Issue 2254 - Tuesday 21 January, 2025

Heya! Since the Sizzle paywall is back up, if you want to continue enjoying the RSS feed you will need to click on each edition’s title to open it up in your browser to read the full edition. At the moment, this is the only way to do RSS with the newsletter (and as a bonus it also removes the annoying Beehiiv link tracking). Hope you enjoy! CW

In Today’s Issue

The News

Tech CEOs in Trump’s front row

Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk were front and centre at President Donald J Trump’s second inauguration, even before Trump’s own cabinet picks (The Guardian). If it wasn’t already clear, Big Tech has become the most important story in the world.

What’s at stake for them? Elon Musk already has a White House email address (The Hill) and is set to receive a West Wing office (New York Times, $), signalling an even closer relationship for a man whose companies Tesla and SpaceX have benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts and incentives. Mark Zuckerberg is staring down an antitrust suit that would spin-off WhatsApp and Instagram from the company (The Verge). Biden’s recent AI rules restricting exports are in the sights of influential venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (Futurism), who has been spending time at Mar-a-Lago and helping fill government positions (Business Insider, $). The future remains uncertain for TikTok, whose CEO was weirdly seated next to Trump’s national intelligence pick (The Verge). Apple’s Tim Cook, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi were all there too (BBC).

Trump’s administration is clearly interested in tech. One of its irst executive orders appears to be a largely symbolic decree (White House) about ending government censorship — although it does have a rather ominous promise to “identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct” by the government — targeted at online platforms.

All these big tech companies have a lot to lose if they earn the wrath of the Trump administration, and so far, we’ve seen their leaders have all chosen to bend the knee. This means all of us — their employees, customers and the billions of users — are going along for the ride.

A quick Cam note: I know I’ve written a lot about tech and Trump since starting the Sizzle. Even for an Australian-focused newsletter, it really is the biggest story in the world right now and has big impacts for us. I’m not doing this from a place of hate or partisanship, although my work is grounded in values that are important to me like a zero tolerance for hate and bigotry. The Sizzle is about sharing analysis (not feelings) to help you understand what’s going on and what might happen. This isn’t a politics newsletter so I’m going to keep writing what it actually means for us people using tech. If you’re not keen on so much coverage of this, I promise it’ll quiet down soon.

Is everything just becoming TikTok?

Despite TikTok remaining online in the US, everyone else is lining up to welcome the short video platform’s users. Today, Bluesky has released custom feeds showing only video content and a trending video section (The Verge). X continues its quest to become the Everything App app with a new dedicated video tab, too. (A warning, be careful searching "X” and “videos” at work). My LinkedIn has just updated with a video tab too (Axios) in case you’re interested in seeing the worst videos you could imagine.

Developers using the AT Protocol which powers Bluesky are also building standalone TikTok clones, although I’m not sure if Bluesky’s 60 second video limit is an underlying infrastructure limitation which would really kneecap them. My kingdom for one of these companies to do something original and not related to video (bonus points if it involves RSS or any other open protocol).

CIAi

Imagine this: you are a spy and you’ve been told to ingratiate yourself with Australia’s prime minister. Instead of diving through briefs and clippings, you instead plop down at a computer and thrash it out with AI-thony Albanese. This is a real use of artificial intelligence, according to the CIA’s chief technology officer (New York Times). The agency is also using AI to help “spies navigate cities in authoritarian countries where governments use A.I.-powered cameras to conduct constant surveillance”. Fun fact: CIA has a “venture arm” called In-Q-Tel which is a big investor in the Australian tech startup scene (Capital Brief, $). Also, Australian AI startup Dragonfly Thinking has been awarded a $811,000, six month federal government contract to “leverage generative AI to break down complex and test interventions” with examples given like geopolitics (InnovationAus, $). Best of luck sorting out this whole China thing, fellas.

Oh, Also

Are food delivery apps making Indonesians heavier?

Have you gained weight because of Uber Eats? Authors of a new paper Impact of Super Apps on the Nutrition Transition in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Evidence from Indonesia think they’ve got evidence that suggests that it has. Two researchers from the University of Bonn’s Centre for Development Research looked at government data from Indonesia’s health and food consumption survey and compared regions based on whether they had access to food delivery platforms Gojek and Grab, which was rolled out in stages. What they found was, maybe unsurprisingly, there was a correlation between having access to the food delivery apps and higher BMI scores which might be due to eating more junk food. It’s not all bad, though, since the apps appeared to reduce the number of people who were underweight and increased overall fruit and meat consumption.

Bargains

The End

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday afternoon. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

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The Sizzle is created on Gadigal land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.