Heyo, and welcome to the second Inside The Newsroom podcast newsletter of the week! On Monday the amazing Kait Parker of weather.com came on to talk about how hurricane recoveries can last up to a decade, and how climate change attitudes among Republicans might actually be swinging the right way. Today’s guest is Kashmir Hill, an awesome tech journalist most recently at Gizmodo Media. Kash is about to announce her new gig, but one of her final projects at Gizmodo was to cut out the Big Five technology giants — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft — from her life for one week at a time, before cutting them all. Kash described it as “hell.” 🔥Below are links and analyses of one of my favorite podcasts so far… Enjoy!
Amazon Basically Owns the Internet
You, I and the majority of the people reading this will think Amazon makes most of its money from its retail business, aka delivering whatever we want, whenever we want it. We’re wrong. I knew Amazon Web Services — Amazon’s cloud computing platform — was a big thing, but I didn’t know it raked in $25.7 billion in 2018. As Kash detailed, millions of websites use AWS in some way, so it pretty much owns the internet.
This is Why Facebook is the Most Dangerous
The most glaring difference between Facebook and the “others” is its intention to control our emotions and guilt trip us into using its platform. And it’s not just Kash or me saying this. Five years ago, Facebook actually admitted to manipulating our newsfeeds to make us feel more positive or negative, a process called "emotional contagion". They’re still doing this today.
The Microsoft Antitrust Case Changed Everything
More than 20 years ago, Microsoft was sued by the Department of Justice and 20 state attorneys for violating antitrust law. The case allowed new competitors to flourish. Two of those companies, Amazon and Google, are now in the firing line of the DOJ’s antitrust chief, and the Microsoft case will set the precedent for any punishment.
Richard Blumenthal and Tim Wu for the New York Times
When Did Congress Become So Dumb?
In my episode with Jessica Lessin, founder and editor-in-chief of The Information, we talked about how the people supposedly keeping these companies in check aren’t even smart enough, let alone know what they’re talking about. Along with the snail’s pace with which Congress moves, it will be long, long time before anything significant changes in the tech industry.
Grace Gedye, Washington Monthly
Technology is Changing What it Means to be Human… Dayum
Well that’s not good, but it’s probably true. Vox’s Sean Illing spoke to Michael Bess, a historian of science at Vanderbilt University and the author of Our Grandchildren Redesigned: Life in a Bioengineered Society, and basically we’re all doomed, but how we’re all doomed is the spooky part.
Want to Really Block the Tech Giants? Here’s How…
Kash worked with technologist Dhruv Mehrotra to make the series happen, and Dhruv kindly outlined exactly how he was able to keep the likes of Amazon and Google out of Kash’s life. Whether or not you decide to go cold turkey and cut everything out after reading this, there are subtle changes you can make to reduce your reliance on the Big Five that will improve your privacy, and sanity.
Dhruv Mehrotra for Gizmodo Media
Related Podcasts
#41 — Jessica Lessin (The Information)
#36 — Sam Biddle (The Intercept)
Next Up…
… is Domonique Foxworth or Taylor Lorenz
Last Time
#42 — Kait Parker (weather.com)
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