What We're Fighting For

Summary

Better Offline: "What We're Fighting For" – Episode Summary

Podcast Information:

• Title: Better Offline
• Host/Author: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
• Release Date: February 21, 2025
• Description: Better Offline is a weekly show delving into the tech industry's pervasive influence and manipulation of society. Hosted by tech veteran Ed Zitron, the podcast combines storytelling, interviews, and panel discussions to expose the schemes of entities ranging from cryptocurrency fraudsters to the most avaricious venture capitalists. The show aims to illuminate how tech giants are reshaping the world, for better or worse.

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Introduction to the Episode

In the episode titled "What We're Fighting For," Ed Zitron embarks on a fervent critique of the modern tech industry's relentless pursuit of growth at any cost. He highlights the subtle yet destructive changes these companies impose on everyday products and services, often overshadowed by more sensational scandals.

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The Growth-At-All-Costs Mindset

Ed Zitron begins by discussing the pervasive "rot economy"—a term he uses to describe the tech industry's obsession with unbridled growth. This mindset prioritizes revenue, user engagement, and time spent on platforms above all else, leading to detrimental changes in product design and consumer experience.

Ed Zitron [02:36]: "The rot economy sits above all things. It's not enough for Apple to make iterations of the iPhone that are better and faster. It must sell more of them every quarter."

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Case Studies: Tech Giants Misleading Consumers

Google's Search Ads Manipulation

Zitron points out how Google has blurred the lines between advertisements and organic search results, prioritizing ad revenue over user experience.

Ed Zitron [05:15]: "In the space of a decade, Google made its ads on search look near identical to regular search results... The ads team made Google search worse for money."

Nvidia's RTX Graphics Cards Debacle

Nvidia's questionable launch strategy for its RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 graphics cards serves as another example. Zitron criticizes the company's misleading stock availability and poor product performance.

Ed Zitron [08:45]: "Nvidia has effectively lied about the launch of its RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 graphics cards... These events hit millions of consumers in a tangible way."

Apple's App Store Exploitative Practices

A significant portion of the episode focuses on Apple's App Store, where Zitron condemns the promotion of exploitative free-to-play games and dating apps laden with microtransactions.

Ed Zitron [16:04]: "Apple's App Store... actively promotes and profits off of exploitative free-to-play mobile games... They're like a global Ponzi scheme."

Meta's (Facebook) User Manipulation

Zitron briefly touches on Meta's manipulation of user data and engagement metrics to sustain growth, contributing to the platform's toxic environment.

Ed Zitron [24:30]: "Mark Zuckerberg has manipulated Facebook's users as a means to express growth to the public markets... It's a perpetual act of abuse."

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Media's Role and Failures

Zitron argues that mainstream media often overlooks these subtle yet impactful issues, focusing instead on more sensational or isolated scandals like Meta's Cambridge Analytica involvement. This neglect allows tech companies to continue their harmful practices with minimal public scrutiny.

Ed Zitron [06:30]: "The mainstream media... does not seem capable or willing to discuss the real, tangible, obvious problems with the modern tech ecosystem."

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Impact on Consumers

The relentless push for growth has led to a decline in product quality and an increase in exploitative monetization strategies. Consumers face higher costs, poorer service quality, and increased manipulation through psychological tactics employed by apps and services.

Ed Zitron [11:00]: "Consumers are paying more for products that suck, and they're aware that the free products they use are getting worse as a means of making them more profitable."

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Recommendations for Consumers

Zitron offers several strategies for consumers to combat these practices:

1. Reduce Engagement: Limit time spent on exploitative apps and services.
2. Provide Feedback: Use feedback forms and social media to voice dissatisfaction.
3. Support Better Alternatives: Choose to engage with products and services that prioritize user experience over mere growth.

Ed Zitron [25:00]: "Use the feedback forms... complain about these problems on social media... if you really don't use the service, stop using it."

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Call to Action: Solidarity Against the Rot Economy

Ed emphasizes the importance of collective action and solidarity in resisting the destructive growth-at-all-costs mentality. By uniting and voicing their concerns, consumers can push for meaningful change within the tech industry.

Ed Zitron [28:00]: "We need to speak about these companies and this software in plain terms. We are in an era of rot, our markets dominated by a growth-obsessed death cult."

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Conclusion

In "What We're Fighting For," Ed Zitron delivers a passionate critique of the tech industry's current trajectory, urging listeners to recognize and combat the subtle yet pervasive harm being inflicted through the pursuit of perpetual growth. He calls for greater media accountability, consumer activism, and a shift towards valuing quality and ethical practices over mere expansion.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ed Zitron [02:36]: "The rot economy sits above all things. It's not enough for Apple to make iterations of the iPhone that are better and faster. It must sell more of them every quarter."
• Ed Zitron [16:04]: "Apple's App Store... actively promotes and profits off of exploitative free-to-play mobile games... They're like a global Ponzi scheme."
• Ed Zitron [25:00]: "Use the feedback forms... complain about these problems on social media... if you really don't use the service, stop using it."
• Ed Zitron [28:00]: "We need to speak about these companies and this software in plain terms. We are in an era of rot, our markets dominated by a growth-obsessed death cult."

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Final Thoughts:

This episode serves as a crucial wake-up call for consumers, encouraging them to critically evaluate the tech products and services they use daily. By understanding the underlying motivations of tech giants and actively resisting exploitative practices, listeners are empowered to advocate for a more ethical and user-centric digital landscape.

Transcript

[Oracle Representative]

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[Gabe Leonors]

Would you do if mysterious drones appeared over your hometown? I started asking questions. What do you remember happening on that night of December 16th?

[Ed Zitron]

It actually rotated around our house, looking as if it was peering in each window of our home.

[Gabe Leonors]

I'm Gabe Leonors from Imagine I Heart Podcasts and Leonhars Entertainment. Listen to Obscurum Invasion of the Drones wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

[Jay Shetty]

In a world of economic uncertainty and workplace transformation, learn to lead by example from visionary C Suite executives like Shannon Schuyler of PwC and Will Pearson of iHeartMedia. The good teacher explains the great teacher inspires.

[Ed Zitron]

Don't always leave your team to do the work that's been the most important part of how to lead by example.

[Jay Shetty]

Listen to Leading by Example executives making an impact on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Osvaloshin]

Why does the godfather of AI warn that the very thing he helped create now has a 10 to 20% chance of leading to human extinction in the next three decades? And what did he learn from losing his wife to cancer about how to approach the future of AI? I'm Os Velozian, host of Tech Stuff, and I'm so excited to share this memorable and intimate conversation with Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton. Listen to Tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ed Zitron]

Call Zone Media Fix Up. Look sharp. I'm Ed Zitron. This is Better Offline Better Offline 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 playing into it, and the fact that all of this is caused by the rot economy, which is the growth at all cost 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 manifest ways and manifold ways, in 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 other than big meaty problems like Meta'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, seemed 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. 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 has, 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 pro Sema graphics cards, which by the way, make up billions of dollars in revenue and a large percentage that, and it does not appear to be able to deliver them 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 that console gaming brought in. And according to research from Yuzu. 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. This shit's really important. But things are worse. Things are worse than I'm even saying. Nvidia's 58e 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 Chann 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 a card that they can't find. 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. 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 Stephen, email me at my web zone easytteroffline.com that's ezeteroffline.com Please Stephen. By the way, these, 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 they act like Stephen and Paul. They protect consumers from active harm as the mainstream media chases their tails about whatever half broken bullshit Sam Altman has farted out on their heads. Nvidia, a company discussed by what it it feels like every single business and tech out there 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 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 are 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 suck. 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. 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 Am, a DEO anthropic farting into a microphone about how in maybe 2 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. Amadei, tell me how smart you are. Fuck you. 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 to these companies, they're told, yeah, well, what if you had some generative AI? What do you think? Do you like it? What do you think? 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. The real Ed heads going back to the beginning. 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 popularized 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 micro transaction 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 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 Pie. And Partival, 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 1 out of 5 star rating on Trustpiler, 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. And the reason I'm agonizingly 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.

[Oracle Representative]

Okay, business leaders, are you playing defense or are you on the offense? Are you just. Excuse me. Hey, I'm trying to talk business here. As I was saying, are you here just to play, or are you playing to win? If you're in it to win, meet your next MVP NetSuite by Oracle NetSuite is your full business management system in one suite. With NetSuite, you're running your accounting, your financials, HR, E commerce, and more, all from your online dashboard. One source of truth means every department's working from the same numbers. With no data delays. And with AI embedded throughout, you're automating manual tasks, plus getting fast insights for your next move. Whether you're competing on your home turf or looking to Conquer International Markets, NetSuite helps you get the W Over 40,000 businesses have already made the move to NetSuite, the number one Cloud ERP right now.

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[Gabe Leonors]

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?

[Ed Zitron]

We used the word drone because it.

[Oracle Representative]

Was comfortable to other people.

[Gabe Leonors]

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

[Ed Zitron]

That is beyond creepy.

[Gabe Leonors]

Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically?

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, absolutely.

[Gabe Leonors]

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

[Osvaloshin]

Why did the godfather of AI warn that the very thing he helped create now has a 10 to 20% chance of leading to human extinction in the next three decades? And what did he learn from losing his wife to cancer about how to approach the future of AI? I'm Osvar Loschin, host of Tech Stuff, and I'm so excited to share this memorable and intimate conversation with Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton. Listen to Tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm Jay Shetty. My latest episode is with financial expert Scott Galloway.

If you are doing a lot of side hustles it's very, very difficult to be great at your main hustle. The only way you're build real wealth and economic security is to go all in on one thing. That is greatness, focus. None of this matters. None of it means a thing if you can have deep and meaningful relationships.

[Ed Zitron]

Scott is a professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business. He's a bestselling author. He has earned a massive following through his lectures, podcasts and YouTube channel.

[Scott Galloway]

Scott Galloway how do we rewire our relationship with money? Because most of us have a stressful relationship with money.

You want to be good at money? Put down the facade and start talking to people about their investments, how much money they make, what they do with their money, how they save money. What I tell young people is you can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.

Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ed Zitron]

Apple's App Store, a trillion dollar marketplace where Apple takes a 30% of almost every buck a developer makes, actively promotes and 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 paywalls. 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. 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. 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 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 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 want to 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 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 up to much more than a AAA 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. 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 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 fucking. Does 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 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 millions 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 or media pressure makes them do otherwise. The latter 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 Walzer that the Atlantic was earlier than most, myself included. These are usually one and done 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 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 anytime you use your phone. 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 Prabhakar Raghavan and Sundar Pishai 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 toiler, is literally obfuscated by the demands of growth.

[Oracle Representative]

Okay, business leaders, are you playing defense or are you on the offense? Are you just. Excuse me. Hey, I'm trying to talk business here. As I was saying, are you here just to play or are you playing to win? If you're in it to win, meet your next MVP NetSuite by Oracle NetSuite is your full business management system in one suite. With Netsuite, you're running your accounting, your financials, hr, e commerce, and more all from your online dashboard. One source of truth means every department's working from the same numbers. With no data delay and with AI embedded throughout, you're automating manual tasks plus getting fast insights for your next move. Whether you're competing on your home turf or looking to conquer international markets, NetSuite helps you get the W. Over 40,000 businesses have already made the move to NetSuite, the number one Cloud ERP right now.

Get the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com stereo get this free guide at netsuite.com stereo okay guys.

[Gabe Leonors]

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?

[Ed Zitron]

We used the word drone because it.

[Oracle Representative]

Was comfortable to other people.

[Gabe Leonors]

One minute was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh, that is beyond creepy. Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically?

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, absolutely.

[Gabe Leonors]

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

[Osvaloshin]

Why does the godfather of AI warn that the very thing he helped create now has a 10 to 20% chance of leading to human extinction in the next three decades? And what did he learn from losing his wife to cancer about how to approach the future of AI? I'm Osvaloshin, host of Tech Stuff, and I'm so excited to share this memorable and intimate conversation with NOBE Laureate Geoffrey Hinton. Listen to Tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm Jay Shetty. My latest episode is with financial expert Scott Galloway.

If you are doing a lot of side hustles, it's very, very difficult to be great at your main hustle. The only way you're going to build real wealth and economic security is to go all in on one thing. That is greatness. Focus. None of this matters. None of it means a thing if you can't have deep and meaningful relationships.

[Ed Zitron]

Scott is a Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business. He's a best selling author. He has earned a massive following through his lectures, podcasts and YouTube channel.

[Scott Galloway]

Scott Galloway how do we rewire our relationship with money? Because most of us have a stressful relationship with money.

You want to be good at money? Put down the facade and start talking to people about their investments, how much money they make, what they do with their money, how they save money. What I tell young people is you can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.

Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ed Zitron]

The Internet allows us to do so many things and what we see today is both a technological marvel and a disgrace to humanity. We right now have the ability to talk to somebody thousands of miles away to send them a photo of a video of what we're doing to meet people we'd never meet in real life and build meaningful relationships with them as a creator, a writer, whatever the hell you call me. I'm able to shoot the shit with my Buddy Casey in SoCal or my editor Matt Hughes in Liverpool, and I'm able to do so about the same speed and as a result write thousands of words of ideas and perform these long podcasts where I get extremely mad that that. Well, Matt Osawski or Matt Hughes ends up editing all with a few clicks and I can distribute my newsletter to 55,000 people and the podcast to a number larger or smaller that I can't say than that it's kind of cool. I can go on bluesky and shoot the shit with people I know well or who I've just met or never met in my life and have a blast doing so. I can sit in my living room and play a video game while I stream music from my phone to a big speaker in a few taps. And this technology has become more and more accessible as the years have gone on. It's really cool. And we live in a time when technology does really, really cool things that help billions of people. These companies can innovate and they can make our lives better. The problem is that software may have actually eaten the world and growth holds software's leash. The rot economy sits above all things. It's not enough for Apple to make iterations of the iPhone that are better and faster. It must sell more of them every quarter. And the software sitting in those iPhones must continue to generate monthly or quarterly revenue or annual reven revenue in perpetuity. The websites you read that have page wide ads, they're all run by people that don't read anything and must see revenue numbers increase. And they're doing so because they're looking for startup metrics in media which has never ever worked. And that's the same way that the Match group must always find new ways to increase quarterly revenues for their dating apps. Even if the way they do so is to make them cost more money to connect with people and to obfuscate the connections that we log on to find. Mind each of these ideas a miniature little computer that sits in our pocket and gives us access to the world's information or an app for falling in love. They're extremely cool. Yet the reckless incentives of the rot economy and growth have poisoned them. And like I've said, 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 into 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 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. 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 listen to this in the future. And 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 Jeff. Amazon.com I think, like, you don't need to. Don't. 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 going to keep emailing them every couple weeks. Let them know you don't want to spam them, you don't want to threaten, you don't want to be nasty. You just want to 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. 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. 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 culture, it's cross class. Though I would argue it hurts people the lower their income is, much like most of America. And this is something we all face. And I know that it sounds kind of schmaltzy to be like oh you're a 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 hostile 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. 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 language to describe what is being done to you and the names of those responsible for doing it to you. 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 and 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. 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 software in 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. 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 back 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. 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 co workers 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. 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. 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. It's what gives us light in the darkest times and what the darkest people in the world wish to rob 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, 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, with naming those responsible for poisoning the world with software. Sundar Pishai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Tim Cook and Phil Schiller, 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 name. 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. 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 [e-mail] m a t t o s o w s k-I.com you can email me at ezeteroffline.com 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 app to visit the Discord Discord and go to R betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Coolzone Media. For more from Coolzone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever.

[Jay Shetty]

You get your podcast.

[Gabe Leonors]

What would you do if mysterious drones appeared over your hometown? I started asking questions. What do you remember happening on that night of December 16th?

[Ed Zitron]

It actually rotated around our house house looking as if it was peering in.

[Gabe Leonors]

Each window of our home. I'm Gabe Leonors from Imagine I Heart Podcasts and Leonard's Entertainment. Listen to Obscura Invasion of the Drones wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

[Jay Shetty]

In a world of economic uncertainty and workplace transformation, learn to lead by example from visionary C suite executive like Shannon Schuyler of PwC and Will Pearson of iHeartMedia, the Good Teacher explains the great teacher inspires.

[Ed Zitron]

Don't always leave your team to do the work that's been the most important part of how to lead by example.

[Jay Shetty]

Listen to Leading by Example executives making an impact on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Osvaloshin]

Why did the Godfather of AI warn that the very thing he helped create now has a 10 to 20% chance of leading to human extinction in the next three decades? And what did he learn from losing his wife to cancer about how to approach the future of AI? I'm Osvaloshin, host of Tech Stuff, and I'm so excited to share this memorable and intimate conversation with Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton. Listen to Tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ed Zitron]

Hey man, what are you into? I have the hookup. The hookup? The hookup for what? I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now. Poppers. Why are there so many poppers? All roads lead to the hookup.

[Oracle Representative]

You think it's causing people to turn aggro?

I'm gonna rip your arms off and.

[Ed Zitron]

Use them to yeah That's a word for it. Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.