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Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At

Ed Zitron's Where's...
The People Deliberately Killing Facebook Over the last decade, few platforms have declined quite as rapidly and visibly as Facebook and...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
Over the last decade, few platforms have declined quite as rapidly and visibly as Facebook and Instagram. What used to be apps for catching up with your friends and family are now algorithmic nightmares that constantly interrupt you with suggested content and advertisements that...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
We're Watching Facebook Die In the first quarter of 2024, Meta made $36.45 billion dollars - $12.37 billion dollars of which was...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
In the first quarter of 2024, Meta made $36.45 billion dollars - $12.37 billion dollars of which was pure profit. Though the company no longer reports daily active users, it now uses another metric: “family daily active people.” This number refers to “registered and logged-in
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Sam Altman Is Full Of Shit Note: In my last newsletter, I said that my next post would be the second part of my Facebook...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
Note: In my last newsletter, I said that my next post would be the second part of my Facebook autopsy. Don’t worry, that’s still coming, but given the recent drama between Sam Altman, OpenAI, and Scarlett Johansson, I felt the need to write something. Don’
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Expectations Versus Reality A few months ago, OpenAI showed off “Sora,” a product that can generate videos based on a short...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
A few months ago, OpenAI showed off “Sora,” a product that can generate videos based on a short prompt, much like ChatGPT does for text or DALL-E does for images, and I asked myself a pretty simple question: "...how can someone actually make something useful out of
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Monopoly Money Last week, in the midst of the slow, painful collapse of the generative AI hype cycle, something...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Last week, in the midst of the slow, painful collapse of the generative AI hype cycle, something incredible happened. On Monday, a Federal Judge delivered a crushing ruling in the multi-year-long antitrust case filed against Google by the Department of Justice. In 300-pages of...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Put Up Or Shut Up I feel like the tech industry is currently in the midst of the most bizarre cognitive dissonance...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
I feel like the tech industry is currently in the midst of the most bizarre cognitive dissonance I've ever seen — more so than the metaverse, even — as company after company simply lies about their intentions and the power of AI.  I get it. Everybody wants
Ed Zitron's Where's...
The Rot-Com Bubble If you enjoy this post, why not subscribe to my podcast Better Offline? This week's a two parter...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
If you enjoy this post, why not subscribe to my podcast Better Offline? This week's a two parter that further expands on the Rot-Com Bubble, coming out Wednesday and Friday. The noxious growth-at-all-costs mindset of the Rot Economy sits at the core of every issue that I'
Ed Zitron's Where's...
How Does OpenAI Survive? Throughout the last year I’ve written in detail about the rot in tech — the spuriousness of...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Throughout the last year I’ve written in detail about the rot in tech — the spuriousness of charlatans looking to accumulate money and power, the desperation of the most powerful executives to maintain control and rapacious growth, and the speciousness of the latest hype cycle —...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Pop Culture A week and a half ago, Goldman Sachs put out a 31-page-report (titled "Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
A week and a half ago, Goldman Sachs put out a 31-page-report (titled "Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?”) that includes some of the most damning literature on generative AI I've ever seen. And yes, that sound you hear is the slow deflation of
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Silicon Valley's False Prophet The tech industry has craved a messiah since the death of Steve Jobs, but in OpenAI CEO Sam Altman...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
The tech industry has craved a messiah since the death of Steve Jobs, but in OpenAI CEO Sam Altman they’ve discovered more of a false prophet — a seedy grifter that uses his remarkable ability to impress and manipulate Silicon Valley’s elite to mask a total
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Rot Economics - An Interview With MIT's Daron Acemoglu Want to listen to this interview instead? Download the latest episode of Better Offline! You can...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Want to listen to this interview instead? Download the latest episode of Better Offline! You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you can insert an RSS feed. Last week, I had the privilege of interviewing Daron Acemoglu — one of the world’s most
Ed Zitron's Where's...
The Other Bubble Buried in the 8000 words I wrote last week was a worrying story — that Microsoft considered drastic...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
Buried in the 8000 words I wrote last week was a worrying story — that Microsoft considered drastic measures to free up  capacity in its US-based servers for GPUs to power the AI boom. In an email shared with me by a source from earlier this year, Microsoft'
Ed Zitron's Where's...
CrowdStruck Soundtrack: EL-P - Tasmanian Pain Coaster (feat. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez & Cedric Bixler-Zavala) When I...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Soundtrack: EL-P - Tasmanian Pain Coaster (feat. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez & Cedric Bixler-Zavala) When I first began writing this newsletter, I didn't really have a goal, or a "theme," or anything that could neatly characterize what I was going to write about other than that I was
Ed Zitron's Where's...
The Subprime AI Crisis None of what I write in this newsletter is about sowing doubt or "hating," but a sober evaluation of...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
None of what I write in this newsletter is about sowing doubt or "hating," but a sober evaluation of where we are today and where we may end up on the current path. I believe that the artificial intelligence boom — which would be better described as a
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Matt Stoller Explains Monopolies The latest episode of my podcast Better Online is a conversation with Matt Stoller — America’s...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
The latest episode of my podcast Better Online is a conversation with Matt Stoller — America’s leading voice on monopoly and antitrust matters, and a thoughtful and prolific writer. You can find Matt on Twitter here, and his newsletter here. It was a timely conversation. At the
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Burst Damage Soundtrack: Masters of Reality - High Noon Amsterdam I have said almost everything in this piece in...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Soundtrack: Masters of Reality - High Noon Amsterdam I have said almost everything in this piece in every one of these articles for months. I am not upset, but just stating an obvious truth. The current state of affairs effectively pushes against the boundaries of good sense,...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Let Tim Cook Last week, Apple announced “Apple Intelligence,” a suite of features coming to iOS 18 (the next...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
Last week, Apple announced “Apple Intelligence,” a suite of features coming to iOS 18 (the next version of the iPhone’s software) in a presentation that FastCompany called “uninspired,” Futurism called “boring,” and Axios claimed “failed to excite investors.”  The
Ed Zitron's Where's...
The Shareholder Supremacy I promise you, everything that's happening makes sense. It all feels so chaotic, so utterly,...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
I promise you, everything that's happening makes sense. It all feels so chaotic, so utterly, offensively stupid, so disconnected from reality that it's hard to understand how Meta can run a terrible company with decaying services that's also wildly profitable, or how Meta,...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Rabbit Holed Thank you to Emily Shepherd for her hard work reporting parts of this story, as well as her...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
Thank you to Emily Shepherd for her hard work reporting parts of this story, as well as her assistance clarifying details related to GAMA and finding company documents related to Rabbit and Cyber Manufacture.    In November 2021, a company called Cyber Manufacture Co raised $6...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Never Forgive Them In the last year, I’ve spent about 200,000 words on a kind of personal journey where I’ve tried...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
In the last year, I’ve spent about 200,000 words on a kind of personal journey where I’ve tried again and again to work out why everything digital feels so broken, and why it seems to keep getting worse, despite what tech’s “brightest&
Ed Zitron's Where's...
You Can't Make Friends With The Rockstars You cannot make friends with the rock stars...if you're going to be a true journalist, you know, a...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
You cannot make friends with the rock stars...if you're going to be a true journalist, you know, a rock journalist. First, you never get paid much, but you will get free records from the record company. [There’s] fuckin’ nothin' about you that is
Ed Zitron's Where's...
The Cult of Microsoft At the core of Microsoft, a three-trillion-dollar hardware and software company, lies a kind of...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
At the core of Microsoft, a three-trillion-dollar hardware and software company, lies a kind of social poison — an ill-defined, cult-like pseudo-scientific concept called 'The Growth Mindset" that drives company decision-making in everything from how products are sold, to how...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
In Response To Google Google has chosen to send a response to my article to Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable....
10 months ago
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10 months ago
Google has chosen to send a response to my article to Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable. Here is my response. (1) On the March 2019 core update claim in the piece: This is baseless speculation. The March 2019 core update was designed to improve the quality of our search
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Godot Isn't Making it Before we get going — please enjoy my speech from Web Summit, Why Are All Tech Products Now Shit? I...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
Before we get going — please enjoy my speech from Web Summit, Why Are All Tech Products Now Shit? I didn’t write the title. What if what we're seeing today isn't a glimpse of the future, but the new terms of the present? What
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Requiem for Raghavan Last week, Prabhakar Raghavan was relieved of duty as Senior Vice President of Search, becoming...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
Last week, Prabhakar Raghavan was relieved of duty as Senior Vice President of Search, becoming Google's "Chief Technologist."  An important rule to follow with somebody's title in Silicon Valley is that if you can't tell what it means, it probably doesn&
Ed Zitron's Where's...
The Man Who Killed Google Search Wanna listen to this story instead? Check out this week's Better Offline podcast, "The Man That...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
Wanna listen to this story instead? Check out this week's Better Offline podcast, "The Man That Destroyed Google Search," available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
OpenAI Is A Bad Business OpenAI, a non-profit AI company that will lose anywhere from $4 billion to $5 billion this year,...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
OpenAI, a non-profit AI company that will lose anywhere from $4 billion to $5 billion this year, will at some point in the next six or so months convert into a for-profit AI company, at which point it will continue to lose money in exactly the same way. Shortly after
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Lost In The Future Soundtrack: Post Pop Depression - Paraguay I haven't wanted to write much in the last...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
Soundtrack: Post Pop Depression - Paraguay I haven't wanted to write much in the last week. Seemingly every single person on Earth with a blog has tried to drill down into what happened on November 5 — to find the people to blame, to somehow explain what could&
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Managing Up Over the last two newsletters (three, if you include my reply to Google’s “rebuttal” of the...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
Over the last two newsletters (three, if you include my reply to Google’s “rebuttal” of the Prabhakar Raghavan newsletter), I’ve made the case that while rot economics are responsible for making technology products manifestly worse, this transformation was only possible thanks to...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Bubble Trouble As I previously warned, artificial intelligence companies are running out of data. A Wall Street...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
As I previously warned, artificial intelligence companies are running out of data. A Wall Street Journal piece from this week has sounded the alarm that some believe AI models will run out of "high-quality text-based data" within the next two years in what an AI researcher called...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
They're Looting The Internet Last week, Meta revealed (in a motion trying to dismiss an FTC anti-monopoly lawsuit) that Instagram...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
Last week, Meta revealed (in a motion trying to dismiss an FTC anti-monopoly lawsuit) that Instagram made an astonishing $32.4 billion in advertising revenue in 2021. That figure becomes even more shocking when you consider Google's YouTube made $28.8 billion in the same period....
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Thank You Soundtrack: Spinnerette - The Walking Dead - (Alt: Postmodern Jukebox - Radioactive)  Thanks so much...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
Soundtrack: Spinnerette - The Walking Dead - (Alt: Postmodern Jukebox - Radioactive)  Thanks so much to everybody that has supported me in the last year. This newsletter started as a way for me to process the complex feelings I have about the technology industry, and still...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
The Descent of Elon Musk Money can't buy happiness, but it can get you pretty damn close. As the second richest man alive, ...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
Money can't buy happiness, but it can get you pretty damn close. As the second richest man alive,  Elon Musk should be rolling electric coal down Rodeo Drive in a cybertruck, smugly aware of the fact that, despite what the haters say, he's kind of
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Have We Reached Peak AI? Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a 10-minute-long interview with OpenAI CTO Mira Murati,...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a 10-minute-long interview with OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, with journalist Joanna Stern asking a series of thoughtful yet straightforward questions that Murati failed to satisfactorily answer. When asked about what data was used to train...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
One Month of Better Offline Hello! I have been deliberately not dropping every episode of my new show iHeartRadio/Cool Zone...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
Hello! I have been deliberately not dropping every episode of my new show iHeartRadio/Cool Zone Media show Better Offline onto the newsletter feed, as I don't want to start sending you two emails a week, or make you feel like you're being spammed. I am
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Are We Watching The Internet Die? Sometime this month, Reddit will go public at a valuation of $6.5bn. Select Redditors were offered...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
Sometime this month, Reddit will go public at a valuation of $6.5bn. Select Redditors were offered the chance to buy stock at the initial listing price, which it hasn’t announced yet but is expected to be in the range of $31-34 per share. Regardless of the actual
Ed Zitron's Where's...
The Slop Society In the last week we've seen the emergence of the true Meta — and the true Mark Zuckerberg — as the...
a month ago
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a month ago
In the last week we've seen the emergence of the true Meta — and the true Mark Zuckerberg — as the company ended its fact-checking program, claiming that (and I quote) "fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Introducing: Better Offline Episodes 1 and 2 Out Now Hello everybody! A short newsletter today to announce the launch of my new...
a year ago
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a year ago
Episodes 1 and 2 Out Now Hello everybody! A short newsletter today to announce the launch of my new podcast Better Offline - my new tech show from iHeartRadio and Cool Zone Media. It's a weekly exploring the tech industry’s influence and manipulation of society -
Ed Zitron's Where's...
The Apple Vision Pro: A Review I’ve spent a lot of time with the Vision Pro, turning my experience into both the newsletter you’re...
a year ago
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a year ago
I’ve spent a lot of time with the Vision Pro, turning my experience into both the newsletter you’re reading and one of the first two episodes of my upcoming iHeartRadio podcast Better Offline. I wrote the majority of this newsletter on the Vision Pro itself, though
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Subprime Intelligence Please scroll to the bottom for news on my next big project, Better Offline, coming this...
a year ago
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a year ago
Please scroll to the bottom for news on my next big project, Better Offline, coming this Wednesday! Last week, Sam Altman debuted OpenAI's "Sora," a text-to-video AI model that turns strings of text into full-blown videos, much like how OpenAI's DALL-E turns text into
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Software Has Eaten The Media As I wrote a year ago in The Rot Economy (and as I argued on the first episode of my podcast Better...
12 months ago
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12 months ago
As I wrote a year ago in The Rot Economy (and as I argued on the first episode of my podcast Better Offline), I believe that both public and private markets have become decoupled from the concept of "good business," ruled instead by a hunger for the eternal
Ed Zitron's Where's...
How Tech Outstayed Its Welcome Last week, Apple opened pre-orders for the Vision Pro, a $3500 “spatial computer” that is its first...
a year ago
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a year ago
Last week, Apple opened pre-orders for the Vision Pro, a $3500 “spatial computer” that is its first real “new” thing since the Apple Watch, and arguably its most notable release since the iPad or iPhone. Ming-Chi Kuo, one of the few truly reliable Apple analysts, estimates
Ed Zitron's Where's...
Deep Impact Soundtrack: The Hives — Hate To Say I Told You So In the last week or so, but especially over the...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
Soundtrack: The Hives — Hate To Say I Told You So In the last week or so, but especially over the weekend, the entire generative AI industry has been thrown into chaos. This won’t be a lengthy, technical write-up — although there will be some inevitable technical complexities,
Ed Zitron's Where's...
What We're Fighting For Soundtrack: Bad Religion — The Resist Stance A great deal of what I write feels like narrating the...
a week ago
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a week ago
Soundtrack: Bad Religion — The Resist Stance A great deal of what I write feels like narrating the end of the world — watching as the growth-at-all-costs, hyper-financialized Rot Economy seemingly tarnishes every corner of our digital lives. My core frustration isn't just how...
Ed Zitron's Where's...
The Generative AI Con It's been just over two years and two months since ChatGPT launched, and in that time we've seen...
5 days ago
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5 days ago
It's been just over two years and two months since ChatGPT launched, and in that time we've seen Large Language Models (LLMs) blossom from a novel concept into one of the most craven cons of the 21st century — a cynical bubble inflated by OpenAI CEO