Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and I love all things tech and we are
Speaker 1: continuing our top tech news stories of closing out the year.
Speaker 1: What a year it was. And one thing I feel
Speaker 1: I should mention right off the top of this episode
Speaker 1: which I forgot about. Well, yesterday's episode went up. You know,
Speaker 1: all that ranting about Meta and Facebook, I forgot to
Speaker 1: mention the company has been voted the quote worst company
Speaker 1: of the year end quote. Now. That's according to Yahoo Finance,
Speaker 1: which selects a company for this dubious honor each year
Speaker 1: using metrics like market performance and achievements, and mostly polling
Speaker 1: people to find out which company upset them the most
Speaker 1: over the course of the previous twelve months. This year,
Speaker 1: that was met h slash Facebook, though notably the investment
Speaker 1: service Robin Hood, which we will talk more about in
Speaker 1: just a few minutes, was also a contender. Last year
Speaker 1: it was the Nicola Motor Company. So you know Nicola
Speaker 1: Tesla being this very instrumental engineer in the field of electricity.
Speaker 1: Of course, the Tesla motor company takes its name from him,
Speaker 1: and so does the Nicola Motor Company that's an electric
Speaker 1: truck company. It also got some votes this year, but
Speaker 1: it won if you can call it that worst company
Speaker 1: of the year last year at corn Yahoo Finance. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this isn't like a scientific examination of which company is
Speaker 1: in fact the worst. I mean, it's a pole. There's
Speaker 1: not even that many people who respond to it from
Speaker 1: what I can tell. Uh. And also meta slash Facebook
Speaker 1: was in the news a lot towards the end of
Speaker 1: this year, so most of that news was not positive
Speaker 1: at all. It's not a big surprise. I should also
Speaker 1: point out that TikTok and Twitter both end up on
Speaker 1: a lot of hated company lists. Not necessarily the yeah
Speaker 1: who finance one, but lots of companies or lots of
Speaker 1: outlets will organize lists like this, and TikTok and Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook are frequently in that mix. All right. In
Speaker 1: our last episode we ended with my rant about n
Speaker 1: f t s, there was a lot of ranting. Uh
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, there'll be more ranting in this episode. Well,
Speaker 1: since we talked about n f t S in the
Speaker 1: last episode, I suppose we should also talk about cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: While we're on the subject of block chains and such,
Speaker 1: crypto had another roller coaster of a year, with bitcoin
Speaker 1: prices climbing rapidly and steadily into early spring, reaching around
Speaker 1: sixty thou dollars per bitcoin. Then there was a big
Speaker 1: crash in May, with the value dropping by are you know,
Speaker 1: around fifty or so. Then there was a recovery period.
Speaker 1: It got back as high as sixty three thou dollars
Speaker 1: per bitcoin in November. Uh, as I record this, it's
Speaker 1: closer to around fifty thou dollars per bitcoin, but that's
Speaker 1: as I record this. By the time you hear this,
Speaker 1: who knows. But bitcoin continues to be a volatile investment,
Speaker 1: and I still wouldn't call it a currency because the
Speaker 1: value fluctuates so dramatically that it's hard to imagine using
Speaker 1: it as a practical currency. It's far more likely to
Speaker 1: be used as either a way to invest money and
Speaker 1: hope that the value of the bitcoin continues to grow, or,
Speaker 1: as we've seen in the recent past, to use it
Speaker 1: as a means to launder ill gotten gains and hide
Speaker 1: the fact that you've been on Santa's naughty list. This year,
Speaker 1: we've seen proof of work cryptocurrencies take a bit of
Speaker 1: a beating on another pr front this year, one that
Speaker 1: revolves around conservation and climate change. It's no secret that
Speaker 1: proof of work currencies, particularly bitcoin mining, require massive amounts
Speaker 1: of electricity. This is tied into the value of the
Speaker 1: currency itself. If it is hugely profitable to mine the cryptocurrency,
Speaker 1: well then you'll find people and organizations who will pour
Speaker 1: a ton of money into building out mining operations. And
Speaker 1: of course, these these operations that they're using powerful computers
Speaker 1: to play a complicated guessing games. What it really boils
Speaker 1: down to, But one thing that's not a guess is
Speaker 1: the amount of electricity that these machines need. It's a lot.
Speaker 1: So much, in fact, that it's not unusual for bitcoin
Speaker 1: mining operations to purchase or at least facilities that are
Speaker 1: co located to power plants, including coal fired power plants,
Speaker 1: including ones that are no longer online, and then bringing
Speaker 1: them back online. This has brought more focus on bitcoin
Speaker 1: mining and its impact on consumption and climate change. China
Speaker 1: has shut down bitcoin mining operations in several regions, citing
Speaker 1: concerns over the potential environmental impact of bitcoin mining. However,
Speaker 1: I think I should add that I suspect China's government
Speaker 1: also has a healthy concern for any ind tree that
Speaker 1: could potentially acquire enough power to rival the government itself,
Speaker 1: and we're seeing some governments around the world at the
Speaker 1: country or the local level consider or even enact bands
Speaker 1: on operations that would require bringing defunct fossil fuel power
Speaker 1: plants back online. So we have seen some opposition in
Speaker 1: various places. Ethereum is currently also a proof of work cryptocurrency. Uh.
Speaker 1: It does also have a much lower value than bitcoin,
Speaker 1: so you don't see the same massive ethereum mining operations
Speaker 1: because the the profits aren't there. It would cost you
Speaker 1: more to run the operation than you would make in
Speaker 1: mind cryptocurrency. So for that reason, mining rigs for ethereum
Speaker 1: are a little more modest than the ones that are
Speaker 1: used by bitcoin miners. That's more than a little bit
Speaker 1: of an understatement. So it's the ethereum miners who frequently
Speaker 1: go after graphics processors for their rigs, which of course
Speaker 1: makes it even harder for gamers to get hold of
Speaker 1: a good GPU at a decent price. You've got the
Speaker 1: semiconductor shortage, you've got bots buying up cards and then
Speaker 1: trying to sell them for marked up prices on secondary markets,
Speaker 1: and you've got Ethereum miners who are after those same cards,
Speaker 1: but for the purposes of mining cryptocurrency. However, Ethereum is
Speaker 1: supposed to switch to a proof of steak approach next year,
Speaker 1: which has a much lower computation requirement, so we'll see
Speaker 1: if that actually changes things. But yeah, was a year
Speaker 1: in which crypto sword to new heights, then plummeted, then
Speaker 1: rose again, then plummeted again. You get the idea, and
Speaker 1: a lot of this was fueled by a passionate and
Speaker 1: frankly kind of scary community in places like Reddit. Oh
Speaker 1: and also Elon Musk played a part in it too.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna save a lot of my Elon Musk fire
Speaker 1: for the third episode in this series. I think I
Speaker 1: also received a request recently on Twitter to do a
Speaker 1: full episode about Web three, and I'm still planning to
Speaker 1: do that, but I should talk about the emerging discussions
Speaker 1: of Web three, which is usually spelled out altogether, so
Speaker 1: it's w e B, the number three no spaces that
Speaker 1: ended up becoming a pretty big thing this year, particularly
Speaker 1: on Twitter. There were some Twitter spats about Web three.
Speaker 1: There are also some parallels here between Web three and
Speaker 1: the metaverse, because they're both kind of this concept of
Speaker 1: what the next phase of the Internet, or at least
Speaker 1: internetwork connectivity are all going to be about. And like
Speaker 1: the metaverse, the definitions here get pretty lucy goosey because
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist yet, so it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: talk about what it is because there isn't anything at
Speaker 1: the moment, and different people have sort of a different
Speaker 1: concept of what it will be if it ever does
Speaker 1: become a thing. But generally speaking, the concept of Web three,
Speaker 1: at least the one that most people are referring to,
Speaker 1: is one that uses blockchain as a backbone. And you
Speaker 1: might say, okay, how and uh uh hey, look over there,
Speaker 1: it's something shiny, okay, so well, the concept is that
Speaker 1: Web three will leverage blockchain in such a way that
Speaker 1: ideally the power of the Internet will be distributed to
Speaker 1: those who are using the Internet. In other words, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like putting the Internet's ownership into the hands
Speaker 1: of the people. That's in contrast with how Web the
Speaker 1: three enthusiasts see the Internet today, because they see the
Speaker 1: Internet today as an entity that is heavily dependent upon
Speaker 1: a few major companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta and
Speaker 1: you know, like we'll talk about stuff like the Amazon
Speaker 1: Web Services outage that shows that a lot of what
Speaker 1: we depend upon in connectivity does route through Amazon in
Speaker 1: some way. So this general notion is that Web three
Speaker 1: projects are are similar to cryptocurrencies and n f t s.
Speaker 1: There's some form of implementation that relies on the blockchain
Speaker 1: to keep track of transactions, though what those transactions actually
Speaker 1: are varies dramatically from implementation to implementation. However, once you
Speaker 1: get past that kind of vague description, things really start
Speaker 1: to break down. I have yet to see a compelling
Speaker 1: case explaining how blockchain will enable a new version of
Speaker 1: the Internet, or even of just the Web, because remember
Speaker 1: the Web and the Internet or two different things. The
Speaker 1: Web exists on top of the Internet. So I haven't
Speaker 1: really seen a compelling case for this distributed ownership model.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of folks who are expressing
Speaker 1: skepticism about the idea in general, including people who say
Speaker 1: that if Web three does become a thing, it will
Speaker 1: be a thing that is controlled by venture capitalists rather
Speaker 1: than big companies. But it still means that the hoi poloi,
Speaker 1: meaning folks like you or me will still be left
Speaker 1: out of the loop. Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter,
Speaker 1: made this point on Twitter, saying, Hey, you know, the
Speaker 1: people who will own Web three will be venture capitalists,
Speaker 1: not the people in general, and those making Web three
Speaker 1: applications will be doing so with their investors in mind.
Speaker 1: So it'll be the venture capitalists who are essentially directing
Speaker 1: how Web three evolves, again without really going into details
Speaker 1: about what Web three is going to look like. And anyway,
Speaker 1: that whole criticism is not making Web three evangelists very happy.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna save a deeper conversation about this topic
Speaker 1: for a full episode further down the line, because honestly,
Speaker 1: it would take me hours of research to really dive
Speaker 1: into it and separate the buzz terms from anything with
Speaker 1: you know, actual substance to it, Because every time I
Speaker 1: read anything about Web three, I feel like I'm reading
Speaker 1: ad copy for a product that doesn't exist yet, and
Speaker 1: that's not really useful. But since we're talking about tech
Speaker 1: and money, let's chat about something that unfolded early this
Speaker 1: year that involved both, and it all has to do
Speaker 1: with Game Stop and stock prices. Alright, So game Stop
Speaker 1: is a video game retail company. They sell video games
Speaker 1: and video game systems. Early in two thousand twenty one,
Speaker 1: there was a move to short sell Game Stop stock
Speaker 1: among certain hedge funds. So a short sell is when
Speaker 1: you borrow a bunch of shares of a company from
Speaker 1: another stockholder. You don't known these shares, you're borrowing them,
Speaker 1: and you're promising that you will return that same number
Speaker 1: of shares to the stockholder at some agreed upon time.
Speaker 1: Then you take the shares you borrowed and you sell them.
Speaker 1: You know, the ones that you do not own. You
Speaker 1: sell them and you take the money, and your goal
Speaker 1: is to buy back the shares you just sold, but
Speaker 1: at a lower price, and you pocket the difference. So
Speaker 1: what you're hoping for is for the stock price to
Speaker 1: come down. You're hoping that a company hits hard time
Speaker 1: send their stock price reflects that. So you might sell
Speaker 1: a bunch of shares at around twenty dollars a pop,
Speaker 1: and then your plan is to buy back those shares
Speaker 1: when they reach five dollars a pop, and you pocket
Speaker 1: the fifteen dollars difference per per share. More or less,
Speaker 1: it gets a little more complicated than that, but that's
Speaker 1: the basic idea, and then you return the shares to
Speaker 1: the stockholder, you keep what's left over. Everyone's happy, while
Speaker 1: the stockholder is probably not happy because their shares are
Speaker 1: worth less now, but hopefully they're in it for the
Speaker 1: long term because they believe in the company or some nonsense. Now,
Speaker 1: if the price of the stock goes up instead of down, well,
Speaker 1: you then have to spend more money to purchase the
Speaker 1: shares back then you made when you sold the shares
Speaker 1: in the first place, because you still have the obligation
Speaker 1: to return those shares to the original holder, like you
Speaker 1: can't just walk away. So then you get a bunch
Speaker 1: of folks online who decided to do something called a
Speaker 1: short squeeze. Is on some hedge funds that we're planning
Speaker 1: to short sell the game Stop stock. So what these
Speaker 1: folks did was they just started buying up shares of
Speaker 1: game Stop, like lots of shares, and that activity drove
Speaker 1: up the stock price because there was a demand for
Speaker 1: game Stop stock, so the price went up. Demand is high,
Speaker 1: price increases, and that meant that these hedge funds were
Speaker 1: suddenly faced with the very real possibility of having to
Speaker 1: pay more money to buy back those shares that they
Speaker 1: had borrowed than they had on hand to cover the
Speaker 1: short cells. And it was a kind of activism mixed
Speaker 1: with speculation because as the price was going up, it
Speaker 1: also meant that the stock that people were holding was
Speaker 1: growing in value, that the stuff they owned was actually
Speaker 1: getting more valuable, and their wealth was increasing. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was increasing significantly. And you might wonder how significantly well.
Speaker 1: The stock price had been at around seventeen dollars per
Speaker 1: share before the squeeze really got moving. At the height,
Speaker 1: it was closer to five hundred dollars per share. So
Speaker 1: imagine you bought something for seventeen bucks and then you
Speaker 1: could sell it for five hundred bucks. So there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are jumping on board this
Speaker 1: not because they were trying to push against hedge funds,
Speaker 1: not because they were like trying to take down the
Speaker 1: the These these groups that were, you know, boasting memberships
Speaker 1: of incredibly wealthy people, and to stick it to the man,
Speaker 1: they were joining because they saw this as a way
Speaker 1: to get rich quick. So there was a mixture of
Speaker 1: both of these kinds of people. Now, this peak wasn't
Speaker 1: to last. It did settle down a bit. But even
Speaker 1: as I record. This the stock prices valued at around
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty dollars per share, so not quite ten
Speaker 1: times what it was valued at before the squeeze. This
Speaker 1: also did force a few hedge funds to shut down,
Speaker 1: and it also brought to lights and disparities in the
Speaker 1: individual investor world. So the investment service robin Hood that
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, it made headlines because it began to
Speaker 1: deny robin Hood users the opportunity to purchase game Stop stock.
Speaker 1: Like that's what robin Hood exists for, is for the
Speaker 1: individual person to participate in the stock market. Because the
Speaker 1: individual typically if they have any involvement in the stock
Speaker 1: market at all, it's because they happen to have something
Speaker 1: like a four oh one K plan where some fund
Speaker 1: manager is deciding, you know, what moneys go to what stocks.
Speaker 1: This is a case where the individual person can say, no,
Speaker 1: I want to buy fifty shares of game Stop stock
Speaker 1: for example. Well, robin Hood's stopped that. They stopped letting
Speaker 1: people do that on their service, and they cited a
Speaker 1: desire to not contribute to an unstable market environment, which
Speaker 1: is pretty rich when you consider robin Hood's namesake, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like the Robin Hood, the legendary figure, was
Speaker 1: all about creating an unstable market environment. Anyway. This prompted
Speaker 1: folks to draw connections between Robin Hood and people who
Speaker 1: were involved in hedge funds who had participated in the
Speaker 1: short selling, and some people started claiming that Robin Hood
Speaker 1: was trying to mitigate the effects of the short squeeze
Speaker 1: because they had financial interests in those, you know, folks
Speaker 1: that were higher up in the food chain of various
Speaker 1: hedge funds. In other words, they were saying, you're not
Speaker 1: really for the people, you're for other big companies. The
Speaker 1: whole game stop saga prompted a lot of folks to
Speaker 1: get into individual investors stuff when they had never really
Speaker 1: dipped their toes into it before, and several sub credits
Speaker 1: saw their ranks swell due to this interest, and a
Speaker 1: lot of folks came out at the subject from all
Speaker 1: different angles, a lot of them uninformed angles. You could
Speaker 1: almost taste the frustration of the more seasoned investors in
Speaker 1: those groups as folks totally new to the field began
Speaker 1: delving out their expert advice. You know, people who had
Speaker 1: been investing for all of like two weeks were suddenly
Speaker 1: experts anyway. In many respects, this whole thing was part
Speaker 1: of a larger, more vague trend of people finding ways
Speaker 1: to push back against big corporate and financial entities. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that more after we come back from
Speaker 1: this quick break. So another kind of expression of this
Speaker 1: anti corporate sentiment, and I don't mean that in a
Speaker 1: bad way. I mean this, this feeling of I've taken
Speaker 1: all I can take and I won't take anymore. Was
Speaker 1: this general trend of workers organizing and unionizing. Here in
Speaker 1: the United States, we're seeing support for the concept of
Speaker 1: unions grow, but the pandemic really pushed folks to move
Speaker 1: at a faster rate. Workers get to demand more from employers,
Speaker 1: and uh employers began complaining about stuff like labor shortages.
Speaker 1: They were saying, we can't we don't have enough people
Speaker 1: to do the work we need to do, and the
Speaker 1: workers were saying, well, there's no surprise there, you know,
Speaker 1: look at the compensation you're offering people, look at the
Speaker 1: working conditions that people have to endure. It's no wonder
Speaker 1: that you aren't able to attract and retain employees. You've
Speaker 1: got to offer more to them. And companies were like yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound right. And then workers at lots of
Speaker 1: places said, okay, well, we're all going to band together
Speaker 1: and create a union so that we have the leverage
Speaker 1: to force you into negotiations for better conditions or else
Speaker 1: you don't have anyone to do your work for you,
Speaker 1: and where will that put you. So we saw unions
Speaker 1: go on strike at Freedo, Lay, at Kellogg's, John Dear, Nabisco,
Speaker 1: and more. And while John Dear is the only company
Speaker 1: in that short list I gave that is most related
Speaker 1: to tech, at least as the way we think of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, all of these companies rely on tech obviously,
Speaker 1: but John Deere is a company that makes technological products.
Speaker 1: But the sentiment spread much further than just those companies.
Speaker 1: Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama rallied to unionize,
Speaker 1: and they held a vote on the matter, but that
Speaker 1: vote famously failed. In fact, it failed it like a
Speaker 1: two to one ratio. However, in the process of that,
Speaker 1: workers were alleging that Amazon had engaged in anti union
Speaker 1: practices and was actively trying to discourage employees from supporting
Speaker 1: a union. This was enough to prompt the US Labor
Speaker 1: Board to order a revote, which has not yet happened,
Speaker 1: but should in the not too distant future. On a
Speaker 1: similar note, Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York,
Speaker 1: filed a union petition earlier in then withdrew the petition,
Speaker 1: and and this month chose to refile that petition. They
Speaker 1: also staged a walk out during the holiday rush, placing
Speaker 1: enormous pressure on Amazon to respond before customers started losing
Speaker 1: their ding dang minds that their Christmas presents We're gonna
Speaker 1: arrive late. The message is clear. Workers around the US
Speaker 1: are starting to demand better working conditions and better compensation.
Speaker 1: Many of the industries involved are ones that required people
Speaker 1: to come into situations that are dangerous even when there
Speaker 1: isn't a pandemic going on. Amazon fulfillment centers are notoriously hazardous,
Speaker 1: for example. And we've also seen these kind of movements
Speaker 1: among hospital staff as hospitals get consistently overwhelmed and the
Speaker 1: staff are demanding better conditions because they're under extreme circumstances
Speaker 1: for an extended period of time due to lots of
Speaker 1: other factors that go well beyond the scope of this podcast.
Speaker 1: So don't worry. I'm not gonna rant about all that
Speaker 1: generally speaking, unionization has been on the decline in the
Speaker 1: United States until fairly recently, but we're seeing the movement
Speaker 1: spread across multiple industries, including the tech world. In fact,
Speaker 1: will tackle a really notable case in just a moment.
Speaker 1: But uh, I should also add for full transparency that
Speaker 1: the I Heart Media podcasters also submitted a petition to unionize,
Speaker 1: which passed a vote the podcasters past that now that
Speaker 1: process is still ongoing, and considering my position, I can't
Speaker 1: really comment on it any further than that, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to at least acknowledge that it is a thing
Speaker 1: that is happening. All right. Now, let's tackle another really
Speaker 1: big story in tech that unfolded throughout twenty one, the
Speaker 1: story of Activision Blizzard. Now, this is such a big
Speaker 1: and nasty story that's gonna take up essentially a third
Speaker 1: of this whole episode, and it plays into a lot
Speaker 1: of other trends in tech that we saw over the year,
Speaker 1: such as the continuation of the Me too movement as
Speaker 1: a movement in which people are coming forward with allegations
Speaker 1: of like hostile work environments and sexual harassment and worse.
Speaker 1: And it also ties into the labor organizing movement that
Speaker 1: I touched on just a second ago. So let's dial back,
Speaker 1: and let's go back to July twenty one. That's the
Speaker 1: date when the world at large got a glimpse into
Speaker 1: what the heck was happening over an Activision Blizzard. That
Speaker 1: was when the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing
Speaker 1: or d f e H, filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard,
Speaker 1: the video game company. So, in case you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with Activision Blizzard, it is a truly enormous company that
Speaker 1: has its roots way back in the Atari days. Activision
Speaker 1: originally formed with a group of Atari programmers left Atari
Speaker 1: and found their own game company. The company is known
Speaker 1: for a lot of ultra popular titles like Call of Duty,
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft, Diablo Overwatch, and dozens of others. Well,
Speaker 1: the lawsuit had some really ugly accusations in it, which
Speaker 1: have been expanded upon quite a bit since then. They
Speaker 1: included instances of discrimination, sexual harassment, hostile work environments, sexual
Speaker 1: assault in some cases, and more. There are also charges
Speaker 1: that the company had very few women in leadership positions
Speaker 1: and many women were subjected to unwanted advances from male coworkers. Further,
Speaker 1: the accusations said that the company's HR department had categorically
Speaker 1: failed to respond to complaints, furthering the idea that the
Speaker 1: company's HR department isn't really there to protect employees, it's
Speaker 1: there to protect the company. And that's a narrative that
Speaker 1: I wish I could say is unrealistic, but based upon
Speaker 1: a lot of similar stories in the business world in
Speaker 1: general and the tech world in particular, that's a hard
Speaker 1: narrative to refute. The complaints specifically called out Alex Afrasiab,
Speaker 1: who had previously led the World of Warcraft creative department,
Speaker 1: stating that Afrasiab had engaged in quote blatant sexual harassment
Speaker 1: with little to no repercussions end quote. Now by that
Speaker 1: point he had already left the company, but this was
Speaker 1: sort of the reckoning of of his actions, and the
Speaker 1: next day, on Tuesday, July one, the press ran stories
Speaker 1: about this lawsuit. Activision. Blizzard Reps kind of went into
Speaker 1: a damage control mode, claiming that the allegations that were
Speaker 1: being spread were not accurate and quote distorted and in
Speaker 1: many cases false descriptions of blizzards past end quote. Then
Speaker 1: came a collection of contradictory reports about internal communications. Some
Speaker 1: executives at activision Blizzard appeared decide with the people who
Speaker 1: brought forward the complaints. They were essentially saying, that is awful,
Speaker 1: it is inexcusable, and it's something that must absolutely stop.
Speaker 1: Then there were others who were denying that this was
Speaker 1: a problem in the first place, like, no, that never happened,
Speaker 1: and you're wrong. In the public sphere, you had folks
Speaker 1: sharing video clips of a panel that happened at a
Speaker 1: ten blizz Con event. Blizz Con is an annual conference
Speaker 1: that Blizzard held to promote games and build a community
Speaker 1: of users and that kind of thing. The video clip
Speaker 1: showed Blizzard executives ridiculing a request from one woman. She
Speaker 1: took the mic and said, is there any way that
Speaker 1: future World of Warcraft female characters could be presented in
Speaker 1: a way that was less sexualized? And the people started
Speaker 1: joking about that as a response, it was not, as
Speaker 1: they say, a good look. Things escalated. Employees planned a
Speaker 1: walkout and they issued demands to management. One of the
Speaker 1: big ones was to end mandatory arbitration clauses and layee contracts.
Speaker 1: All Right, so this particular practice, which is pretty darned
Speaker 1: disgusting is one in which a company requires employees to
Speaker 1: sign an agreement UH that says if they ever have
Speaker 1: a complaint against the company, they must first go through
Speaker 1: internal channels before doing anything else. The employee is not
Speaker 1: to go public with a complaint, nor are they to
Speaker 1: seek legal action against the company without first going through
Speaker 1: this internal process. So again, this is a damage control
Speaker 1: practice that tries to eliminate an employee's options to seek
Speaker 1: out any kind of external help for an internal problem.
Speaker 1: And as employees have frequently pointed out, this is an
Speaker 1: issue because if the system is rotten, then there's not
Speaker 1: like you have any hope that you're going to find
Speaker 1: a solution within that system. Right. If the system is
Speaker 1: broken and it's favored for you know, keeping the status quo,
Speaker 1: then going within the system them is going to be fruitless.
Speaker 1: So if the HR department frequently fails to act or
Speaker 1: to protect folks who are at the center of these complaints, uh, well,
Speaker 1: the employees remain the ones who are hurt and the
Speaker 1: people who were the bad actors frequently they were people
Speaker 1: in positions of power, and the the tendency was to
Speaker 1: protect the people in positions of power. After all, this
Speaker 1: is a company that's making bookoos of money. And if
Speaker 1: the thought is, well, yeah, they're awful human beings, but
Speaker 1: look at how much cash they're making us, then there
Speaker 1: was this tendency to protect them. The workers also demanded
Speaker 1: greater efforts to create a diversified workforce, to publish compensation
Speaker 1: and promotion rates in an act of transparency, essentially to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to know how much my co workers make
Speaker 1: because I want to know that we're being compensated fairly. Uh,
Speaker 1: and a lot of other similar demands along those lines.
Speaker 1: The employees staged the walkout on July one. Game developers
Speaker 1: with other studios contributed their support with messages of solidarity.
Speaker 1: Saw a lot of that on Twitter, and that same day,
Speaker 1: Kotaku published a story about a room the blizz Con
Speaker 1: staff would set up at their annual blizz Con uh
Speaker 1: and the room had the nickname the Cosby Suite. The
Speaker 1: purpose of the room, according to the jokes quote unquote,
Speaker 1: was to be a place where hot chicks would be
Speaker 1: brought in their words, not mine, presumably for the male
Speaker 1: Blizzard staff to have someone to harass. Again, not a
Speaker 1: good look, now, Folks who were involved with Blizzard during
Speaker 1: these days. Later on said what these rooms really were
Speaker 1: were just break rooms. They were like a green room
Speaker 1: for people to rest between events, and that the whole
Speaker 1: hot chicks thing was just a joke, it wasn't actually reality. However,
Speaker 1: even if it's just a quote unquote joke, it does
Speaker 1: indicate a pretty pervasive sexist culture at the company. Again,
Speaker 1: not a good look. The bad news was just beginning though,
Speaker 1: with more people coming forward with truly awful allegations about
Speaker 1: the culture at the company. And I'm not going to
Speaker 1: repeat all those stories because there are, first of all,
Speaker 1: too many of them, and they also get super upsetting,
Speaker 1: but I will say that the picture being painted was
Speaker 1: one of a truly hostile and terrible work culture if
Speaker 1: you happen to be, you know, a woman. Then we
Speaker 1: started seeing some high level executives and creators exit Activision Blizzard,
Speaker 1: including the head of HR. The president of the Blizzard
Speaker 1: division left and was replaced by two co head creators,
Speaker 1: so you you got rid of the one president and
Speaker 1: then two people stepped in to fill that role. And
Speaker 1: then some of the creative directors on some of Blizzards
Speaker 1: big titles also left. One of those people, Jesse McCree
Speaker 1: was the inspiration for the name of an Overwatched character
Speaker 1: who was previously called McCree. I say previously because the
Speaker 1: company subsequently renamed McCree to Cole cassidy Activision. Blizzard then
Speaker 1: committed to no longer naming characters or items in games
Speaker 1: after real world people, and the company was also in
Speaker 1: the process of scrubbing references to alphre Siabi, which was
Speaker 1: that was in tons of other games, so they were
Speaker 1: already in that that uh stage of trying to wipe
Speaker 1: out those those markers. We also saw some corporate partnerships
Speaker 1: appear to end. For example, T mobile branding that had
Speaker 1: been part of games like Overwatch mysteriously vanished. Uh. The
Speaker 1: company hired on a law firm called Wilmer Hale, which
Speaker 1: had a reputation that, you know, companies that want to
Speaker 1: discourage employees from organizing will get the services of this
Speaker 1: particular law firm. So, in other words, like the workers
Speaker 1: were saying, Hey, the law firm you hired on, they
Speaker 1: have a reputation for trying to stop people from unionizing.
Speaker 1: That didn't go over well either. In September, employees partnered
Speaker 1: with the Communication Workers of America to file a separate
Speaker 1: lawsuit against the company, this one about conditions that restricted
Speaker 1: employees rights to talk about stuff like hours and working conditions,
Speaker 1: as well as wages. A couple of days later, the
Speaker 1: U S Security is an Exchange Commission or SEC, opened
Speaker 1: an investigation into Activision Blizzard regarding the sexual harassment and
Speaker 1: discrimination complaints. Things would continue to get worse, even as
Speaker 1: the company publicly committed to making substantive changes to the
Speaker 1: culture and policies. For one, Jen O'Neill, who was one
Speaker 1: of the co heads of Blizzard, who was named after
Speaker 1: the president of Blizzard had departed the company, she resigned.
Speaker 1: She had only been the position for a couple of
Speaker 1: months at that time, and she revealed that she had
Speaker 1: received a lower compensation package than the other co head
Speaker 1: of Blizzard. So the two people, these two people had
Speaker 1: the same job, same responsibilities, right, they are co leaders
Speaker 1: of a major division within the company, And she said,
Speaker 1: found that he's making more than i am, which makes
Speaker 1: no sense. I mean, we're doing the same job. And
Speaker 1: of course the other co head happens to be male.
Speaker 1: She also said that she had been the victim of
Speaker 1: sexual harassment at the company as well. Another terrible terrible
Speaker 1: incident of sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard. All right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have more to say about that story, but first
Speaker 1: I need to take a breath, so let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. All right, we're back, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: Activision Blizzards terrible year. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Speaker 1: or e o C reached a settlement with Activision Blizzard
Speaker 1: in September overall lawsuit about the sexual harassment claims at
Speaker 1: the company. That settlement would require Activision to establish an
Speaker 1: eighteen million dollar fund to compensate employees who are claiming
Speaker 1: damages against the company. Now, the state of California's Department
Speaker 1: of Fair Employment and Housing, which you remember, that was
Speaker 1: the department that filed the initial lawsuit in July that
Speaker 1: started off this whole public pr disaster for the company,
Speaker 1: They attempted to intervene here. They said that, you know,
Speaker 1: the settlement could hurt other lawsuits and potentially allow Activision
Speaker 1: Blizzard the chance to destroy some valuable evidence. But a
Speaker 1: judge overruled their objection and a formal ruling on the
Speaker 1: decree will wait until January. And some people are expecting
Speaker 1: that eighteen million dollar fund to grow significantly. On November six,
Speaker 1: employees staged another walkout following an expose published by The
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal. In that piece, the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: shared a story in which CEO Bobby Kodick, who had
Speaker 1: so far more or less been expressing support for workers
Speaker 1: and and committing to making changes at the company, well.
Speaker 1: According to this expose, he allegedly made a death threat
Speaker 1: to his assistant, and there was another incident in which
Speaker 1: he personally intervened during a sexual harassment investigation inside the company.
Speaker 1: The employees then demanded co tex resignation as CEO. Now,
Speaker 1: as of this recording, he's still the CEO of Activision Blizzard,
Speaker 1: but calls for his resignation continue, and he has reportedly
Speaker 1: said to colleagues that should the problems that the company
Speaker 1: not be something that can be fixed quickly, he might
Speaker 1: consider leaving. Then in early December, there was a third
Speaker 1: walkout at Activision Blizzard. This one came in response to
Speaker 1: Raven Software. That's a company that's another part of Activision Blizzard.
Speaker 1: It was one that was acquired by Activision Blizzard not
Speaker 1: too long ago, and recently the company laid off twelve
Speaker 1: quality assurance contractors and that first compelled sixty raven Software
Speaker 1: employees to hold a work stoppage, which as far as
Speaker 1: I know, is still going on right now. And then
Speaker 1: that spread to other departments with an Activision Blizzard, and
Speaker 1: it points to this growing anger of employees who are
Speaker 1: really taking a stand against their employer. So this goes
Speaker 1: beyond the hostile work environment stuff. This is getting into
Speaker 1: solidarity territory. Other components of the story include the fact
Speaker 1: that the Game Awards, which is an industry awards event
Speaker 1: that pretty much does what you would expect it to do,
Speaker 1: they announced that they would not highlight Activision Blizzard in
Speaker 1: any way outside of the nominations that the company's games
Speaker 1: had already received. This was significant because, and if you've
Speaker 1: ever watched a Game Awards presentation you know this. The
Speaker 1: event is frequently one where gamers will see trailers of
Speaker 1: upcoming titles for the first time. But this meant that
Speaker 1: there would be no promotional material for upcoming Activision Blizzard
Speaker 1: titles like Overwatched two or Diablow, for pretty big blow
Speaker 1: on the marketing front for Activision Blizzard. Now, the reason
Speaker 1: I dedicated essentially a third of this whole episode just
Speaker 1: to this topic was the stuff that's happened at Activision
Speaker 1: Blizzard is really just a microcosm for stuff that's going
Speaker 1: on throughout the tech industry and really with throughout business
Speaker 1: in general. We're seeing a growing worker movement at different places,
Speaker 1: including companies like Apple. Uh the Apple too movement is
Speaker 1: still fairly young, but it involves people coming forward to
Speaker 1: protest work culture and conditions at the notorious secretive company. So,
Speaker 1: you know, usually Apple keeps everything buttoned up. That's kind
Speaker 1: of their work culture, and for years that was the
Speaker 1: way it worked. And now we have Apple employees coming
Speaker 1: forward and saying no, like, the only thing that the
Speaker 1: only person this benefits are the only entity this benefits
Speaker 1: is Apple. It does not benefit the employees. And so
Speaker 1: they started speaking out and they formed websites to share
Speaker 1: stories about issues with work culture and demands that the
Speaker 1: company change things. And the Activision Blizzard story follows similar
Speaker 1: things we heard last year about a totally different game company,
Speaker 1: Ubi Soft, which has also had its share of scandals
Speaker 1: and awful revelations. Also, there's been some criticism about Ubisoft
Speaker 1: this year, with people saying that even in the wake
Speaker 1: of all those terrible things that came to light last year,
Speaker 1: the company has not done enough to address the problems,
Speaker 1: and just to be clear, while stories like Activision, Blizzard
Speaker 1: and Ubi Soft and Apple bring a lot of attention
Speaker 1: to specific cases, the underlying message here is that there's
Speaker 1: a lot more of this kind of toxic and harmful
Speaker 1: stuff going on that isn't making headlines. I have no
Speaker 1: doubt that there are those among you listening to the
Speaker 1: show right now who have experienced something akin to what
Speaker 1: I've described in this section at some company or another,
Speaker 1: and I expect we're going to see more stories from
Speaker 1: more employees at more companies about similar issues moving forward.
Speaker 1: My hope is that will actually you make moves to
Speaker 1: address those problems and make workplaces a fair, equitable environment
Speaker 1: where people won't have to fear harassment and where corporate
Speaker 1: responses to such behavior are swift and just. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: move on from that now. In our episode yesterday, I
Speaker 1: talked about how various governments around the world are looking
Speaker 1: at meta slash Facebook and considering the possibility of making
Speaker 1: the company divest itself of properties like Instagram and WhatsApp.
Speaker 1: In other words, the whole breakup Facebook movement. I also
Speaker 1: want to add that other companies are also falling under
Speaker 1: similar scrutiny, though in all cases very little action has
Speaker 1: actually followed that scrutiny. But Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft,
Speaker 1: the other members of the Big five in tech, have
Speaker 1: also served as a launch point for discussions about anti
Speaker 1: competitive practices, market domination, and a possible need to break
Speaker 1: up those companies into smaller entity ease. And while there's
Speaker 1: been a big pr war waged in the press about
Speaker 1: this kind of thing, and we've heard politicians deliver rhetoric
Speaker 1: about how these companies hold far too much power in
Speaker 1: their various markets, as I've said, we've seen precious little
Speaker 1: actual movement on those issues. I suspect we may hear
Speaker 1: more about this next year, but honestly, at this point,
Speaker 1: at least here in the United States, I would be
Speaker 1: shocked to see any real progress being made on it.
Speaker 1: Because there are a lot of other issues, many of
Speaker 1: which pertain to the infrastructure of democracy itself, that I
Speaker 1: suspect will take precedence over the need to curtail tech
Speaker 1: companies and their increasing hold over their various industries. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some big fails in the tech space.
Speaker 1: In one, like literal fails, we saw a few major
Speaker 1: outages across the Internet this past year. In June, a
Speaker 1: cloud computing services provider called Fastly experienced what we in
Speaker 1: the tech biz like to refer to as a massive oopsie. See.
Speaker 1: Fastly service mostly involves having edge computing servers that store
Speaker 1: information on behalf of major sites so that when someone
Speaker 1: calls up info from one of those major sites, it
Speaker 1: gets that person more quickly. So let's say I'm in
Speaker 1: Spain and I want to pull up information that technically
Speaker 1: calls a server in California in the United States home. Well,
Speaker 1: that's probably gonna mean a longer load time, right like
Speaker 1: that that has to travel all the way across the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean to California and across the United States to
Speaker 1: to California, and longer load times are not great from
Speaker 1: a user experienced perspective. So Fastly is a service that
Speaker 1: prides a way to store information on servers that are
Speaker 1: closer to the end user and thus reduced load times.
Speaker 1: So this in that case, a fast Le server in
Speaker 1: Spain would hold copies of the information that I wanted
Speaker 1: to pull from the service in California, and it would
Speaker 1: just come from the server in Spain instead. It would
Speaker 1: look just as it would if it were coming from California,
Speaker 1: but it's faster that way, so Fastly is kind of
Speaker 1: a way to I guess you could call it a
Speaker 1: way to reduce buffering times if you want to think
Speaker 1: of it that way. Well, a month before the actual
Speaker 1: old Age, so this would be May for those of
Speaker 1: you not paying attention, Fastly pushed out a software deployment
Speaker 1: and within this deployment was a little bitty software bug.
Speaker 1: And under most circumstances, nothing would actually happen with that bug.
Speaker 1: It was just there, but it was inert. However, under
Speaker 1: the right situations, the bug would cause a massive shutdown
Speaker 1: of the Fastly network. And in June, that's what happened.
Speaker 1: A customer mercifully unnamed, accidentally triggered this bug. Not really
Speaker 1: the customer's fault, it was a bug. So what followed
Speaker 1: was a massive outage of Fastly and affected dozens of
Speaker 1: websites and services, including major ones like the BBC, The
Speaker 1: New York Times, CNN, Amazon. You try to go to
Speaker 1: those sites and you would get a five oh three
Speaker 1: error and you're wondering what the heck is going on. Now.
Speaker 1: It did get fixed, not you know, it didn't take
Speaker 1: too long to do, but it was one of those
Speaker 1: big things that affected lots of different sites. In October,
Speaker 1: Facebook had its own massive outage. Meta would later say
Speaker 1: that this was a faulty configuration and it just brought
Speaker 1: Facebook services down for several hours, like Facebook, Instagram, Watsap, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And as you can imagine, activity on other platforms those
Speaker 1: not owned by Meta anyway exploded, with lots of folks
Speaker 1: talking about how they were suddenly freed up to do
Speaker 1: other stuff like spend that time on other platforms. I
Speaker 1: guess Google also had a massive outage back in April
Speaker 1: that brought many of its services down, like Google Drive
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. It's actually amazing that knowledge
Speaker 1: wasn't noticed by yours, truly, because I depend on a
Speaker 1: lot on Google services. But then again, I also create
Speaker 1: tech stuff episodes using Office three sixty five software, so
Speaker 1: maybe I was actually, you know, working buckling down on
Speaker 1: a tech stuff episode when the outage happened. And of
Speaker 1: course there was the massive Amazon Web Services outage caused
Speaker 1: by a configuration problem in their network, and that one
Speaker 1: fouled up everything from real world package deliveries from Amazon
Speaker 1: to interfering with services like Netflix. It also impacted tons
Speaker 1: of apps that depend upon Amazon Web services, including apps
Speaker 1: tied to stuff like home automation systems. That particular outage
Speaker 1: really illustrated how much we now depend upon the cloud
Speaker 1: in order to get stuff done. All right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: wrap this episode up because I still have other stories
Speaker 1: to cover for one more episode and um and I'm
Speaker 1: tired of being angry and and next stuff. Y'all is
Speaker 1: my thoughts on Tesla. So you know, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: angry again, but I'm gonna save that for the next
Speaker 1: episode and then we'll start to you know, shift over
Speaker 1: to talking about stuff in two yea. If you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should cover in the future episodes
Speaker 1: of Tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The best
Speaker 1: way to do that is over on Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for the show is text Stuff hs W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.