Big Tech ain't quite what it says it is

Reflecting on this summer's technology news leads to the conclusion that industry giants are producing a great deal more heat than light in this era

by Denis Haman

Published: 18:29, 05 September 2024

September is already upon us, and we are all collectively gearing up towards a sprint finish to a quite extraordinary 2024. One thing that the media industry doesn't lack is drama and disruption, and the year has not failed us in that respect so far.

Having just returned from a break, and catching up with news that affects our industry, there is no shortage of large ticket items, even during what here in the UK we affectionately call the Silly Season - when then news cycle dries up and everyone scratches around for something, anything, to write about, regardless of how ridiculous it may be.

I mean, it may feel like a silly season if you switched off for a couple of weeks. After laughably wanting to sue advertisers for exercising their free will and buying choices by not advertising on X, Space Karen has now managed to get X banned in Brazil for failing to comply with the Brazilian government's legal requests. 

There is now a war of words and threats between a tech giant and a South American land giant. Being a Big Tech company/platform these days means you feel empowered enough to start threatening the fifth largest country in the world. You may not like their laws, but they are a sovereign nation and can enforce their laws any which way they please.

Meanwhile, the brains at Google have seemingly managed to roll back the changes from the Harmful Content Update as we have "affectionately" called it here at Glide Towers. Our friend, Barry Adams, of Polemic Digital fame sensibly asks: "Will we at least get an apology for the massive economic harm caused?". Well, I for one am not expecting Google to even acknowledge it as a mistake. With law-makers already breathing down their neck, it is just as well for Mountain View that such economic harm is difficult to directly prove unless there is the specific political will to do so.

Speaking of political and legal will, a small bit of huge news is that a panel of judges in the US has batted away the section 230 defence put up by TikTok over a terribly sad case involving a young girl who died after performing a viral challenge she had been shown on the platform. Will such an unspeakable tragedy ultimately see the controversial Section 230 reconsidered, and place platforms under the same obligations that publishers already rightfully carry? The "we are not publishers" shtick is wearing so thin it puts nanothreads to shame. 

Elsewhere, a sizeable smattering of AI companies are either being sued or are being sued. NVIDIA, the darling of AI-boom chip making has lost $280bn worth of value after the US Department of Justice OJ issued an antitrust subpoena against it. 

Meta is going at it hard with GenAI (thanks to your personal data, dear reader), in the hope that the Metaverse and the $46 billion thrown at it will be forgotten forever.

Apple, without such a GenAI strategy and a messy relationship with Google has nothing new and genuinely exciting to offer to their loyal, but increasingly slow-to-upgrade fanbase.

Welcome back to work. A bit of distance though, provides also a bit of perspective. 

What came to my mind is sitting on a panel with a competitor of ours and discussing the subject of GenAI. Our competitor was breathlessly going on about how we were at a dawn of Artificial General Intelligence. I have to admit to being unprofessional and rolling my eyes a bit. In turn, I explained that at Glide, we tend to see as AI as Augmentative Intelligence, not some panacea that will take away all the ills of our much disrupted yet very resilient industry. 

Perhaps, we have been in media for too long (30 years for me this summer), but we find that cynicism is healthy as it keeps us rooted. It is important to see things for what they are, rather than what you are told they are.

I note that our competitor has now started using the term Augmentative Intelligence too. I am both pleased and flattered, good on them. 

My own conclusion, as illustrated by my Summery summary, is that Big Tech has become better at PR and hype, legal battles, and monopolistic practices than it has at what made it, innovation. A good PR example is that the gargantuan compute and therefore energy power needed for GenAI is not really discussed, unlike it was with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, an area of innovation in which Big Tech has largely found itself outflanked. The legal firewall that is Section 230 has stood firm for 30 years, providing a shield that no publisher has the luxury of.

So, what of innovation? Well, innovation comes from constraints and pressure. Recently, I had pleasure of hearing that one of our customers, Poker.org, were marvelled at by a large gaming partner of theirs as to how much they have done with a small dev and product team (and Glide CMS and Glide Nexa as platforms of course, I am obliged to add!).

I was obviously delighted to hear that - how could I not? A third party validating both us and and our customer. There can be no greater endorsement.

Without namechecking all of our customers, seeing what they do, with the resources they have at their disposal, I am regularly blown away by the speed of innovation and agility shown. Small, capable teams delighting their customers day in day out, nimbly adapting to various Big Tech winds buffeting their businesses.

The media industry as a whole has had to be innovative to survive with a fraction of the resources that Big Tech has availabe. And yet, the overwhelming feeling is that we are somehow laggards while Big Tech are some trailblazers. Perhaps it is the post holiday optimism talking, but I think we don't give ourselves enough credit.