SNEAKO - SNEAKO Reacts To Why Big Tech Is Collapsing!

00:00:00.000 Why big tech is collapsing? Oh shit, there we go. 0.99

00:00:04.000 Bro, I miss watching with this exact way I wanted to watch right now. 1.00

00:00:06.140 Silicon Valley is in chaos.

00:00:07.760 Almost all of the major big tech companies are collapsing.

00:00:10.440 For example, Meta is worth over a trillion in 2021.

00:00:13.460 But just a year later, and their value has dropped by two thirds.

00:00:16.680 And the other giants aren't far behind.

00:00:18.340 Amazon, Meta, Twitter, Tesla, Netflix have all seen massive revenue drops.

00:00:22.120 Not rumble though! Rumble in the chat!

00:00:24.780 And the scale of these losses is unprecedented.

00:00:26.720 especially considering big tech has been so unstoppable for the last decade in fact revenues

00:00:31.120 and profits were skyrocketing silicon valley was a billionaire factory with some of the most

00:00:34.880 prolific billionaires building their names and their bank accounts on the back of big tech

00:00:38.200 companies bill gates elon musk jeff bezos mark zuckerberg jack dorsey all of them were created

00:00:42.940 by the massive tech boom of the last four decades but then the bubble popped and now the biggest

00:00:47.640 names in silicon valley are seeing their revenue plummet firing hundreds of thousands of employees

00:00:52.160 with the stock value of almost every big tech company falling dramatically which leads us to

00:00:56.420 the question, how did it get this bad so quickly? Well, you see, tech was a growing part of the

00:01:00.460 world's economy for years. Over the last decade, tech companies have only got larger and larger.

00:01:04.700 Now, of course, there were ups and downs. For example, the dot-com crash of the late 90s

00:01:08.340 proved the catastrophic consequences of overvaluing tech companies. However, over time,

00:01:12.400 the industry always picked up again. It was a measured climb at first, but soon people forgot

00:01:15.920 the mistakes of the past, and as the years rolled by and technology improved, the companies behind

00:01:19.840 it grew richer and richer. But there were massive problems on the horizon for Silicon Valley,

00:01:23.580 because the path wasn't all golden.

00:01:25.360 For example, companies like Uber have coasted on their potential,

00:01:28.360 hoovering up investments without a proper model for profitability.

00:01:31.480 The same can be said for Twitter.

00:01:32.820 And yet despite this, all of the giants of the industry

00:01:34.800 go to immense proportions on paper.

00:01:36.660 For example, in 2018, Meta surpassed $500 billion in net worth

00:01:40.700 and Amazon were closing in on a trillion.

00:01:42.720 But all of these companies had a similar problem.

00:01:44.740 They just weren't worth what people thought they were.

00:01:46.680 Their business models were shaky and in constant need of investment.

00:01:49.520 Or they just didn't make that much money to begin with.

00:01:51.480 Their margins were always incredibly tight.

00:01:53.580 And that's why almost all of these tech billionaires never look at the stock price.

00:01:56.820 That whole period is very interesting because the stock is not the company

00:02:00.560 and the company is not the stock.

00:02:02.260 And so as I watched the stock fall from 113 to 6,

00:02:06.920 I was also watching all of our internal business metrics.

00:02:10.040 Every single thing about the business was getting better and fast.

00:02:13.820 Because they believed as their technology spread into every aspect of the world,

00:02:16.980 companies would always ride the wave of future potential.

00:02:19.420 Their shaky business model just didn't appear to be an issue at this point.

00:02:22.160 All these big tech companies were gaining more and more power and it seemed like they were

00:02:25.580 untouchable because big tech had something invaluable, the eyeballs and data of the

00:02:29.660 entire world. You see, ever since they started putting in user data at the massive levels they

00:02:33.580 do now, social media companies were then further driven to maximize their engagement, keeping

00:02:37.960 people on their app for as long as possible, and often as possible became the most important thing,

00:02:42.380 which is why we're all so addicted to our phones and our laptops. It makes all of these big tech

00:02:48.020 companies billions of dollars allowing them to sell more and more ads and if anything is free

00:02:52.980 and this changed my mindset about a lot of things in the world if it's free then you're the product

00:02:57.160 social media is free besides if you're a bot who buys twitter blue of course i would never buy

00:03:01.240 twitter blue but it's all free so how are they gonna make money off of your brain off of selling 0.98

00:03:05.560 you products all the time off of tracking your data and shilling you fucking brooms if i said 0.99

00:03:09.580 the word broom five minutes ago that's how constantly advertising specifically for what 0.99

00:03:15.220 they know you're going to click on. If it's free, you're the product. So it's their incentive to

00:03:20.100 keep you as addicted as possible forever. And over time, these companies perfected this process

00:03:24.500 by manipulating psychology, making the app so addictive that the entire world couldn't live

00:03:28.840 without their smartphone. And during this process, they found out that anger and fear are some of the

00:03:32.620 best ways to keep people engaged. And so as the algorithms were fine-tuned for engagement, they

00:03:36.860 pushed more extreme, more provocative posts above everything else, putting them in front of

00:03:40.700 everyone's faces constantly, all while censoring any information that didn't fit into Silicon

00:03:45.440 Valley's political narrative. Which is why Twitter, Meta, and all these other companies

00:03:49.220 became the breeding ground for social media addiction, censorship, and hatred. And as time

00:03:53.300 went on, the cycle ramped up and the culture war worsened. And these changes in the online space

00:03:57.640 were reflected in the real world, leading to riots, unrest, and collapse. It didn't matter to the tech

00:04:01.920 companies though. In fact, this was in their interest. And instead of tackling the problems

00:04:07.560 that they had caused themselves with their algorithms,

00:04:09.680 companies start to then lean further on censorship,

00:04:12.080 suppressing all counter-opinions in the name of misinformation.

00:04:15.040 But this solution wouldn't...

00:04:16.100 Yep, this is why people are going to start to want to come to Rumble.

00:04:19.580 I think that debate I had about the vaccine with Zestiny

00:04:22.180 really helped because people...

00:04:24.240 You can't even entertain that conversation.

00:04:25.960 You can't even entertain the idea that the vaccine is killing people.

00:04:28.860 You have to say that on Rumble.

00:04:30.120 Work forever.

00:04:30.700 I got like five people's strikes just for them reacting to that debate.

00:04:34.040 I got medical misinformation strikes. 1.00

00:04:36.260 You fucking bots. 1.00

00:04:37.360 How does that feel? 1.00

00:04:37.920 That's why I got banned.

00:04:38.700 They're going to paint me as a violent massager.

00:04:39.940 I got banned for medical misinformation.

00:04:41.680 Companies were going to pay the cost for their meddling in public discourse.

00:04:44.580 However, for now, they had to deal with a much more conventional problem, competition.

00:04:47.980 Over the past decade, China has exploded into the technology industry.

00:04:51.760 Companies like Tencent, Huawei, and Bydance have been eating into the Western market share

00:04:55.560 on a global scale.

00:04:56.740 In fact, Tencent has made numerous takeovers of Western companies like Riot, Epic Games,

00:05:00.500 and even Ubisoft.

00:05:01.600 And through these moves, they've undermined Western dominance in the lucrative gaming

00:05:04.500 industry.

00:05:04.920 with China owning some of the most popular games today

00:05:07.080 like Fortnite and League of Legends.

00:05:08.860 China owns Fortnite and League of Legends?

00:05:11.420 I didn't know that Fortnite was CCP propaganda.

00:05:13.940 China's also taking over with things like TikTok

00:05:15.920 and Tencent's investments in Reddit and Discord.

00:05:18.500 And then Huawei attacked hardware manufacturers,

00:05:20.740 releasing cheaper alternatives

00:05:22.040 loaded with Chinese data collection technology.

00:05:24.540 Yeah, IOMI did the same, but to even greater effect.

00:05:26.980 Despite only being founded in 2010,

00:05:29.060 they've gained over 12% of the market already.

00:05:31.500 And ByteDance is probably the most sinister.

00:05:33.060 I mean, China was well aware of the disruptive powers of social media long before the West

00:05:36.480 had any idea, and they studied what the Western companies were doing with engagement and turned

00:05:40.420 it into an R form, with TikTok exploding in popularity by playing on Silicon Valley's

00:05:44.740 addictive business model.

00:05:45.980 And by learning from Silicon Valley's successes and mistakes, TikTok has grown by 400% every

00:05:50.540 single year, seizing Western social media companies' audiences from under their noses,

00:05:55.940 which is why almost every major app has now adopted TikTok's short video model.

00:05:59.940 and to put it plainly this is a targeted attack on silicon valley all these companies have incredibly

00:06:04.900 close relationships with the ccp youtube shorts is about to take off that's why another reason 1.00

00:06:09.140 to join the creativity kit is youtube shorts are going to start monetizing within three weeks so

00:06:12.820 you should start preparing for that everybody who clips it up for tiktok start preparing because the

00:06:16.180 monetization is going to destroy tiktok tiktok you don't monetize how many views you get but youtube

00:06:21.860 shorts bot tube shorts are about to take over three weeks start preparing p which has given

00:06:26.180 given them enormous room to scale up. Because no matter how profitable these companies are,

00:06:30.060 they've always got the Chinese government behind their back. And this gives them a massive advantage 0.99

00:06:33.720 over the West. They don't have to deal with pesky human right laws, ethical impediments,

00:06:37.460 or even profitability. Instead, they can be saved from the knowledge that as long as they pull the

00:06:41.000 party line, they can get away with virtually anything. And this isn't just within China,

00:06:44.760 this is everywhere. They get government backing abroad, as all of these Chinese big social media

00:06:48.780 sites are practically a third party of the Chinese government. And as they work in tandem,

00:06:52.680 these companies have become an unstoppable force.

00:06:55.280 And so whilst the Western tech companies are always at each other's throats,

00:06:58.180 China's tech giants have been allowed to build their monopolies in peace.

00:07:01.040 Which is why every day, China gains a little more ground on the West. 0.83

00:07:03.960 Because for every user and customer that China gains, Silicon Valley gets weaker.

00:07:07.780 And this new threat has been awful for big tech...

00:07:09.920 Communism is literally invading the West.

00:07:11.860 ...bottom lines.

00:07:12.740 And the true consequences have only just begun today.

00:07:16.860 But before we continue, I want to tell you about...

00:07:19.000 That's my...

00:07:19.500 And by the end of 2016, some journalists were hailing Silicon Valley as the future.

00:07:30.920 They said this because something dramatic had changed.

00:07:33.180 The list of the top companies used to always be dominated by oil and manufacturing,

00:07:37.020 and a few financial giants that relied on their sheer scale to dominate.

00:07:39.680 But these companies had now been replaced by Google, Amazon, Tesla, Apple, and Microsoft,

00:07:44.340 pushing out the old guard.

00:07:45.720 However, despite their immense valuations,

00:07:47.440 these companies still weren't nearly as profitable as they should have been.

00:07:50.320 From 1995 to 2015, Amazon only made $2 billion in profits,

00:07:54.980 despite the company approaching a trillion dollar net worth.

00:08:17.440 now yes this move was meant to dodge taxes yet it still portrayed a significant disconnect

00:08:30.780 between silicon valley and the rest of the world rather than focusing on profitability

00:08:36.360 silicon valley companies were much more focused on growth and the best example of this is uber

00:08:41.020 you see uber spent years focused entirely on growth above anything else they embodied the

00:08:45.700 Silicon Valley mantra, breaking laws in industries to cement themselves in the market, with a massive

00:08:50.060 leak showing that Uber executives were shown instructing their employees to use chaos and

00:08:53.660 violence to uproot the taxi industry and put pressure on governments. And of course, they had

00:08:58.000 big problems with actually making enough money. I mean, their business model still has incredibly

00:09:02.200 low margins, even after they started to squeeze every penny they could and raising all of their

00:09:06.280 prices, which has caused Uber to be in a worrying situation. With market saturation, their stock

00:09:10.880 price is plummeting, and the company streams of market dominance are now fading into the ground.

00:09:14.800 But Uber does still have a slight chance, as Silicon Valley overconfidence has led to way more destructive collapses, specifically in the case of WeWork.

00:09:22.560 In early 2019, WeWork was seen as an innovative new company that was set to change the world of work.

00:09:29.740 Although it was founded in New York, the Silicon Valley mentality had definitely gotten to its founder.

00:09:33.780 I don't trust him. I don't trust them. What is it? What is it about these people, bro?

00:09:44.660 Why do you look like Nick is not green? Why do you look like Nick is not straight, bro?

00:09:51.080 These are the people that have taken over the world. It's true. It's not that Jews run the 1.00

00:09:55.880 world. It's nerds run the world. Tech has given all the power to geeks.

00:10:03.780 and Newman. The charismatic CEO was so good at convincing investors that he pulled in billions.

00:10:09.120 And only a few years after its founding, the company had raised over a billion dollars for

00:10:12.760 their office space company. And I say office space company, but WeWork was still listed

00:10:16.580 as a tech company. And so WeWork managed to raise over a billion dollars for the company.

00:10:21.060 And this was despite mass layoffs of the company and poor financial performance.

00:10:24.680 Because simply enough, investors were just in love with the idea rather than the product in

00:10:28.560 front of them. In fact, WeWork lost over $2 billion in 2018. And yet the hype continued

00:10:33.540 Analysis stated that the company was now worth over $40 billion.

00:10:37.420 This was more than giants like Airbnb.

00:10:39.620 And by September, the company attempted to gain even more investment.

00:10:43.200 Chase Bank, Goldman Sachs.

00:10:45.620 ...money, beginning the process of an IPO or initial public offering.

00:10:49.160 And this would open shares of the company to the public,

00:10:51.180 raising even further billions for WeWork.

00:10:53.200 And yet even with this enormous amount of investment,

00:10:55.720 the IPO started to gain scrutiny as investors started to see

00:10:58.640 that the company was really making no money.

00:11:00.640 and it portrayed the true reality of the Silicon Valley business model.

00:11:03.720 Massive debt and low revenue propped up by other people's money.

00:11:06.840 And so their $40 billion valuation was cut by three quarters in a matter of days,

00:11:11.740 resulting in 20% of the company being fired.

00:11:14.420 And Newman, their CEO and other executives were all forced to resign

00:11:17.260 and the company was forced to cut back on its massive growth plans.

00:11:20.260 Reality hit the company hard

00:11:21.540 and today people are questioning the expiry date of WeWork.

00:11:24.440 But yet again, Silicon Valley didn't learn from this example.

00:11:27.180 Despite the very same business practices being used across tons of tech companies,

00:11:30.640 This was just seen as an isolated case by tech elites.

00:11:34.960 Besides, now wasn't the time to consolidate and slow down.

00:11:37.740 And then as 2019 came and went, the world was forced into the pandemic.

00:11:41.280 First US case has been detected.

00:11:43.460 There's confirmation the coronavirus has reached Australia.

00:11:46.720 And it was here that tech companies would double down.

00:11:48.940 COVID-19, as it was for so many other billionaires and corporations,

00:11:52.180 was a massive opportunity for big tech.

00:11:54.320 The pandemic saw tech companies' values rise by hundreds of billions.

00:11:57.700 They made so much money, they barely even knew what to do with it.

00:12:01.040 And it was the belief at the top of these companies that this is just how things were.

00:12:04.680 Tech dominance into the future seemed all but guaranteed.

00:12:07.400 Zuckerberg and others would be risky and short-sighted in their investments,

00:12:10.400 assuming that revenue levels would stay strong after the pandemic.

00:12:13.260 And that's why Meta's workforce grew by 28% in just a year.

00:12:16.920 And Amazon massively expanded their own operations,

00:12:19.360 seeing their profits soar by over 220%.

00:12:22.200 Apple spent an extra $90 billion just buying back their own stock during the pandemic,

00:12:26.640 betting an amount worth more than the GDP of Sri Lanka on their continued success.

00:12:30.620 You see, tech companies made massive investments into themselves,

00:12:33.280 betting that the good times would never end.

00:12:35.120 And it was this overconfidence that meant that when their profits finally did start to slow down,

00:12:38.960 they wouldn't be able to cope with it.

00:12:40.500 But overconfidence wasn't the only problem that worsened during the pandemic.

00:12:43.780 You see, the culture war was getting more and more intense as people spent more time online.

00:12:47.620 Unwinnable arguments raged as people's lives got measurably worse.

00:12:50.760 And whilst the pandemic was lucrative for tech companies, they were some of the only winners.

00:12:54.640 with lockdowns completely destroying the economy,

00:12:57.160 putting millions out of jobs and businesses out of business.

00:13:00.080 And it's impossible to measure the negative effects of the pandemic

00:13:02.400 on people and their mental health.

00:13:04.020 However, what was measurable?

00:13:05.220 Now, we just all moved on and pretend it didn't happen.

00:13:07.280 And when I talk about it, like, Sneakers stuck in 2020.

00:13:10.300 Bro, this was like one of the biggest events that ever happened in my lifetime.

00:13:14.340 It's really worthwhile to talk about the fact that we stayed inside,

00:13:17.780 quarantining for over a year.

00:13:20.460 A lot of people in New York City.

00:13:22.180 What was the heating up of the culture war?

00:13:24.640 And eventually, the results of this would be social media fatigue.

00:13:27.540 People were just sick of the culture war.

00:13:29.320 And China was now also closing in on Silicon Valley.

00:13:31.620 As over the pandemic, TikTok grew by hundreds of millions of users,

00:13:35.140 surpassing 1.1 billion in 2021.

00:13:37.920 However, all of these combining factors hadn't affected big tech yet,

00:13:41.000 but it would only be a matter of time.

00:13:43.000 Meanwhile, the tech billionaires were enjoying their moments in the sun.

00:13:45.840 Jeff Bezos spent millions on a personal space trip,

00:13:48.480 whilst Elon Musk became Times Person of the Year for 2021.

00:13:51.640 But all of this would turn out to be some of the last good news

00:13:53.800 these tech billionaires had, as once the world finally opened up again, it signaled the end of

00:13:58.260 Silicon Valley's boom, even if no one believed it. For example, at Meta, revenue growth had risen to

00:14:03.120 over 50% in the summer of 2021, but it dropped sharply over the next nine months, falling to

00:14:08.080 just 5% by the first quarter of 2022. Amazon also saw a sharp decline, from over 40% to around 7%

00:14:14.880 in the same time span. Even usually stable companies like Microsoft to Apple suffered

00:14:19.040 the same fate, seeing their growth levels fall off. So what happened here? Well, all of the

00:14:23.380 growing problems that Silicon Valley thought they could ignore were finally making their mark. And

00:14:27.220 whilst they had been shielded from the pandemic recession by artificial demand, that was all over

00:14:31.600 now. And the economy was only getting worse. So people began to spend much less on products.

00:14:36.120 People didn't care about ads. Essentials became more expensive, so people had less disposable

00:14:40.460 income. Services saw a boost as well, as people made up for the last time. And on top of this,

00:14:45.020 the culture war had burned tons of people out as well, leading to less uses of social media.

00:14:49.220 A Canadian survey found that less people were using Facebook, YouTube and Twitter in 2022 than in 2020.

00:14:54.680 And the only tech company that was spared from the decline was TikTok.

00:14:57.640 Their growth was unimpeded, maybe because they're artificially propped up by the Chinese government.

00:15:01.680 But it was clear for everyone in Silicon Valley that they were losing their audience's attention.

00:15:05.300 And with this dramatic reduction in attention came dramatic cuts in their profits.

00:15:09.220 And this is when the cracks started to show.

00:15:11.060 Tech companies have become so focused on growth that when it dried up, it hit them much harder than other industries.

00:15:15.860 Over the course of 2022, tech companies lost more and more money,

00:15:19.340 leading to their CEOs to make some erratic decisions.

00:15:21.640 Musk took over as CEO of Twitter after years of negotiations and legal battles.

00:15:25.280 He started off by firing large parts of the workforce,

00:15:27.480 W, that was my favorite moment of 2022,

00:15:29.840 leading to massive technical glitches and problems with the app.

00:15:34.320 Things were going so badly that he was forced to resign from the company.

00:15:37.720 Is this true?

00:15:39.800 Google had put much of their focus on their new Stadia cloud console,

00:15:42.920 but as with every other big tech company,

00:15:44.440 2022 also saw its demise, being forced to refund everyone who bought it without Google actually

00:15:49.440 getting the products back. Additionally, Uber saw a sharp decline in their business,

00:15:53.180 the ruthless competition, massive leaks, and higher prices. Meta stock value dropped by around 60%,

00:15:58.560 with Tesla's dropping by 70%. So once 2022 was nearing its end, tech companies realized it wasn't

00:16:03.860 going to get any better anytime soon. They needed to cut costs, which is why you started to see

00:16:07.920 articles of these big tech companies firing tens of thousands of workers, like with Microsoft firing

00:16:12.820 over 1,000 employees, then Stripe, a growing startup, letting go of 14% of their workforce.

00:16:17.940 Elon was forced to lay off nearly 4,000 people from Twitter, with Meta following shortly after

00:16:22.200 laying off a further 11,000 people. Amazon cut their numbers by 10,000, and all of this had

00:16:27.160 happened in just over a month. Eventually, Amazon would double their numbers in December,

00:16:30.900 as clearly they hadn't shrunk enough. And these weren't minimum wage employees either. They were

00:16:34.600 both high-skilled and incredibly expensive employees, and in total, over 1,000 tech

00:16:38.820 companies fired over 150,000 workers. But Silicon Valley had made their bed with their risky

00:16:44.080 investments and growth-focused ethos. The same companies that had fought over these workers in

00:16:48.000 the talent wars, which was just a year or two ago, were now letting them go and incurring massive

00:16:52.280 costs in the process. And it wasn't just going to cost them at the time either. These firing sprees

00:16:56.460 represent a massive amount of people with incredibly valuable skills. A job board called

00:17:00.660 Tech Jobs for Good has seen massive increases in skilled job seekers off of the back of these

00:17:04.680 layoffs. People who have seen the fast life of big tech companies are now instead looking to

00:17:08.480 make a difference, despite a small hit to their paychecks. And this is one of the ways in which

00:17:12.080 the collapse of big tech will inadvertently benefit the world. But perhaps this is symptomatic

00:17:16.080 of a much larger trend in our economy. As going into 2023, with the UN predicting we're going to

00:17:20.860 be in a massive recession, it seems like Silicon Valley can only expect more and more suffering.

00:17:25.100 The future looks grim. Ad buys are low, which has hurt all of the social media companies like

00:17:28.880 Meta and supply chain issues are now threatening hardware companies like Apple and Microsoft.

00:17:33.040 Governments are also now souring on big tech, seeing their influence as destabilizing.

00:17:37.180 Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition deal for Activision and Blizzard

00:17:40.440 is being debated by monopoly watchdogs around the world.

00:17:43.340 The FTC has already tried to block it.

00:17:45.260 Meanwhile, the whole tech industry is waiting for another court verdict

00:17:48.140 on recommendation algorithms.

00:17:50.060 Google is being sued for recommending videos made by terrorists,

00:17:52.800 which then incite an attack in France.

00:17:55.320 And if they're found liable,

00:17:56.380 this will upend years of legal doctrine stating that digital platforms

00:17:59.320 aren't responsible for what people post.

00:18:00.880 You can find my old YouTube vids in the creativity case.

00:18:02.740 The results of the case will dictate what's allowed for years to come

00:18:05.720 and will possibly cripple companies like Google and Meta.

00:18:08.280 It is very clear to everyone in the tech world

00:18:10.280 that 2023 is going to be the true test for these tech giants.

00:18:13.600 And so far, only a week into the year,

00:18:15.480 and Amazon is already shedding 18,000 more jobs,

00:18:18.360 with more cuts expected in the next few months.

00:18:20.480 It should be clear by now that it's going to be a very rough year for Silicon Valley,

00:18:23.780 and only time will tell whether they're ever going to be the giants they once had.

00:18:26.420 Notice how Rumble's not here.

00:18:29.660 I'm telling you, this is the year.

00:18:31.100 This is the year for the Wumble takeover, bro.

00:18:33.240 that misinformation

00:18:34.520 I think they're gonna get

00:18:35.500 stricter and stricter

00:18:36.220 with the censorship

00:18:36.880 and one was gonna

00:18:38.920 keep taking over

00:18:39.600 that's it

00:18:45.100 this is your job

SNEAKO - January 11, 2023

SNEAKO Reacts To Why Big Tech Is Collapsing!

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