Speaker 1: As media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Better Offline. Of course, I'm your
Speaker 2: host ed zitron, Here to Serve, Here to podcast. In
Speaker 2: the last episode, I walked you through the how the
Speaker 2: so called sudden magnification of Meta is really just them
Speaker 2: formalizing the rot economy, the growth of all costs bullshit
Speaker 2: that drives the entire company, making the products worse to
Speaker 2: grab more advertising impressions, to make Mark Zuckerberg richer, while
Speaker 2: also making the life of the average Facebook user that
Speaker 2: bit worse. And I believe that had Meta and Mark
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg been ever really held accountable, truly accountable in the
Speaker 2: last decade, that things might have gone a little differently. Zuckerberg,
Speaker 2: like many tech executives, has been allowed to destroy the
Speaker 2: user experience in broad daylight because the media, despite writing
Speaker 2: about Facebook as a product all the time for years,
Speaker 2: doesn't seem capable of writing the blunt truth about how
Speaker 2: shit it is, how bad it works, how everything is
Speaker 2: kind of getting there but nowhere worse than Facebook. Really,
Speaker 2: the problem, I believe is there are some people that
Speaker 2: simply want the tech executives to have power. They want
Speaker 2: to make friends with the rock stars, they want to
Speaker 2: be in their orbit to humor their ideas and celebrate
Speaker 2: their victories, which is so strange because said victories are
Speaker 2: usually just the rich just got even richer, and where
Speaker 2: that's not the case, there's just a lack of willingness
Speaker 2: to say that something is bad, and the consequences are
Speaker 2: that these platforms have been left unchecked. To be clear,
Speaker 2: there are plenty of reporters who have done great work
Speaker 2: reporting on specific parts of Matt's problems, Kevin Russel at
Speaker 2: The Times with crowd tang, or Jeff Horwitz and the
Speaker 2: rest of the team who did the Facebook files at
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal, for example. But there's been this
Speaker 2: bigger and nastier and more obvious problem that no one's
Speaker 2: really put down. In blunt words, the core product of
Speaker 2: Facebook has gone incrementally worse, seemingly every month since two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight. And while I understand that it's hard
Speaker 2: to just write thing bad every week, but I fucking
Speaker 2: do it. Journalism is fully capable of doing this in
Speaker 2: other ways. Think about it when they write about crime
Speaker 2: or wars. How is a social network used by billions
Speaker 2: of people less important than that, or less important than
Speaker 2: how many people have allegedly broken into a CVS cabinet.
Speaker 2: If a tanker overturned on a highway, spilling various poisons
Speaker 2: and acids and such into local water sources and burning
Speaker 2: people alive in the middle of a fucking freeway, that
Speaker 2: would be news, right, But somehow billions of people being
Speaker 2: actively misled, manipulated and harmed every single day just isn't relevant. Now,
Speaker 2: one argument might be, well, it isn't really clear what
Speaker 2: the harms of social media are. We have some reporting,
Speaker 2: but it's just not that obvious. Well, my retort's also
Speaker 2: fairly obvious and goes back to something I just said.
Speaker 2: The media seems fully capable of writing about the rise
Speaker 2: of retail theft, for example, and that led to a
Speaker 2: whole thing with pharmacies like I mentioned, locking in entire
Speaker 2: parts of the store behind plastic, And it wasn't obvious
Speaker 2: whether this was a real problem, but it didn't stop
Speaker 2: the media writing hundreds of thousands of words about how
Speaker 2: dangerous cities had gone, how dangerous, Oh, this retail theft,
Speaker 2: it's all happening. And again it wasn't necessarily based on
Speaker 2: anything other than editorial vibes. And whoever picked up the
Speaker 2: tab at Balthazar that week it was craven, But at
Speaker 2: least could we do like a craven thing with Facebook?
Speaker 2: Because if streets were littered with needles and corpses and
Speaker 2: fires and trash and violence, you would expect then used
Speaker 2: to cover that. Why isn't Facebook treated the same way?
Speaker 2: Why aren't social networks treat it the same way? We
Speaker 2: can do this paranoid, sinophobic shit. We can do this
Speaker 2: thing where we say TikTok is manipulating people with their algorithms,
Speaker 2: as if Meta isn't doing the same thing with theirs.
Speaker 2: But let's take it an abstraction above that and just
Speaker 2: look at what we're really dealing with here. Facebook is
Speaker 2: used by billy of people. It is a platform that
Speaker 2: probably has more effect on the people that use it
Speaker 2: than many forms of entertainment by congressmen, even by local officials.
Speaker 2: People are more aware of the things they see on
Speaker 2: social media than they are of like civic things, And
Speaker 2: I really want to be clear, with that level of exposure,
Speaker 2: with that many people affected by how bad Facebook has got,
Speaker 2: we should be treating this like a mass casualty event,
Speaker 2: like a mass poisoning. We should be looking at the
Speaker 2: quality of these platforms. But none worse than Facebook and
Speaker 2: saying what is being done to people? And it's not
Speaker 2: just about misinformation, it's not just about harassment, two things
Speaker 2: which are very, very fucking important, especially the harassment. It's disgraceful.
Speaker 2: It's disgraceful that trans people are now targeted on there.
Speaker 2: But on top of that, it's just bad, flat out bad,
Speaker 2: flat out harmful, flat out obviously horrible and unsafe and harmful,
Speaker 2: full of scams and spams. But we treat it like
Speaker 2: this cute little thing in the fucking corner. And the
Speaker 2: basic quality of the Facebook experience really is quite terrible,
Speaker 2: I need to repeat myself. And it actively deprives the
Speaker 2: users of dignity in industry to make their own decisions,
Speaker 2: and their experiences are constantly interfered with, and the majority
Speaker 2: of the content that they see is provided by a
Speaker 2: shadowy algorithm built to promote engagement rather than any kind
Speaker 2: of utility. This is not a fair exchange of value.
Speaker 2: If Facebook were a city, every second car would be
Speaker 2: overturned and on fire. Men would solicit you on the
Speaker 2: sides of the street for I don't know, drugs, or
Speaker 2: just to steal from you, or maybe they just try
Speaker 2: and confuse you like a carnival guy. Random people would
Speaker 2: just bark at you from their windows. I think people
Speaker 2: would just throwing faces out the fucking window, and the
Speaker 2: governor would be actively selling pardons on television every day.
Speaker 2: If that was happening in a city, that would be news.
Speaker 2: But it happens on Facebook. It happens on Facebook every day.
Speaker 2: The harms have been here for years, and we as
Speaker 2: the media, have done jack fucking shit. You can report
Speaker 2: on the obvious things, on the research on the harms
Speaker 2: that Facebook know, fine, actually need to do that. We
Speaker 2: need that journalism, But on top of it, we need
Speaker 2: to treat this platform as how harmful it is, but
Speaker 2: also how harmful it's going to get. And like I
Speaker 2: said last episode, it's been like this for a while,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of a comfortable lie I think to
Speaker 2: say that Meta's suddenly done something bad here, because it
Speaker 2: gives the media and society kind of a free pass
Speaker 2: for ignoring this gaping wound in the side of the
Speaker 2: fucking Internet. Two of the world's largest social networks are
Speaker 2: run and have been run with this blatant contempt for
Speaker 2: the user, misinforming and harming people at scale, making the
Speaker 2: things they want to see harder, defiant and swamping them
Speaker 2: in this endless stream of sponsored and recommended content that
Speaker 2: either sells them something or gets them to engage further
Speaker 2: with the platform, with little care as to why they
Speaker 2: be doing so other than the fact that all things
Speaker 2: are justified under growth. Worse still, there have been some
Speaker 2: members of the media that have actively worked to support
Speaker 2: and celebrate what Meta has done for years. You'll never
Speaker 2: guess that I'm referring to Casey Newton of Platformer, who's
Speaker 2: done an admirable job. I will repeat myself covering Meta
Speaker 2: in the last few weeks and the horrifying anti LGBTQ
Speaker 2: things that Matter has been doing. But it's also really
Speaker 2: important to note that Casey was cheerfully covering Zuckerberg and
Speaker 2: I quote his expansive view of the future as recently
Speaker 2: as September twenty fifth, twenty twenty four, and he happily
Speaker 2: published how and I quote again, Zuckerberg was back on
Speaker 2: the offensive somehow, not seeing anything worrying about the fact
Speaker 2: that Mark Zuckerberg's shirt referenced Julius Caesar, the historic dictator
Speaker 2: that perpetuated the genocide in the Gaelic wars like this
Speaker 2: is who he was months ago. Where was the alarm then?
Speaker 2: Where was the worry then? But don't worry, I'm not
Speaker 2: remotely done with you, Casey. Yeah, Casey felt it unnecessary
Speaker 2: to mention at any time how utterly atrocious Facebook has got,
Speaker 2: but he will happily quote Mark Zuckerberg saying things like
Speaker 2: in every generation of technology, there is a competition of
Speaker 2: ideas for what the future should look like. Yet the
Speaker 2: most loathsome thing that Casey Newton published was the following
Speaker 2: and I quote and all of these will be linked
Speaker 2: to in the notes don't worry ahem, but it left
Speaker 2: unsaid it referring to Meta what seemed to be the
Speaker 2: larger point, which is that Zuckerberg intends to crush his rivals,
Speaker 2: particularly Apple, into a fine pulp. His swagger on stage
Speaker 2: was most evident when discussing the company's next generation glasses
Speaker 2: as the likeliest next generation computing platform, and highlighted the
Speaker 2: progress that Meta had made so far in overcoming the
Speaker 2: crushing technological burdens necessary for that to happen. And Meta
Speaker 2: also failed to capture just how personal all this seems
Speaker 2: to Mark Zuckerberg. Burned by what he has called the
Speaker 2: twenty year mistake of the company's reaction to the post
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen tech backlash very weird. That that's not twenty years,
Speaker 2: and Zuckerberg, in this case quoting again, is long haunted
Speaker 2: by criticisms that Meta has been nothing more than the
Speaker 2: competition crushing copycat since it released the news feed, Zuckerberg
Speaker 2: has never seemed more intent on claiming for himself the
Speaker 2: mantle of inn Well Don Casey great fucking journalism there
Speaker 2: mate share, not a dry seat in the house, ridiculous,
Speaker 2: cowardly paper tiger analysis, stenography for the powerful masters, deep thoughts.
Speaker 2: This specific paragraph is exactly where Casey Newton could have
Speaker 2: said something about how worrying Mark Zuckerberg modeling himself on
Speaker 2: a Roman dictator was. I don't know. Maybe he could
Speaker 2: have brought up how all the company was, despite winking
Speaker 2: about how it's building the future, letting its existing products
Speaker 2: deteriorate as it deliberately turned the screws to duce engagement.
Speaker 2: Casey Newton has regularly and reliably turned his back on
Speaker 2: the truth that Metascore products are really quite bad in
Speaker 2: favor of pumping up various AI products and vague promises
Speaker 2: from Zuckerberg about a future that just arrived in fucking sucks.
Speaker 2: The reason I'm singling him out, by the way, is
Speaker 2: that it's very very very very important to hold the
Speaker 2: people that helped Mark Zuckerberg succeed accountable, especially as the
Speaker 2: attempt to hint that they've always been an aggressive advocate
Speaker 2: for the truth. J Newton is fully capable of real journalism,
Speaker 2: as proven by the way by his recent coverage, but
Speaker 2: he's chosen again and again to simply print whatever Mark
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg wants to say. Now, I'm going harden the paint
Speaker 2: against Casey for a reason, and it's because he wrote
Speaker 2: something at the end of last year called The Phony
Speaker 2: Comforts of AI Skepticism. It's one of the weirdest things
Speaker 2: I've read in my life. It's this sloppily stapled together
Speaker 2: piece of marketing collater or for AI companies, saying that
Speaker 2: not only is AI the future, but those that are
Speaker 2: critiquing it were doing so in this kind of cynical,
Speaker 2: corrupt way for attention. And he singled out one person,
Speaker 2: Gary Marcus, who's an independent critic. I've had my issues
Speaker 2: with Gary, but let me tell you something. If you're
Speaker 2: singling out a writer, You'll do it again. You'll gladly
Speaker 2: choose an independent writer and single them out. Now I
Speaker 2: should be clear, I'm doing the same thing with Casey
Speaker 2: right now. But Casey has a bigger audience than I have.
Speaker 2: He has more connections, he's more powerful ostensibly. But on
Speaker 2: top of that, when you choose to single out a writer,
Speaker 2: a writer who is critiquing the powerful, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Who do you work for? Casey? I'm not done with you,
Speaker 2: not remotely. I've got plenty more to say here. But
Speaker 2: I think the biggest question I ask for Casey Newton
Speaker 2: is who are you defending? What are you defending? What
Speaker 2: is it you do every day? Who are you writing for?
Speaker 2: Because if you're going to choose an independent critic, a
Speaker 2: critic who is critiquing multi billion dollar companies, to what
Speaker 2: end are you doing? So what are you defending? But
Speaker 2: let's keep going, though, because there was also another thing
Speaker 2: that Casey said that I just didn't like. Right at
Speaker 2: the end, he said, and I quote that he was
Speaker 2: taking detailed notes on all bloggers writing financial analyzes, suggesting
Speaker 2: that Open Eye will go bankrupts soon because it's not
Speaker 2: profitable yet. Oh Casey, Casey, Casey, Casey, who could you
Speaker 2: possibly be talking about there. I'm not going to say
Speaker 2: I think it is. I'm just going to say this.
Speaker 2: I do not like bullies, and I do not like threats.
Speaker 2: Suggesting that one is taking detailed notes on bloggers is
Speaker 2: an attempt to intimidate people that are seriously evaluating the
Speaker 2: fact that open ai burns five billion dollars a year
Speaker 2: and has no part of the profitability. I don't know
Speaker 2: if this is actually about me, and I don't really
Speaker 2: give a shit, but I will tell you something, Casey. Actually,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you two things. One, don't fucking threaten people.
Speaker 2: Don't talk about taking detailed notes on people. You have power,
Speaker 2: you have a platform, You have responsibility to young journalists
Speaker 2: as well as to yourself, and you seem to have
Speaker 2: given up on all the rest of it. You seem
Speaker 2: to have lost your weight. But then there's the second thing,
Speaker 2: which is, Casey, I've been taking detailed notes on you
Speaker 2: for some fucking time. Well. Newton's metaverse into View from
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one was deeply irresponsible in how much it
Speaker 2: quoted Mark Zuckerberg just saying complete crap, Arguably his most
Speaker 2: disgraceful act was October twenty six, twenty twenty one, when
Speaker 2: he wrote a piece called the Facebook Paper's Missing Piece,
Speaker 2: an interview with an anonymous integrity worker that attempted to
Speaker 2: undermine the Wall Street Journals reporting on the Facebook files,
Speaker 2: a massive investigation and expose of how Facebook knew how
Speaker 2: harmful their platform was. I should be clear the Facebook
Speaker 2: file situation involved Francis Horgan coming forward, risking her life,
Speaker 2: risking her safety. That woman is incredibly brave, as are
Speaker 2: the reporters that covered this. This is important work. This
Speaker 2: is necessary work. And Newton's pieces a disgrace to tech journalism,
Speaker 2: a disqualifying one, a seeming attempt to discredit by proxy,
Speaker 2: the bravery of a whistleblower that provided documents that led
Speaker 2: to this meaningful reporting. And it's utterly repulsive corporate hand washing,
Speaker 2: and its important context for any criticism that casing you
Speaker 2: has anything of anything ever again. And I'm furious. I'm
Speaker 2: furious because Casey could be better. I believe that Casey
Speaker 2: could actually do meaningful things. And we need you right now, Casey,
Speaker 2: we need you to fucking start working again. And indeed,
Speaker 2: I think the only comfortable thing I hear, or at
Speaker 2: least feel, is reading. How much of the powerful's messaging
Speaker 2: you like to share? Casey Newton argued that while AI
Speaker 2: companies have hit a scaling wall, it's actually okay. And
Speaker 2: don't worry, I'll have plenty of links in the notes
Speaker 2: that NFTs went finally mainstream in twenty twenty two. They didn't.
Speaker 2: He argued that Clubhouse was the future and that live
Speaker 2: audio was Zuckerbugs and I quote big bet on creators
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one due to and I quote again
Speaker 2: the shift in power from institutions to individuals. I should
Speaker 2: add that Facebook shut down their podcast service a year later.
Speaker 2: And he also added, and I can't see the full
Speaker 2: text here because it's payward, that metaverse pessimists were missing
Speaker 2: something because Meta's grand vision was already well on its way.
Speaker 2: He wrote this in November twenty twenty one. By the way,
Speaker 2: he also wanted that Meta's leadership changed its mind about
Speaker 2: its name because Facebook was not the future of the company.
Speaker 2: Maybe that was accurate, I don't know. He also wrote
Speaker 2: about Acxieinfinity, which is a cryptoweb three Pokemon clone thing
Speaker 2: that created a kind of indentured servitude. There's like loan
Speaker 2: sharks in the Philippines. That fuck, people have heard this.
Speaker 2: It's insane. And by the way, back by Andres and Horowitz,
Speaker 2: and he was claiming that the game turned gaming on
Speaker 2: its head. It sucks absolutely. I could go on, it
Speaker 2: shouldn't be this easy, man, It shouldn't be this easy
Speaker 2: to find a bunch of really weird stuff. Because Casey
Speaker 2: has also at times had real dalliancies with criticism. He
Speaker 2: has criticized Facebook, but it's also hard to take those
Speaker 2: criticisms seriously when Casey's also written a piece for The
Speaker 2: Verge about how Google plans to win its antitrust trial.
Speaker 2: They didn't win, by the way, and he printed the
Speaker 2: legal and marketing opinion of one of the largest companies
Speaker 2: in the world their general counsel, knowing full well the
Speaker 2: Department of Justice could not respond. How would they respond?
Speaker 2: The old Microsoft anti trust case ended up getting sucked
Speaker 2: up because a judge responded to a journalist like, that's
Speaker 2: the thing, Casey, use your power responsibly. Don't talk about
Speaker 2: taking notes, mate, don't talk about taking notes. There's fighting words. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the Google thing I brought up, maybe thinking why would
Speaker 2: I bring up anythim with with Google. This is about
Speaker 2: meta right, Well, there were emails revealed in the Department
Speaker 2: of Justice is anti trust against trial against Google Search, which,
Speaker 2: as you well know, for the man who cup Google Search,
Speaker 2: I've read a lot of Well, Google specifically mentioned having
Speaker 2: briefed Casey Newton with the intention of and I quote
Speaker 2: looking for ways to drive headlines on Google's own terms. Now,
Speaker 2: in Newton's defense, this is standard pr language, but it
Speaker 2: is within the context of what I'm saying, quite hard
Speaker 2: to ignore. And again, the reason I'm so fucking furious
Speaker 2: about Casey Newton, it's these part of a media machine
Speaker 2: that's helped whitewash Mark Zuckerberg and the people around Mark
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg running these glossy puff pieces with scumbags like Nick
Speaker 2: fucking Clegg and saying things like and I quote. The
Speaker 2: transition away from Facebook's old friends and family dominated feeds
Speaker 2: to metas algorithmic wonderland Jesus Christ seems to be proceeding
Speaker 2: mostly without incident. By the way that line I AD
Speaker 2: was published in twenty twenty three, two years after the
Speaker 2: release of the Facebook files, which revealed that the company
Speaker 2: knew its algorithmic timeline had a propensity to push users
Speaker 2: into increasingly radical echo chambers, and one year after amidst,
Speaker 2: the International published a report accusing Facebook's algorithms of and
Speaker 2: I quote, supercharging the spread of harmful anti Rohinga content
Speaker 2: in Nyamar amidst the genocide that saw an estimated million
Speaker 2: displaced and tens of thousands massacred. KC. Case wake up, brother,
Speaker 2: it's time to go back to work. It's time for
Speaker 2: you to do a good job again. Case Is spent
Speaker 2: years using his platform to subtly defend these companies, these
Speaker 2: companies that actively make their shit worse, and he occasionally
Speaker 2: proves he can be a real journalist. There is a
Speaker 2: whole series of articles he wrote about the acquisition of
Speaker 2: Twitter by Elon Musk that was genuinely important, fighting for
Speaker 2: workers as well as members of the platform's trying horrible
Speaker 2: things that Elon Musk was saying and doing. You can
Speaker 2: do this, Casey, you can actually do this. But then
Speaker 2: it feels like you slip back into am I being
Speaker 2: too mean to meta? I'm not gonna single Casey out further,
Speaker 2: and I really want to make it clear my frustration
Speaker 2: here isn't that I think Casey's stupid or poorly connected.
Speaker 2: Quite the opposite. I think Casey's quite smart. I think
Speaker 2: Casey's fully capable of doing this. It's why it's so
Speaker 2: sickening when you go and look back and see what
Speaker 2: he's done. And I really need you to know how
Speaker 2: important it is to have really great independent writers and
Speaker 2: not have them scared to do things because a guy
Speaker 2: who clearly has some allegiance with the powerful wants to
Speaker 2: scare them. You can't scare Gary Markus. Nothing scares Gary
Speaker 2: Marcus is actually kind of remarkable, actually kind of weird.
Speaker 2: But this isn't about Gary. Now. The media and people
Speaker 2: like Casey, and this is another frustrating thing as well.
Speaker 2: They're super influential of a public policy and the overall
Speaker 2: way that's I've used and judges tech as an experienced,
Speaker 2: knowledgeable journalist, Casey is too regularly chosen to frame fear
Speaker 2: and balanced as let's make sure the powerful get their
Speaker 2: say too. As I've said and I will continue to say,
Speaker 2: Casey is fully capable of doing some of the literal
Speaker 2: best journalism in tech. And I always cite his Facebook
Speaker 2: moderation stuff. It's really good. He fought for people that
Speaker 2: were victims of a horrifying corporate machine. Yeah, he keeps
Speaker 2: choosing not to do that, And I don't know what
Speaker 2: it is. I'm not gonna I actually don't consider Casey
Speaker 2: and Karaswish are the same thing. I don't know Casey's intentions.
Speaker 2: All I know is what he's done. And all I
Speaker 2: know is that if we are to push back on authoritarianism,
Speaker 2: that if we're actually going to tell the truth to
Speaker 2: people and help people understand what's happening to them, we
Speaker 2: can't keep doing it this way. We can't. And the
Speaker 2: cost of doing it this way is that the powerful
Speaker 2: of used people in the media as mouthpieces to whitewash.
Speaker 2: There's horrible, little fucking product decisions, these terrible things they've done.
Speaker 2: And I don't know why Casey I mentioned it. I
Speaker 2: don't know his intentions. I really don't. But what I
Speaker 2: do know is that as a result of Casey Newton's work,
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg and his products have received a continual amount
Speaker 2: of promotion for ideas and air cover for their failures,
Speaker 2: and as a result, public policy has been directly influenced.
Speaker 2: And it's just frustrating. It can be better, it should
Speaker 2: be better. And while Newton has acted for years like
Speaker 2: nothing was wrong with the quality of the platforms themselves.
Speaker 2: He's been able to write with clarity and purpose about
Speaker 2: other things. And if he did the same thing, and
Speaker 2: I would be I will be completely serious. If he
Speaker 2: changes his tune, I'd be so happy. We need Casey
Speaker 2: Newton actually challenging these companies meaningfully. And I don't know
Speaker 2: what would change that, but I will say, don't threaten
Speaker 2: fucking writer as Casey, don't do that. I don't like bullying.
Speaker 2: I won't tolerate in this fucking tech media. I know
Speaker 2: oint can squeak at you all I possibly can. Don't
Speaker 2: talk about taking detailed notes about people. It's greasy, it's gross.
Speaker 2: And I think that the consequences of supporting these companies,
Speaker 2: of making sure that when something bad happens they have
Speaker 2: a newsletter with one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers that
Speaker 2: they can go to and get a kindly story. That's
Speaker 2: just worrying and it can be better in case he
Speaker 2: can be better too, But the consequences here are horrifying
Speaker 2: and they're all also just reading these stories again just
Speaker 2: feels me full of bile, as if I'm usually that
Speaker 2: calm putting aside the fact that Mark Zuckerberg is this
Speaker 2: horrible career liar and this charlatan. He's deliberately hurting billions
Speaker 2: of people. He has been doing this for a while,
Speaker 2: and I believe that by being given air cover for
Speaker 2: so long and now having this mask off moment where
Speaker 2: he can just say, oh, give it's now, I would
Speaker 2: not be surprised if Zuckerberg turns on the media. Well
Speaker 2: maybe they'll help him. I don't know, but I think
Speaker 2: that where we are right now, with this kind of unvarnished,
Speaker 2: unrepentant Mark Zuckerberg, I think that all of the changes
Speaker 2: he's making at Meta, it's going to create this new
Speaker 2: era of decay. I think he is going to inspire
Speaker 2: tech executives unburdened by the kind of flimsy approach to
Speaker 2: societal norms and customer loyalty. I think he's going to
Speaker 2: inspire them to make their shit even worse. From here,
Speaker 2: I think Meta has fired the gun of the slop society.
Speaker 2: And yes, I came up with a new term, because
Speaker 2: this is the beginning of the shittiest shit that ever
Speaker 2: did shit. In an interview with The Financial Times from
Speaker 2: December twenty twenty four metas VP of Product for Generative AI,
Speaker 2: Connor Hayes said that Meta expects AI to actually overtime
Speaker 2: exist on metas platforms, kind of in the same way
Speaker 2: that accounts to each one having their own bios and
Speaker 2: profile pictures and the ability to and I quote generate
Speaker 2: and share content powered by AI on the platform. This
Speaker 2: came hot off the heels of Mark Zuckerberg saying in
Speaker 2: a quarterly earning school that Meta would and I quote
Speaker 2: add a whole new category of content, which is AI
Speaker 2: generated or AI summarized content, or kind of existing content
Speaker 2: pulled together by AI in some way, effectively promising to
Speaker 2: drop AI slop into feeds already filled with recommended and
Speaker 2: sponsored slop from real people that gets in the way
Speaker 2: of you seeing the things you actually log onto their
Speaker 2: platforms to look at. Now, this whole thing in the
Speaker 2: Financial Times it led to a kind of scandal where
Speaker 2: users discovered what they believed to be brand new AI profiles.
Speaker 2: Karenattiir of The Washington Post were a long thread and
Speaker 2: blue Sky, and a piece in the post itself about
Speaker 2: her experience talking to a bot she fairly described as
Speaker 2: digital blackface, with Meta receiving massive backlash for these bots
Speaker 2: that would happily admit that they were trained by a
Speaker 2: bunch of white people. It turns out, by the way,
Speaker 2: that these bots had been around for over a year
Speaker 2: in various forms that were so unpopular that nobody really
Speaker 2: noticed in twenty twenty three until the financial time story
Speaker 2: came up at the end of twenty twenty four, leading
Speaker 2: to better deleting the bots, at least for now, though
Speaker 2: I'm hearing reports you can still get to them if
Speaker 2: you really need to talk to a chat GBT version
Speaker 2: of what someone who thinks her a gay black person is.
Speaker 2: And I'm really describing the literal bot here live is
Speaker 2: the name? Really disgusting stuff. And I'm one hundred percent sure,
Speaker 2: by the way, that these chatbots are coming back, because
Speaker 2: it's fairly obvious that Meta intends to fill your feeds
Speaker 2: with content, whether it's entirely generated or recommended or summarized
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. And AI generated slop's already dominating
Speaker 2: the platform, and has discussed earlier the quality of the
Speaker 2: platform itself has already fallen into a kind of ultra disrepair,
Speaker 2: mostly because Meta's only concern is keeping you on Instagram
Speaker 2: or Facebook so that they can show you more ads
Speaker 2: or content that they've been paid to show you, even
Speaker 2: if the reason you're seeing it is because you can't
Speaker 2: find the things you actually want to find. And I
Speaker 2: keep repeating that point for a reason, because that's how
Speaker 2: meta makes money. And all of this is because well,
Speaker 2: like everything in this show, all roads lead back to
Speaker 2: the rot economy, which the growth at all cost mindset.
Speaker 2: That means that the only thing that matters is the
Speaker 2: growth of revenue, which comes from showing you as many
Speaker 2: ads as possible and you being engaged with the platform
Speaker 2: as much as possible. But I'm gonna be honest, it's
Speaker 2: almost ridiculous to call us users of Facebook at this point.
Speaker 2: We don't use Facebook. Facebook uses us. It's tripe, but
Speaker 2: it's true. We're victims. We're all victims of the rot economy.
Speaker 2: And I said it at the end of last year,
Speaker 2: But with Facebook, I really think it's at its most grotesque.
Speaker 2: We're not users. We are the used. We're the punished,
Speaker 2: the terrorized, the trick the scammed, the abused. We're constantly
Speaker 2: using this app trying to get things that we actually want.
Speaker 2: We're constantly forced to navigate through layers of abstraction between
Speaker 2: the thing we're allegedly using and the features we'd like
Speaker 2: to use. It's fucking farcical how little attention has been
Speaker 2: given to how bad tech products have gone, and few
Speaker 2: have decayed as severely as Facebook thanks to this near
Speaker 2: monopoly they have over social media. I would rather not
Speaker 2: use any of their products, but there are people I
Speaker 2: know who really only speak to me on there, and
Speaker 2: I know many people who have the same experience. Don't
Speaker 2: call me a loser, all right, I've gone to a
Speaker 2: lot of therapy. I don't call myself that anymore anyways.
Speaker 2: Is Zuckerberg and his people are intimately aware though people
Speaker 2: don't really have any whe else to go, which, along
Speaker 2: with a lack of regulation and a fairly compliant media,
Speaker 2: has given Mark Zuckerberg and Meta permission to do just
Speaker 2: about anything they want to increase advertising impressions, which in
Speaker 2: practice means giving you more reason to stay on the platform,
Speaker 2: which means putting more things in the way of what
Speaker 2: you want to see, rather than creating something you'd want
Speaker 2: to see in the first place. It's the same thing
Speaker 2: that happened with Google Search, where the revenue team pushed
Speaker 2: the search team to make search results worse as a
Speaker 2: means of increasing the amount of times that people search
Speaker 2: for things on Google, because you know, a user that
Speaker 2: finds what they're looking for quickly spends less time looking
Speaker 2: at ads. And that's just not how it works with
Speaker 2: Probagar Ragavan and said his name in a while. But
Speaker 2: this is why the app store on Apple devices is
Speaker 2: so chaotic and poorly curated as well, because they make
Speaker 2: money on the advertising impressions they get from showing you
Speaker 2: ads as you search for apps. Also, this is why
Speaker 2: so many products on the App Store have expensive and
Speaker 2: exploited in micro transactions too. Apple makes thirty percent off
Speaker 2: of all apps store revenue, even if the app sucks,
Speaker 2: even if the app tricked you and said, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to charge you weekly, they hide the weekly.
Speaker 2: You think, oh three ninety nine a month, right now,
Speaker 2: it's weekly. It's in a tiny, little little note at
Speaker 2: the bottom. Apple eventually gets rid of those people eventually.
Speaker 2: And I believe that Mark Zuckerberg loosening community standards and
Speaker 2: killing fact checking is just the beginning of texts real
Speaker 2: era of decay. You think the rot economy is bad,
Speaker 2: that they it's only getting worse. See it's Trump really
Speaker 2: inspires people horrible people by bulldozing norms, doing things that
Speaker 2: we would all agree we would never do, like being
Speaker 2: noxious and toxic and racist, and in the process moves
Speaker 2: the over window, which is the range of acceptable things
Speaker 2: in the society, further and further and further into the toilet,
Speaker 2: aggressively flushing it as he goes. But really, we've already
Speaker 2: seen tech's Overton window shift for years. A lack of
Speaker 2: media coverage of the actual decay of these products, and
Speaker 2: a lack of accountability for tech executives, both in the
Speaker 2: media and regulation. It's given these companies the permission to
Speaker 2: quietly fuck up their stuff, to make the services worse,
Speaker 2: to make more growth happen, and because everybody made things shittier.
Speaker 2: Over time, it became accepted practice to punish and trick
Speaker 2: customers with dark patterns, designed choices to intentionally mislead people,
Speaker 2: to the point that the FTC found last year that
Speaker 2: the majority of subscription apps and websites use them. I believe, however,
Speaker 2: that Zuckerberg is going to move the tech Overton window
Speaker 2: a little bit further. Look, he's publicly saying we are
Speaker 2: going to fill your feeds with slop, we're firing five
Speaker 2: percent of our workers because they're not good, and we're
Speaker 2: going to have AI profiles instead of real people on
Speaker 2: the site. You visit to see the real people you know.
Speaker 2: And we don't really give a shit about marginalized people
Speaker 2: to the point of formalizing it in policy, rendering our
Speaker 2: DEI initiatives, and people are too mean to men. These
Speaker 2: are the things that Mark Zuckerberg is using to signal
Speaker 2: the fact that he does not give a rap fuck
Speaker 2: about you or the users of his products, and he
Speaker 2: knows that, in his position of the CEO, is one
Speaker 2: of the most powerful companies in the world, let alone
Speaker 2: tech companies. By the way, people are going to follow,
Speaker 2: not just in tech, but are really in tech. Tech's
Speaker 2: already taken liberties with the digital experience, and I believe
Speaker 2: this SLOP era is going to be one where experiences
Speaker 2: will begin to subtly and overtly rot, with companies proudly
Speaker 2: boasting that they're making adjustments the user engagement that will
Speaker 2: provide better business forward outcomes, which will be code for
Speaker 2: make things worse so we make more money. I realize
Speaker 2: this also an obvious thing. I'm not saying that the
Speaker 2: Trump administration isn't going to be any kind of regulatory
Speaker 2: force against big tech. Trump is perhaps the most transactional
Speaker 2: human being to ever grace the earth. Big tech knows this,
Speaker 2: which is why all of them have been donating random
Speaker 2: one million dollar checks to him to his inorganization fund.
Speaker 2: It's why Trump is completely revert this position on TikTok,
Speaker 2: which is banned or unbanned depending on what's happening today.
Speaker 2: I'm recording this. It's back up. I don't use it. It's weird.
Speaker 2: I don't like it. Something's wrong there. I don't even
Speaker 2: mean with the app before it like, something's weird with it.
Speaker 2: Now you can't post about meta negatively. But tech knows,
Speaker 2: or at least thinks, that by kissing the ring, they
Speaker 2: can do whatever they want. Now. I should be clear
Speaker 2: that previous governments have not been particularly effective at curbing
Speaker 2: the worst excesses of big tech, though. I think we
Speaker 2: can all agree on that he has done some stuff.
Speaker 2: But even then, the qualities, there's no quality standards. Outside
Speaker 2: of the last few years, and specifically the work done
Speaker 2: by the FTC under Lena Khan Anti Trust against big
Speaker 2: tech has been incredibly weak and really has been pretty
Speaker 2: weak against everyone else as well, and no meaningful consumer
Speaker 2: protections exist to keep websites like Facebook or Google functional
Speaker 2: for consumers or limit how exploitative they can be. Like
Speaker 2: they can't just have vats of piss in your drinking water.
Speaker 2: Why is this any different? And yes, I consider spam
Speaker 2: a form of piss. But the media really has failed
Speaker 2: to hold them accountable at scale, which has in turn
Speaker 2: allowed the Overton window to shift on quality. And now
Speaker 2: that Trump and the general magnified mindset of you can
Speaker 2: do or say whatever you want if you do so
Speaker 2: confidently or loudly enough, has risen to power again, and
Speaker 2: so too will an era of outright selfishness and cruelty
Speaker 2: within the products that consumers use every day. Except this time,
Speaker 2: I believe these tech companies finally have permission to enter
Speaker 2: their real, dirtiest, sloppiest eras. I also think that Trump
Speaker 2: gives them the confidence that monopolies like Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft
Speaker 2: three sixty five, which is Microsoft's enterprise monopoly over business
Speaker 2: productivity software, things like Google Search and Google Advertising, which
Speaker 2: I realize remedies are coming for, but I really think
Speaker 2: a lot of these are going to remain unchallenged, and
Speaker 2: even if they're not, I don't think anything exists to
Speaker 2: make these companies start getting better. But what I'm really
Speaker 2: describing is an era of industrial contempt for the consumer,
Speaker 2: a continuation of what I described in the Invisible War
Speaker 2: and the Invisible War criminals from last year take decides
Speaker 2: that they will do whatever they want to consume us
Speaker 2: within the boundaries of the law, but with little consideration
Speaker 2: of good taste, user happiness, or anything other than growth.
Speaker 2: Now how this manifests in Facebook and Instagram will be
Speaker 2: fairly obvious. I believe that the already fucked up state
Speaker 2: of these platforms will just massively accelerate. Meta is going
Speaker 2: to push as much aislop as it wants, both created
Speaker 2: by its generative models and their users, and massively up
Speaker 2: content that riles up users with little regard for the consequences.
Speaker 2: And I wouldn't be surprised if the generative content is
Speaker 2: political too. Instagram will become more exploitative and more volatile.
Speaker 2: Instagram ads have been steadily getting more problematic, and I
Speaker 2: think Meta will start taking ads from just about anyone,
Speaker 2: and this will internal lead to an initial revenue bump.
Speaker 2: But then I hypothesize a steady bleed of users that
Speaker 2: will take a few quarters to truly emerge, and we're
Speaker 2: already kind of seeing it with Facebook. Go back to
Speaker 2: the rock combubble from last year. Sadly, I think we're
Speaker 2: already seeing the abuse. These abusive practices come out elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Both Google and Microsoft are now forcing generative AI features
Speaker 2: onto customers, with Google drifting business users by increasing the
Speaker 2: cost of Google Workspace by two dollars per user per
Speaker 2: month along with adding AI features that they didn't want,
Speaker 2: and Microsoft has now raised the price of consumer office subscriptions,
Speaker 2: justifying the move by adding Copilot AI features that again
Speaker 2: nobody really wants. The informations. John Victor and Aaron Holmes
Speaker 2: add that's yet to be seen what Microsoft does with
Speaker 2: their corporate customers using Microsoft three sixty five Productivity Suite.
Speaker 2: Adding Copilot costs, by the way, thirty dollars per use
Speaker 2: per month. But I also hypothesize that they're going to
Speaker 2: do exactly the same thing that Google did. They're going
Speaker 2: to knock up the prices and they're going to go
Speaker 2: but you've got free AI isn't free? Isn't free? If
Speaker 2: I have to pay more? Mate, that's not how free works.
Speaker 2: I should also be clear that the reason they're doing
Speaker 2: this is because they're desperate. These companies must express growth
Speaker 2: every single quarterly earnings or see their stock prices. Creator
Speaker 2: and big tech companies have oriented themselves around growth as
Speaker 2: a result, meaning that they're not really used to having
Speaker 2: to do things like compete for a customer or make
Speaker 2: a product that the customer might like. For over a decade,
Speaker 2: tech has been rewarded for creating growth opportunities empowered by
Speaker 2: monopolistic practices. And I'd argue that the cultures that created
Speaker 2: the products that people remember actually liking, Yeah, they're dead.
Speaker 2: They've been killed. And the people that did them, the
Speaker 2: people that built those products, well, they've been strangled to
Speaker 2: they've been pushed out of the tech industry. The soldiers
Speaker 2: of the rot economy are manifold, and they're willing to
Speaker 2: do whatever it takes to make things grow. And you
Speaker 2: are more than likely already seeing signs that this is happening.
Speaker 2: The little features on products you use that feel broken,
Speaker 2: like when you try and crop an image and iOS
Speaker 2: and it sometimes doesn't actually crop it, and when the
Speaker 2: copy link button on Google Docs doesn't work, when a
Speaker 2: Google search gives you a page of forum links that
Speaker 2: don't answer your question. I expect things to get worse,
Speaker 2: possibly a new and incredibly frustrating ways, and being a
Speaker 2: little dramatic with all that stuff. But these are the
Speaker 2: little niggling problems in your head. These are things poking
Speaker 2: you in the head as you use these apps every day.
Speaker 2: Don't pretend like this shit doesn't piss you off. Don't
Speaker 2: pretend that the little interruptions, the little problems you get
Speaker 2: from these things don't annoy you. And if they don't, great,
Speaker 2: I wish I could engage you the level of calm.
Speaker 2: I'm very mentally healthy. It may not come across in
Speaker 2: the podcast, but I find these things just very frustrating
Speaker 2: because there's no way in hell that the people using
Speaker 2: these products don't see them, or they don't use their products.
Speaker 2: Both of these are utterly reprehensible, and I deeply worry
Speaker 2: that we're going to enter now into the most irresponsible
Speaker 2: era of tech, yet not just in the harms that
Speaker 2: companies allow or perpetuate, but in the full rejection of
Speaker 2: their stewardship from the products themselves. Our digital lives are
Speaker 2: already chaotic and poisonous, different incentives warring for our attention,
Speaker 2: user interfaces corroded by those who believe everything is justified
Speaker 2: in pursuit of growth. And I fear that the subtle
Speaker 2: little problems you see every day will both multiple and expand,
Speaker 2: and that the core services we use will break down
Speaker 2: because I believe the most powerful people in tech never
Speaker 2: really gave a shit and no longer believe that they
Speaker 2: have to pretend otherwise. Now, like the end of every episode,
Speaker 2: you may think, head, that's all just very sad. There
Speaker 2: is a funny thing I'm hypothesizing happens. I think as
Speaker 2: crappy as these companies are going to get, I think
Speaker 2: users are just gonna stop using stuff. They're all saying, oh, well,
Speaker 2: they don't have anywhere else to go. We've got more
Speaker 2: Facebook and Instagram. They're fucked. What they're gonna do not
Speaker 2: use Instagram or Facebook. Yes, yes, I actually think that
Speaker 2: that's what's really coming. I think that these companies assume
Speaker 2: that they are unkillable. They assume that because they've never
Speaker 2: really been held accountable, not by governments, not by the media,
Speaker 2: though there are people in the media who have nevertheless
Speaker 2: never consistently accountable and certainly not for the quality of
Speaker 2: the services they provide. They're arrogant, they're lazy. There are
Speaker 2: probably startups that could come for them. There are genuinely
Speaker 2: ways that these companies can be stopped. And though they
Speaker 2: may be unrepentant in the dogshit they serve you, they're
Speaker 2: only doing that because they're desperate, but also because they
Speaker 2: don't think there's ever gonna be other competition, and history
Speaker 2: has kind of proven that that never happens, that there
Speaker 2: is always a bigger fish. To quote Qui gon Jin
Speaker 2: in The Phantom Menace, classic movie about trade. Anyway, the
Speaker 2: port are making is nothing's nothing is unkillable, nothing's unstoppable.
Speaker 2: Every empire, even the worst one, ends. There is a
Speaker 2: good chance in the next ten years that Meta actually collapses.
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg is doing this meaningless, fake masculine bullshare because
Speaker 2: he realizes he doesn't have much left. He may have
Speaker 2: all that money, but his platforms suck, his users hate them.
Speaker 2: He's twisted and hurt people, billions of people time. He
Speaker 2: knows that the party's ending. Online advertising is falling apart.
Speaker 2: I think things are going to get very interesting in
Speaker 2: the next years. And frankly, in the next months. But
Speaker 2: I'll leave you with some hope. Again, none of these
Speaker 2: companies are unkillable. Every single company in tech history that's
Speaker 2: thought they were died. MySpace died, and yeah it was
Speaker 2: a different circumstance. But Meta, while they may seem unstoppable,
Speaker 2: relies on advertising for ninety nine percent of their revenue.
Speaker 2: Things like ad blockers, things like even subtle changes in
Speaker 2: the EU about how ads can be served to customers,
Speaker 2: like the opt in feature for ads is deadly for them.
Speaker 2: If anything happens to online ads, Meta will die. AI
Speaker 2: is not going to save them. AI will not save
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg. And if he truly pulls the top off
Speaker 2: of this and says, you know what, I'm just going
Speaker 2: to serve them shit at scale, I'm just going to
Speaker 2: slop them up, slop them up, AI, slop in every profile.
Speaker 2: No one's going to go on Facebook anymore. They're already
Speaker 2: losing traffic. If they do that to Instagram, which is
Speaker 2: the one meaningful thing they still have, they're completely double fucked.
Speaker 2: And if you think that Google Search can't be competed
Speaker 2: with eh, I don't even think that that's the case either.
Speaker 2: I think the remedies of that trial mean that they
Speaker 2: have to start sharing their search data. All of these
Speaker 2: companies can be beaten with or without regulation, but it
Speaker 2: also starts with not using their shit anymore. I'm really
Speaker 2: working out how I can start deleting myself from these services.
Speaker 2: I don't know how I'm going to do it. I'm
Speaker 2: already going to delete myself from Threads after this. I
Speaker 2: need Instagram. That are people that like I can't talk
Speaker 2: to elsewhere. I don't know, not super close friends, or
Speaker 2: just people that like talking on them more than elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Some of you probably feel like that too. Don't give up, hope,
Speaker 2: all right, don't There's the whole thing about not bending
Speaker 2: the knee and all that, But a big thing that
Speaker 2: authoritarianism really wants from you is to give up in advance.
Speaker 2: It's not just about controlling you. It's about making it
Speaker 2: so that you don't stay angry, that you don't stay
Speaker 2: outraged at these people. I'm trying really not to tell
Speaker 2: you how to feel here. I'm just saying, if you
Speaker 2: feel the frustration with these companies, all that these people
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg especially have is their names. You think Mark Zuckerberg's
Speaker 2: going on the Joe Rogan experience and going m men
Speaker 2: and men are mistreated because he's secure. No, all of
Speaker 2: these men, all they have is their names. So talk
Speaker 2: about the things they've done. Tell people about how bad
Speaker 2: Facebook is now maybe they know, maybe they've never really
Speaker 2: looked close enough. I can't give you the exact skeleton
Speaker 2: key to life, but I can tell you things get
Speaker 2: better through discussions. Things get better through everybody agreeing that
Speaker 2: things should be better. It's a start. I really appreciate
Speaker 2: all of you listening to this show. Better Offlone's going
Speaker 2: to be so weird this year. The whole talk radio
Speaker 2: segment was so good in CES and I enjoy doing
Speaker 2: them in person at the beautiful Eyeheart Radio Studios, New York.
Speaker 2: If you've made it this far, you must really like
Speaker 2: well boys, So thank you for listening. We will be
Speaker 2: back next week. We'll be back next week with another
Speaker 2: talk radio segment. Thank you, Thank you for listening to
Speaker 2: Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline
Speaker 2: theme song is Matasowski. You can check out more of
Speaker 2: his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M
Speaker 2: A T T O, S O W s ki dot com.
Speaker 2: You can email me at easy at better Offline dot
Speaker 2: com or visit better Offline dot com to find more
Speaker 2: podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really
Speaker 2: recommend you go to chat dot Where's Youreed dot at
Speaker 2: to visit the discord, and go to our slash Better
Speaker 2: Offline to check out our reddit. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for listening.
Speaker 1: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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