Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: tech are You. I've got a special episode today. I've
Speaker 1: got a fellow podcaster in the studio with me, virtually
Speaker 1: Ed Zetron, who has the better offline podcast. If y'all
Speaker 1: think that I cast a critical eye at the tech industry,
Speaker 1: strap in, because Ed, you know, I give him the business.
Speaker 1: But I've listened to your show and it's gloves off
Speaker 1: when you start.
Speaker 2: I can't help myself. I have to because everyone's angry
Speaker 2: at tech right now. Everyone is so angry, and I
Speaker 2: get emails about it saying, oh, you've really put into
Speaker 2: words so I feel. And I think it's just I
Speaker 2: am naturally pissed off. I guess very much, just a
Speaker 2: natural fury.
Speaker 3: I suppose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a gen xer, so I'm a little older,
Speaker 1: and I think the natural cynicism that I possess has
Speaker 1: sort of dulled me to the point where I'm angry.
Speaker 1: But I'm also tired supposed to being angry. I've been
Speaker 1: angry since the early eighties. Yeah, I mean, you grow
Speaker 1: up in that Cold War era and you really start
Speaker 1: you learn how to be angry. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about your show and about its genesis and sort
Speaker 1: of the process of you know, how you came about
Speaker 1: thinking about doing a podcast and the sort of things
Speaker 1: that specifically inspired you. I'd love to talk about the
Speaker 1: episode that published most recently as we record this, where
Speaker 1: you talked about the metaverse, because it's something that I share.
Speaker 1: All the feelings that you express in that episode I've
Speaker 1: talked about on this show as well, which is largely
Speaker 1: about how infuriating it is to have this ill defined
Speaker 1: concept take over to an extent where you feel you're
Speaker 1: just screaming into the void. Why are you doing? Why
Speaker 1: are you spending money? Why are these businesses jumping into it?
Speaker 1: But you can say the same thing about NFTs, you
Speaker 1: can say the same thing about AI and he did, yes,
Speaker 1: and you continue you will continue to do so. But
Speaker 1: let's talk about that, Let's talk about sort of what
Speaker 1: your background is and then leading into the creation of
Speaker 1: the Better Offline podcast.
Speaker 2: So in twenty twenty, I was as many people were
Speaker 2: getting quite depressed, and it was because I wasn't writing
Speaker 2: as well as the world burning around us. So I thought,
Speaker 2: I'm going to start a newsletter. I had two hundred subscribers,
Speaker 2: three hundred maybe, and most of them, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: with dead emails. But I started writing about tech stuff
Speaker 2: because I've be running a PR firm for about twelve years,
Speaker 2: and a tech PR firm specifically, so I've seen all
Speaker 2: these things up close. And then during twenty twenty, I
Speaker 2: was writing a lot about return to office, and that
Speaker 2: felt like I was screaming into the void as well.
Speaker 3: People were saying.
Speaker 2: From like July, oh no, even like May Well, We've
Speaker 2: got to get back to the office, but no one
Speaker 2: could say why. There were all these articles Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 2: New York Times talking about the office is better, the
Speaker 2: office is better, and it was always talking to executives,
Speaker 2: and that really began to joke afire me a bit.
Speaker 2: I was like, ah, I don't like this, and people
Speaker 2: were reading it. People were responding really well. But I
Speaker 2: remember the thing that the first time it really took
Speaker 2: off was this thing called Clubhouse. Clubhouse was I don't
Speaker 2: know if you remember, so everyone in the tech industry
Speaker 2: was saying clubhouse is the future. Clubhouse is the future.
Speaker 2: What Clubhouse was was basically a live podcast show. It's
Speaker 2: Twitter spaces, that's all. It is a live voice chat
Speaker 2: thing where any number of speakers can speak at the
Speaker 2: same time. And what happened was Andrewson Horowitz major venture
Speaker 2: capital firm, and Mark Andresen himself were really trying to
Speaker 2: push this through. They were pushing every tech person, every
Speaker 2: celebrity they knew to use this platform, and everyone was
Speaker 2: talking about it and saying this is the future. And
Speaker 2: I couldn't tell how because last time I checked, radio
Speaker 2: existed and everyone was talking about this thing, saying it's
Speaker 2: going to be worth billions, and it was allegedly a
Speaker 2: four billion dollar offer. And I kept writing, just saying,
Speaker 2: this is vaporware. This isn't the thing. There is no
Speaker 2: there was no revenue, there was no monetization strategy. There
Speaker 2: really wasn't a point to it. And also tech people
Speaker 2: are frightfully boring. So hearing these ultra rich buffoons.
Speaker 3: Going, oh, well, you know, the innovations are very important,
Speaker 3: and they'd ramble on and on.
Speaker 2: It was dull, but people were flocking to it. And
Speaker 2: then one day they just stopped. They just stopped using it,
Speaker 2: and I did a few like aha moments where I
Speaker 2: was like, ah, gotcha, and then I got quoted in
Speaker 2: like Wired, and I was like, oh, okay, this is cool.
Speaker 2: But I kept writing because I enjoyed it. And also
Speaker 2: I kind of see both sides. I see the business
Speaker 2: side and I see the journalism side. And I was
Speaker 2: a games journalist before this, and so I just kept
Speaker 2: writing about the stuff and I kept calling it as
Speaker 2: I see it because it was an independent newsletter, and
Speaker 2: it went from two hundred people to fourth out like
Speaker 2: one thousand to four thousand subscribers. It's twenty three thousand today,
Speaker 2: and so it became a big thing. And I don't know,
Speaker 2: I like writing a lot, and I can write very fast.
Speaker 2: I used to do three or four a week. I
Speaker 2: have no idea how I had that output. Now I
Speaker 2: just do once a week when I can make it.
Speaker 2: But I write in the way that I grew up
Speaker 2: reading and seeing on television. In England, there was generally
Speaker 2: a more critical approach to journalism, but there was more opinion,
Speaker 2: and when the opinion ran, there wasn't really afraid of
Speaker 2: leaving a few black eyes. As long as you punched up,
Speaker 2: you don't attack the people below, you, attack the executives,
Speaker 2: the sun duper shies of the world, Google's alphabet CEO
Speaker 2: guy who makes two hundred and twenty million dollars a
Speaker 2: year and lays off thousands of people and drives Google
Speaker 2: Search into the ground. These are things that people see
Speaker 2: and people.
Speaker 3: Are angry about.
Speaker 2: And I think I'm good at putting that into words
Speaker 2: for better.
Speaker 3: Words there.
Speaker 1: I guess sure. It's such a valuable asset to have
Speaker 1: because to your point, in your various podcasts and hearing
Speaker 1: you talk and meetings and things, you know, we got
Speaker 1: a lot of quote unquote tech journalism that's not really
Speaker 1: journalism at all. It's essentially regurgitating press releases, which doesn't
Speaker 1: have any value to it. You could just go and
Speaker 1: read the press release if that's what you wanted to do.
Speaker 1: And it's only a few outlets that go any further
Speaker 1: than that, and I find them incredibly valuable. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: those are like the exceptions rather than the rule. And
Speaker 1: actually we could even talk about tech's effect on journalism
Speaker 1: and how that has played a huge part in this
Speaker 1: and that it has devalued journalism to large extent. There's
Speaker 1: the infamous pivot to video moment we could talk about like,
Speaker 1: there's so much that ends up being wrapped up in this.
Speaker 1: It becomes a lot of inside baseball for folks who
Speaker 1: work in the industry. But it's important to recognize so
Speaker 1: that when I do something like advocate for critical thinking,
Speaker 1: people have those assets that they can go to that
Speaker 1: help train them on this and not just throwing them
Speaker 1: into the deep end of the pool and saying think
Speaker 1: critically and you'll be fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what does thinking critical look like? Tech journalism as
Speaker 2: a whole has got more critical. On the broadcast side,
Speaker 2: a lot of tech podcasts are very right leaning right now.
Speaker 2: The two most successful ones the All In Podcast and
Speaker 2: Lex Fridmund's And Lex Fridman is a right wing so
Speaker 2: it is the all In guys. David sax Is a
Speaker 2: pro Russia goon. Jason Kalakanis isn't much better. These guys
Speaker 2: are controlling the airwaves to some extent. But a lot
Speaker 2: of that is because a lot of the tech industry
Speaker 2: thinks that what media in tech should do is positive.
Speaker 2: It should be rah rah, and we should only criticize
Speaker 2: a few things when we kind of feel like here
Speaker 2: versus what people want, which is an explanation as to
Speaker 2: why things aren't working right. They want to understand the
Speaker 2: decisions that people are making. Something you've done very what
Speaker 2: was You've explained why things are the way they are,
Speaker 2: how things have got places when Google was a search
Speaker 2: company versus an AD's company. People don't know these things.
Speaker 2: There is a need for things like how your iPhone works.
Speaker 2: Rich Deimiro Katla excellent guy, great radio host as well.
Speaker 2: He does very good like how to avoid scam stuff.
Speaker 2: That kind of journalism is extremely valuable. Steve Noviello and
Speaker 2: Houston on Fox another great guy for this, that's very valuable.
Speaker 2: But otherwise, tech journalism is growing into an industry. It's
Speaker 2: growing into something that critiques things and says, here are
Speaker 2: what the powerful people are doing. But I don't think
Speaker 2: that there's enough just explaining why the world is the
Speaker 2: way it is and showing the emotion the anger you
Speaker 2: need to because this stuff Google Search being worse is horrifying.
Speaker 2: It's something that hits billions of people. You should be angry.
Speaker 2: You're angry. I'm angry. This should be front page news
Speaker 2: everywhere except Google put out a thing saying, oh, we're
Speaker 2: gonna fix search we're gonna make it better, and everyone's like, great,
Speaker 2: Google's good. Now they're not. They haven't done anything well.
Speaker 1: And if it were a front page news, you never
Speaker 1: find it because you've put it in Google Search and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't come exactly.
Speaker 3: You get three different seo spam sites.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating to me because I can actually, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously this isn't a new thing. I can see patterns
Speaker 1: of this kind of cycle where if you start asking
Speaker 1: questions and you start coming up with answers, you start
Speaker 1: to see kind of the cynical background that's fueling things
Speaker 1: within the tech industry. I'm reminded when I first started
Speaker 1: getting into tech podcasting, it was in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Two thousand and eight was around the time where all
Speaker 1: the different television manufacturing companies were all pushing three D
Speaker 1: televisions and you start to ask the question, why why
Speaker 1: are you pushing three D TV? And if you start
Speaker 1: coming up with answers, Well, one, you've got the various
Speaker 1: studios out there that are really keen on the idea
Speaker 1: of creating a format that is very difficult to pirate,
Speaker 1: and so therefore they have an incentive to push the
Speaker 1: three D technology, and then you've got the manufacturers who
Speaker 1: they need to come up with ways to differentiate this
Speaker 1: year's models from last year's models. It's not just good
Speaker 1: enough to out with another TV that does what last
Speaker 1: year's TV does, and you can't just constantly push resolution
Speaker 1: year over year. So there were all these very cynical
Speaker 1: reasons for it, and ultimately the response from consumers was
Speaker 1: I just don't want this.
Speaker 2: But that's a fascinating one, though, because I remember that
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight was actually when I moved to
Speaker 2: America and I moved into the tech industry. And the
Speaker 2: other thing that you're completely right about is you'll notice
Speaker 2: you didn't mention the filmmakers. The filmmakers were just like,
Speaker 2: I don't want I don't want to do this. This
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like it will make the movie better unless
Speaker 2: I'm making Shrek. Shrek was one of the few the
Speaker 2: minions movies I think much later, obviously, Yeah, but that
Speaker 2: was really one of those times where I don't think
Speaker 2: I saw it at the time quite as clearly as
Speaker 2: you did, but you're right, that was one of those times.
Speaker 2: So it's like this something he's being done to consumers
Speaker 2: rather than for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were trying to pull a Steve Jobs, who
Speaker 1: was obviously brilliant at convincing people they needed something that
Speaker 1: they probable. Guy though, listen, we're not going to talk
Speaker 1: about getting on this podcast because that was a thing
Speaker 1: at Apple, I know. But yeah, well probably know people
Speaker 1: who got jobs at one point that was when you
Speaker 1: would walk in and Steve Jobs would fire you on
Speaker 1: the spot for some minor thing. Anyway, what he was
Speaker 1: really good at was convincing people that they wanted a product,
Speaker 1: or that a product that he had on offer was
Speaker 1: going to solve a problem they didn't even know they
Speaker 1: had before. And partly why he was able to create
Speaker 1: entirely new markets. I don't want to discount all the
Speaker 1: other people who also put in a huge amount of work,
Speaker 1: you know, Johnny Ives and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But the industry was trying to copy what he was
Speaker 1: able to do, and they just weren't able to achieve it.
Speaker 1: They were not able to convince the market that three
Speaker 1: D television was really a valuable thing. There was the
Speaker 1: issue that there wasn't that much content in the beginning
Speaker 1: to really grab people.
Speaker 2: This still isn't Apple on the vision pro is still
Speaker 2: trying to convince you to get three D content.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean when you look at some of
Speaker 1: the ones that came out, like there were a few
Speaker 1: obvious standouts that showed spectacle and how spectacle could be effect.
Speaker 1: I mean, Avatar is it's impossible to argue like it
Speaker 1: was the top grossing film of all time and in
Speaker 1: part was because of the spectacle of this three dimensional
Speaker 1: filmmaking approach. But then you had things like the Hobbit series,
Speaker 1: which certainly did not capture imaginations the same way Avatar did,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it was three D and forty
Speaker 1: eight frames per second film making pushing the envelope, saying
Speaker 1: this is the future of film, and people said, yeah,
Speaker 1: can we make it? Not that because I don't like
Speaker 1: the Hobbits looking like they're acting in a Mexican soap opera.
Speaker 1: It's just not appealing to me.
Speaker 2: But also just no one wanted it. No one was
Speaker 2: saying that being like I wish this movie was more
Speaker 2: in front of me.
Speaker 1: Right, or that it was three times longer than it
Speaker 1: needed to be. Yeah, oh god, yeah.
Speaker 3: We won't go.
Speaker 1: So I also have a Lord of the Rings tattoo,
Speaker 1: so I'm not even gonna go into my disdain for
Speaker 1: the Hobbit films, but that, to me is an example
Speaker 1: of sort of the things that are going on behind
Speaker 1: the scenes that you may not necessarily be aware of
Speaker 1: as a consumer or just you know, part of the
Speaker 1: mainstream public. And that's why I find podcasts like Better
Speaker 1: Offline really valuable, because what you're doing is you're asking
Speaker 1: the questions and peeling back the layers and saying, not
Speaker 1: only does this thing not make sense, but you need
Speaker 1: to understand the motivations behind why it's a thing in
Speaker 1: the first place, and why you should question it and
Speaker 1: why you might feel uneasy toward it. Like I again,
Speaker 1: I think to NFTs as being a great example of
Speaker 1: the thing that everyone who was already invested in the
Speaker 1: crypto world, we're desperate to convince you this is a
Speaker 1: valuable thing enough so that companies were jumping in without
Speaker 1: really understanding what NFTs were. I think I think most
Speaker 1: companies still don't understand what NFTs are, and everyone was
Speaker 1: getting that feeling of am I actually missing out? Is
Speaker 1: this going to be a case of not investing early
Speaker 1: on and I'm going to miss out on a huge opportunity,
Speaker 1: and of course, we saw the bottom drop out of
Speaker 1: NFTs at the end of that EA, and it hasn't
Speaker 1: recovered since, which suggests that the people who were skeptical
Speaker 1: and expressing caution were right all along. That to me
Speaker 1: is where the value for a show like Better Offline
Speaker 1: really comes in, because it teaches you to ask those
Speaker 1: questions yourself, even if you haven't done an episode about
Speaker 1: that specific topic yet.
Speaker 2: And a lot of it is as well that people
Speaker 2: are a lot smarter than they think they are with
Speaker 2: this stuff. And I think the tech industry is done
Speaker 2: and the marketers especially have done a really good job
Speaker 2: making people feel that they won't understand there are algorithms
Speaker 2: and powers at play that you just simply could not
Speaker 2: on Stay You don't understand NFTs, and that's why you
Speaker 2: will have fun staying Poor or Crypto the same deal,
Speaker 2: when ultimately with Crypto they claim to be making decentralized
Speaker 2: software and they weren't. The software does not work, None
Speaker 2: of it is good. Axioinfinity is allegedly like a Pokemon clone.
Speaker 2: It costs like one thousand dollars just to start, and
Speaker 2: by the way, it's a terrible game. It's not good.
Speaker 2: A lot of guys rich though, And that's the thing.
Speaker 2: When people understand the incentives and the actual basic things.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people can understand tech way more.
Speaker 2: And you know this, You've been doing this podcast for
Speaker 2: a long time. People are way more aware of this stuff.
Speaker 2: But there is almost a deliberate obfuscation at times, and
Speaker 2: I find it reprehensible. I find it very annoying. And
Speaker 2: the reason the Metaverse episode got me so angry was
Speaker 2: I remember everyone trying to explain to me, Hey ed
Speaker 2: virtual worlds of the future, and I looked them dead
Speaker 2: in the iron and said, I was literally like the
Speaker 2: second guy in England who wrote about massively multiplayer online RPGs.
Speaker 2: I know these things, and I've known them for a
Speaker 2: long time. I played Meridium fifty nine and I know this.
Speaker 2: I played Ultimore Online. I know this stuff. What you
Speaker 2: were describing is the stuff that I was playing on
Speaker 2: a PCMIA card. So please tell me how this is different.
Speaker 2: And they couldn't. It was a big lie, and I
Speaker 2: think everyone saw it at the time, but the media
Speaker 2: fell for it. There were so many there were Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal, New York Times, Time Magazine, all of these
Speaker 2: places saying the metaverse is here, The metaverse is here everyone,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was reminding me if you go back
Speaker 1: a decade of discussions of the semantic web, the semantic web.
Speaker 2: Oh god, I haven't saw about the semantic web in forever,
Speaker 2: I know, But it's essentially I mean, it has a
Speaker 2: lot of the same groundwork as as the metaverse does.
Speaker 1: Right, it doesn't necessarily incorporate a virtual world, but then
Speaker 1: arguably neither does the metaverse because the word doesn't mean anything,
Speaker 1: so like the metaverse could involve a virtual world, or
Speaker 1: you could be talking about something entirely different. It all
Speaker 1: depends upon how.
Speaker 2: I saw Microsoft teams referring to itself as ye verse.
Speaker 3: I got that was when it's not nope, yes enough, it's.
Speaker 1: Not just frustrating, it's destructive. When you see enterprises jump
Speaker 1: in on these trending ideas that are not fully baked
Speaker 1: and convincing people, whether it's it's employees or partners or investors,
Speaker 1: that this is the future when clearly no one has
Speaker 1: a really firm grip on what they're even talking about,
Speaker 1: and it's such a massive waste of resources. And when
Speaker 1: you sit there, when you see when tech works well,
Speaker 1: when tech is doing its job and actually making things
Speaker 1: easier or better, and you sit there and think, what
Speaker 1: if we took all that wasted time and effort and
Speaker 1: we had actually dedicated it to enterprises that could benefit people,
Speaker 1: where would we be now? Like, those are the questions
Speaker 1: that get me angry. I still rant about it, and.
Speaker 2: A lot of it comes down to something are called
Speaker 2: the rot economy, where we are in a world where
Speaker 2: companies are evaluated in the public markets and at times
Speaker 2: the private markets based on growth, not based on what
Speaker 2: they produce, whether they have happy customers, whether they are
Speaker 2: making a sustainable income, whether they could do the same
Speaker 2: thing for another three years and may be fine, No,
Speaker 2: you must grow ten twenty percent a year, which is
Speaker 2: why Microsoft jumped on the metaverse wagon. Disney same deal
Speaker 2: and then drop them the moment things look bad, and hey,
Speaker 2: you know who also dropped the metaverse meta They also
Speaker 2: moved itward. They went fro him in twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: talk about the metaverse being the most important thing to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three being the year of efficiency, and that
Speaker 2: AI was where Boz and Zuck were now facing themselves.
Speaker 2: And he'll still claim that the metaverse is around, but
Speaker 2: it's just that is the symptom of an economy that
Speaker 2: doesn't build technology for people, but builds technology to sell
Speaker 2: to investors. And that's where we're going right now. And
Speaker 2: that's the scary thing. Tech can be great and a
Speaker 2: big thing better off on I'm trying not to do
Speaker 2: is not to be just endlessly cynical. I'm angry, and
Speaker 2: you should be angry. But I don't hate tech. I
Speaker 2: hate some people in tech. I find Mark Zuckerberg truly disgusting.
Speaker 2: Same with Steve Jobs, staying with Elon Musk, all of
Speaker 2: these people are not working for people. They are working
Speaker 2: for investors in themselves. And Steve Jobs was an evil
Speaker 2: cret in listened to Behind the Bastards if you want
Speaker 2: to know more. But at the very least he made
Speaker 2: stuff for people. He had an inherent sense of like,
Speaker 2: this feels good in the hand, This UIUX situation is satisfying.
Speaker 2: They can now do this and that will make me
Speaker 2: lots of money. He was good at that. Tim Cook less,
Speaker 2: so he's better, and he's better than a lot of
Speaker 2: the rest of them. But Sundar Pishai, he doesn't give
Speaker 2: a rat's ass about any of this he wants to
Speaker 2: see Google grows. It was two hundred and twenty three
Speaker 2: million in twenty twenty two, two hundred and eighty and
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one year off of the pandemic, millions of
Speaker 2: people dying, and he's becomes one of the richest guys.
Speaker 2: Really really sad, especially because Google Search has got so bad.
Speaker 2: And I think the big difference is it no longer
Speaker 2: feels like a fair trade. We're no longer in situation
Speaker 2: where they're making cool stuff and we're okay with them
Speaker 2: getting rich doing so because they're making bad stuff and
Speaker 2: getting richer.
Speaker 1: And getting richer ed. And I will be back to
Speaker 1: rant a lot more, but first, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to think our sponsors. Google in particular is a
Speaker 1: tricky topic simply because even in its good years, it
Speaker 1: was a company that seemed like it was throw anything
Speaker 1: at the wall and hope that things stick. And even
Speaker 1: if things stuck, you weren't guaranteed to have that product
Speaker 1: last for more than a few years before Google would
Speaker 1: either discontinue it or you know, cannibalize it for parts
Speaker 1: and put it into other existing Google features. Like I
Speaker 1: talked recently about Google Wave, a product that was, oh,
Speaker 1: Google Wave good for maybe two people, and it was
Speaker 1: me and my co host because.
Speaker 3: Because we were so cool. But it was useless.
Speaker 1: It was it was useless except we would use it
Speaker 1: to literally build run of show for a live streaming
Speaker 1: show we did once a week, and for that it
Speaker 1: was perfect. And I said, I literally can't think of
Speaker 1: another use case for this particular tool.
Speaker 3: The thing.
Speaker 2: Imagine if they'd have built Discord instead, which is basically mIRC,
Speaker 2: which is a twenty thirty year old piece of free software.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So even in Google's you know heyday, when
Speaker 1: the Don't Be Evil was still at least nodded to.
Speaker 1: It was a tricky place, but at least you felt
Speaker 1: like they were sincere. I felt that it was a
Speaker 1: lot of engineers building tools for other engineers, not necessarily
Speaker 1: for the general public. If you weren't an engineer. It
Speaker 1: wasn't nearly user or friendly enough. But I felt like
Speaker 1: they believed in what they did. I don't necessarily feel
Speaker 1: that today, largely for the same reasons you've mentioned.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a big thing that happened in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty. Ben Gomes, who was the head of Google
Speaker 2: Search at the time he was Actually he put out
Speaker 2: there was an event at Google called Code Yellow, where
Speaker 2: basically they realized that the search had a problem, and
Speaker 2: he put out an alert warning saying the Google Ads
Speaker 2: site is getting too close to search. They keep trying
Speaker 2: to mess with him. Twenty twenty, Prabakar Rakavan takes over
Speaker 2: his former job head of Ads at Google. That's what happened, folks.
Speaker 1: This it's not a bug, it's a feature. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not a problem, it's a goal.
Speaker 2: And what was funny was at the time Prova CoV
Speaker 2: was like, oh, yeah, yeah, God's doing a great job
Speaker 2: with search.
Speaker 3: Great job man. Zip.
Speaker 2: Now Google Search sucks so bad. Yeah, it's so And
Speaker 2: that's the thing. That's the emails I get about the
Speaker 2: Row Economy episode, where it's like, thank you for saying
Speaker 2: that I'm being confused this whole time. These things feel
Speaker 2: very obvious to those of us who were extremely online,
Speaker 2: who were doused in this every day. But I don't
Speaker 2: think most people realize because there's so much happening, and
Speaker 2: to your point earlier, Google news is not particularly useful.
Speaker 2: News is not something that's very well spread these days.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, I mean, well, I'm not gonna open up
Speaker 1: the can of worms, because I totally could. But this
Speaker 1: is it's making me want to start talking about things
Speaker 1: like recommendation algorithms and the evils they present. But we've
Speaker 1: done I've done tons of episodes, but I've done a
Speaker 1: lot that. Yeah, I don't need to retread that ground,
Speaker 1: but there are big problems that I think need to
Speaker 1: be recognized and addressed. I don't know what the solutions
Speaker 1: are because when I look at the issues of you're
Speaker 1: running a company specifically to keep shareholders happy, right, rather
Speaker 1: than to see any other corporate mission through. That to me,
Speaker 1: has its roots deep in the again the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: like there I grew up, and like that's where that
Speaker 1: kind of really started to take hold thanks to like
Speaker 1: people like Jack Welch and stuff and areas outside of tech.
Speaker 1: But the tech industry seems to have really taken that
Speaker 1: ball and run with it.
Speaker 2: They're rewarded for it by the markets, of course, is
Speaker 2: very profitable.
Speaker 1: It's what makes me have to ask questions too, that
Speaker 1: even when I'm hearing things that on the surface sound
Speaker 1: beneficial or benign, I started asking questions and then it
Speaker 1: turns out there's a darker side to it. So, for example,
Speaker 1: open AI and the push for regulations in AI, Like
Speaker 1: that sounds great, you know, the idea of, oh, we
Speaker 1: have a dominant company in generative AI that's advocating for
Speaker 1: the purposes of creating regulations rules for AI. That sounds
Speaker 1: like that's good. Like that seems like that's within the
Speaker 1: actual mission statement of the original open AI, which was
Speaker 1: presumably created to make responsible artificial intelligence implementations and avoid
Speaker 1: all the pitfalls that we worry about.
Speaker 2: Whether it's you know, except you were basically letting a
Speaker 2: murderer at that point dictate his own sentence.
Speaker 1: Yes, you're you're letting the person who would most benefit
Speaker 1: from making the rules make the rules right, which could
Speaker 1: very well mean that, oh, let's make rules so that
Speaker 1: it suppresses anyone else who's getting into the AI game,
Speaker 1: giving us an even greater advantage in the market than
Speaker 1: we already have while impacting us the bare minimum amount.
Speaker 1: And it starts sounding like you're getting into fringe theories,
Speaker 1: but that's really what's going on. It's really it's really
Speaker 1: the truth that you're talking about people who they have
Speaker 1: such a huge stake in the game, And I think
Speaker 1: that kind of applies to pretty much everything we've talked about.
Speaker 1: They have such a huge steak, that's the full and
Speaker 1: centive for them to do this. It may sound on
Speaker 1: the surface to be like this very kind of gracious approach,
Speaker 1: but in reality it's very self serving.
Speaker 2: Well, it's kind of like the entire open ai nonprofit
Speaker 2: side that when Sam Altman was elvested, was proven to
Speaker 2: be completely ineffectual. People should be really angry about that.
Speaker 2: What happened there was Sam Oltman was kicked out for
Speaker 2: reasons we still do not know.
Speaker 3: We really do not know.
Speaker 2: That's never come out. However, what happened was pressure from
Speaker 2: venture capitalists and Microsoft, a three trillion dollar tech firm,
Speaker 2: was used to put him back in. The pressure was done.
Speaker 2: That should That is one of the darker things I've
Speaker 2: seen happen in the tech industry. And I saw journalists
Speaker 2: saying this is beautiful. That scared me. That scared me
Speaker 2: more than anything I've seen in this industry when you see.
Speaker 1: That the other people who are on the board were
Speaker 1: members of the co founding group that came up with
Speaker 1: the idea of open ai in the first place.
Speaker 2: And the people on the board were replaced by Larry Summers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you want some gen x cynicism. Yeah, Harry bloody Sommers.
Speaker 2: Adam DiAngelo, the co founder of Qura, he's still on
Speaker 2: the board. Cora is currently full of open ai stuff
Speaker 2: ruining the platform. People don't realize this is the stuff
Speaker 2: that matters. These moments are the things to be angry about.
Speaker 1: Right and when people like the members of the former
Speaker 1: board are trying to take action in order to get
Speaker 1: back on the track that was originally intended when they
Speaker 1: were first forming open Ai, you know what they get
Speaker 1: for their their efforts is this huge backlash that was
Speaker 1: exacerbated by the media coverage of it, and then forced
Speaker 1: to not only reinstate Altman, but to step down as well.
Speaker 1: Right like, you had co founders having stepped.
Speaker 2: Down and replaced with Larry goddamn Summers and one of
Speaker 2: the sales force guys. Just like, replace them, Just replace
Speaker 2: them with Darth Vader, just go, just go the whole way,
Speaker 2: replace them with replace them with David Petraeus. Why not
Speaker 2: just go the whole damn way. I'm sure they considered
Speaker 2: Contaliza Rice m so they now have something in common
Speaker 2: with the Cleveland Browns.
Speaker 1: This totally off topic, but I'm reminded of the time.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of the Disney parks because I
Speaker 1: went to them as a kid. So even as an adult,
Speaker 1: while I recognized the shortcomings of the Disney Company, the
Speaker 1: parks have a special place in nostalgia in my heart.
Speaker 1: It's not that different from today, honestly, but this happened,
Speaker 1: you know, back in the nineties. There was a time
Speaker 1: period where Disney had replaced the executive level of leadership
Speaker 1: for the Disney parks with retail leaders so people from
Speaker 1: like the Banana Republican Gap, and that was a time
Speaker 1: where they started to do things like gut all the
Speaker 1: stuff that gave character to the Disney parks and replace
Speaker 1: them with stores, and to take out some of the
Speaker 1: other attractions and to put in like quick service food
Speaker 1: carts because they were much higher profit margins, right like
Speaker 1: they were running it like they were running a retail business.
Speaker 1: And it started to take away a lot of the
Speaker 1: charm that had been there in the parks. And to me,
Speaker 1: like I recognize a lot of that same sort of
Speaker 1: stuff going on in the tech world in general, like
Speaker 1: even tools that maybe once upon a time you liked
Speaker 1: a lot of the sheen has worn off.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean Google is more profitable than ever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: same with Meta, Like these companies are so much worse,
Speaker 2: the products are so much worse, but they're more profitable
Speaker 2: than ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah. When you're thinking about Google, I also think about YouTube.
Speaker 1: I think about how incredibly successful YouTube is, and I
Speaker 1: think about all the creators on YouTube and how at
Speaker 1: the mercy of YouTube they are. Like, if there's any
Speaker 1: change in YouTube at all, it has a disproportionate effect
Speaker 1: on the people who are creating the content there. And
Speaker 1: you could have someone who has really good content and
Speaker 1: genuinely has a good voice and something to say and
Speaker 1: good production values, and they could be absolutely devastated by
Speaker 1: a change in YouTube's algorithms or be completely laid waste
Speaker 1: when there's unsubstantial copyright claims put against them, Like the
Speaker 1: platform can be weaponized, and so it has been weaponized.
Speaker 3: I look at that.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, you have at the company level, a company
Speaker 1: that continues to just benefit financially larger amounts a year
Speaker 1: over year over year.
Speaker 2: Yes, and by making the product more annoying to use
Speaker 2: so that people spend more time on it. I mean
Speaker 2: it's frustrating as well. Because the fair question is what
Speaker 2: do we do here? And the answer genuinely is things
Speaker 2: like four h four media independent group of former VI
Speaker 2: some motherboard people at Jason Coblo, Emanuel Milberg, Fantastic, Semantically Colors. Well,
Speaker 2: they did a really great story about research thing that
Speaker 2: showed that Google results were getting worse. I believe that
Speaker 2: awareness of these issues will put pressure on these companies.
Speaker 2: I know it's I'm just running a podcast, really, but
Speaker 2: I believe that more people being aware of these things
Speaker 2: means that more things will change. These companies have gotten
Speaker 2: away with it because they've obfuscated the value proposition and
Speaker 2: the way they're making their money. Now that that's changing,
Speaker 2: I actually believe that they may stop pulling these things back.
Speaker 2: It will take time.
Speaker 1: I have some optimism, largely because I have seen activism
Speaker 1: and organization and unionizing starting to grow, especially in the
Speaker 1: tech industry over the last couple of years, which was
Speaker 1: unheard of a few years ago.
Speaker 2: Unions will also break the back of these companies, which
Speaker 2: why they're so scared of them.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it's why they're challenging the National Labor Relations
Speaker 1: Board and whether or not as constitutional.
Speaker 3: I know, right so discussed I'm.
Speaker 1: Not going to go into it because I'll start screaming
Speaker 1: into the microphone. Support your unions, guys, please do. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like seeing that has given me a lot of hope
Speaker 1: because it tells me that there has finally reached a
Speaker 1: point where you can't just sit back and not be
Speaker 1: active and not support your fellow workers, and to actually
Speaker 1: call out these companies when they are doing things that
Speaker 1: are hard for everyone other than the executives and the shareholders.
Speaker 1: And I think that is promising. It's not a guarantee
Speaker 1: that we're going to turn the corner and enter into,
Speaker 1: you know, the idyllic version of the future that Gene
Speaker 1: Roddenberry had when he made Star Trek. I don't think
Speaker 1: that we're like on that doorstep. But I find solace
Speaker 1: in seeing that movement grow in various sectors of the
Speaker 1: tech industry. And my hope is to continue to see
Speaker 1: that grow and to continue seeing people educate themselves, as
Speaker 1: you've said, and to advocate for those changes because ultimately
Speaker 1: it does benefit the largest amount of people. The people
Speaker 1: it doesn't benefit would be again the executive team, the
Speaker 1: c suites, and the shareholders. But honestly, I think they
Speaker 1: can afford to it will be fine.
Speaker 2: Think, Yeah, you'll make fifty million dollars a year.
Speaker 3: Hell, you'll probably make one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2: You'll be fine. You'll be fine. Make good stuff again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in the long term, you'll actually be better.
Speaker 1: I'm not done being angry at the tech industry just yet,
Speaker 1: but I do have to take a break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsors. So there's an online media company that I
Speaker 1: was a fan of for a very long time called
Speaker 1: rooster Teeth, and yeah, Warner Brothers Discovery announced yesterday they
Speaker 1: shutting it down. So after twenty one years, almost twenty
Speaker 1: one years, the company, rooster Teeth is getting shut down.
Speaker 1: At more than one hundred and fifty people are losing
Speaker 1: their jobs as a result of that. I plan on
Speaker 1: doing a full episode kind of giving a history of
Speaker 1: that company and its impact on Internet culture. But I
Speaker 1: look at things like that and I think that's why
Speaker 1: it's really important to organize, to have unions, to have
Speaker 1: the ability to advocate, because the problems of Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: it's more than just Warner Brothers making a decision, a
Speaker 1: unilateral decision to shut them down. It's not just David
Speaker 1: Zaslov wants to say money. It's also that there were
Speaker 1: a lot of bad decisions made over the last decade
Speaker 1: that have hurt that company in the long run. And
Speaker 1: if you have things like unions, you can help mitigate that.
Speaker 1: If you have people who passionately believe in what they
Speaker 1: are doing, and it's not just how can we make
Speaker 1: number go up, I think that you see a much
Speaker 1: healthier ecosystem for all involved. And I'm so tired of
Speaker 1: watching companies sacrifice things to get short term gains and
Speaker 1: then suffer in the long term.
Speaker 2: It's exhausting, and that is the right economy is the
Speaker 2: growth of all costs economy. It is a frustrating business.
Speaker 2: And the only way to fight is awareness because we
Speaker 2: cannot test people. But like you said, labor organization will
Speaker 2: do it too. Yeah, a worker owned business is like
Speaker 2: the facta like for or for media, like Aftermath. They
Speaker 2: are going to fight this. They're going to fight the
Speaker 2: people like Corey Hike who ran Vice into the ground.
Speaker 2: These people have names, yeah, and they should be said
Speaker 2: out loud on podcasts and in the media. The people
Speaker 2: that are responsible. David Zaslav one brother Discovery. He is
Speaker 2: responsible for so many great things not happening like Coyote
Speaker 2: vosus acme. Yeah for example, Yeah, that woman.
Speaker 3: Like he just literally killing media.
Speaker 1: So full disclosure, The company I worked for when I
Speaker 1: started this podcast was HowStuffWorks dot com, which at one
Speaker 1: point was part of Discovery Communications. So, as I've said
Speaker 1: on this podcast a few times, I am well aware
Speaker 1: of how David Zaslov operates because I got to see
Speaker 1: it up close and personal. And I can't say that
Speaker 1: anything that's happened over the last two years as its
Speaker 1: surprised me. I've felt discouraged. I mean, as a fan
Speaker 1: of those properties, I really would have liked the chance
Speaker 1: to see them. And it's a shame that for a
Speaker 1: tax right off, it means that they can never see
Speaker 1: the light of day. It's not just oh it's on
Speaker 1: the shelf. No, it's going to be like obliterated from
Speaker 1: the earth for no reason. Yeah, tax right off, that's it.
Speaker 1: But also do you need that tax right off, whether
Speaker 1: they need it or not. Like when you see someone
Speaker 1: who's in control of a company that makes content seemingly
Speaker 1: have no passion for content at all, it's just heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: And this is the problem behind a lot of the
Speaker 2: problems of Catalysm right now that the people running things
Speaker 2: are not making things for people. Yeah, they are making
Speaker 2: things for the markets. They're making things for algorithms. They're
Speaker 2: making things because they saw something on TikTok is. They
Speaker 2: want to appeal to an algorithm or a market. And
Speaker 2: it's disgraceful because this kind of works until it doesn't,
Speaker 2: and when it stops working, it's calamitous. Yeah, look at
Speaker 2: what happened to Disney with the streaming. The massive overinvestment
Speaker 2: in streaming. Things like that are a result of this disconnection.
Speaker 1: And to your point, it ends up affecting like when
Speaker 1: I was talking about rooster teeth, it ends up affecting
Speaker 1: so many people who end up without a job and
Speaker 1: the end of it when it ultimately collapses in on itself.
Speaker 1: We saw the same thing when the pandemic hit and
Speaker 1: you had all these tech companies invest in their infrastructure,
Speaker 1: which made sense at the time, seemingly, but then once
Speaker 1: the pandemic starts to recede, they realize, oh, we now
Speaker 1: have this huge investment in infrastructure that's no longer necessary.
Speaker 1: It's now we could view it as a cost as
Speaker 1: opposed to an asset that's downsize it's just such a
Speaker 1: massive waste and so many talented people end up being
Speaker 1: jerked around.
Speaker 2: The CEO should be fired. Yeah, but then.
Speaker 1: Well, and I've heard plenty of people argue about when
Speaker 1: they talk about AI, not generative AI, but AI potentially
Speaker 1: replacing jobs, Like, why aren't we looking at the C
Speaker 1: suite for that? Because that seems to me.
Speaker 2: I wrote a business inside a piece on this very subject,
Speaker 2: and people were very mad at it. People did not
Speaker 2: like that idea, most of them CEOs. Most of them
Speaker 2: were like, hey, whoa, whoa, I got sweet gig.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could see why they would be mad at
Speaker 1: the same reason why I get mad when I hear
Speaker 1: a CEO suggests that eight thousand jobs could be held
Speaker 1: off from being filled by humans because we can just
Speaker 1: fill them AI in the future.
Speaker 2: Here's a funny one for you, so read it. Read
Speaker 2: it laid off what ninety people just before their IPO,
Speaker 2: how much Steve Hoffman made in twenty twenty three, how
Speaker 2: much over one hundred and ninety million dollars? Actually, let me,
Speaker 2: I want to confirm that number.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a lie of schaeddar.
Speaker 2: Well, it was a combination like all these things between
Speaker 2: stock options and all that. Yeah, his total compensation exceeded
Speaker 2: one hundred and ninety three million dollars in twenty twenty three. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and read it is getting worse made and he has
Speaker 2: not paid a single person who actually dedicated themselves to
Speaker 2: building Reddit.
Speaker 3: That's the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these people better hope that there is not actually
Speaker 2: a revolution. Their faces are all over the internet.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's it's funny because every year
Speaker 1: I feel like we're just a little step closer. Well,
Speaker 1: this has been a great conversation.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm ready now to go out and start swinging.
Speaker 3: So hell yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to again remind all my listeners. Better Offline
Speaker 1: is the podcast. It's live now. You can find it
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. You absolutely should check it
Speaker 1: out and take a listen.
Speaker 3: Better Offline dot com and all.
Speaker 2: The links, all the links go there.
Speaker 1: Check out the newsletter too. Again, being informed is your
Speaker 1: best weapon when it comes to these sorts of things,
Speaker 1: and you know, otherwise you're just going to be left
Speaker 1: asking why is nothing as good as I remember it? Being?
Speaker 1: Like there are reasons why I'm not on well what
Speaker 1: is now X? But used to be Twitter? Like for
Speaker 1: a while, it was great. I loved it. It was
Speaker 1: a fantastic one.
Speaker 2: I have made my business, made friends, fallen in love
Speaker 2: on that, and now now it's going to the dogs.
Speaker 1: Yeah I remember getting opportunities to do things that I
Speaker 1: never would have done had I not been on a
Speaker 1: platform like that. But yeah, it just got so useless
Speaker 1: so quickly that I couldn't justify staying there anymore. I
Speaker 1: have friends who still use it as a way of
Speaker 1: promoting stuff, but I just found it far too depressing,
Speaker 1: honestly to be active on the platform, and for my
Speaker 1: own mental health, I step back. I was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, I did build an audience, but honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't even know how many of those people are still
Speaker 1: active on this platform, because that's how bad it got.
Speaker 1: So definitely check out all those links and ed, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for agreeing to be on the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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