Tech Won't Save Us

Paris Marx is joined by Emma Kinema to discuss how workers are organizing in the video game and tech industries, the challenges faced by those workers, and the importance of organizing to improve workplaces, but also larger economic structures.

Emma Kinema is a former tech and games worker who is a Campaign Lead with the Communications Workers of America on the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees. She also co-founded Game Workers Unite. Follow Emma on Twitter as @EmmaKinema.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com and Passage at readpassage.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Emma spoke about labor organizing in the video games industry at XOXO Festival.
• Paris wrote about why game workers are organizing in Australia, Canada, and France.
• In January 2020, GDC’s State of Games Industry report found 54% of game workers thought they should unionize.
• Workers at Riot Games walked out in May 2019. Workers at Blizzard Entertainment walked out in October 2019. Workers at Lovestruck went on strike and got an average raised of 78%.
• Rockstar’s co-founder said there were 100-hour weeks ahead of Red Dead Redemption 2. Bioware workers said “depression and anxiety are an epidemic” within the company. CD Projekt Red said there wouldn’t be crunch on Cyberpunk 2077, then enforced it anyway.

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Paris Marx is joined by Wilfred Chan to discuss how gig companies misled California voters to back Prop 22, whether the Biden administration will be an ally to gig workers, and the need for solidarity in the fight to preserve (and expand) labor rights.

Wilfred Chan is a contributing writer at the Nation. He has also written for Dissent, The Guardian, NBC News, and more. Read his recent piece on the fight for labor rights after Prop 22. Follow Wilfred on Twitter as @wilfredchan.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

If you want to join the Discord and check out the new supporter tiers, head over to Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• The Economic Policy Institute published an explainer on California’s Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) and worker misclassification
• The gig companies bought endorsements and sent out fake progressive mailers for Prop 22. The head of California’s NAACP stepped down after the election for taking $1.7 million to back ballot measures.
• VP-elect Kamala Harris’ brother-in-law Tony West is chief legal officer at Uber, and now there are calls to make him Attorney General in a Biden administration
• Biden’s transition team is full of people from Big Tech with concerning pasts, including from Uber and Lyft
• Uber and Lyft’s share prices soared after Prop 22 won
• Find out more about Rideshare Drivers United and New York Taxi Workers Alliance

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Paris Marx is joined by Liz Pelly to discuss how the Spotify model of streaming music continues a long trend of exploitation in the music industry and why musicians need to organize around a vision for a different world of music.

Liz Pelly is a freelance writer and critic who has spent the past decade working with community arts spaces. She is also a contributing editor and columnist at The Baffler. Follow Liz on Twitter as @lizpelly.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Read the plan for the future of the show and supporter benefits on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Liz’s work looks at many aspects of Spotify, including the model it’s pushing on musicians and increasingly on podcasters
• Paris has written about how consolidation and the emergence of streaming is having similarly negative effects in film and television
• Naomi Klein explains how New Deal arts programs funded 225,000 musical performances which reached 150 million Americans — and much more
• Cherie Hu tweeted a diagram showing how different streaming and music companies have stakes in one another
• The Verge obtained Sony Music’s contract with Spotify
• How Galaxy 500 and Pavement had random songs take off on Spotify
• Spotify CEO says artists need to record music more frequently
• Henderson Cole’s proposal for an American Music Library
• The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers launched the Justice at Spotify campaign

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Paris Marx is joined by Will Evans to discuss how excessive productivity targets are causing high rates of injury at Amazon warehouses, how executives have misled the public about the problem, and what that suggests about the impacts of the company’s “customer obsession.”

Will Evans is a reporter at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Read his investigation about Amazon’s safety crisis. Follow Will on Twitter as @willCIR.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Read the plan for the future of the show and supporter benefits on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris reflected on what Will’s investigation suggested about the relationship between consumerism and workers’ rights for NBC News.
• Will did an earlier investigation about safety (or the lack thereof) at Tesla.
• Brian Merchant wrote an “op-ed from the future” looking at how technology hides the harm to workers in a fictional fully automated Amazon warehouse.

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Paris Marx is joined by Daniel Joseph to discuss the relationship between video games and capitalism, how the gaming experience has become increasingly commercialized, and what the new consoles — Xbox Series X|S and Playstation 5 — herald for the future of the industry.

Daniel Joseph is a Senior Lecturer of Digital Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. Read his articles for Real Life about video games and capitalism and platformization, and for Briarpatch about what better platforms might look like. Follow Daniel on Twitter as @DanjoKaz00ie.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

** Support the show on Patreon and read the plan for the future.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• “If Xbox is Netflix, then Playstation is cinema” by Christopher Dring at GamesIndustry.biz
• How PS4 better positioned itself against Xbox One, including a short video about trading games
• Nintendo was charged with price fixing in the 1990s in the United States and Europe
• In 2015, Valve and Bethesda had to backtrack on plans to commercialize modding
• 53% of PS4 game sales were digital in 2019. That grew to 74% in the early part of 2020.
• David Nieborg and Thomas Poell’s work on platforms; Sarah Grimes’ work on commercialization of children’s gaming; the App Studies Initiative; and T.L. Taylor’s “Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming”

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Paris Marx is joined by Aaron Benanav to discuss why jobs are getting worse because the economy’s slowing down, not because technology is speeding up, and why that requires a vision of post-scarcity centered around human relationships instead of technological change.

Aaron Benanav is an economic historian and social theorist. He is a post-doctoral researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin and author of “Automation and the Future of Work.” Follow Aaron on Twitter as @abenanav.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Prop 22 passed in California, stopping gig workers from becoming employees
• Paris explains the limits of a basic income, how Aaron’s book helps us think about the future, and the problems with luxury communism
• Aaron explains why automation isn’t wiping out jobs
• Aaron’s science fiction reading list: “The Dispossessed,” “The Word for World is Forest,” and “Always Coming Home” by Ursula K. Le Guin; “Red Star” by Alexander Bogdanov; “Hard to be a God” and “Noon: 22nd Century” by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky; “News from Nowhere” by William Morris; “Looking Backward” by Edward Bellamy; “The Conquest of Bread” by Peter Kropotkin; “Trouble on Triton” by Samuel R. Delaney; “Star Maker” by Olaf Stapledon; and “Utopia” by Thomas Moore.

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Paris Marx is joined by Evan Greer to discuss Republican and Democratic desires to amend or revoke Section 230, why the proposals won’t solve problems with Big Tech, and the international implications of US decisions about moderation.

Evan Greer is an activist, musician, and writer. She is the deputy director at Fight for the Future, which is currently running campaigns to protect Section 230 called Save Online Free Speech and to ban facial recognition technology. Follow Evan on Twitter as @evan_greer.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets. 

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Evan wrote about the problems with algorithmic amplification for Wired
• There is no anti-conservative bias on social media and Facebook’s algorithms connected extremists with hate groups
• Facebook removes the accounts of anti-government activists internationally and an internal memo by a former employee says it doesn’t care about its impacts if Western media won’t find out about it
• SESTA/FOSTA made life harder for sex workers, but has also empowered a movement for decriminalization
• Zoom deleted meetings discussing its own censorship

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Paris Marx is joined by Xiaowei Wang to discuss how technology is being used to connect rural China to global supply chains, what that means for life and work in those communities, and how China also holds inspiration for a different way of organizing production and technological development.

Xiaowei Wang is a technologist, artist, and writer. They are the creative director at Logic Magazine and author of “Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside.” Follow Xiaowei on Twitter as @xrw.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets. You can also find out more about 49th Parahell on its website.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• How China’s Sanlu milk scandal shattered trust in the food system
• Garrett Hardin, who came up with the tragedy of the commons, was a racist, eugenicist, nativist, and Islamophobe — and those ideas are baked into the concept
• Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in Economics for her work on the governance of commons, rebuking Hardin’s ideas
• Xiaowei wrote about the Chinese concept of “shanzhai” provides a vision of an open-source future of technological development

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Paris Marx is joined by Tim Hwang to discuss how digital ad markets became financialized, why Google and Facebook have an incentive to hide how poorly digital ads actually work, and how a financial bubble in digital advertising could usher in a better future of the internet.

Tim Hwang is a writer, researcher, and former global public policy lead for artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google. He is also the author of “Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet.” Follow Tim on Twitter as @timhwang.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets. You can also find out more about Alberta Advantage on their website.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner isn’t so sure Cambridge Analytica was as good at changing our minds as it made us all believe.
• When Procter and Gamble cut their digital ad spend by $200 million, its reach increased by 10%.
• A Google report found that 56% of ad impressions may not even be seen by humans.
• Facebook’s “pivot to video” was based on false metrics and caused a lot of journalists to lose their jobs.
• Paris wrote a critical review of The Social Dilemma for Jacobin.

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Paris Marx is joined by JS Tan to discuss the internet’s connection with neoliberalism, China’s protectionist measures to develop its own tech industry, and how the new tensions between the United States and China are leading Silicon Valley to embrace nationalism.

JS Tan is a former tech worker and writer. He also started Collective Actions in Tech. He recently wrote articles about the tech angle on the Cold War for Foreign Policy and Trump’s attempted TikTok ban for Jacobin. Follow JS on Twitter as @organizejs.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets. You can also find Kino Lefter on Twitter.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• The solidarity between tech workers in the United States and China
• Key insights into tech worker activism from the Collective Actions in Tech database
• Mark Zuckerberg’s speech at Georgetown University
• Peter Thiel’s tech nationalism op-ed in the New York Times
• Eric Schmidt’s tech nationalism op-ed in the New York Times

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