A look at the vibe shift around Big Tech
How did we all come to loathe these once-darlings?
It is generally advisable - for the sake of one’s mental health - to not spend too much time reading internet comments. But I find them an excellent source of research - imperfect but representative.
Recently, I saw this post by American news publication Morning Brew:
Ooh boy, the comments should be fun.
I had a hunch things would be even more entertaining over at Reddit. They were.
Let’s take a minute to appreciate this. Americans rooting for destroying what should be their darlings. During a war! I can’t imagine such jocular support against Chevron or GM during the Iraq War.
From optimism to weariness
There was recently a ruling against Meta and YouTube. From Forbes:
Last week marked a landmark moment in tech history when a Los Angeles jury ruled that social media giants Meta and YouTube were negligent in designing features that harmed a 20-year-old’s mental health.
Big Tech is no stranger to lawsuits - with piddly billion-dollar fines, they are considered the cost of doing business. This time seems more watershed.
It’s being called Big Tech’s Big Tobacco moment. While parallels between the two industries have been drawn for a while, this ruling seems to have cemented the analogy. It comes at a time when technology firms’ reputation are at their nadir: Americans across party lines deeply distrust them (Gallup), and say they have too much political power (Pew). In mid-2023, Brookings said the drop in Big Tech trust outpaced that of any other industry (and this was before AI properly took off - which has only accelerated the distrust). Over half of Americans are okay with increased regulation - so the LA ruling must be having public support.
I use America as an example because a techno-optimist country - not to mention the home of all these firms - falling out of love with Big Tech indicates something much larger about us as humans. It’s hardly isolated - social media regulation is happening or being considered around the world - Australia, Philippines, Denmark, Malaysia, Karnataka!, Indonesia, and more each month.
It wasn’t always this way. Us millennials remember a time when we were optimistic about technology as a whole and these firms in particular. Twitter leading to the Arab Spring. Oatmeal drawing a Tesla comic. Facebook was cool.
In my view, that optimism didn’t turn to pessimism - it turned to weariness. Internet-based technologies are now tiresome. It’s like how a fun person at a party morphed into a blowhard who won’t shut up, everyone wishes would leave, but keeps asking you to do things you don’t want to.
I remember the first time Gmail asked me if I forgot to attach something because my mail had the word ‘attached’. I was head over heels - how thoughtful is that! Today, the Gmail experience is mostly trying to have AI features I don’t want shoved in my face. I’ll keep my imperfect writing, thanks, I have no interest in trying to make it more “concise” - meaning anodyne. You can’t use an internet-based tool today without being bombarded by AI features - from WhatsApp to Wix. It’s not that these features may not be useful to some - but there seems to be no way to turn them off. How do you get rid of that blue button in WhatsApp?
Work-based tools see the most egregious inflitration, and that only adds to the angst. The looming threat of being replaced by an LLM is reinforced with every cycle of layoffs, yet employees are being forced to adopt it at work (or being told by LinkedIn thoughtfluencers that they are obsolete if they’re not).
In many ways, AI is the ultimate Dilbertian tool - employees loathe it and it’s actually increased their work rather than reduce it. Bosses hardly know how to use it, but see it as a way to increase productivity and is a convenient scapegoat for layoffs. And then there’s how it’s made LinkedIn even more LinkedIn.
Given the all-pervasive nature of technology firms - especially the big ones - in our lives today, the surface area for weariness increases.
Take the collective hatred for AI art. In various forums I have seen absolute rejection of AI art, with people not even giving it a chance. It’s not just indie musicians and purists. If you go to the comments sections (ah, that again) of Instagram pages dedicated to funny cat videos - that most representative part of the internet - you will see many imploring admins not to post generated videos, even if they’re interesting.
When news emerges that Spotify props up AI music to pay even less to pesky human musicians, it further strengthens the hate to AI and Big Tech. There is increasing awareness of AI’s harms - environmental, mental, to artists.
I remember a podcast by The Ken where the host Praveen made an astute observation: A lot of Indian millennials are not finding meaning at startups anymore. Those firms started with lofty missions but over time, have just become just other boring, profit-maximising companies. Cue dark patterns. Cue millennial disillusionment. Cue board game nights and digital detoxes to regain some sense of purpose.
And at a time when job security and basic safety is increasingly a concerm, news that {insert tech / AI firm} has raised {insert absurd dollar amount} in funding or deals just seems from a different planet. The antics / comments of Altman, Huang, Musk, Zuckerberg, Nadella and other techbros are alienating many. I mean, take a look at the comments here for what schadenfreude looks like:
Distrusted by parents. Loathed by employees. Viewed sceptically by governments. Yelled at by artists and environmentalists. Hated by workers who just want to make an honest living. Big Tech’s reputation is lower than Johnny Cash’s vocal register right now.
Finally, maybe things are just moving too fast. Human beings - as a species - are loathe to too much change too quickly. In the world of AI, it seems there’s a new model, a new skill to learn, a new platform coming up every single day. Your job used to be writing marketing copy, it now seems like you’re better off on a farm if you don’t use Claude to vibe-code your workflow? Is it any wonder that many are longing for simpler days of tech being friendly or never around at all?
I consider myself an observer rather than taking sides, though my bias might have shown. And as an observer of technology’s impact on humans and culture, I am fascinated by how our collective immune system is kicking in, something I wrote about here.
The Slowing Down Economy and its attractions
All this has pushed many people in their individual capacities to try and de-tether themselves from Big Tech in small ways - going analog partially, restricting screen time, doing outdoorsy things, or getting a physical alarm clock. I call all of these various things the Slowing Down Economy, and I believe it’s a reaction to the over-preponderance of tech in our lives, and how tired we are of it.
Two key attractions to this Economy are:
Choice: People do most of the anti-Big Tech things on their own volition in ways that make the most sense for them, which is a refreshing change.
Decentralisation: The Slowing Down Economy is spread across thousands - maybe millions - of touchpoints ranging from individuals to small stores to apps and by nature are never going to consolidate for maximising shareholder value. Big Tech, on the other hand, will be studied for the ill effects of over-consolidation and getting too big - most of those lawsuits are indeed for holding monopoly over a market.
Like I wrote last week, it blows my mind how far these companies’ reputation stocks have fallen in such a quick span of time. Of course, their actual stocks have been doing quite well in the meantime. To be fair, a lot of them do still do good, and have some very smart honest people working in them (so Iran - please don’t bomb them). But I do feel this vibe shift is quite telling.
Big Tech’s Big Tobacco moment could be one of the most significant flash points in the history of this most fascinating time we’re living through.
Anyway, enough of that - so on to something else quickly.
Coming this Wednesday: Unstuck
08 April is the two-year anniversary of the launch of The 6% Club.
In that time, we have seen 8 cohorts and 300+ participants finding themselves through a creative project. Several Substacks, podcasts, and video series have been made as a result. Some are even launching books! It’s been very fulfiling. But now, we have a new offering coming.
Unstuck. A three-month program that aims to help people find direction and build habits in service of their values. I can’t share anything yet, but here’s what the top fold of our upcoming website looks like.
If you are interested in signing up, do mail me back and I’ll give you priority notification. Of course, I will be mailing my newsletter database anyway. It’s the most ambitious thing either Utsav or I have ever done. And we launch it on the 2-year anniversary of the 6% Club. And I swear, whatever we do, we will NEVER behave like Big Tech :)
Thank you for reading, and supporting me through all these years.
Chuck
There’s a real lack of ambition in “tech” (software). Particularly, outside US.
If you’re a millennial chasing the same thrill you might have got building apps when it was novel in early 2010s, I’d suggest taking a bit of a risk and moving into deep tech.
Work at a startup building rocket propulsions systems or jet engines or solid state batteries or new ways to deliver vaccines. I can guarantee you that it will give you immense satisfaction intellectually and ethically. You’ll exercise brain muscles that you’ve probably not done since college and you’ll face the thrill of the unknown again.
Won’t work for everyone. But I see far too many smart ambitious people work themselves into the ground making PRD’s for stupid B2B Saas widgets. All to chase status and become Principal PMs or whatever.
I just find it extremely tragic and an absolute waste of human potential.
So it can certainly help the world on the margins.
Called it! 😅