.
Speaker 2: To say, album these people do not use their own products,
Speaker 2: or if they do, they do so in such a
Speaker 2: distant way that it doesn't really matter if they suck. It's
Speaker 2: time to speak about these companies and this softer and
Speaker 2: plain terms. We are in an era of rot our markets,
Speaker 2: dominated by a growth obsessed death cult so powerful that
Speaker 2: it's just accepted that the only good stocks are those
Speaker 2: that grow every single quarter. A good company is no
Speaker 2: longer one that provides a good service or that will
Speaker 2: be around in ten years. No, it's one that provides
Speaker 2: a service in such a way that they can jack
Speaker 2: up the prices or upsell customers while also somehow getting
Speaker 2: more customers. If anything, the rot economy is kind of
Speaker 2: like a global Ponzi scheme, where the only companies that
Speaker 2: succeed are the ones that can continually get more customers
Speaker 2: and come up with new ways to get more customers
Speaker 2: that don't exist yet. Even if the service or the
Speaker 2: goods provided are bad, it doesn't matter to these companies
Speaker 2: that the only thing that grows forever is cancer, and
Speaker 2: the perpetual growth could very well falter and then crash everything.
Speaker 2: It's short term thinking all the time. I want you
Speaker 2: to start seeing everything through the lens of growth, and
Speaker 2: I believe everything will start making more sense as a result.
Speaker 2: And these companies don't even have to do it this
Speaker 2: way success and being a decent in the moral sense
Speaker 2: of the word sparingly in the case of capitalism, you
Speaker 2: can do this as a company. These things are not
Speaker 2: mutually exclusive. These companies could have modest two to five
Speaker 2: percent growth each quarter. They could make good software that
Speaker 2: people like. They could do all of these things, but
Speaker 2: they choose not to. They'd rather hurt us because growth
Speaker 2: is more important to them than whether our lives fucking suck.
Speaker 2: They'd rather refuse to maintain a rigorously test their products,
Speaker 2: especially their software, because investing in customers doesn't grow your
Speaker 2: customer base as fast as focusing on finding new ones.
Speaker 2: And these things have been happening for over a decade,
Speaker 2: and being able to explain them for you, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's important. You need to be able to do this
Speaker 2: in plain English. Having conversations about this is important too.
Speaker 2: Talk to your friends and your family and your coworkers
Speaker 2: about this stuff. They're all dealing with it too. I
Speaker 2: don't care if my work's involved. Just tell them what's
Speaker 2: fucking happening. Look, you can't change the world on your own,
Speaker 2: and you may very well go through the world without
Speaker 2: changing much at all. But in your own small way,
Speaker 2: you can, at the very least, contribute to a greater
Speaker 2: hope and positivity in the bubble around you. The ideas
Speaker 2: you have of a fair or better, more inclusive world,
Speaker 2: one where people are not vilified for being who they are,
Speaker 2: are shared by most people. We outnumber them, and we
Speaker 2: outnumber them by an overwhelming margin. The demands you make
Speaker 2: of the world do not necessarily need to be realistic,
Speaker 2: but they can be fair. It's not unfair to demand
Speaker 2: a tech industry that is worth I don't know, a
Speaker 2: few hundred billion dollars while providing a service that largely
Speaker 2: benefits the world around us. At the very least, we
Speaker 2: can ask for shit that works. Discussing ideas what a
Speaker 2: better world might look like. It's eternal. It's the root
Speaker 2: of humanity. It's what gives us light in the darkest times,
Speaker 2: and what the darkest people in the world wish to
Speaker 2: rob of us, not simply hope, but the ingredients of hope,
Speaker 2: the stuff that builds the foundation that allows us to
Speaker 2: truly believe. This isn't to say any of this will
Speaker 2: be an easy process, nor one without deep dark moments,
Speaker 2: but at the very least we can have standards and
Speaker 2: beliefs in ourselves of what better looks like. And now
Speaker 2: it kind of feels a little silly to hold up
Speaker 2: better software and technology is such a serious concept, but
Speaker 2: I think the world as it stands is suffering due
Speaker 2: to the tolerance we've had for the horrifying conditions of
Speaker 2: modern software, which has now been deeply penetrated into every
Speaker 2: part of our lives, in some cases leaving trash lying
Speaker 2: around that we find ourselves tripping over all the time.
Speaker 2: Software has, to some extent, truly improved humanity, all having
Speaker 2: levels of connection that are truly special, both with those
Speaker 2: we know and those we barely know. It has, however,
Speaker 2: grown without restraint, without true accountability for those who write
Speaker 2: it and deploy it, and let's be honest, barely maintain
Speaker 2: it or actively and consciously striving to undermine it. I
Speaker 2: cannot promise you that will ever have solutions to any
Speaker 2: of these problems. But I can, as you can, say
Speaker 2: what a better world looks like. And a better world
Speaker 2: is one where software works for, not against, the people
Speaker 2: that use it. There's no harm in liking or even
Speaker 2: loving technology. Ges Liking it allows you to more articulately
Speaker 2: explain why you fucking hate what they've made of it.
Speaker 2: Expressing what good looks like what you love allows you
Speaker 2: to cut deeper with your hatred for those who have
Speaker 2: caused you so much harm. This starts, by the way,
Speaker 2: with naming those responsible for poisoning the world with software.
Speaker 2: Sundopeshi of Google, satch In the Della of Microsoft, Tim
Speaker 2: Cook and Phil Schiller who runs the app store of Apple,
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, and the other invisible war criminals
Speaker 2: responsible for the destruction of our digital lives. They have
Speaker 2: nothing but their names. The tech industry is so woefully
Speaker 2: unprepared to deal with regular people having the language and
Speaker 2: understanding of their horrible acts. Crisis p Arthentek does not
Speaker 2: know how to deal with real people saying why did
Speaker 2: you fuck up my website? In the thousands or millions,
Speaker 2: These people have never ever dealt with real accountability, or
Speaker 2: even a real conversation about what they're doing and why
Speaker 2: they're doing it. We deserve better, so we should fucking
Speaker 2: ask for it. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.
Speaker 4: The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
Speaker 4: is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
Speaker 4: and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T
Speaker 4: T O S O.
Speaker 2: W s ki dot com.
Speaker 4: You can email me at easy at Better Offline dot
Speaker 4: com or visit Better Offline dot com to find more
Speaker 4: podcast links and of course, my newsletter. I also really
Speaker 4: recommend you go to chat dot Where's youreaed dot at
Speaker 4: to visit the discord, and go to our slash.
Speaker 2: Better Offline to check out our reddit. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for listening.
Speaker 3: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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