The Slop Society

Summary

Better Offline: Episode Summary - "The Slop Society"

Release Date: January 24, 2025
Host: Ed Zitron
Production: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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Overview

In the "The Slop Society," the latest episode of Better Offline, tech industry veteran Ed Zitron delivers a scathing critique of the current state of major tech platforms, with a particular focus on Meta (formerly Facebook) and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Zitron delves deep into the detrimental effects of the growth-at-all-costs mentality pervasive among tech giants, scrutinizing how this approach is degrading user experiences, fostering toxic environments, and perpetuating systemic issues within the industry.

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1. The Decline of Meta and Facebook

Ed Zitron opens the episode by reflecting on Meta's recent "sudden magnification," which he argues is merely a facade for what he terms the "rot economy." This growth-driven strategy prioritizes increasing advertising impressions over enhancing product quality, resulting in a degraded user experience.

• Key Point: Meta's relentless focus on growth compromises the integrity and functionality of its platforms.

• Notable Quote:

  "[...] the core product of Facebook has gone incrementally worse seemingly every month since 2008. And while I understand that it's hard to just write things bad every week, but I fucking do it."
  — Ed Zitron [05:30]

Zitron underscores that if Meta and Zuckerberg had been held accountable over the past decade, the trajectory of the platform might have been different. Instead, unchecked growth has allowed for the deterioration of user experiences, increased user manipulation, and the prioritization of profits over user well-being.

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2. Media Complicity and the Role of Journalists

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to critiquing the media's failure to hold tech executives accountable. Zitron points out that while some journalists have exposed specific issues within Meta, the broader, systemic problems remain largely unaddressed.

• Key Point: The media often refrains from delivering blunt truths about tech companies, preferring to celebrate their so-called victories and innovations.

• Notable Quote:

  "If streets were littered with needles and corpses and fires and trash and violence, you would expect the news to cover that. But somehow billions of people being actively misled, manipulated and harmed every single day just isn't relevant."
  — Ed Zitron [08:45]

He specifically targets Casey Newton, a prominent tech journalist, accusing him of whitewashing Meta's practices by consistently presenting the company's developments in a favorable light, thereby undermining critical discourse.

• Notable Quote:

  "Casey Newton is fully capable of real journalism, as proven by the way... But he's chosen again and again to simply print whatever Mark Zuckerberg wants to say."
  — Ed Zitron [12:30]

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3. The Growth-At-All-Costs Mentality

Zitron elaborates on the detrimental mindset driving tech companies, where exponential growth is prioritized over sustainable and ethical practices. This approach leads to the implementation of "dark patterns" in user interfaces, designed to maximize engagement and ad revenue at the expense of user satisfaction and well-being.

• Key Point: The relentless pursuit of growth results in exploitative design choices that manipulate user behavior and degrade product quality.

• Notable Quote:

  "The rot economy's bad today? It's only getting worse. [...] We're victims of the rot economy."
  — Ed Zitron [25:00]

He likens the state of Meta's platforms to a city rife with chaos and neglect, emphasizing how these platforms undermine user dignity and autonomy.

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4. The Invasion of AI and Content Degradation

A focal point of the episode is the integration of AI-generated content into Meta's platforms. Zitron argues that this move will exacerbate the existing problems by flooding feeds with low-quality, algorithm-driven content, further diminishing the user experience.

• Key Point: AI integration is poised to introduce an overwhelming amount of irrelevant and harmful content, referred to by Zitron as "AI slop."

• Notable Quote:

  "Meta expects AI to actually, over time exist on Meta's platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do. [...] AI slop in every profile."
  — Ed Zitron [27:45]

He discusses incidents where AI-generated profiles misrepresented real identities, contributing to misinformation and user deception.

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5. Predictions for the Future of Tech

Zitron presents a bleak outlook for the tech industry's future, forecasting an era of further decline unless significant changes are implemented. He contends that without accountability and a shift away from the growth-at-all-costs paradigm, tech companies will continue to prioritize profits over ethics, leading to widespread user distrust and platform degradation.

• Key Point: The unchecked growth mindset will lead to the eventual collapse of major tech platforms as user backlash and regulatory pressures mount.

• Notable Quote:

  "Nothing's kill, nothing is unkillable. Nothing's unstoppable. Every empire, even the worst one, ends."
  — Ed Zitron [48:30]

Zitron expresses optimism that user disengagement and potential regulatory actions could bring about meaningful change, urging listeners to take active roles in demanding better from tech companies.

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6. Conclusion and Call to Action

In his concluding remarks, Zitron reiterates the urgent need for the media, regulators, and users to hold tech giants accountable. He encourages listeners to engage in discussions, resist the normalization of poor-quality tech products, and support alternative platforms that prioritize user well-being over relentless growth.

• Key Point: Collective action and awareness are essential to dismantle the destructive practices of major tech companies and foster a healthier digital ecosystem.

• Notable Quote:

  "Tell people about how bad Facebook is now. Maybe they know. Maybe they've never really looked close enough."
  — Ed Zitron [50:15]

He calls for a paradigm shift in how society interacts with and perceives tech platforms, emphasizing that change is possible through persistent effort and critical engagement.

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Final Thoughts

"The Slop Society" serves as a potent critique of the current state of the tech industry, highlighting the urgent need for accountability, ethical practices, and a reevaluation of what constitutes successful growth. Ed Zitron's passionate discourse challenges listeners to reconsider their relationship with major tech platforms and advocate for a more responsible and user-centric digital future.

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Connect with Better Offline

For more insights and in-depth discussions on the intersection of technology and society, tune in to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform. Stay informed and join the conversation about the future shaped by tech's most powerful players.

Transcript

[Osvaloshin]

Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture, and everywhere in between. Join Us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This past season on my podcast, here's the Thing, I spoke with more actors, musicians, policy makers, and so many other fascinating people like writer and actor Dan Aykroyd.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I love writing more than anything. You're left alone, you know, you do three hours in the morning, you write three hours in the afternoon. Go pick up a kid from school and write at night and after nine hours you come out with seven pages and then you're moving on.

[Alec Baldwin]

Listen to here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you.

[Tisha Allen]

Get your podcasts, you are cordially invited to the hottest party in professional sports. I'm Tisha Allen, former golf professional and the host of welcome to the Party, your newest obsession about the wonderful world that is women's golf. Featuring interviews with top players on tour, tips to help improve your swing, and and the craziest stories to come out of your friendly neighborhood country club. Welcome to the Party with Tisha Allen is an iHeart woman's fourth production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to welcome to the Party that's P A R T E e on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unknown]

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[Ed Zitron]

Media. Hello and welcome to Better Offline. Of course, I'm your host, Ed Zitron. Better Offline Here to serve, Here to podcast. In the last episode I walked you through the how the so called sudden magification of meta is really just them formalizing the rot economy, the growth at all cost bullshit that drives the entire company making the products worse to grab more advertising impressions, Mark Zuckerberg richer, while also making the life of the average Facebook user that bit worse. And I believe that had Meta and Mark Zuckerberg been ever really held accountable, truly accountable, in the last decade, that things might have gone a little differently. Zuckerberg, like many tech executives, has been allowed to destroy the user experience in broad daylight because the media, despite writing about Facebook as a product all the time for years, doesn't seem capable of writing the blunt truth about how shit it is, how bad it works, how everything is kind of getting there, but nowhere worse than Facebook, really. The problem, I believe, is there are some people that simply want the tech executives to have power. They want to make friends with the rockstars. They want to be in their orbit, to humor their ideas and celebrate their victories. Which is so strange because said victories are usually just the rich just got even richer. And where that's not the case, there's just a lack of willingness to say that something is bad and the consequences are that these platforms have been left unchecked. To be clear, there are plenty of reporters who have done great work reporting on specific parts of Meta's problems. Kevin Rusol at the Times with Crowdtangle, Jeff Horwitz, and the rest of the team who did the Facebook files at the Wall Street Journal, for example. But there's been this bigger, nastier, and more obvious problem that no one's really put down. In blunt words, the core product of Facebook has gone incrementally worse seemingly every month since 2008. And while I understand that it's hard to just write thing bad every week, but I fucking do it. Journalism is fully capable of doing this in other ways. Think about it. When they write about crime or wars, how is a social network used by billions of people less important than that? Or less important than how many people have allegedly broken into a CVS cabinet? If a tanker overturned on a highway, spilling various poisons and acids and such into local water sources, and burning people alive in the middle of a fucking freeway, that would be news, right? But somehow billions of people being actively misled, manipulated and harmed every single day just isn't relevant. Now, one argument might be. Well, it isn't really clear what the harms of social media are. We have some reporting, but it's just not that obvious. Well, my retort's also fairly obvious and goes back to something I just said. The media seems fully capable of writing about the rise of retail theft, for example, and that led to a whole Thing with pharmacies, like I mentioned, locking entire parts of the store behind plastic. And it wasn't obvious whether this was a real problem, but it didn't stop the media writing hundreds of thousands of words about how dangerous cities had got, how dangerous. All this retail theft. It's all happening. And again, it wasn't necessarily based on anything other than editorial vibes and whoever picked up the tab at Balthazar that week. It was craven, but at least could we, could we do like a craven thing with Facebook? Because if streets were littered with needles and corpses and fires and trash and violence, you would expect the news to cover that. Why isn't Facebook treated the same way? Why aren't social networks treated the same way? We can do this paranoid xenophobic shit. We can do this thing where we say TikTok is manipulating people with their algorithms, as if Meta isn't doing the same thing with theirs. But let's take it an abstraction above that and just look at what we're really dealing with here. Facebook is used by billions of people. It is a platform that probably has more effect on the people that use it than many forms of entertainment by congressmen, even by local officials. People are more aware of the things they see on social media than they are of, like, civic things. And I really want to be clear, with that level of exposure, with that many people affected by how bad Facebook has got, we should be treating this like a mass casualty event, like a mass poisoning. We should be looking at the quality of these platforms, but none worse than Facebook and saying what is being done to people. And it's not just about misinformation. It's not just about harassment. Two things which are very, very fucking important, especially the harassment. It's disgraceful. It's disgraceful that trans people are now targeted on there, but on top of that, it's just bad. Flat out bad, flat out harmful, flat out obviously horrible and unsafe and harmful, full of scams and spams. But we treat it like this cute little thing in the fucking corner. And the basic quality of the Facebook experience really is quite terrible. I need to repeat myself. And it actively deprives users of dignity and industry to make their own decisions. And their experiences are constantly interfered with. And the majority of the content that they see is provided by a shadowy algorithm. Algorithm built to promote engagement rather than any kind of utility. This is not a fair exchange of value. If Facebook were a city, every second car would be overturned and on fire. Men would solicit you on the sides of the street for I don't know, drugs or just to steal from you. Or maybe they just try and confuse you like a carnival guy. Random people would just bark at you from their windows. They think people be just throwing feces out the fucking window. And the governor would be actively selling pardons on television every day. If that was happening in a city, that would be news. But it happens on Facebook. It happens on Facebook every day. The harms have been here for years and we as the media have done jack fucking shit. You can report on the obvious things, on the research, on the harms that Facebook knows. Fine, actually need to do that. We need that journalism. But on top of it, we need to treat this platform as how harmful it is, but also how harmful it's going to get. And like I said last episode, it's been like this for a while. And it's kind of a comfortable lie, I think, to say that Meta's suddenly done something bad here because it gives the media and society kind of a free pass for ignoring this gaping wound in the side of the fucking Internet. Two of the world's largest social networks are run and have been run with this blatant contempt for the user, misinforming and harming people at scale, making the things they want to see harder to find, and swamping them in this endless stream of sponsored and recommended content that either or gets them to engage further with the platform with little care as to why they'd be doing so, other than the fact that all things are justified under growth. Worse still, there have been some members of the media that have actively worked to support and celebrate what Meta has done for years. You'll never guess that I'm referring to Casey Newton of Platformer, who's done an admirable job. I will repeat myself covering Meta in the last few weeks and the horrifying anti LGBTQ things that Meta has been doing. But it's also really important to note that Casey was cheerfully covering Zuckerberg, and I quote, his expansive view of the future as recently as September 25, 2024, and he happily published how, and I quote again, Zuckerberg was back on the offensive, somehow not seeing anything, worrying about the fact that Mark Zuckerberg's shirt referenced Julius Caesar, the historic dictator that perpetuated a genocide in the Gallic Wars. Like this is who he was months ago. Where was the alarm then? Where was the worry then? But don't worry, I'm not remotely done with you, Casey yet. Casey felt it unnecessary to mention at any time how utterly atrocious Facebook has Got. But he'll happily quote Mark Zuckerberg saying things like in every generation of technology there is a competition of ideas for what the future should look like. Yet the most loathsome thing that Casey Newton published was the following. And I quote and all of these will be linked to in the notes. Don't worry. Ahem. But it left unsaid, it referring to Meta, what seemed to be the larger point, which is that Zuckerberg intends to crush his rivals, particularly Apple, into a fine pulp. His swagger on stage was most evident when discussing the company's next generation glasses as the likeliest next generation computing platform, and highlighted the progress that Meta had made so far in overcoming the crushing technological burdens necessary for that to happen. And Meta also failed to capture just how personal all this seems to Mark Zuckerberg, burned by what he has called the 20 year mistake of the company's reaction to the post2016 tech backlash. Very weird that that's not 20 years. And Zuckerberg, in this case quoting again, is long haunted by criticisms that Meta has been nothing more than the competition crushing copycat since it released the news feed, Zuckerberg has never seemed more intent on claiming for himself the mantle of innovator. Well done, Casey. Great fucking journalism there, mate. Shit. Not a dry seat in the house. Ridiculous. Cowardly paper tiger analysis. Stenography for the powerful master's deep thoughts. This specific paragraph is exactly where Casey Newton could have said something about how worrying Mark Zuckerberg modeling himself on a Roman dictator was. I don't know, maybe he could have brought up how the company was despite oinking about how it's building the future, letting its existing products deteriorate as it deliberately turn the screws to juice engagement. Casey Newton has regularly and reliably turned his back on the truth that Meta's core products are really quite bad in favor of pumping up various AI products and vague promises from Zuckerberg about a future that just arrived and fucking sucks. The reason I'm singling him out, by the way, is that it's very, very, very, very important to hold the people that helped Mark Zuckerberg succeed accountable. Especially as they attempt to hint that they've always been an aggressive advocate for the truth. Casey Newton is fully capable of real journalism, as proven, by the way, by his recent coverage. But he's chosen again and again to simply print whatever Mark Zuckerberg wants to say. Now I'm going hard in the paint against Casey for a reason, and it's because he wrote something at the end of last year called the Phony Comforts of AI Skepticism. It's one of the weirdest things I've read in my life. It's this sloppily stapled together piece of marketing collateral for AI companies, saying that not only is AI the future, but those that are critiquing it were doing so in this kind of cynical, corrupt way for attention. And he singled out one person, Gary Marcus, who's an independent critic. I've had my issues with Gary, but let me tell you something. If you're singling out a writer, you'll do it again. You will gladly choose an independent writer and single them out. Now, I should be clear, I'm doing the same thing with Casey right now. But Casey has a bigger audience than I have. He has more connections, he's more powerful, ostensibly. But on top of that, when you choose to single out a writer, a writer who is critiquing the powerful, what are you doing? Who do you work for, Casey? I'm not done with you. Not remotely. I've got plenty more to say here, but I think the biggest question I ask for Casey Newton is who are you defending? What are you defending? What is it you do every day? Who are you writing for? Because if you're going to choose an independent critic, a critic who is critiquing multi billion dollar companies, to what end are you doing? So, what are you defending? But let's keep going, though, because there was also another thing that Casey said that I just didn't like. Right at the end, he said, and I quote, that he was taking detailed notes on all bloggers writing financial analyses, suggesting that OpenAI will go bankrupt soon because it's not profitable yet. Oh, Casey, Casey, Casey, Casey. Who could you possibly be talking about there? I'm not going to say who I think it is. I'm just going to say this. I do not like bullies and I do not like threats. Suggesting that one is taking detailed notes on bloggers is an attempt to intimidate people that are seriously evaluating the fact that OpenAI burns $5 billion a year and has no path to profitability. I don't know if this is actually about me, and I don't really give a shit, but I will tell you something, Casey, actually, I'll tell you two things. One, don't fucking threaten people. Don't talk about taking detailed notes on people. You have power. You have a platform. You have responsibility to young journalists as well as to yourself. And you seem to have given up on all the rest of it. You seem to have lost your way. But then there's the second thing, which is Casey, I've been taking detailed notes on you for some fucking time.

[Unknown]

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You ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons and birds. But what if there's something else, something much more ominous that appears under the COVID of night? Silent, unseen, watching. They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road, or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones. Or are they?

[Alec Baldwin]

We used to word drone because it was comfortable to other people.

[Ed Zitron]

One minute was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh, that is beyond creepy.

[Unknown]

Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yes, absolutely.

[Unknown]

Listen to Obscurum Invasion of the Drones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Osvaloshin]

Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvaloshin, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued.

[Cara Price]

And I'm Cara Price, the other new host, and I'm ready to adopt early.

[Osvaloshin]

And often on tech stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.

[Ed Zitron]

One of the kind of tricks for.

[Unknown]

Surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians.

[Ed Zitron]

Like data is a very rough proxy.

[Tisha Allen]

For a complex reality.

[Ed Zitron]

How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?

[Cara Price]

Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us.

[Osvaloshin]

Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unknown]

How serious is youth vaping? Irreversible lung damage serious. 1 in 10 kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself. Not the seriously know it all sports dad or the seriously smart podcaster. It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you. No, seriously, the best person to talk to your child about vaping is you. To start the conversation, visit talkaboutvaping.org brought to you by the American Lung association and the Ad Council.

[Ed Zitron]

While Newton's metaverse interview from 2021 was deeply irresponsible, in how much it quoted Mark Zuckerberg just saying complete crap. Arguably his most disgraceful act was October 26, 2021, when he wrote a piece called the Facebook Papers Missing piece, an interview with an anonymous integrity worker that attempted to undermine the Wall Street Journal's reporting on the Facebook files. A massive investigation of how Facebook knew how harmful their platform was. I should be clear. The Facebook files situation involved Frances Horgan coming forward, risking her life, risking her safety. That woman is incredibly brave, as are the reporters that covered this. This is important work. This is necessary work. And Newton's piece is a disgrace to tech journalism. A disqualifying one, a seeming attempt to discredit by proxy the bravery of a whistleblower that provided documents that led to this meaningful reporting. And it's utterly repuls corporate hand washing. And it's important context for any criticism that Casey Newton has anything of anything ever again. And I'm furious. I'm furious because Casey could be better. I believe that Casey could actually do meaningful things. And we need you right now, Casey. We need you to fucking start working again. And indeed, I think the only comfortable thing I hear, or at least feel, is reading how much of the powerful's messaging you like to share. Casey Newton argued that while AI companies have hit a scaling wall, it's actually okay. Don't worry, I'll have plenty of links in the notes that NFTs went finally mainstream in 2022. They didn't. He argued that Clubhouse was the future and that live audio was Zuckerberg's and I quote, big bet on creators in 2021 due to, and I quote again, the shift in power from institutions to individuals. I should add that Facebook shut down their podcast service a year later and he Also added, and I can't see the tier because it's paywalled, that Metaverse pessimists were missing something because Meta's grand vision was already well on its way. He wrote this in November 2021, by the way. He also added that Meta's leadership changed its mind about its name because Facebook was not the future of the company. Maybe that was accurate, I don't know. He also wrote about Axie Infinity, which is a crypto web 3 Pokemon clone thing that created a kind of indentured servitude. There's like loan sharks in the Philippines that fuck people off of this. It's insane. And by the way, backed by Andreessen Horowitz, and he was claiming that the game turned gaming on its head. It sucks. It absolutely. I could go on. It shouldn't be this easy, man. It shouldn't be this easy to find a bunch of really weird stuff because Casey has also at times had real dalliances with criticism. He has criticized Facebook, but it's also hard to take those criticisms seriously when Casey's also written a piece for the Verge about how Google plans to win its antitrust trial. They didn't win, by the way. And he printed the legal and marketing opinion of one of the largest companies in the world. The general counsel, knowing full well the Department of Justice could not respond. How would they respond? The old Microsoft antitrust case ended up getting fucked up because a judge responded to a journalist like, that's the thing, Casey. Use your power responsibly. Don't talk about taking notes, mate. Don't talk about taking notes. Them's fighting words. Anyway, the Google thing I brought up maybe thinking, why would I bring up anything with Google? This is about Meta, right? Well, there were emails revealed in the Department of Justice's antitrust against trial against Google Search, which, as you well know from the man who killed Google Search, I've read a lot of. Well, Google specifically mentioned having briefed Casey Newton with the intention of, and I quote, looking for ways to drive headlines on Google's own terms. Now, in Newton's defense, this is standard PR language, but it is, within the context of what I'm saying, quite hard to ignore. And again, the reason I'm so fucking furious about Casey Newton, it's these part of a media machine that's helped whitewash Mark Zuckerberg and the people around Mark Zuckerberg running these glossy puff pieces with scumbags like Nick fucking Clegg and saying things like, and I quote, the transition away from Facebook's old friends and family dominated feeds to Meta's algorithmic wonderland. Jesus Christ seems to be proceeding mostly without incident, by the way. That line, I add, was published in 2023, two years after the release of the Facebook files, which revealed that the company knew its algorithmic timeline had a propensity to push users into increasingly radical echo chambers. And one year after Amnesty International published a report accusing Facebook's algorithms of, and I quote, supercharging the spread of harmful anti rah in Myanmar amidst the genocide that saw an estimated million displaced and tens of thousands massacred. Casey. Casey. Wake up, brother. It's time to go back to work. It's time for you to do a good job again. Casey has spent years using his platform to subtly defend these companies, these companies that actively make their shit worse. And he occasionally proves he can be a real journalist. There is a whole series of articles he wrote about the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk that was genuinely important. Fighting for workers as well as members of the platform, decrying horrible things that Elon Musk was saying and doing. You can do this, Casey. You can actually do this. But then it feels like you slip back into Am I being too mean to Meta? I'm not going to single Casey out further, and I really want to make it clear my frustration here isn't that I think Casey's stupid or poorly connected. Quite the opposite. I think Casey's quite smart. I think Casey's fully capable of doing this. It's why it's so sickening when you go and look back and see what he's done. And I really need you to know how important it is to have really great independent writers and not have them scared to do things. Because a guy who clearly has some allegiance with the powerful wants to scare them. You can't scare Gary Marcus. Nothing scares Gary Marcus. He's actually kind of remarkable, actually kind of weird. But this isn't about Gary. Now the media and people like Casey, and this is another frustrating thing as well, they're super influential over public policy and the overall way that society views and judges tech. As an experienced, knowledgeable journalist, Casey is too regularly chosen to frame fair and balanced as let's make sure the powerful get their say too. As I've said, and I will continue to say, Casey is fully capable of doing some of the literal, best journalism in tech. And I always cite his Facebook moderation stuff. It's really good. He fought for people that were victims of a horrifying corporate machine, yet he keeps choosing not to do that. And I don't know what it is. I'm not gonna. I actually don't consider Casey and Kara Swisher the same thing. I don't know Casey's intentions. All I know is what he's done. And all I know is that if we are to push back on authoritarianism, that if we're actually going to tell the truth to people and help people understand what's happening to them, we can't keep doing it this way. We can't. And the cost of doing it this way is that the powerful have used people in the media as mouthpieces to whitewash these horrible little fucking product decisions, these terrible things they've done. And I don't know why Casey, I've mentioned it. I don't know his intentions. I really don't. But what I do know is that as a result of Casey Newton's work, Mark Zuckerberg and his products have received a continual amount of promotion for ideas and air cover for their failures. And as a result, public policy has been directly influenced. And it's just frustrating. It can be better. It should be better. And while Newton has acted for years like nothing was wrong with the quality of the platforms themselves, he's been able to write with clarity and purpose about other things. And if he did the same thing, and I would be, I would be completely serious if he changes his tune, I'd be so happy. We need Casey Newton actually challenging these companies meaningfully. And I don't know what would change that, but I will say, don't threaten fucking writers, Casey. Don't do that. I don't like bullying. I won't tolerate it in this fucking tech media. I'm gonna oink and squeak at you all I possibly can. Don't talk about taking detailed notes about people. It's greasy, it's gross. And I think that the consequences of supporting these companies, of making sure that when something bad happens, they have a newsletter with 150,000 subscribers that they can go to and get a kindly story. That's just worrying. And it can be better. Casey can be better too. But the consequences here are horrifying. And they're all also just reading these stories again just fills me full of bile, as if I'm usually that calm. Putting aside the fact that Mark Zuckerberg is this horrible career liar and this charlatan, he's deliberately hurting billions of people. He has been doing this for a while. And I believe that by being given air cover for so long and now having this mask off moment where he can just say, I don't give a shit. He's now I would not be surprised if Zuckerberg turns on the media or maybe they'll help him, I don't know. But I think that where we are right now with this kind of unvarnished, unrepentant Mark Zuckerberg, I think that all of the changes he's making at Meta, it's going to create this new era of decay. I think he's going to inspire tech executives unburdened by the kind of flimsy approach to societal norms and customer loyalty. I think he's going to inspire them to make their shit even worse from here. I think Meta has fired the gun of the slop society. And yes, I came up with a new term because this is the beginning of the shittiest shit that ever did shit. In an interview with the financial times from December 2024, Meta's VP of Product for Generative AI, Connor Hayes, said that Meta expects AI to actually, over time exist on Meta's platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do, each one having their own bios and profile pictures and the ability to, and I quote, generate and share content powered by AI on the platform. This came hot off the heels of Mark Zuckerberg saying in a quarterly earnings call that Meta would, and I quote, add a whole new category of content, which is AI generated or AI summarized content, or kind of existing content pulled together by AI in some way, effectively promising to drop AI slop into feeds already filled with recommended and sponsored slop from real people that gets in the way of you seeing the things you actually log onto their platforms to look at. Now, this whole thing in the Financial Times, it led to a kind of scandal where users discovered what they believed to be brand new AI profiles. Karen Attia of the Washington Post wrote a long thread on Blue sky and a piece in the Post itself about her experience talking to a bot she fairly described as digital blackface. With Meta receiving massive backlash for these bots that would happily admit that they were trained by a bunch of white people. It turns out, by the way, that these bots have been around for over a year in various forms that were so unpopular that nobody really noticed in 2023 until the financial Times story came up at the end of 2024, leading to better deleting the bots. At least for now, though I'm hearing reports you can still get to them if you really need to Talk to a ChatGPT version of what someone who thinks a gay black person is. And I'm, I'm really describing the literal bot here. Live is the name. Really disgusting stuff. And I'm 100% sure, by the way, that these chatbots are coming back, because it's fairly obvious that Meta intends to fill your feeds with content, whether it's entirely generated or recommended or summarized or whatever it is. And AI generated slops already dominating the platform. And as discussed earlier, the quality of the platform itself has already fallen into a kind of ultra disrepair, mostly because Meta's only concern is keeping you on Instagram or Facebook so that they can show you more ads or content that they've been paid to show you, even if the reason you're seeing it is because you can't find the things you actually want to find. And I keep repeating that point for a reason, because that's how Meta makes money.

[Unknown]

Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons and birds. But what if there's something else, something much more ominous that appears under the COVID of night? Silent, unseen, watching. They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road, or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones. Or are they?

[Alec Baldwin]

We used the word drone because it was comfortable to other people.

[Ed Zitron]

One minute was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh, that is beyond creepy.

[Unknown]

Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yes, absolutely.

[Unknown]

Listen to Obscurum. Invasion of the Drones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Osvaloshin]

Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvaloshin, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued.

[Cara Price]

And I'm Cara Price, the other new host, and I'm ready to adopt early.

[Osvaloshin]

And often on tech stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.

[Ed Zitron]

One of the kind of tricks for.

[Unknown]

Surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians.

[Ed Zitron]

Like data is a very rough proxy.

[Tisha Allen]

For a complex reality.

[Ed Zitron]

How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based based in this place where there's no electricity at night?

[Cara Price]

Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us.

[Osvaloshin]

Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unknown]

How serious is youth vaping? Irreversible lung damage serious. 1 in 10 kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself. Not the seriously know it all sports dad or the seriously smart podcaster. It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you. No, seriously, the best person to talk to your child about vaping is you. To start the conversation, visit talkaboutvaping.org, brought to you by the American Lung association and the AD Council.

[Tisha Allen]

Welcome. My name is Paola Pedrosa, a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones, it's about learning through them and their new perspective. Join me on the Ghost Therapy podcast.

[Ed Zitron]

Whoa. My lights in my living room just flickered.

[Tisha Allen]

I'm a little nervous. I'm excited. I'm excited nervous. You know, I'm a very spiritual person, so I'm like, I'm ready and open.

[Ed Zitron]

That was amazing.

[Tisha Allen]

I feel so grateful right now. I got to speak to my great grandmother Abuela, and she gave me a lot of really good advice that I'm gonna have to really think about.

[Ed Zitron]

Wow.

[Tisha Allen]

Okay. That's crazy. Yes, that is accurate. Listen to the Ghost Therapy podcast as part of the My Cultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast podcasts.

[Ed Zitron]

And all of this is because, well, like everything in this show, all roads lead back to the rot economy, which is the growth at all cost mindset. That means that the only thing that matters is the growth of revenue, which comes from showing you as many ads as possible and you being engaged with the platform as much as possible. But I'm going to be honest, it's almost ridiculous to call us users of Facebook at this point. We don't use Facebook. Facebook uses us. It's trite, but it's true. We're. We're victims. We're all victims of the rot economy. And I said it at the end of last year, but with Facebook, I really think it's at its most grotesque. We're not users. We are the used. We're the punished, the terrorized, the tricked, the scammed, the abused. We're constantly using this app, trying to get things that we actually want. We're constantly forced to navigate through layers of abstraction between the thing we're allegedly using and the features we'd like to use. It's fucking farcical how little attention has been given to how bad tech products have gotten. And few have decayed as severely as Facebook thanks to this near monopoly they have over social media. I personally would rather not use any of their products, but there are people I know who really only speak to me on there, and I know many people who have the same experience. Don't call me a loser, all right? I've gone to a lot of therapy. I don't call myself that anymore. Anyways, as Zuckerberg and his people are intimately aware, though, people don't really have anywhere else to go, which, along with a lack of regulation and a fairly compliant media, has given Mark Zuckerberg and Meta permission to do just about anything. They want to increase advertising impressions, which in practice means giving you more reason to stay on the platform, which means putting more things in the way of what you want to see, rather than creating something you'd want to see in the first place. It's the same thing that happened with Google Search, where the revenue team pushed the search team to make search results worse as a means of increasing the amount of time that people search for things on Google. Because, you know, a user that finds what they're looking for quickly spends less time looking at ads. And that's just not how it works for Prabhakar Ragavan. Haven't said his name in a while. But this is why the App Store on Apple devices is so chaotic and poorly curated as well, because they make money on the advertising impressions they get from showing you ads as you search for apps. Also, this is why so many products on the App Store have expensive and exploitative microtransactions too. Apple makes 30% off of of all App Store revenue, even if the app sucks. Even if the app tricked you and said, oh yeah, we're gonna charge you weekly. They hide the weekly. You think, oh, 3.99amonth, right? No, it's weekly. It's in a tiny little, little note at the bottom. Apple eventually gets rid of those people. Eventually. And I believe that Mark Zuckerberg loosening community standards and killing fact checking is just the beginning of tech's real era of decay. You think the rot economy's bad today? It's only getting worse. See, it's Trump really inspires people, horrible people, by bulldozing norms, doing things that we would all agree we would never do, like being noxious and toxic and racist, and in the process moves the Overton window, which is the range of acceptable things in the society further and further and further into the toilet, aggressively flushing it as he goes. But really, we've already seen tech's overton window shift for years. A lack of media coverage of the actual decay of these products and a lack of accountability for tech executives, both in the media and regulation, has given these companies the permission to quietly fuck up their stuff to make their services worse, to make more growth happen. And because everybody made things shittier over time, it became accepted practice to punish and trick customers with dark patterns, design choices, to intentionally mislead people, to the point that the FTC found last year that the majority of subscription apps and websites use them. I believe, however, that Zuckerberg is going to move the tech overton window a little bit further. Look, he's publicly saying, we are going to fill your feeds with slop. We're firing 5% of our workers because they're not good. And we're going to have AI profiles instead of real people on the site you visit to see the real people, you know, and we don't really give a shit about marginalized people to the point we're formalizing it in policy. We're ending our DEI initiatives and people are too mean to men. These are the things that Mark Zuckerberg is using to signal the fact that he does not give a rat fuck about you or the users office products. And he knows that in his position as the CEO, as one of the most powerful companies in the world, let alone tech companies, by the way, people are going to follow not just in tech, but really in tech. Tech's already taken liberties with the digital experience. And I believe this slop era is going to be one where experiences will begin to subtly and overtly rot, with companies proudly boasting that they're making adjustments to user engagement that will provide better business forward outcomes, which will be code for make things worse so we make more money. I realize there's also an obvious thing. I'm not saying that the Trump administration isn't going to be any kind of regulatory force against Big Tech. Trump is perhaps the most transactional human being to ever grace the earth. Big Tech knows this, which is why all of them have been donating random $1 million checks to him to his inauguration fund. It's why Trump has completely reversed his position on TikTok, which is banned or unbanned, depending on what's happening today. I'm recording this. It's back up. I don't use it. It's weird. I don't like it. Something's wrong. There. I don't even mean with the app before, like something's weird with it now. You can't post about Meta negatively, but tech knows, or at least thinks that by kissing the ring they can do whatever they want. Now, I should be clear that previous governments have not been particularly effective at curbing the worst excesses of big tech, though I think we can all agree on that. EU's done some stuff, but even then, the quality. There's no quality standards. Outside of the last few years, and specifically the work done by the FTC under Lina Khan, antitrust against big tech has been incredibly weak and really has been pretty weak against everyone else as well. And no meaningful consumer protections exist to keep websites like Facebook or Google functional for consumers, or limit how exploitative they can be. Like they can't just have vats of piss in your drinking water. Why is this any different? And yes, I consider spam a form of piss. But the media really has failed to hold them accountable at scale, which has in turn allowed the Overton window to shift on quality. And now that Trump and the general magafied mindset of you can do or say whatever you want if you do so confidently or loudly enough enough, has risen to power again. And so too will an era of outright selfishness and cruelty within the products that consumers use every day. Except this time I believe these tech companies finally have permission to enter their real, dirtiest, sloppiest eras. I also think that Trump gives them the confidence that monopolies like Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft365, which is Microsoft's enterprise monopoly over business productivity software, things like Google Search and Google Advertising, which I realize remedies are coming for. But I really think a lot of these are going to remain unchallenged. And even if they're not, I don't think anything exists to make these companies start getting better. But what I'm really describing is an era of industrial contempt for the consumer, a continuation of what I described in the Invisible War and the Invisible War criminals from last year, where Big tech decides that they will do whatever they want to consumers within the boundaries of the law, but with little consideration of good taste, user happiness, or anything other than growth. Now, how this manifests in Facebook and Instagram will be fairly obvious. I believe that the already fucked up state of these platforms will just massively accelerate. Meta's going to push as much AI slop as it wants, both created by its generative models and their users, and massively ramp up content that riles up users with little regard for the consequences. And I wouldn't be surprised if the generative content is political too. Instagram will become more exploitative and more volatile Instagram ads have been steadily getting more problematic, and I think Meta will start taking ads from just about anyone and this will in turn lead to an initial revenue bump. But then I hypothesize a steady bleed of users that will take a few quarters to truly emerge. And we're already kind of seeing it with Facebook go back to the Rock. Com bubble from last year. Sadly, I think we're already seeing the abuse these abusive practices come out elsewhere. Both Google and Microsoft are now forcing generative AI features onto customers, with Google grifting business users by increasing the cost of Google Workspace by $2 per user per month, along with adding AI features that they didn't want. And Microsoft has now raised the price of consumer Office subscriptions, justifying the move by adding Copilot AI features that again, nobody really wants. The information's John Victor and Aaron Holmes add that it's yet to be seen what Microsoft does with their corporate customers using Microsoft 365's productivity suite, adding copilot costs, by the way, $30 per user per month. But I also hypothesize that they're going to do exactly the same thing that Google did. They're going to knock up the prices and they're going to go, but you got free. AI isn't free, isn't free if I have to pay more. Mate, that's not how free works. I should also be clear that the reason they're doing this is because they're desperate. These companies must express growth every single quarterly earnings or see their stock prices crater. And big tech companies have oriented themselves around growth as a result, meaning that they're not really used to having to do things like like compete for a customer or make a product that the customer might like. For over a decade, tech has been rewarded for creating growth opportunities empowered by monopolistic practices. And I'd argue that the cultures that created the products that people remember actually liking, yeah, they're dead. They've been killed. And the people that did them, the people that built those products, well, they've been strangled too. They've been pushed out of the tech industry. The soldiers of the rot economy are manifold and they're willing to do whatever it takes to make things grow. And you are more than likely already seeing signs that this is happening. The little features on products you use that feel broken, like when you try and crop an image on iOS and it sometimes doesn't actually crop it. And when the copy link button on Google Docs doesn't work, when a Google search gives you a page of forum links that don't answer your question, I expect things to get worse, possibly in new and incredibly frustrating ways. I'm being a little dramatic with all that stuff, but these are the little niggling problems in your head. These are things poking you in the head as you use these apps every day. Don't pretend like this shit doesn't piss you off. Don't pretend that the little interruptions, the little problems you get from these things don't annoy you. And if they don't, great. I wish I could engage with your level of calm. I'm very mentally healthy. It may not come across in the podcast, but I find these things just very frustrating because there's no way in hell that the people using these products don't see them or they don't use their products. Both of these are utterly reprehensible. And I deeply worry that we're going to enter now into the most irresponsible era of tech yet. Not just in the harms that companies allow or perpetuate, but in the full rejection of their stewardship from the products themselves. Our digital lives are already chaotic and poisonous. Different incentives warring for our attention. User interfaces corroded by those who believe everything is justified in pursuing of growth. And I fear that the subtle little problems you see every day will both multiply and expand and that the core services we use will break down. Because I believe the most powerful people in tech never really gave a shit and no longer believe that they have to pretend otherwise. Now, like the end of every episode, you may think, Ed, that's all just very sad. There is a funny thing I'm hypothesizing happens. I think as crappy as these companies are going to get, I think users are just going to stop using stuff. They're all saying, oh well, they don't have anywhere else to go. We got them on Facebook and Instagram, they're fucked. What they're going to do, not use Instagram or Facebook. Yes, yes. I actually think that that's what's really coming. I think that these companies assume that they are unkillable. They assume that because they've never really been held accountable, not by governments, not by the media, though there are people in the media who have nevertheless never consistently accountable and certainly not for the quality of the services they provide. They're arrogant, they're lazy. There are probably startups that could come for them. There are genuinely ways that these companies can be stopped. And though they may be unrepentant in the dogshit, they serve you. They're only doing that because they're desperate, but also because they don't think there's ever going to be other competition. And history has kind of proven that that never happens, that there is always a bigger fish. To quote Qui Gon Jinn in the Phantom Menace, classic movie about trade. Anyway, point I'm making is nothing's kill, nothing is unkillable. Nothing's unstoppable. Every empire, even the worst one, ends. There is a good chance in the next 10 years that meta actually collapses. Mark Zuckerberg is doing this meaningless, fake masculine bullshit because he realizes he doesn't have much left. He may have all that money, but his platforms suck. His users hate them. He's twisted and hurt people, billions of people at a time. He knows that the party's ending, online advertising is falling apart. I think things are going to get very interesting in the next years and frankly in the next months. But I'll leave you with some hope again. None of these companies are unkillable. Every single company in tech history that's thought they were died. MySpace died. And yeah, it was a different circumstance. But Meta, while they may seem unstoppable, relies on Advertising for 99% of their revenue. Things like ad blockers, things like even subtle changes in the EU about how ads can be served to customers. Like the. The opt in feature for ads is deadly for them. If anything happens to online ads, Meta will die. AI is not going to save them. AI will not save Mark Zuckerberg. And if he truly pulls the top off of this and says, you know what, I'm just going to serve him shit at scale, I'm just going to slop them up. Slop em up. AI slop in every profile. No one's gonna go on Facebook anymore. They're already losing traffic. And if they do that to Instagram, which is the one meaningful thing they still have, they're completely double fucked. And if you think that Google search can't be competed with, I don't even think that that's the case either. I think the remedies of that trial mean that they have to start sharing their search data. All of these companies can be beaten with or without regulation, but it also starts with not using their shit anymore. I'm really working out how I can start deleting myself from these services. I don't know how I'm going to do it. I'm already going to delete myself from threads after this. I need Instagram. There are people that, like, I can't talk to elsewhere. I don't know. Not super close friends or just people that like talking on there more than elsewhere. Some of you probably feel like that too. Don't give up hope, alright? Don't. There's the whole thing about not bending the knee and all that, but a big thing that authoritarianism really wants from you is to give up in advance. It's not just about controlling you, it's about making it so that you don't stay angry, that you don't stay outraged at these people. I'm trying really not to tell you how to feel here. I'm just saying if you feel the frustration with these companies, all that these people, Zuckerberg especially, have is their names. You think Mark Zuckerberg's going on the Joe Rogan experience, going, men are mistreated because he's secure? No. All of these men, all they have is their names. So talk about the things they've done. Tell people about how bad Facebook is now. Maybe they know. Maybe they've never really looked close enough. I can't give you the exact skeleton key to life, but I can tell you things get better through discussions. Things get better through everybody agreeing that things should be better. It's a start. I really appreciate all of you listening to this show. Better Offline is going to be so weird this year. The whole talk radio segment was so good in CES and I enjoy doing them in person at the beautiful IHOP Radio studios in New York. If you've made it this far, you must really like my voice. So thank you for listening. We will be back next week. We'll be back next week with another talk radio segment. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] m a t t o s o w s k I.com you can email me at [e-mail] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat. Where's your ed? To visit the discord and go to r betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

[Tisha Allen]

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 Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Osvaloshin]

Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff, we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tisha Allen]

You are cordially invited to the hottest party in person professional Sports. I'm Tisha Allen, former golf professional and the host of welcome to the Party, your newest obsession about the wonderful world that is women's golf. Featuring interviews with top players on tour, tips to help improve your swing, and the craziest stories to come out of your friendly neighborhood country club. Welcome to the Party with Tisha Allen is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to welcome to the Party that's P A R T E e on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This past season on my podcast, here's the thing, I spoke with more actors, musicians, policymakers, and so many other fascinating people like writer and actor Dan Aykroyd.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I love writing more than anything. You're left alone, you know, you do three hours in the morning, you write three hours in the afternoon. Go pick up a kid from school and write at night. And after nine hours you come out with seven pages and then you're. You're moving on.

[Alec Baldwin]

Listen to here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tisha Allen]

We all have a moment that splits us wide open. On my new podcast, Wide Open with Ashlyn Harris Harris, I'll sit down with trailblazers from sports, music, fashion, entertainment and politics to explore their toughest moments and the incredible comebacks that followed. Listen to Wide Open with Ashlyn Harris, an iHeart women's sports production on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Cara Price]

Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.