What We're Fighting For

In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through the how the tech media misses the stories that hurt billions of people every day - and how deep down, most people really do like technology and miss when it wasn’t so actively harmful. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 2:10Speaker 04

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• 2:52Ed Zitron?

  Fix up, look sharp. I'm Ed Zitron, this is Better Offline.

• 3:07Ed Zitron?

  In the last episode, I know, I know, we talked about something I talk about all the time, the growing shittiness of tech and how the media is kind of playing into it. And the fact that all of this is caused by the rot economy, which is the growth at all costs mindset that means everything must grow. Revenue, engagement, time on app, everything at all costs, at all times, and how, well, the things you change to make growth happen, they're pretty terrible. And they hit you everywhere. And they hit you in a manifest ways, manifold ways, and ways that just fill you full of little poisons every day. And it's these little things that are mostly overlooked, mostly by the media. See, the modern tech clash narrative pushed by the media hasn't been focused on anything

• 3:47Ed Zitron?

  other than big, meaty problems, like Matt's Cambridge Analytica scandal, while ignoring the gradual destruction of the products we use every day. In the space of a decade, Google made its ads on search look near identical to regular search results, and only a few websites, like Search Engine Land, for example, seem to take that and the other changes made to the algorithm of one of the single most important sources of information in the world with any kind of seriousness. The fact that I, a part-time blogger with a podcast that runs a PR firm during the day, was the one to uncover and discuss how the ads team made Google search worse for money nine months after the associated emails were made public, it's just a glaring example of the misalignment of the tech media with what actually affects people on a daily basis.

• 4:32Ed Zitron?

  But let me give you another example. Nvidia, one of the most single-covered tech companies of the last year, has effectively lied about the launch of its RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 graphics cards, doing something called a paper launch, where stores like Micro Center received as few as 233 RTX 5090 graphics cards nationwide. While Nvidia did warn of stock shortages, it's laughable to even call this a launch. And I'd argue that the tech media as well, basically no interest in covering it, despite this being a very, very significant story about how Nvidia is misleading people about its consumer and prosumer graphics cards, which by the way make up billions of dollars of revenue and a large percentage of it at that. And it does not appear to be able to deliver them

• 5:15Ed Zitron?

  on time or in any kind of value or volume. These events hit millions of consumers in a tangible way. Nvidia, despite all its financial success selling AI chips to companies like Microsoft and Amazon, appears to be spurning one of its core customer bases, the one it built its name on by the way. And the response from the consumer tech media has been tepid. The Verge covered this by the way, Tom's Hardware has done it. Like, there are people covering it. And this is all despite the fact that PC gaming revenue is comparable in size to console gaming. It's 43.2 billion in 2024 compared to the 51.9 billion dollars the console gaming brought in, according to research from Newsu. And PC gaming by the way is one of the only things that's growing right now. It's growing 4% year over year compared to a 1% contraction in console revenue.

• 6:00Ed Zitron?

  This shit's really important. But things are worse, things are worse than I'm even saying. Nvidia's 5080 graphics cards, well, they kind of suck. And they represent how Nvidia is treating PC gamers in 2025, according to Paul's Hardware, a fantastic YouTube channel. And they skewered Nvidia for slowly reducing the amount of performance gains you'll get out of mid-range graphics cards like the 5080 and the previous generations. And this is a cynical attempt to make it so that anyone looking for a real upgrade to their graphics card has to spend upwards of $2,000 on a 5090 that they can't find.

• 6:35Ed Zitron?

  And there's more, by the way. And I can't really speak to this fully as I'm not super into the hardware space, but I'll include a YouTube. Right now, there is a massive scandal going on that tech media really isn't jumping on. Nvidia's 5090 graphics cards may have been poorly load-balanced. Sounds technical, right? It means all the power is going into like two wires and literally melting cards. This may lead to a recall. This is significant. I don't see anything on the New York Times about it. Guess something else is happening. Guess they're busy. But anyway, this is significant. This is really significant. This is like Apple slowly, over the course of years, reducing the efficiency and performance of the regular iPhone in the hopes of juicing sales of the iPhone Pro.

• 7:19Ed Zitron?

  Yet the only people that are taking stories like these seriously appear to be video creators like Paul's Hardware, who I've mentioned, and Gamers Nexus. Steven Burke, the fucking legend. Steven, come on my show, please. If you know Steven, email me at my web zone, [email protected]. That's [email protected]. Please, Steven. By the way, these are not small channels. 1.5 million subscribers on Paul's Hardware, 2.4 million on Gamers Nexus. And time and time again, these guys specifically, they've taken on real stories that affect real consumers, like gaming PC builder NZXT creating a PC rental program that actively conned consumers with rates worse than a payday loan company. And Steven and Paul, they protect consumers from active harm as the mainstream media

• 8:03Ed Zitron?

  chases their tails about whatever half-broken bullshit Sam Altman has farted out on their heads. Nvidia, a company discussed by what it feels like every single business and tech outlet has a documented pattern of misleading and shortchanging customers. Why is this not everywhere? Huh. It's almost as if the only reason that anyone's talking about Nvidia is that there's a herd mentality in what stories are important to the modern media, rather than any kind of relationship to the effects that these companies might have on actual customers. The mainstream media, especially when it comes to technology, does not seem capable or willing to discuss the real, tangible, obvious problems with the modern tech ecosystem, instead choosing to attack things piecemeal or blandly reporting news with as little context

• 8:46Ed Zitron?

  as necessary and with as many company quotes as possible. Look, people are pissed off at the tech industry because the tech industry is actively pissing them off. They're getting less value from the products they pay for, and they're paying more for them too. And they're aware that the free products they use are getting worse as a means of making them more profitable. Stories about distrust in big tech continually fail to talk about the simplest, most obvious problems. Facebook sucks, Instagram sucks, our app sucks, Microsoft Teams sucks, Zoom sucks, Google Meet sucks. It sucks, they suck. They're all like, I'm not even being polemic here, these are factual statements, these products are worse. They are worse.

• 9:28Ed Zitron?

  Everything feels like it's built to subtly fuck with us, and this is a problem that affects billions of people, one that's discussed so rarely that I am considered creative for writing a thousand words about the literal experience of using a shitty laptop, as I did in my newsletter Never Forgive Them, which I turned into the Invisible War Criminals. You know how the process goes, folks, it's way more fun when I read it, anyway. These problems are everywhere, they're everywhere and they're real, meaningful stories, ones that are more important than Dario Amadeo of Anthropic farting into a microphone about how in maybe two years AI will be smarter than humans. These fucking assholes just go and bloviate, and the media lines up like fucking idiots to go, "Oh, Mr. Amade, tell me how smart you are." Fuck you.

• 10:13Ed Zitron?

  I'm referring to Amade, I'm not telling the tech media to go fuck themselves. Regular people are not really, in my opinion, from my experience from talking to people, not pissed off at big tech for any complex or multifaceted series of events that made them pissed off. The shit they pay for sucks, the shit they use sucks, the shit they trade their data for sucks, the products are broken or in the process of actively breaking, and when consumers look at to these companies, they're told, "Yeah, well, what if you, what if you had some generative AI? What do you think? Do you like it? What do you think? Hmm?" And the customer's like, "I fucking hate that, can I take it off?" And they go, "Haha, no." But let me give you another example. And this one for my listeners, my the real Ed heads going back to the beginning.

• 10:57Ed Zitron?

  You're finally getting it. I'm finally going in on fucking Apple. The App Store is a complete mess. On loading it up, the first ad I received is for Truth Social. You know, the Donald Trump social network, followed by popular iPhone apps, including Bumble, which is a microtransaction-heavy dating app, Paramount Plus, Zoom Max, that's HBO Max, I don't know, Amazon Prime Video, and of course Tinder, another microtransaction-heavy dating app, followed by another microtransaction-heavy mobile gaming app, Madden NFL 25 Mobile Football, followed by another microtransaction-heavy mobile game, Clash of Clans, followed by another microtransaction game, Archero, followed by helpful apps for every day, which included

• 11:40Ed Zitron?

  Strava, a fitness app that I use, Letterboxd, the social network for people to review movies, StoryGraph, an app for tracking books you've read, Peanut, an app for mothers to connect with each other, and then some sort of app for discovering IRL plans near you called Pi and Partavol, an app for planning parties, immediately followed by an ad for Apple's own party invite app that specifically competes with them. It'd be so cool if we had antitrust. Now, the next carousel is for 10 great dating apps, the first of which is OkCupid, a dating app with a one out of five star rating on TrustPilot, with the first review saying that, and I quote, "Everything is designed to force you into paying, and even when you do, you quickly realise it's not worth it." OkCupid is owned by the publicly traded Match Group, which owns three of the other apps on the list, Hinge, Tinder, and Plenty of Fish.

• 12:24Ed Zitron?

  And the reason I'm agonisingly breaking down these problems is because I believe the problems of the modern tech industry are far simpler and far more pervasive than the media will face.

• 12:41Speaker 01

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• 13:09Ed Zitron?

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• 13:54Ed Zitron?

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• 14:12Speaker 02

  Empower is all about helping you invest well, so you can go out and live a little. And their free Empower Personal Dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets, analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals, and more. Whether you're saving for something big, wanna treat yourself, friends, or family, or meet long-term goals, Empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money, and Empower can help you make the most of it. Download the Empower Personal Dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.

• 14:46Ed Zitron?

  Apple's App Store, a trillion-dollar marketplace where Apple takes a 30% of almost every buck a developer makes, actively promotes some profits off of exploitative free-to-play mobile games that academics believe rob consumers of their right to self-determination, and an online dating industry that has adopted these very same ideas to turn romance into its own kind of free-to-play game. I'm single, by the way. My single friends all experience this. These apps are insane. These apps are completely bonkers. They are asking you for money constantly. They very clearly hide the best matches behind pay wars. This is what online dating is now. It's a fucking gacha game. It's a slot machine. It's a mess. It's absolutely abominable.

• 15:32Ed Zitron?

  And you know who makes a shit ton of money off of that abominability? Mr. Timothy Cook of Apple. The App Store largely promotes apps and their associated features from public companies with billions or trillions of dollars in market capitalization. And much like Google Search, only functions to bring you results that are convenient for Apple. And they no longer highlight apps based on anything other than shadowy partnerships and profit incentives. No, I do not believe the App Store editorial group is going, huh, what if we advertise the literal apps that everyone has? The apps that people know about already? Or maybe they just want more microtransaction revenue, it's that, it's so obvious. And this is the way that tens, if not hundreds of millions of people are introduced to software. And the software they're introduced to is inherently exploitative.

• 16:16Ed Zitron?

  It's like if every Kroger store sold bread that cost an extra $3 if you wanted to cut it into slices, or bacon that required you to subscribe to Bacon Plus if you kept it in the fridge for longer than two days. I'm not even being facetious, this is the actual scale of the harms being done against actual consumers by a company with a market capitalization of $3.5 trillion. When somebody buys a new iPhone, they're not thinking like me, or you, or someone else deeply aware of the incentives behind these companies. They blindly, because nobody really explains this shit or takes it seriously in the media, download whatever apps they see promoted by Apple. Consumers trust Apple, and as a result, trust the companies that Apple chooses to promote, at which point whatever malevolent mechanisms these companies use are more effective, because

• 16:59Ed Zitron?

  consumers believe that Apple, a company with a multi-trillion-dollar market cap, wouldn't allow nakedly exploitative apps on their phones. Except they do. They don't just let them in. They give them a comfy fucking chair to beat the shit out of your wallet. Apple could very easily use its unilateral control over the entire App Store to prevent these companies from existing, or at least choose not to promote them. Instead, they choose to both ensure and profit from their success by putting them in front of millions and millions of consumers every day. And I want to be explicit here. Apple could just not accept dating apps that use microtransactions. They could say, "Hey, this seems like it's just fucking with consumers." They could do the same with these mobile games that use manipulative psychological tricks

• 17:43Ed Zitron?

  to make you do these things. And it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous because it's not that they just allow it. It's not like this is just a, "We're being egalitarian. We let these companies in. We let everyone in, and as long as they apply to our standards." Also, what standards? That's fine. They're like, "Yeah, baby. It's Apple time. Join the Apple wagon. You wanna be on the front of the App Store? Fuck yeah. I hope you scam someone. Give us that 30%, baby." While microtransactions aren't inherently evil, when unrestrained, they naturally lead to evil outcomes. As I've repeatedly said, modern dating apps effectively require users to buy both a monthly subscription and piecemeal items that make your message or profile more prominent in

• 18:27Ed Zitron?

  an app dominated by spam profiles. Mobile gaming, an industry that makes tens of billions of dollars of yearly revenue, has become dominated by free-to-play games that require you to spend money to progress, using deceptive psychological techniques to push users into spending money in small amounts that naturally add up to much more than a triple-A gaming title on a console or a computer. I hammer so hard and repetitively on these because they make up the majority of the promoted content on Apple's App Store. Good lord. Good fucking lord. We would scream if a city was dominated by people just selling drugs at every corner, if our streets were unsafe. Even if they're not unsafe, Republicans still go on TV and talk about how unsafe they are.

• 19:11Ed Zitron?

  Somehow, this is okay, though. Somehow, this is okay, despite this being a direct portal into people's lives and into people's wallets. It's just disgusting. It pisses me off. And as I've said, to be abundantly clear, Apple had and has the power to kill any of these industries or at the very least, limit their harms. Apple controls every single thing that goes on the App Store and could very easily make dark patterns that manipulate consumers, which are, by the way, in the majority of subscription apps. You could just make them against the rules and harshly penalize the apps that use microtransactions. Apple could do this tomorrow. They could do it today. Apple could easily take a stand against these companies that combine microtransactions with loot boxes, which are essentially in-game content where you don't know what you're buying

• 19:54Ed Zitron?

  ahead of time. You hit a button, money goes in, thing pops out. You could, they could get rid of that. And by the way, this is a way of introducing kids to gambling. What do you think, kids go and use games like Fortnite and they just fuck it. Fortnite have loot boxes, I'm 100 years old. Nevertheless, Roblox, another title on there, principally aimed at children with microtransactions. All of this is great. It's so good. I love watching this. This makes me happy. And one could argue that it's the companies themselves, not Apple, choosing to make these decisions. But at the scale at which Apple operates, they're effectively a kind of government, and any government regulation controls the kinds of products and services that can be offered to a consumer. But Apple's App Store isn't like a regular government or a democracy. It's a kleptocracy, where sleazy companies

• 20:39Ed Zitron?

  like The Match Group, who as I mentioned, they own Hinge, Tinder, Match.com, and OkCupid, and Supercell, who makes Clash of Clans, they can make Apple billions of dollars in App Store fees by tricking and hurting consumers. Apple, through sheer scale, dictates exactly how the economics of apps and consumer purchasing at large to an extent operate. And it's their decisions that have allowed these poisonous flowers to bloom. This, I'd argue, is one of the largest-scale consumer harms in existence. There are hundreds of billions of people with iOS devices, and Apple has perpetuated and profited off of economics that are actively harmful, manipulative, and cruel, and will continue to do so unless meaningful regulation

• 21:20Ed Zitron?

  or media pressure makes them do otherwise. The law would require the media to actually discuss this problem. I can find no major media outlet that's run anything even close to an evaluation of the state of the modern App Store, nor can I find any condemnation of the very obvious harms perpetuated by Apple or Google with their App Stores, outside of the lawsuit between Epic and Apple, which hasn't so much... Been about the harms themselves, but the extent to which Apple has profited off of them and stopped other people from profiting themselves. Similarly, there's little coverage of the destruction of Google Search or the horrifying state of Instagram and Facebook. While outlets have had dalliances and little flirtations with the collapse of Search, Charlie Worsley at The Atlantic was earlier than most, myself included, these are usually one-and-done

• 22:04Ed Zitron?

  features, a momentary hmm in the slop of breaking news and hot takes. If these stories even happen at all, you might argue that one cannot simply write these stories again and again, to which I say, skill issue. The destruction of the products at the core of society, the fabric of society, is real important and should be in the news constantly. And like I said, they talk about crime all the time in modern metropolitan areas. This is a crime. It's not illegal, but I consider it criminal in the Zitron Justice System I will now be building. And please, on the Reddit, let me know other things that need to be in the Zitron Justice System. Companies like Google, Meta, and Apple have been allowed to expand their wealth and influence

• 22:46Ed Zitron?

  to the point that they're effectively nation-states, and I believe they should be reported on as such. The manifold ways in which Mark Zuckerberg has manipulated Facebook's users as a means to express growth to the public markets is a perpetual act of abuse, globally perpetuated. Yet it remains relatively undiscussed because the media refuses to discuss technology in a way that actually affects people. The same goes for Apple's App Store, and the same goes for Google Search, and shit, I'd argue, most of the modern internet. How is it not a bigger story that the mobile browsing experience on most websites ranges from awful to impossible to use because your browser crashed? And I think this is the thing that really confuses me. How the fuck is this not being written about? You see it any time you use your phone.

• 23:30Ed Zitron?

  It's everywhere, always, all the time. There's so many examples, yet tech coverage is always about news, or how to do something on your computer or phone that isn't obvious, without any acknowledgement that the reason that that piece has to exist, the reason that something isn't obvious, is because user interface design is terrible, they don't care anymore, and also you want your website to rank high on Google Search. And I'd argue that regular people are experiencing these pains at scale, and they're so frustrated because they know beneath the layers of abstraction, of warring incentives and abusive UI choices, there's something they want or something they need. And I'm not just angry at Mark Zuckerberg for turning Facebook into an actively harmful product. I'm angry that he's done so in a way that took away something that made the internet magical, in the same way that I despise Prabha Gargavan

• 24:14Ed Zitron?

  and Sundar Peshar for doing the same with Google Search. And I'm not just angry at one of the many different quarter-page-sized ads that block an article I want to read. I'm angry that one of the coolest things on the internet, access to varied media sources on the toilet, is literally obfuscated by the demands of growth.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Empower is all about helping you invest well so you can go out and live a little. And their Free Empower Personal Dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets, analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals, and more. Whether you're saving for something big, want to treat yourself, friends, or family, or meet long-term goals, Empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money, and Empower can help you make the most of it. Download the Empower Personal Dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.

• 25:47Ed Zitron?

  La Internet nous permet de faire tant de choses et ce que nous voyons aujourd'hui est un miracle technologique et un désastre pour l'humanité. Nous avons maintenant la capacité de parler à quelqu'un des milliers de miles à l'écart, de leur envoyer une photo, un vidéo, de ce que nous faisons, de rencontrer des gens que nous ne rencontrons jamais dans la vie réelle et de construire des relations significatives avec eux. En tant que créateur, écrivain, peu importe ce que vous me appelez, je suis capable de tirer des balles avec mon copain Casey à SoCal ou mon éditeur Matt Hughes à Liverpool. Et je suis capable de le faire à peu près à la même vitesse. Et comme résultat, écrire des milliers de mots et de idées et effectuer ces longs podcasts où je me rends extrêmement fou. Eh bien, Matt Asowski ou Matt Hughes finissent par éditer, tous avec quelques clics. Et je peux distribuer mon newsletter à 55 000 personnes

• 26:29Ed Zitron?

  et le podcast à un nombre plus grand ou plus petit que je ne peux dire. C'est un peu cool ! Je peux aller sur Blue Sky et tirer des balles avec des gens que je connais bien ou qui je viens de rencontrer ou qui je n'ai jamais rencontré dans ma vie et avoir une explosion en le faisant. Je peux m'asseoir dans mon salon et jouer un jeu vidéo pendant que je transmettrais de la musique de mon téléphone à un gros auditeur en quelques clics. Et cette technologie est devenu plus et plus accessible avec les années qui ont passé. C'est vraiment cool ! Et nous vivons dans un temps où la technologie fait vraiment, vraiment des choses qui aident des milliards de personnes. Ces entreprises peuvent innover et elles peuvent rendre nos vies meilleures. Le problème est que le logiciel a peut-être en fait mangé le monde et la croissance garde le cheval de logiciels. L'économie rotte se situe au-dessus de toutes les choses. Ce n'est pas suffisant pour Apple de faire des itérations de l'iPhone qui sont meilleures et plus rapides. Il doit vendre plus d'entre eux chaque trimestre.

• 27:14Ed Zitron?

  Et le logiciel qui se trouve dans ces iPhones doit continuer à générer des revenus mensuels ou trimestriels ou annuels, en permanence. Les sites web que vous lisez qui ont des adages pageirois, ils sont tous dirigés par des gens qui ne lisent rien et doivent voir que les chiffres de revenus augmentent. Et ils le font parce qu'ils cherchent des métriques de start-up dans les médias qui n'ont jamais, jamais fonctionné. Et c'est la même façon que le groupe Match doit toujours trouver de nouvelles façons d'augmenter les revenus trimestriels pour leurs applications d'adresses même si la façon dont ils le font est de les rendre coûter plus d'argent pour se connecter avec des gens et pour obstruire les connexions que nous nous connectons pour les trouver. Chaque une de ces idées, un petit ordinateur miniature qui se trouve dans notre poche qui nous donne accès à l'information du monde ou une application pour se faire amuser, sont extrêmement cool, mais les incentives absurdes de l'économie rotte et de la croissance les ont blessés.

• 28:00Ed Zitron?

  Et comme je l'ai dit... I don't hate this stuff. I love it. I'm a broken-hearted romantic. The internet made me who I am, and it allowed me to thrive both as a person and a professional, and it continues to do so every day, except now I have to fight seemingly every app and service to get them to do what I want. As I've said before, I will never forgive these people for what they've done to the computer, as I love what the computer has done for me, and I hate what the computer now does to other people and myself, because Apple, Google, and Meta need to increase quarterly revenues. Well, look, it's easy to give in to pessimism here, but I'd argue that the better alternative is to be loud and annoying and extremely verbal about the problems you see. Every single website you use has a feedback form, and I really encourage you to use them,

• 28:44Ed Zitron?

  as I encourage you to complain about these problems on social media, and to regularly say the names of the people who caused these problems to everybody you know. If you're feeling particularly spicy, perhaps write your elected officials that you believe the quality of digital products you're using is getting worse as a means of increasing stock prices, and add that doing so is anti-democratic, anti-competitive, and un-American, and very harmful, but really just say "un-American", and say to them like, "Look, this isn't real business. This isn't what America's for", and I realize why that might not sound so good right now, but maybe you'll listen to this in the future. But there's another idea. I think a lot of these executives have email accounts. Why not let them know how you feel? I'm not saying be horrible or rude, like [email protected], I think.

• 29:27Ed Zitron?

  Like, you don't need to, don't be horrible to these people, really, please don't. But I think you should look them up and let them know how bad things have become, and mention how long you've used them, and how bad they are, and how you're gonna keep emailing them every couple of weeks. Let them know. You don't wanna spam them, you don't wanna threaten them, you don't wanna be nasty. You just wanna very patiently let them know, because these people, they're insulated, they're safe. They don't have anything that really scares or upsets them. They read their emails. That's the one thing I know. But another thing you can do is be less useful. If you use Instagram, use it in a way that actively generates less engagement. Click through a few stories, then drop off the app. Don't use the feed. Avoid clicking or staying on any ads. Go through them quickly.

• 30:10Ed Zitron?

  And as Jeff Fowler at The Washington Post recommends, reset your feed regularly. Delete the data that these companies have on you regularly, and there'll be links, by the way, to this. And anytime a company asks you for feedback that isn't about a customer service rep, skip it. Close the browser. That data is only useful for them. In general, engage with apps less, both in the amount of time you spend on them and the amount of time you interact with their features, and obsessively read every single privacy policy. These companies make billions of dollars off idle muscle-memory-based use of their software, so get used to their tricks and work against them. And if you really don't use the service, stop using it. By the way, I'm not going to judge you for staying on any of them. I'm still on Instagram because it's where a lot of my friends are, and I like seeing what they're up to. Again, I'm not against these products in principle. I just hate what they've become.

• 30:55Ed Zitron?

  But more importantly, I want you to find solidarity with others against the rot economy. Every single person you meet is a victim. Every single person you meet faces similar problems to you, and every single person you know is likely pissed off at email spam, the collapse of social networks and Google, or the abominable state of modern business software. We all have this. This is a thing that all of us deal with. It's bipartisan, it's cross-cultural, it's cross-class, though I would argue it hurts people the lower their income is, much like most of America.

• 31:27Ed Zitron?

  And this is something we all face. And I know that it sounds kind of schmaltzy to be like, "Oh, you're fellow man", but really it is. I don't know how else you connect with people, but I guarantee their software pisses them off. But the reason that these companies have been able to penetrate and poison so many things using software is a combination of lax regulation and a docile societal approach to technology. They want... no, no, no. They need you to feel hopeless. They need you to think that they're too big, that they can grow forever or do whatever they want to you, and that there'll never be enough negative sentiment to change their ways. The reality is these people are extremely vulnerable, extremely unprepared, and they don't know how to deal with pushback. Tech executives are poorly media-trained, thin-skinned, and have never faced any meaningful negative consumer sentiment, largely because they've never faced any meaningful competition.

• 32:12Ed Zitron?

  They simply do not believe you will act in a way that doesn't benefit them because they've done literally everything they can to make it difficult to avoid or leave their systems. They need you to think that things will always be this bad, or that they'll get worse. And for you to just sit there and take it, rather than screaming in their fucking faces about what they're doing and saying it's unacceptable. They want you to give up. Don't let them destabilize you. Do not let them pump you full of cynicism, of pessimism, of the belief that there's nothing good, and thus that there can be nothing that will ever change, that we're in this unchanging hell. We are not. Going forward, one of my missions with this podcast is to give you the languish to describe what is being done to you and the names of those responsible for doing it to you.

• 32:55Ed Zitron?

  I fundamentally believe that anyone can understand the stuff I'm talking about, and that the tech behind it is not magic, and that the terrible things being done to you are being done in the name of the rot economy and perpetual growth, and that none of these things are mystical or require some insane background. You can do this. I talk to so many of you over email, and it's awesome, because you're teachers, robbers, you're people that drive into banks with a big car. No, no, no, no more criminal stuff, please keep that off the Reddit. But generally, most of the people that contact me are non-tech people. You all seem to fucking get it. I don't know what the problem is. And I want you to understand this stuff so you can make better decisions, and also understand that you are the victim of a con where you've been convinced that you were behind the times, when the tech industry just actually gave up on serving you.

• 33:40Ed Zitron?

  Our economy and the majority of public companies are run by people who do not face any real problems or do any real work, and the tech industry, run by similar people, has oriented itself around building products and services to sell them. These people do not use their own products, or if they do, they do so in such a distant way, it doesn't really matter if they suck. It's time to speak about these companies and this softer and plain terms. We are in an era of rot. Our markets dominated by a growth-obsessed death cult, so powerful that it's just accepted that the only good stocks are those that grow every single quarter. A good company is no longer one that provides a good service, or that will be around in 10 years. No, it's one that provides a service in such a way that they can jack up the prices or upsell customers, while also somehow getting more customers.

• 34:26Ed Zitron?

  If anything, the rot economy is kind of like a global Ponzi scheme, where the only companies that succeed are the ones that can continually get more customers and come up with new ways to get more customers that don't exist yet, even if the service or the goods provided are bad. It doesn't matter to these companies that the only thing that grows forever is cancer, and the perpetual growth could very well falter and then crash everything. It's short-term thinking all the time. And I want you to start seeing everything through the lens of growth, and I believe everything will start making more sense as a result. And these companies don't even have to do it this way. Success and being a decent, in the moral sense of the word, sparingly in the case of capitalism, you can do this as a company. These things are not mutually exclusive.

• 35:10Ed Zitron?

  These companies could have modest 2% to 5% growth each quarter. They could make good software that people like. They could do all of these things, but they choose not to. They'd rather hurt us, because growth is more important to them than whether our lives fucking suck. They'd rather refuse to maintain or rigorously test their products, especially their software, because investing in customers doesn't grow your customer base as fast as focusing on finding new ones. And these things have been happening for over a decade. And being able to explain them, for you, I mean, it's important. You need to be able to do this in plain English. Having conversations about this is important, too. Talk to your friends and your family and your coworkers about this stuff. They're all dealing with it, too. I don't care if my work's involved, just tell them what's fucking happening. Look, you can't change the world on your own,

• 35:53Ed Zitron?

  and you may very well go through the world without changing much at all. But in your own small way, you can, at the very least, contribute to a greater hope and positivity in the bubble around you. The ideas you have of a fairer, better, more inclusive world, one where people are not vilified for being who they are, are shared by most people. We outnumber them, and we outnumber them by an overwhelming margin. The demands you make of the world do not necessarily need to be realistic, but they can be fair. It's not unfair to demand a tech industry that is worth, I don't know, a few hundred billion dollars while providing a service that largely benefits the world around us. At the very least, we can ask for shit that works. Discussing ideas what a better world might look like, it's eternal. It's the root of humanity.

• 36:38Ed Zitron?

  It's what gives us light in the darkest times and what the darkest people in the world wish to rub of us. Not simply hope, but the ingredients of hope, the stuff that builds the foundation that allows us to truly believe. This isn't to say any of this will be an easy process, nor one without deep, dark moments. But at the very least, we can have standards and beliefs in ourselves of what better looks like. I know it kind of feels a little silly to hold up better software and technology as such a serious concept, but I think the world as it stands is suffering due to the tolerance we've had for the horrifying conditions of modern software, which has now been deeply penetrated into every part of our lives, in some cases leaving trash lying around that we find ourselves tripping over all the time. Software has, to some extent, truly improved humanity,

• 37:22Ed Zitron?

  allowing levels of connection that are truly special, both with those we know and those we barely know. It has, however, grown without restraint, without true accountability for those who write it and deploy it, and, let's be honest, barely maintain it, or actively and consciously striving to undermine it. I cannot promise you that we'll ever have solutions to any of these problems, but I can, as you can, say what a better world looks like. And a better world is one where software works for, not against, the people that use it. There's no harm in liking or even loving technologies. Liking it allows you to more articulately explain why you fucking hate what they've made of it. Expressing what good looks like, what you love, allows you to cut deeper with your hatred for those who have caused you so much harm. This starts, by the way,

• 38:05Ed Zitron?

  with naming those responsible for poisoning the world with software: Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Tim Cook and Phil Shiller, who runs the App Store of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, and the other invisible war criminals responsible for the destruction of our digital lives. They have nothing but their names. The tech industry is so woefully unprepared to deal with regular people having the language and understanding of their horrible acts. Crisis PR for tech does not know how to deal with real people saying, "Why did you fuck up my website", in the thousands or millions. These people have never, ever dealt with real accountability, or even a real conversation about what they're doing and why they're doing it. We deserve better, so we should fucking ask for it.

• 38:54Ed Zitron?

  Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com. M A T T O S O W S K I dot com. You can email me at [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot where's your ed dot at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

• 39:26Speaker 06

  Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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