Our evolving relationship with "Big Tech"
Technology companies have never been more powerful, but it feels like a change is on the horizon.
Sree’s newsletter is produced w/ Zach Peterson (@zachprague). “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” - Sree’s photo of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in DC, taken in 2013.
Scroll down for Read Something; Watch Something; a weekly tech tip from Robert S. Anthony (@newyorkbob), and much more.
TUNE IN: #NYTReadalong - Our guest this week was Elisabeth Goodridge, deputy editor for the Travel Desk at The New York Times.
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Big Tech has never been more powerful, but it all feels a bit tenuous. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube have become so central to our communications ecosystem that imagining news before social media is like thinking about buggies and covered wagons. The last decade feels like a century for the news industry, and society’s acceptance of what could be considered very obvious facts — Covid19 is real and will soon kill half a million Americans, for example — is just no longer a given.
Whether they like it or not, Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg have proven their power. Deplatforming Trump and QAnon absolutely changed the news cycle, and things are noticeably different without reactive takes to inflammatory tweets. It’s also become clear that absolutely zero tech CEOs want to be the de facto Editor in Chief of The Discourse, but this is exactly where we’re at.
There’s backlash to this of course, and it goes far beyond the vacuous bleating from right-wing personalities about “censorship” and the like. The fact is that the public square is very much privatized, and the implications of this permeate throughout society.
Governments at all levels, and all around the world, are increasingly willing to challenge the tech giants. If the end goal is breaking up Big Tech, we should not hold our collective breath. Breaking up or heavily regulating is the right thing to do, but will also take years to accomplish — years that will continue to test our news and information ecosystem.
Now, I can’t help but feel that seeing stories like the one below make a lot of people think immediately of an uncle or cousin on Facebook.
I’ve seen a significant change in Facebook usage in particular. Several close friends barely use the main platform anymore and others are moving from Whatsapp to Signal and Telegram over a botched updated privacy policy (read more in this article by Shelley Hepworth - @shelleymiranda - including 5 privacy tips for the new year).
I’m curious to see how the Biden-Harris Administration approaches Big Tech in the first 100 days, especially given the last 100 days.
- Sree
A couple of my friends, Andrew Blechman and Lisa Cahn are putting together #IlluminateDemocracy, asking folks to light a candle or light up your phone at a window on Tuesday, Jan. 19, at 9 pm ET. Hope you can participate. Details here and here.
Read Something
I’m what you’d call a WhatsApp power user, but I really can’t tell you what, if anything, the app does with user data. It seems like a lot of people who are much smarter than me on these sorts of things are equally confused.
CES 2021: A Virtual Success — Without the Hugs and Handshakes
By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Robert S. Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him on @newyorkbob.
The show went on, but not the way we’re used to. CES, the nation’s largest consumer electronics show, dazzled attendees Jan. 11 to 14 with hundreds of slick new products and technologies but did so as a virtual event instead of in Las Vegas.
For CES 2021 thousands of attendees logged into their computers to peruse 1,959 exhibitors via an interface designed by Microsoft. That’s a drop from the 4,400 exhibitors and 170,000 attendees who walked around CES 2020, but an admirable tally during these pandemic-distracted times.
With so many of us working from home it was no surprise that new gadgets that enhance the videoconferencing experience, like lightweight headsets and tiny earbuds with active-noise-canceling (ANC) technology, were common at CES 2021.
For example, the Jabra Elite 85t ANC Bluetooth wireless earbuds ($229) have six microphones, four of which are used by the ANC technology to separate voices from noise. The earbuds offer protection from wind noise as well as “sidetone,” which transmits a little bit of your own voice into the earbuds—thus reducing the urge to shout.
According to Jabra, the Elite 85t earbuds provide 5.5 hours of talk time per charge with ANC turned on and can last up to 25 hours when stored in the included case—which has its own wirelessly chargeable battery.
The first thing you’ll notice about the AfterShokz OpenComm ANC Bluetooth wireless around-the-head headset is that it has a swiveling ANC boom microphone, but no speakers. AfterShokz headsets transmit sound to the ears via bone conduction—a technology that has the advantage of leaving the ears open to hear the environment.
The $160 OpenComm, which rests gently on the cheekbones, offers up to 16 hours of talk time per one-hour charge, according to AfterShokz, but a five-minute fast charge provides for up to two hours of talk time.
So, what about CES 2022? The Consumer Technology Association, owner of CES, is planning for a show that will be “in person in Las Vegas, and digitally, Jan. 5-8, 2022.” We can hardly wait.
Threads to Follow
I would say we should impeach the president over this, but that seems like light punishment. Absolutely criminal.
Watch Something
Can’t say enough about our She’s on Call show — I’m so proud of our Digimentors colleagues for putting this together every week. This episode, with student leaders in med school, is a great dose of “the kids are alright.”
Odds & Ends
🗞 Sunday #NYTReadalong w/ Elisabeth Goodridge, deputy editor for the Travel Desk at The New York Times. She led this year’s 52 Place to Go list, renamed: 52 Places to Love.
The Readalong is followed, on Sundays at 11 am-noon ET, by a new medical show I’m co-executive producing with surgeons Sujana Chandrasekhar, M.D. (@DrSujanaENT), and Marina Kurian, M.D. (@MarinaKurian), called She’s On Call (watch live or later).
After 250 episodes in 250 days, my global show has moved from daily episodes to 1-2 times a week. The best way to know when I’m on the air and see all my archived shows, is to subscribe to my YouTube channel or my Whatsapp alerts.
The Sunday #NYTReadalong is sponsored by Muck Rack. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email sree@digimentors.group and neil@digimentors.group.
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