Five Things Tech: End of Big Tech, War on Chinese Tech, Meta Subsea Cable, Smart Appliances, Bad Tech

This is what you should read right now.

Hello again, and welcome back to Five Things Tech!

Big Tech certainly is as powerful as ever and this leads to a lot of frustration in both business and society. Companies hate to be dependent on traffic or services only the big tech companies can provide and while many people like to interact with friends and family, they do mind that they have to use commercial platforms for this. Especially now that we have all seen how algorithms create filter bubbles and help to spread desinformation and misinformation. At the same time, parents worry that their kids could be negatively affected by the stickyness and lock-in effects social media platforms can create. So this week Australia decided to ban social media usage for every kid under the age of 16. I assume that many platforms will see a sudden rise in 16-year olds in Australia and an interesting new phenomenon where kids try to outsmart the age-verification hurdles. This time it won’t be for porn, but to be able to chat with their friends. I’m curious to see if local apps will appear on the market that can be a viable alternative for Australian teens, both approved by the government and the kids.

Big Tech has lost so much trust that I think other countries will follow suit if Australia’s policy is only half successful. And we also have to address the big elephant in the room that our conversations have moved almost entirely into commercial spaces where commercial entities decide what piece of information gets to be displayed to which user. This cannot be good for our liberal democracies.

On that happy note, here’s a quick reminder: if you are still looking for inspiration, check out the Five Things Gift Guide! Of course I included some tech gadgets in the list!

Read now about Big Tech and the beginning of its end, about Chinese Tech and how American tariffs helped to make it better, about a huge subsea cable that Meta wants to build, about dumb smart appliances and about bad tech.

Enjoy!