Look all around and we’re seeing a very different side of tech we once admired. Overhyped AI, X in tatters, Facebook without moderation, Amazon breaking laws, and even a company taking credit for providing us what we paid for.
As one that’s spent much of his career in tech, it’s truly embarassing. Many of the leaders that once enspired are displaying a lack of spine, setting poor examples and are indifferent to their customers.
This is not the tech we thought we were getting.
Remeber when Silicon Valley founders struggled to get venture funding to start their company based on a premise of an idea or a crude prorotype? They were the envy of the world when they succeeded. They were hard working and we were happy to read about the one in ten or twenty that succeeded. As early adopters, we flocked to buy their new products.
But the industry matured quickly and moved from fledging startups to huge monoliths led by CEOs that never seem to be rich or powerful enough. Their greed seems endless and they are shameless about displaying it. Rarely is the customer a priority any longer, with the result that we no longer get the tech we were promised.
Putting customers first means shipping products and selling services that work well, solve a useful problem, and arendesigned to be safe and sufficiently tested to insure they cause no harm or danger. We expect that in the pursuit of these goals, they play fair and don’t break the law.
Just this week Mark Zuckerberg displayed a new low in poor judgement, cowardness and a hollowness to the core, that gives his customers a more dangerous product, products that even cause injury or death.
From Kevin Roose of the New York TImes:
“On Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg — wearing a $900,000 wristwatchand an air of strained enthusiasm — announced in an Instagram Reel that Meta was replacing its fact-checking program with an X-style “community notes” feature. The company is also revising its rules to allow more criticism of certain groups, including immigrants and transgender people, letting users see more “civic content” in their feeds and moving its content review operations from California to Texas to avoid, he said, the appearance of political bias.”
“Mr. Zuckerberg’s stated reason for these changes — that Meta had realized that its old rules had resulted in too much censorship and that it should return to its roots as a platform for free expression — was nonsense.” (For starters: Which roots? Facebook was inspired by a hot-or-not website for Harvard students, not a Cato Institute white paper.)”
From The Guardian, Dan Milmo Global technology editor writes,
“The Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa has said Meta’s decision to end factchecking on its platforms and remove restrictions on certain topics means “extremely dangerous times” lie ahead for journalism, democracy and social media users.
“The American-Filipino journalist said Mark Zuckerberg’s move to relax content moderation on the Facebook and Instagram platforms would lead to a “world without facts” and that was “a world that’s right for a dictator”.
If you want a preview of what no moderation will look like, check out X. It’s filled with conspiracy theories, anti-LGBT postings, antisemitic rants, medical misinformation, and actual recruiting from anti-government militias and hate organizations. No longer will Meta’s platforms, Facebook, Instagram and Threads be a place where you can go and not be exposed to this.
(As an aside, my wife who has been using Facebook since its inception immediately closed her account. Between the two of us we closed a total of four accounts across Instagram, Facebook and Threads.)
Jeff Bezos is another entrepreur many once admired. Yet he has also is showing he can be bought and doesn’t care about his customers. He’s taken a heavy hand to his Washington Post by removing reporting that is critical of the incoming administration. As a result he’s destroying one of the most esteemed newspapers that’s now shedding some of their best reporters.
Amazon, a company that many admired, continues in its ruthless pursuit of greater profits at the expense of its customers. Not satisfied to profit from selling products on its site sold by others, they continue to use the sales data from sellers to clone the best selling products and sell under their own brand at a lower cost.
Dana Mattaioli’s new book Amazon’s “Everything War,” provides evidence that contradicts Amazon’s testimony before Congress denying this. And Amazon has now become the third largest advertiser by charging sellers for placement on their site, making it harder to use and make a good choice. Just another tech company putting profits ahead of their customers.
I never liked when my parents talked about the good old days, and I don’t want to fall in that trap, but remember how most companies competed to provide the best product or service? That’s when there was not just a handful of companies monopolizing their areas, but competitors trying to earn our business.
Finally, I thought I was reading the Onion when my friend, Joe Brancatelli, send me a press release from AT&T this morning titled, “AT&T to credit qualifying customers after service outages: Who is eligible?”
Basically, they will give us what we paid for:
“AT&T made a “bold promise” to customers on Wednesday, telling them that the company plans to issue credits to consumers who lose phone service or fiber connectivity. (AP)”
“Specifically, AT&T’s new “Guarantee” promises customers that if they lose phone service for more than an hour, or lose fiber connectivity for 20 minutes, the company will credit the customer with the cost of a day’s service, which can be used in an upcoming billing cycle. AT&T says it is the first and only carrier that offers such a guarantee for wireless and fiber networks.”
Gee, thanks, AT&T!