Hello and welcome to TechScape. Alex is now on paternity leave, and in his place, a rotating cast of writers will be giving their take on the world of tech.
Apologies to readers who have begged Alex for fewer stories about Elon Musk and cryptocurrency, but in a post-Twitter takeover world there are no quiet weeks for tech reporters. In recent weeks, Musk has handed over documents for the latest edition of the “Twitter Files” to controversial author Alex Berenson (with the not-so-revealing news that Twitter has been asked not to spread misinformation about the vaccine); he implied that we are receiving 4000 character long tweets; and he tweeted messages about the arrest of disgraced influencer and “king of toxic masculinity” Andrew Tate.
All of this happened while the share price of his electric car company, Tesla, plummeted. For better or worse, and so far he appears to be ill, Musk became the lead character in 2022’s Trumping tech.
Which is why I hope you’ll forgive us for focusing so much on him and continuing to do so until 2023. Because, like Trump, Musk’s way of doing things has a butterfly effect beyond Twitter. Musk (pictured above) is redesigning the TechScape, and how we as journalists (and politicians as regulators) should treat it.
Alex Hern, like me, has long treated big tech with a healthy dose of skepticism. The Guardian he was among the top outlets holding Facebook’s feet on the fire during the Cambridge Analytica scandal; discovered issues with TikTok’s content moderation system; laughs (rightly) at the metaverse. It’s long been obvious that social media executives can’t always deal with the problems they need to, given their companies’ central role in our society, and I’ve personally felt that they’re simply not ready to understand their own impact. .
However, in retrospect, we can now appreciate how lucky we were. Even if Big Tech executives weren’t always up to the task, they recognized the enormity of the problem. Mark Zuckerberg made many bad decisions and often acted in his flagrant self-interest, but he seemed to realize that his company’s position in our lives meant that he had to try to keep his platform in check.
There is little sense of that with Musk. The risk is that just as politicians began flouting the rules after realizing that Donald Trump got away with it, other tech executives could start doing the same. We can look back on 2022 and think that we never had it this good when it comes to Big Tech behavior, which is a worrying thought.
The metaverse… lives?
The breaking news this week that the flat lunacy known as the metaverse could, and I stress might – Being resurrected. Since Facebook reviewed your entire business and renamed himself Meta as of late 2021, the metaverse has been little more than a Mark Zuckerberg dream in search of a use case.
The reason? No consumer wants to spend thousands of pounds on VR hardware (pictured above) that might increase the likelihood of tripping in their own home only to enter a universe with sub-Sims graphics.
Until now. Bloomberg reports that Apple is due to introduce a virtual and augmented reality headset this spring, in what is the world’s worst kept secret.
It’s a significant moment, not least because there’s an assumption (which may be misplaced) that Apple could do with virtual reality headsets, and thus the metaverse, what it did to the smartphone in 2007. Back then, people didn’t see the point of having an all-in-one device that could replace one’s camera as cleverly as it could take a call. They did not always see the point of applications. But 16 years later, we’re enthralled by the world of Apple.
The theory is that the headset, which can be called the Reality Pro, could propel the metaverse out of the realm of shaky tech nerds and into the mainstream. But like everything from Apple, it will come at a (high) cost. The metaverse got interesting again.
Ticktac for TikTok?
Another major news broke in the world of technology. TikTok made a mistake for the first time, and it was a problem. Two days before Christmas, TikTok sent an internal email from the general counsel of parent company ByteDance, Erich Andersen, revealing that staff members were spying on reporters covering the company.
I’ve got some experience covering TikTok And, like a phalanx of reporters, I’ve been looking for the story that torpedoed the company. Not out of malice, but because every tech company has skeletons in the closet. Until now, many talented reporters couldn’t find much beyond the problems that bankrupt all big tech companies: intimidation (£), content moderation errors and White Lies (£) whose objective is to make the platform appear less intrusive than it is.
Turns out we didn’t need to dig to find the irrefutable proof. TikTok did it for us.
It’s hard to overestimate how much of an own goal his snooping is for TikTok. Sino-skeptical politicians in the UK and US, for example, could argue that it confirms their fears that the company is not really Westernising, and they could argue that claims that TikTok is disassociating itself from Chinese government control are little more than gibberish.
The decision to spy is, in its own way, as important as Elon Musk breaking the rule book on how to be a great tech executive. It’s the worst possible start to 2023 for TikTok, and it means the company must rebuild trust not only with politicians and users, but also with the reporters who cover the company.
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