Surveilled — Issue 27
Surveilled
Issue 27
A weekly summary of what I've found interesting at the intersection of economics, finance and technology.
Headlines
More fallen angels—Luggage maker—sorry, lifestyle company—Away landed in hot water this week, after The Verge revealed a dysfunctional bullying culture emanating from the CEO herself. Nothing about this story is very surprising anymore nowadays, from the revelations itself to the reactions to it. VC’s and their allies dismiss the story or even praise “the hustle”, whereas critics (rightfully, in my opinion) call out the self-righteousness and the hypocrisy. What is perhaps different these days is that the CEO resigned in a matter of days (although she remains as “executive chairman.”)
Spare a thought for the team at Kotaku who came out with a very similar story about gaming peripherals company Razer, but that was overshadowed by the Away story in the end. The chances of Razer’s CEO leaving are nil, however.
Nonetheless, taken together and with the whole WeWork saga, these stories are an indication of the wider malaise in the tech industry, and perhaps a lead indicator for the end of the good times. It seems the huge influx of money into the industry ended up creating a culture very similar to the financial industry from before the global financial crisis (neatly captured in this tweet), and a readjustment will be necessary.
Apple’s always-on location feature—“Security reporter Brian Krebs asked why the newest iPhone 11 Pro appeared to be sending out a user’s location even when the user disabled Location Services in their phone’s settings, in conflict with Apple’s privacy policy and the express wishes of the user.” Apple’s explanation seems reasonable, although it doesn’t look great. Overall this seems to be much ado about nothing, and incidentally a response time of 2 days actually strikes me as fast in a giant corporation (where the query would have bounced around a few departments before getting an answer), but the minor freakout shows the high stakes about privacy lately.
Uber releases report on safety—the ride-sharing company released a report on the safety of its platform and it listed 3,045 instances of sexual assault (against drivers or passengers), nine murders and 58 people killed in crashes in 2018. Those numbers look scary, but there is a lack of comparable information across the industry, so it’s difficult to assess whether this is an issue with Uber in particular or a reflection of society in general. Either way, it will need addressing and that will drive up costs or reduce revenue. Day by day the economics for ride-sharing are looking less exceptional.
Google founders announce departure—Larry Page and Sergei Brin announced they are leaving their posts. Probably doesn’t mean much today, but they are giving the appearance they are ducking responsibility for the issues Google and the industry at large are facing. Longer term, I fear Google (or Alphabet) will become more beholden to corporate interests as a result of their departure, and we will see more of the surveillance capitalism behaviour, not less.
Context
Artists tricked bots that produce t-shirts with ripped off artworks from Twitter into printing incriminating messages. This story is amazing. Read
That's it for this week's edition. As always, thanks for reading and please forward this to anyone who you think might be interested, it would be much appreciated.