WEBVTT - The Rot Economy ft Robert Evans 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:03.360 All Zone Media. 0:00:05.440 --> 0:00:08.920 Welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zitron. I've 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:11.079 spent the last fifteen years in tech, both as a 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:14.080 reporter and a public relations executive, and over that career, 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:16.400 I've realized that many see the tech industry as kind 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:19.720 of a monolith. It's actually a lot simpler than you'd imagine. 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:22.280 And it's my mission with this podcast to got through 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:25.040 the buzzwords and nonsense and explain to you how venture 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:27.560 capital and big tech are trying to change the future 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:30.560 for better or for worse. Today, I'm joined by Robert 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:33.160 Evans of Cool Zone Media to break down a theory 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:35.600 I have that is pretty much core to everything I 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:45.640 think about and we'll talk to you about on this podcast. 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:50.879 Thank you for having me ed. I love that we're 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:53.239 coming on to talk about this because the concept you're 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:55.160 about to introduce was like the thing that made me 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:57.280 reach out to you about doing this show, or at 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:00.160 least one of the major ones. I think everyone has 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.200 this feeling that like something is fucked up and wrong. 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:07.039 We can remember this period of like optimism about technology 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:10.600 and the Internet and like not just feeling excited about 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:13.400 like new shit that we could buy, but feeling excited 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.240 about the things that technology was going to bring us, 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:20.200 the promise of like the new Digital age, and that 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:23.520 all fell aside to be replaced by this looming sense 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:25.800 of doom so quickly that I don't I don't think 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:27.560 a lot of us have a good idea about like 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:29.520 why it happened. 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:32.480 And you know what, I think that's actually a great 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:36.440 place to start with a very simple question, why does 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:39.360 it feel like the tech we use every day is 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:43.200 getting worse? Look your search results. They're full of sponsored 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:46.840 content and articles that don't actually answer any questions, or 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:49.040 just a big thread of people asking the same question 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:52.000 without ever getting an answer. Your friends aren't popping up 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:56.720 on Instagram, you constantly gained product emails, notifications pop up, 0:01:56.840 --> 0:02:01.200 spam emails, and people you've maybe spoken who wants to 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:03.960 buy some Dodad. But then you look at the news 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:08.240 and seemingly every tech company is making billions of dollars, 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:13.359 growing at this alarming, almost unsustainable rate, all while laying 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:15.799 off tens of thousands of people a year. And that's 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:17.760 because there is a problem at the center of the 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:21.400 tech industry and actually the market's at large. It's a 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:24.440 cancerous problem and it's at the fabric of how capital 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:28.480 is deployed in modern business. Public and private investors, along 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.840 with the markets themselves, have become entirely decoupled from the 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:35.880 concept of what good business truly is, focusing on only 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:43.480 one goddamn thing, only one noxious, shitty metric growth In 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:47.440 the row economy, products are made worse, customers are abused, 0:02:47.840 --> 0:02:54.240 labor is disposable, and executives are getting richer every single day. Now, 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:57.560 growth in this case is not necessarily just about being 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:02.960 bigger or better. It's just about more. It's always more. 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:07.600 Everything must be generating more money, must be having a 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:12.320 higher headcount, even when laying people off. No, the problem 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:15.280 here is growth in this case is not necessarily about 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:19.720 being bigger or better. It's just about more. It means 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:23.359 the company's generating more revenue, higher valuations, and gaining more 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:27.040 market share. And then it's looking around and saying, you know, 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:31.400 that's just not enough. We must have more. Businesses are 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:33.920 expected to be in fact, they're rewarded for being so 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:39.440 eternal engines of capital. They must continue to create more 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:43.320 and more shareholder value while hopefully at some point providing 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:46.640 a service of some kind to a customer. In the 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:50.320 public markets. This means that companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:55.440 they're all rewarded for having these unfocused, capital intensive businesses, 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.400 they're also involved laying off tens of thousands of people. 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:02.280 Over the last use hundreds of thousands of workers have 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:06.120 been laid off as multiple tech companies have been worth 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:10.760 half to three quarters to even a trillion dollars. It's ridiculous. 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:14.880 Yeah, it's uh. I think like one of the really 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.400 important things to nail in here is that, like this 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:20.400 isn't a question of profitability. The fact that you tie 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:23.400 it to growth is so important because like the issue 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.440 is not that these companies are not profitable, Like profit 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:29.400 has nothing to do with these decisions. It's about all 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:32.160 I mean Abida does, which is basically like profit over 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:34.600 costs and stuff. But it's like it's this this question 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:37.800 of like growth, right that if you're not if you're 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:42.880 not returning this kind of algorithmically scaling growth, then your 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:44.919 company is seen as a failure by a lot of 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:48.560 the people who who are responsible for like the financial decisions, 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:50.880 and so all of these choices that are kind of 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:54.360 choking the Internet out and making the stuff we use 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:57.000 every day work less aren't about It's not a question 0:04:57.040 --> 0:04:59.200 of the company could can't be profitable if we don't 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:01.880 do this, It's that we won't have the right number 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:03.600 on a sheet to show somebody. 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:08.680 And Microsoft is actually a really good example. So Microsoft, 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:11.680 of course, they bought Activision Blizzard for sixty eight billion 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:16.599 dollars recently. They then even more recently, downsized the gaming 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.920 division at the cost of about nineteen hundred jobs, and 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:23.680 then they became more valuable than Apple in the process. 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:27.800 In December, shares of Spotify jumped by nearly seven point 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:30.359 five percent upon the news that it was slashing seventeen 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:34.359 percent of its workforce, adding nearly two point six billion 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.280 to the company's market cap. And the process, none of 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:39.960 these companies, of course, were punished for their poor planning, 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.279 or their stagnating products, the mismanagement of human capital, or 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:46.359 their general lack of any real innovation. And it's because 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:49.200 the number kept going up, and that is all that 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:50.440 seems to matter. 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:55.240 Yeah, And I like, when I was a kid kind 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:58.400 of questioning why stuff like layoffs hat and you know 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:00.880 where my dad got laid off from his and tech 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:03.200 and stuff. It was always framed to me as like, well, 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:05.640 these are. You know, companies aren't charities. They have to 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:08.720 like do this to turn a profit, otherwise they can't 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:11.719 afford to operate. And I think it's so crucial that 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:13.800 like that is not at all what's happening here. 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:19.080 Yeah. Microsoft had twenty two billion dollars in profit. Yeah, 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:22.720 their lost learnings. Yeah, these companies are fine. Google when 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:26.240 they did mass layoffs last year and in yes, twenty 0:06:26.279 --> 0:06:29.480 twenty three, they had like ten billion dollars in profit. 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:34.040 These companies are in the green and they're fine. There's 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:35.919 no reason to lay off these people other than the 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:40.880 fact that they can and they don't need them anymore. 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:44.920 Or perhaps they just ran the company in this big, shitty, 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:48.920 messy way. And nowhere is that more obvious than with Meta. 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:51.680 Oh god. Yeah. 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:54.640 So back in October of twenty twenty two, I said 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.240 that Mark Zuckerberg was going to kill Meta. Perhaps I 0:06:57.279 --> 0:06:59.919 was a little bit early on that one, but I 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.760 genuinely think that they're on the path to death. So 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:06.040 my argument is that their user numbers are declining. They 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:07.760 will occasionally have a time when they go up by 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:11.640 the percent, perhaps, but then they'll drop. But also the 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:16.080 user experience of Facebook and Instagram has just become awful. 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:20.200 They spend these insane amounts of money, tens of billions 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:24.280 of dollars on Meta's reality division, which is where they 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:27.640 stick the horrible VR experiences that everybody hates, and the 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:32.080 term metaverse. But what was crazy was Mark Zuckerbog didn't 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.200 get punished for literally lying about the metaverse. The street 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.880 did not mind the fact that he very clearly misled everybody. 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:42.840 In the announcement of Meta, he played a video of 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:45.000 a bunch of stuff that no one can do is 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:49.040 technologically impossible, shit jumping through things all around you with 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:53.000 no headset, completely insane. The stock had a little bit 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:56.320 of a wobble, but nothing happened. Yet once he fired 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.080 eleven thousand people and claimed that twenty twenty three would 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:03.280 be the year of efficiency, the market loved him, double 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:07.360 digit increases in the price of Meta shares. Nothing happened 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.000 to Zuckerberg with the next part, though, because he also 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:12.800 lost thirteen point seven billion dollars on the metaverse thing 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:14.040 that has never made them any money. 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:18.160 Yeah, and for some reference, thirteen point seven billion dollars 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:23.760 is about the GDP of Rwanda. Like that, that's how much. 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:26.680 That's a rwanda worth of losses. He's lost a rwanda 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:28.120 in his in his metaverse. 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.400 Bet it's actually a bit more as well, because recently. 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:32.840 It's more than it is more than a rwanda. 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:36.040 Yes, it's actually multiple. It might even be as many 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:41.320 as three rwandas, because an estima from last year suggested 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:44.280 that he's lost nearly forty two billion dollars on the metaverse. 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:48.640 Jesus Christ. So yeah, that's that's about. That's almost three 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:50.319 and a half Macedonias. 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.920 And it doesn't matter to the markets. You'd think a 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:57.959 public company that makes his money meta off of social 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:01.280 media experiences and selling ads on them, you think the 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:05.200 markets would care. The Instagram, one of their largest products, 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:07.600 one of their big money makers, an app for sharing 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:11.160 and following your friends photos and videos, no longer reliably 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:15.120 shows you content from those you follow. That's because meta 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:19.599 must simply interrupt your feed with sponsored content based on 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:22.440 and actually impossible to define amount of data. It is 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.040 not obvious how they choose. There are things that have 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:27.480 appeared on my Instagram that I've only ever said out loud. 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:30.640 It's very strange. And this is because it doesn't matter 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.640 if the product sucks. If meta is growing by double 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:36.360 digit percentages if they're making billions of dollars, even if 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:39.920 they're fucking the user in the process. Another great example 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.760 for you is Google. It doesn't matter that Google's aipower 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:49.800 Gmail plugin literally makes up it hallucinates email conversations. But 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:53.400 because they put AI on Gmail, Google's market cap goes up. 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:56.839 Everyone loves Sanda Pishe despite the fact that he gets 0:09:56.840 --> 0:10:00.400 paid two hundred and eighty million dollars and layser tens 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:04.240 of thousands of people seemingly all the time. And it 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:06.480 really doesn't matter. And this is one that really bothers 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:09.800 me because I think we're all kind of stuck with Amazon. 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:13.360 The Amazon experience is even worse. You go on there 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:17.120 and you type spoon or spatula, and there's eighty seven 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:20.760 different knockoffs with names that sound like someone had a 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:24.839 seizure while typing that skib spatula eleven dollars will deliver 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:28.320 in three minutes. But because Amazon is able to show 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:32.160 double digit percentages of growth every year, yay, it's fine. 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:37.400 It doesn't matter that the product sucks. No, no, no, no. 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:39.880 Only a few things really matter when it comes to 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:44.480 big tech in their oh outsized valuations, layoffs, growth and 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:47.839 the promise of growth, no matter how faint or how speculative. 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:52.400 The markets lack any long term thinking, and they lack 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.800 the analysis that would actually force businesses to become sustainable 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.960 and make great products. And when I say sustainable, I 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:02.280 don't mean anything about the environment. I mean and this 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:04.400 is a crazy concept, Robert. This one's going to really 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:06.640 blow you away. That they make more money than they 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:09.240 spend and don't have to fire people all the time. 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:11.760 Wow. Yeah, what a concept in business. 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:15.560 If the markets actually cared about sustainable companies that could 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:18.920 last the test of time without constantly burning capital and 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:22.440 firing people, the markets might not have ignored the fact 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:26.040 that Meta got a four hundred and ten million dollar 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:30.080 fine from the EU under the General Data Protection Regulation, 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:34.480 which is the laws that govern data use and customer 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:38.840 data in Europe. And they also would have probably noticed 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:41.880 the fact that European users now have to deliberately opt 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:45.760 in to share their data. Now. As a little aside, 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:49.920 Facebook makes their money off of using cookies and various 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:52.360 other means of getting your data and then presenting you 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.040 with ads based on that. Some of it comes from 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:56.600 how you use the platform, but a lot of it 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:01.640 comes from this very insidious hidden tracking. What's happened here 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:05.880 is that European users will no longer have that by default. 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:09.960 They will have to choose whether to help Mark Zuckerberg 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:11.439 by another fifth of Hawaii. 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:15.200 Hey, just MAUI just MAUI. 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:17.960 Oh, I'm sorry, terribly sorry. I wouldn't want to hurt 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:21.800 mister Zuckerberg. But what's really bad about this is statistically 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:24.960 users do not like opting into these things. Only about 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.480 twenty five percent of iOS users have chosen to opt 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.439 in to app tracking, which was a feature that was 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:34.600 actually added a few versions of iOS Ago to your iPhone, 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:37.920 your iPad and so on and so forth. And by 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:41.800 the way, this means that basically every app is kind 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:44.560 of on notice if it's an Apple device. Now users 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.080 know when they might be sharing their data, and it's 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:51.160 genuinely a threat to a lot of the tech ecosystem 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:53.880 that a lot of people don't know. In fact, Meta's 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:57.160 business model is intrinsically linked to the repurposing of customer 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:01.680 data into ad targeting. But the markets don't seem to care. 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:06.920 And I get it. It might seem unthinkable that mister 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:09.960 Zuckerberg's fancy party could come to an end, but we 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:14.040 really need to be clear about something. Meta's core advertising 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:17.200 models depend heavily on things that in the next decade 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:21.560 will likely become impossible to do legally. They might not 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:26.520 even be possible technically, because now Apple is adding apptracking transparency, 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:29.959 which I've kind of mentioned with the iOS update, and 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:32.160 this means that people are first of all aware of 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:34.120 when their date is being shared, and they're probably going 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:37.560 to tell them to pound sand. There are other different 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.200 changes that are happening as well, alphabet which Google of 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:43.760 course they're going to be retiring third party tracking cookies. 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:47.400 Meta is kind of a point where if anyone was 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:50.679 paying attention, they'd be a little bit more worried. And 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:54.560 that existential threat is why Mark Zuckerberg is so desperate 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:57.760 to distract you with dreams of the metaverse. It's so 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:02.280 desperate to make you think that Meta will be the 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:06.880 thing that builds the artificial general intelligence, which is just 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:10.120 the buzzword for an AI that can have kind of 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:13.720 human level intellect, despite the fact that most generative AI 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.559 right now just makes shit up and when you really 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:20.000 look at it, And this is what confuses me about 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:22.400 how much this company is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:27.359 Their other products don't make that much money. And Zuckerberg's 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:30.360 last big idea, the one that he changed his goddamn 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:34.240 company name for, lost them billions of dollars. Forty two billion, 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:36.400 probably be sixty billion next year. 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.640 God. Yeah, why Street loves six seven Macedonias. 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:46.960 Yeah, multiple Macedonias there. Since I published my original thoughts 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:49.440 on the row economy, their share process is more than doubled. 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:52.320 It was one hundred and seventy seven dollars then and 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:55.920 it's now four hundred dollars right now. It's despicable. 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:06.040 Yeah, I think the thing you have to understand when 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:09.360 you look at like, how can a company be burning 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.200 money at this rate and their stock price increase as 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.520 much as Facebooks has, or Metas has. I guess we 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:17.080 have to call it. I don't. I still don't like 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:18.840 calling it that. I feel like that's giving him a win. 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:20.400 Yeah, it's it's not fair. 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:24.760 It's not fair. But I think part of what you 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:29.680 have to understand is that like the people buying the stock, 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:34.120 like their vested financial interest is in it, continuing to like, 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:36.440 this is not all that different from what was happening 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:39.880 with n FTS right in that like there is this, 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:41.760 there is very much a group of people with a 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:45.320 vested interest in that stock price raising well above what 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:48.040 can actually be justified by the performance of the business, 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.680 and the people who are making a fortune on that 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:55.880 right now understand that it is a limited timeframe that 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:57.760 this game will work in. I don't know that Mark 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:01.240 fully does. He may he's he maybe to some extent 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.200 a little deranged himself at this point. But I think 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:07.160 there are a lot of people who absolutely do understand 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.520 and are heavily invested in Facebook now trying to get 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:12.960 as much of that as they can while it lasts, 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:15.480 but they understand that it's not going to last forever. 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:19.880 And I think there is a big fall of Rome 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:22.560 style story coming for tech, and I think the rot 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:26.560 economy is behind it because so much of tech has 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:29.560 become engineered to growth at all costs. It's a phenomenon 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:32.880 that controls everything. And I think the place where it 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:36.920 hits the most people because you know, Instagram's annoying, Facebook's annoying, 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:39.440 but you can kind of get around it. But I 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:43.080 think the place that hits home the most is Google. Yeah, 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:45.920 so the thing that everyone knows Google for is. Of course, 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:49.240 Google search used to be a place where crazy idea. 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:51.280 You go and you type in a thing, tip tap 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:54.040 tap search, and then a bunch of results come up 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:58.480 that are actually useful. Now it's a labyrinth full of 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:03.160 optimized garbage. Search engine optimization is an important thing to 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:05.720 remember here, which is companies have worked out how to 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.880 trick Google into making you see their link rather than 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:14.280 Google finding a useful thing. This is partially ruined Google Search, 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:20.240 but the other problem is adds sponsored content and of 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:24.200 course artificial intelligence crap. So Charlie Wazel over the Atlantic, 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.320 he argued a couple of years back, he said, Google Search, 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:30.199 what many consider an indispensable tool of modern life, is 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.800 dead or dying. And I agree. Users have to effectively 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:37.280 find a way to cheat and con Google into giving 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:39.680 them what they want. They add things like I don't 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:43.439 know you put PC repair error, put the error in 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:47.919 plus reddit To get anything approaching a reliable answer, If 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:50.160 you go and type a regular tech problem in as 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:53.240 I mentioned earlier, you just get a lot of shit. 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:57.240 You just get a bunch of things that it will 0:17:57.320 --> 0:17:59.720 seem right. You'll say, oh, this is how to fix 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:02.600 forty two on my iPhone. Cool, and then you click 0:18:02.680 --> 0:18:06.280 through and there's not actually really much useful content. It's 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:09.600 have you tried resetting your iPhone? Is your iPhone broken? 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:13.840 Is something wrong? Have you tried restarting your iPhone? Useless garbage? 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:19.120 But nevertheless, pushing traffic towards media outlet's the kind of cretinous. 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:23.000 Yeah, And that's like, I think it's important both as 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:25.840 you noted, a lot of the fucking worst shit in 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:29.240 tech can be strangled by stuff like what the EU 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:31.720 has done to force the companies to not allow you 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:35.320 to be opted in on stuff that's directly against your interests. 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:38.119 And likewise, if that were to be, if that were 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.000 the kind of thing that we could like make more 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:41.919 moves like that in the United States. You're not just 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:44.680 strangling the worst parts of big tech with that, You're 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:48.920 strangling a lot of really predatory, toxic media with that 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.200 that all of their money comes from that kind of 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:54.119 shit one way or the other. That like, they are 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:58.160 an integral part of this and can be harmed by 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:02.160 like doing damage to this fundamentally dishonest way of doing business. 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:08.240 And Google spends decades, they claim trying to improve the 0:19:08.320 --> 0:19:12.439 quality of organic results, but it's for over a decade, 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:14.800 has been easily gained by anyone who knows how to 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:18.520 create an algorithmic headline, a headline that will make the 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:21.720 Google spider that looks over all the websites say this 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:25.080 is the thing, this is the answer. I personally don't 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:28.760 know whether Google does this deliberately or whether they've simply 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:32.160 lost track of everything, whether the evil parties are winning. 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:36.399 But you mention media companies and these predatory ones. The 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:41.000 problem is it's not just predatory ones. A large chunk 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:44.080 of modern media is obsessed with affiliate marketing, which is 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:47.040 you'll see these things, which is like best apps for 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:49.440 blah blah, and those would be affiliate links, yeah, which 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:52.040 give them a little bit of little bit of money, 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:55.680 or best super Bowl deals again a little bit of cash, 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:57.919 little bit of money every time you buy something through it. 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:01.919 And it's turned a large chunk of the web, but 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:08.119 especially Google Search, into this complete slot, and without finding 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:11.000 a way to negotiate with it, you're offered this kind 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:15.160 of fragmented buffet of content based on what Google kind 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:17.440 of thinks you want to see, but it's more based 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:20.000 on how much money Google is paid and how often 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:24.840 Google has been trigged. Let's be honest, and I think 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:27.359 it's fair to argue that Google no longer provides the 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:30.199 best results to any query. It provides an answer that 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:36.040 it believes is most beneficial or profitable, which can sometimes 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:38.480 be the thing you want, isn't always. 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:41.320 I think one of the problems is that I don't 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:43.639 know of a search engine that I would say is 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:45.879 better than Google in the way that Google used to 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:48.440 be better than anything else, right, and I'm talking ten 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:51.080 years ago. I do know there are search engines and 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:53.680 options that are better than Google at certain things. I've 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:56.399 come to learn that, like, if I use Perplexity AI, 0:20:57.000 --> 0:20:59.119 it'll be worse than Google at a bunch of stuff, 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:01.560 but there are a few specific things it's better at, 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:05.440 and like that has increasingly become how I use search, right, 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:08.960 is that I cycle through different options with the same 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:11.400 question to try to figure out, like, well, who's gonna 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:13.760 fuck me least on trying to get this information? 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:18.879 And it sucks as well, because sure we all know 0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:22.879 that any free service online isn't free. There is some 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:25.600 way they're making money, and that's fine, you've got it, 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:30.480 service cost money, whatever, But at some point, how much 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.920 profit is too much and also how can you justify 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:39.359 this much profit while making things so much worse? And 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:42.000 I mean, the result is that it just sucks. It sucks. 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:46.440 Googling sucks now, it's an exercise in pain. It leads 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:49.320 you to a bunch of content that is so obviously 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:53.240 engineered to get your clicks rather than actually provide any service. 0:21:54.240 --> 0:21:59.320 That the web is slower. This makes the Internet slower, 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:04.080 It makes the flow of information between people and countries worse. 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:08.960 And what's worse is Google loves this monopoly and they 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:12.600 pay a pretty penny to keep it. They pay Apple 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:16.280 eighteen billion dollars a year. And this came out in 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:21.240 a recent US versus Google antitrust case. Eighteen billion dollars 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:24.639 a year to be on your iPhone, to be on 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:28.920 Apple devices. It's not because they're better, it's not because 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:32.760 Apple even thinks that they couldn't do better. This is 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:36.879 specifically to stop Apple trying and to make your lives 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:39.919 worse so that Google can make their search worse to 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:42.960 make more money and give some Dharkashi two hundred and 0:22:43.040 --> 0:22:48.320 eighty million dollars. And it's depressing. It's something that makes 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:51.439 me I have to fight the cynicism every time I 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:55.320 use Google. This is a problem that hits billions of people. 0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:59.679 This is a real thing, and this isn't an attack 0:22:59.720 --> 0:23:03.359 on any journalistic outlet, But why the fuck is the 0:23:03.720 --> 0:23:06.840