Better Offline – Details, episodes & analysis

A few weeks ago, a federal judge declared that Google has a monopoly over the search industry and text-based advertising. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how the many monopolies of big tech hurt you on a daily basis.

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In this episode, Ed Zitron sits down with Matt Stoller, author of the BIG Newsletter and Research Director of the American Economic Liberties Project to explain what a monopoly is, why they're so pervasive, how America entered a "monopoly crisis," and what all of this means for Google, Apple, Meta, and the rest of big tech.

Want to read the transcript of this episode? Go to wheresyoured.at/stoller

BIG by Matt Stoller https://www.thebignewsletter.com/

Matt Stoller on Twitter https://x.com/matthewstoller 

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When the money gets nervous, so should you. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through a remarkable report from global investment bank Goldman Sachs where multiple economists call BS on the AI movement - and why it's time for the rest of the world to follow suit.

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The shareholder supremacy has eaten the tech industry, driving private and public companies to chase unprofitable, unsustainable ideas like generative AI as a means of expressing eternal growth to the markets. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how this destructive mindset has created an entirely new kind of manager - one disconnected from labor and creation - and how the dark hand of shareholder supremacy is behind everything strange and bad in tech in the last few years

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In this episode, Ed Zitron tracks the history of the growth-at-all-costs rot economy to a court case in 1916 that established the Shareholder Supremacy, and set the terms for General Electric's Jack Welch to fundamentally break capitalism, an era where companies moved away from building lasting, sustainable companies that created things and instead began focusing on pleasing shareholders - and how it leads to today's terrible tech companies and leaders.

LINKS: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

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Ed's Socials - http://www.twitter.com/edzitron  instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social  https://www.threads.net/@edzitron  

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A few weeks ago, an Australian tech worker called Nik Suresh wrote an evisceration of the current AI hype boom called "I Will F**king Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again." Ed Zitron and Robert Evans sat down to talk about the blog - and the wider problems that Nik sees in the tech industry at large.

LINKS:

Nik's blog: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/

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In a special live-to-tape episode of Better Offline, Ed is joined by The Verge's Alex Cranz and YouTube influencer Michael Fisher to talk about what they're actually enjoying in the tech industry - and why things don't feel quite as magical and exciting as they used to.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheMrMobile

https://www.theverge.com/authors/alex-cranz 

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In April, The Onion was acquired by a new entity called Global Tetrahedron, revealed shortly thereafter to be a joint venture between billionaire Jeff Lawson and former NBC disinformation reporter Ben Collins, now its CEO. Ben joins Ed to talk about buying The Onion, keeping its Chicago roots, and how we can save digital media. 

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Last week, Apple announced that they're integrating artificial intelligence into your iPhone and Mac in a stunningly demure and reserved presentation. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through whether you should trust Apple - and how OpenAI agreed to the worst deal in tech history to integrate ChatGPT in the least-prominent way.

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In this episode, Ed Zitron walks through how Sam Altman's ridiculous promises about the future of artificial intelligence could be ruinous for Silicon Valley, and speaks with Bloomberg's Ellen Huet about how Sam Altman - a non-technical founder with little business success - accumulated so much power.

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