System Crash
Tech giants like Google and Facebook have conquered — some would say killed — the internet. Elon Musk used his platform to help elect Trump, and Silicon Valley elites want to gut the public sector. OpenAI and Microsoft aim to wipe away millions of jobs. Uber is driving down wages. Apple is impenetrable. Amazon is inescapable. All this high tech, and our quality of life is getting lower. The system has crashed.
So, System Crash: a weekly tech news show willing to tell the hard truths about how tech — and the titans who own and operate it — is really transforming the world. Co-hosts Paris Marx and Brian Merchant dissect the stories that matter, break news of their own, offer expert commentary, and interview journalists, whistleblowers, authors, and tech workers and ordinary people fighting back.
System Crash
Please Reboot Your System
The system is crashing, and we’re here to guide you through the wreckage. In the inaugural episode of System Crash, Brian Merchant and Paris Marx dig into how the alliance of Donald Trump and Elon Musk—along with his Silicon Valley cohort—is poised to transform both our politics and the tech world. Plus, how generative AI is trained on thousands of Hollywood scripts and why Bluesky gives us (a least a little) hope.
Mentioned this week:
- Sam Biddle on how Trump is a win for tech’s “warrior class” in the Intercept.
- The Financial Times wrote about advertisers heading back to Twitter/X to gain the favor of Trump and Musk. (See also: Paris’s newsletter on Musk and advertising.)
- Alex Risner wrote about generative AI being trained on Hollywood scripts for the Atlantic.
- The Hollywood Reporter on the #Xodus. (See also: Brian’s newsletter on why Bluesky is succeeding because it’s everything big tech’s not)
Theme music is “Dystopia” by YACHT. Production is by Eric Wickham.
