Tech's Loyalty Penalty, TV Botnets, and Driver Privacy | 11-09-26

[00:00:19] Welcome to Tech Watch, where we keep an eye on TechSeed on Have To, brought to you by Network Providers Inc. All I can tell you is there's so much going on in tech, let's just get right to it. Even Bitwarden is soaking long-time customers with the all-too-trendy loyalty penalty. I've got a problem with this whole thing, Jay. Me too. I hate it. Welcome, sir. Thank you. It seems like a lot of companies are doing this now.

[00:00:49] Bitwarden is updating its pricing plans, doubling the individual premium plan from $10 to $19.80 per year. And I know that's kind of cheap. It was $10, but it was nice. It was like, hey, it's less than a buck a year to have premium Bitwarden for an individual. But why they don't just keep people grandfathered in, I don't know. There's a guy I see sometimes on a TikTok in different places. His name is Tyler Gardner. He's a financial advisor, and he creates investing content videos and stuff. He put it this way.

[00:01:17] He said, every company that you ever pay is going to charge you more to stay. It's called loyalty pricing, and it's the single most backwards thing in American commerce. And I agree with him 100%. Yeah, let me give you an example to kind of compare this, Jay, that I think is relevant. Let's say I go to a restaurant. Right. And I go by myself. Nobody with me, just Sam. Yep. It's weird to go out and eat alone, but I've done it before plenty of times. I hate it. I never do it. I kind of like it in a way. I can think and eat. Anyway, I don't do it all the time, but I think it's fine.

[00:01:46] Anyway, the point is, if I go, I just decide what my tip is. If I bring a person with me, which they should be happy about, right? Yeah. Still cool. No problem. But if I decide to bring 20 of my best friends, so now there's 21 people, Sam and 20 people, then they're like, we need to add this gratuity. We're going to force 18, sometimes 20, sometimes 22%. It's like a penalty for me to bring a bunch of people to their restaurant. Yeah, which they're making tons of more money.

[00:02:14] And they're like, well, yeah, but it takes a lot of work. And my response is, would you prefer that I bring less people? Yeah. Well, no, of course not, Sam. Okay. Well, then why are you penalizing me when I bring more people? I just don't get it. But it's similar in nature, right? I've got another story about Comcast, too. Please. Along the similar van. It's actually happened this week. There's this thing called switching cost. Investopedia says this. Switching cost is the price, time, effort, and psychological friction

[00:02:43] that consumers or businesses incur when changing from one brand, product, service, or supplier to another. Companies strategically build high switching costs in to protect their market share, reduce customer churn, and to gain pricing power. And that's what they're doing. So I have an account where I have a contract with Comcast. And it was like a two- or three-year contract. And it had just ended. And all of a sudden, the bill went from $80 a month to $110 a month. And I'm like, why?

[00:03:11] Now, mind you, this is a circuit where I don't think- Because you're not under contract anymore, sir. Yeah. Because they're like, well, your loyalty pricing ended. And so we're going to bump this up. Now, I've seen other companies, Windstream, Connecticut. So you want to end my loyalty pricing, but you want me to stay? Is that what you're telling me? Yeah, exactly. So and now they're like, well, we don't even have that plan anymore. You can't even do that plan. So the best we can do for you, sir, is we can give you-

[00:03:37] It was 150 megabit thing for $80 a month, which I think is pretty fair, pretty good. Also, mind you, that this is a backup circuit. This doesn't even get used. There's no data on it, almost none. Like, it's only used in an emergency. We never call out on it. Like, I don't think there's ever been in two or three years or whatever been a call, a trouble ticket call. Virtually hardly any data or usage or anything else. Yeah, it's like it would be your absolute best customer if you're a Comcast person. They're not using any of your bandwidth, and they're not calling you and bugging you all the time, right?

[00:04:08] So they say, well, the best thing we can do, sir, is we can keep you at that 110. We could double your speed. We can make it 300, but keep you at the 110 a month. But you've got to sign another two- or three-year contract to do this. And I just said, no, keep it the way it is. I'm going to look at other options because I've seen things with Starlink for back calls and things that are $55 a month that are still in the 100 megabit down and stuff.

[00:04:32] But it's that sting of, like, you're taking your best, loyal, easiest customers, and you're just saying, we're just going to ramp this up. Our bean counters have figured out that the best way, even though we're going to lose a few people like this, is to just milk them until they're just a dry husk until they give up or do something else. And I think personally my plan is I would grandfather people like that in.

[00:04:57] I mean, just imagine if I had a Comcast link like that that's been using no data, been no trouble to them, and I've had it for 20 years. I'm paying $20 a month still. I would never get rid of that thing. The same with Netflix. If I had a Netflix plan and I was paying $7 a month, I would never get rid of that thing because I knew if I came back as a new customer or quit the plan, now I've got to pay $27 a month. I just don't get it. I think this is bad. Yeah, I don't get it.

[00:05:21] The only benefit that I can see to them is they're saying, hey, we have to build greater infrastructure, whether it's movies. We've got to add a bunch of movies and get contracts to add content. And or in this case, we've got to build out our infrastructure. So we do need to get more out of these customers to make sense for them. So if we move you from $80 to $110, that's $30 more, but we're doubling your speed. You know, at some point, I do think there's some benefit to that. What I don't think they should do is force people.

[00:05:50] And that's kind of the difference of, you know, I understand both sides of the equation. And I'm saying if you don't force everybody, what you say to them is, Jay, I'll double your speed. If you go to the $110 a month effect, I'll just make it $120 more, double your speed. Now I've got $20 more from you. You've doubled the speed and you're happy and you're going to stay. And it's a choice you've made. See, the problem is that I'm going to force this upon you, Jay. Right. Or you leave. And I'm going to penalize you for being loyal by you're not under a contract now.

[00:06:18] So now you've got to hurry and make your decision. See, it's all that pressure. Yeah, exactly. And that force that drives me crazy. If they just said, no, listen, your contract is over. We're giving you 90 days to stay on your current plan because we want to, we love you. We're not trying to, but look, we've got extra costs. We've got greater bandwidth. We've got all these benefits. So here's the deal. We're going to give you 90 days on your current plan. So you have time to make a decision. And we would really encourage you to upgrade. You could stay where you are, but we really think, hey, for 20 bucks more, 25, whatever they

[00:06:47] think they can get away with, we're going to give you all this more. And you don't feel pressured and you don't feel pressed and you're not for, you're likely going to take it. And most people will, Jay. Yeah. And most people, especially businesses that are just, this is a backhaul feed or whatever. They're just going to absorb that $30. They're not even going to say anything. They're not even going to bother with calling or doing anything. It's just like, oh, the bill goes up $30 and then next year it'll go up another $30 or whatever. And we can just soak them and pretty soon they're paying $400 a month. That's not loyalty though. I want to create win-wins. Right.

[00:07:16] And this is not a win-win when you do that to me. No. If you promise me better enough, you increase my thing and increase my bandwidth at the same time, fine or whatever. All I'm telling you is that we need to come to grips of this and they need to rethink this. And that's why there is more and more churn. That's why there's more and more anger for these companies. I mean, no one's loyal anymore because there's no loyalty given. That's exactly right. If you're loyal to me, I'll be loyal to you. But if you're not loyal to me and you expect me to be loyal to you, good luck with that. It isn't going to happen. All right.

[00:07:45] Tech firms are dismantling. Well, one last thing on this. They call this the loyalty pricing and it should be called the loyalty penalty in my opinion because it's doing the exact opposite. It's making me very disloyal. So just imagine if I had some grandfather in price, the ambassador that I would be for their brand and just be like, man, you guys need to get this. This is so awesome. I remember when AT&T did this with unlimited data for people with iPhones and they canceled all their unlimited data plans because it was getting super expensive and stuff. And, but they said, if you had one, your grandfathered in, you get to keep it.

[00:08:12] And, and people were just absolute ambassadors for this and just like, man, I just love AT&T and I have one of those great plans. Yeah. And the question becomes, Hey, is it sustainable? And that's another issue I believe currently, and I'm all dovetail this into AI. I don't believe these $20 plans for AI are sustainable at all. Right. And I'm telling you, they will be bumping you up and you will be paying double, triple, quadruple in not too long of a distant future. I don't know exactly when, when they start building, when they start building these data,

[00:08:42] centers, when they start, you know, realizing the real cost. No one knows the real cost of AI right now. They just don't. Too many things are changing too fast, but I'm telling you, they're going to bump everybody up. They're going to have to, there's no way they can give you $20 and let you just beat on that thing all day, 24 seven in business and ask questions and eventually start using it for co-work and it's building spreadsheets and PDFs and PowerPoints. And it's, you know, grabbing your email every day for you and breaking it down and telling you what you need in your email. They'll never leave that at $20.

[00:09:11] I'm telling you right now, write it down and remember who told you first. It's funny because I have one of the $20 ones like that and I do some of that stuff that you're talking about. And now it's constantly nagging like, Hey, don't you want to upgrade to the $100 plan? Now we can do more of this stuff. Well, you have to Jay. They'll eventually force you to. I know they will. And they're being polite, but I'm telling you, it's not sustainable is the problem. And the problem is they don't know what the sustainable numbers are. They just know that everybody had kind of free money because this was the, you know, new awesome thing.

[00:09:41] And so everybody had plenty of money and they're like, Hey, let's spin this up and get everybody hooked. They've done that over the last three years now. And I'm telling you, it won't be very long and things will change. If everybody just keeps dumping money into this by the bucket, by the dump truck load, you know, they'll figure it out. Eventually that'll come to an end. Eventually people will say, Hey, we got to have Roy here. Yeah. We'd have a return on our investment. And now we're basically saying, Hey, it's time for the real people to stand up and the other people to go away. And you'll see a culling. You'll see a reality of check on this thing. I promise you. All right. Tech firms are dismantling.

[00:10:11] What's this thing? Botnet. Yeah. So actually this is kind of cool. Google said that it worked with industry partners to dismantle a botnet that was made up of more than 1.3 million Android TV set top boxes that shipped with malicious code secretly installed. And they were using the user's internet connection. Was this Google? Yeah. Google was doing the. So Google's basically selling spyware. No, no, no.

[00:10:37] Well, it was an Android TV that came from, you know, China or Taiwan or wherever. And it secretly, the manufacturer or somewhere in the supply chain, somebody had got some malware into the TV. Yep. And since Google owns Android and, you know, they can control it, they figured this out. They vetted it out. And they're involved in a takedown. They say the action is likely to sever the botnet's access to more than 10 million additional compromised systems, including Internet of Things products such as light bulbs and stuff like that.

[00:11:06] Android-based healthcare devices and karaoke machines all had this problem. And they're taking it down. And I think that's probably the best way to attack that kind of problem is to get it from the source when you find it like that and it's on your OS if you have control over it. So kudos to Google on that one, I think. Kudos to Google on one hand. On the other hand, though, you know, maybe there needs to be some checks and balances before stuff gets released somehow, too. Yeah. Well, definitely. There should be.

[00:11:34] But, you know, you have an open, not open source. I mean, it is sort of. It's an open kind of platform. Android. It's not open source, though. No, but I mean, it's more open than, say, iOS, right? So people. And that's why they're getting the problems they're getting. And so I'm saying they need to kind of control this more. I appreciate them catching it down the road and doing something about it. That's phenomenal. But I believe there's ways that they could have caught this kind of on the get go and stuff. And today, if you're going to partner with us and use our system, we're going to put checks and balances to make sure that you don't do that kind of stuff. And they do. They have a lot of that.

[00:12:03] I mean, apps have to get vetted through the Android store, things like this. But it's hard, man. And you know how it is. It's a cat and mouse game. Oh, yeah. I think they're doing a lot. But I think things once in a while slip through. And this is just an example of it. But at least you're taking proactive action and dismantling this fairly large botnet. And hopefully they'll do more because I'm sure glad I don't have one of them TVs, you know? Yeah. You may have it and not even know it. I may have one and not know it. Oh, yeah. Good point. I better check, huh?

[00:12:31] People are doing a lot of cool stuff with writing their own software with AI for their TVs and getting rid of the software that's built into the TV. That's a whole other topic, though. Yeah. That's, you know, what do they call that? Break. Jailbreak your TV kind of idea. Yeah, exactly. Jailbreak and Vibe Code, man. Your TV. There you go. General Motors is agreeing. $220 million to settle, right? Yep. $220 million. Allegations from 36 different states, Jay. Yeah.

[00:13:01] They said they improperly sold people's personal driving location data and other information to third parties. They sold at insurance companies, potentially raising customer premiums. From 2016 to 2024, GM's Smart Driver Program tracked millions of drivers collecting information about speeding, braking, acceleration, and travel locations. Investigators found that more than 370,000 drivers were incorrectly told that they weren't

[00:13:27] enrolled even though, or even while their information was being connected and collected and sold. Well, it depends on how you define enrolled, Jay. Yeah, right? You weren't enrolled. We're doing it anyway. You don't need to enroll. That's right. That's right. Under an October 29th settlement, so not long ago. Because enrolled would suggest you gave permission. Exactly. And so you're not enrolled, literally. But this is game playing to the ump degree, and this is why these companies can't be trusted. I don't trust Google because they've done this kind of stuff. I don't trust GM because they've done this kind of stuff.

[00:13:57] This needs to stop, Jay. Oh, 100%. Now GM must obtain explicit permission before collecting or sharing driving data, strengthen their privacy protections, and improve dealership oversight. They discontinued the smart driver program in 2024. The settlement does not provide direct refunds to affected drivers. But, you know, GM's not the only... That's a shame, though. No direct refunds, but yet they cranked up my insurance based on this bogus data that they shouldn't even have collected in the first place? Yeah.

[00:14:25] The idea is you're not that safe of a driver, Jay. You brake quickly. You punch the gas. You swerve into lanes. Not Jay. You're out of control, Jay. Not Jay. No, I'm one of the safest drivers, actually. I get teased about that because... I'm just making a point, though, that, you know, that's how they're kind of treating the drivers and stuff. And I agree it's good to be careful. I agree it's good to obey the rules. And, you know, the smooth... I always tell my children when they learn to drive, and me and my wife teach them to drive and everything else, I always teach them, you know what?

[00:14:53] You want to think about if I have a drink of lemonade in my hand. Right. And that drink is almost full. I mean, so full that a bump is going to spill lemonade and stuff. I know you can't make everything perfect, right? You can't prevent potholes and things in the road that are beyond your control. But you can drive as smooth as you can. And the smoother you drive, for me, the better experience it is for me and the safer it is for everyone. Exactly. End of paragraph. It's not even debatable. Like the driver instructor that gets in and puts his cup of coffee up on the dash and says, don't spill that. Yeah.

[00:15:23] And I really think that's kind of what people should do. And so I don't have any problem with the desire to try to help people drive more safely and all that. It's good. But to steal people's data without their knowledge? Unacceptable. And they're not the only people. This is happening with governments, too. I mean, Florida just had a big thing where they were selling DMV information, all the information, basically, that's on your driver's license. And it got loose and got on the dark web and all this kind of stuff. And they shouldn't be doing this without permission. They shouldn't be doing it at all. Well, agreed. But I mean, I guess it's OK if you're asking permission.

[00:15:53] Well, to me, I don't think so, though. If you're government, you're asking permission. I'm kind of like, well, I better say yes or else I raise my taxes. There is a little bit of intimidation there, isn't there? So I don't think the government should be doing that at all. Now, if a company says part of my model is to decrease your cost and give you, for example, Life 360, and yes, we sell your data, but it's free for you, it's a trade people can make. I get it. But in the government sector, I don't think so. But you know Life 360 sells your information, right? Yeah, I'm sure they do. Yeah. So there you have it.

[00:16:22] But again, when it's a private company, I have a lot more, you know, I understand. We're giving you free software and this is the way we make money. Now, I personally believe if you pay for it, then that should go away. You should be guaranteed that won't happen if you pay for it. They shouldn't be able to double dip from both. I agree with that also, but they do. I know. Absolutely. And that to me is a problem. So anyway, a lot of issues in tech that we're bringing up, ladies and gentlemen. And by the way, they just raised their prices too a couple months ago as we're talking about. Life 360? Yes, they did. Yeah.

[00:16:51] See, everybody's raising prices, Jay, because they have to. Yeah. Except wages aren't keeping pace with it. Nope. And that's why guys like me and you are starting to decide we're just going to simply drop certain things that we don't have to have. Well, you got to. You got to make the call, right? And people are going to... You got to live within your budget. Unlike some governments and, you know. And that's why some people are... Or some companies are, you know, you raise my thing and pretty soon I just might not have it anymore. Yeah. But they're calculating, you know, they're doing the math and they're saying, hey, even

[00:17:20] if, you know, 5%, 10% of people drop off, if we raise the price by 20%, we're still making out like bandits. It's a sad reality, ladies and gentlemen, but that's the modern game people are playing. And I think we need to fight against it to the best of our ability. By the way, Cybertrucks, everybody thought they were really cool and Elon Musk thought they were awesome. Then he broke the window and it wasn't a very good look. But then he released the trucks and people really liked them.

[00:17:46] But now Tesla will stop making the Cybertruck in 2027, Jay. Sad. They're going to use the ability to, you know, build other vehicles. And it's just, it didn't work near as well as Elon wanted it to. He felt like that was going to be the best thing since sliced bread. And it turns out that everybody wants a gas fed or a diesel fed, what, Ford 150? No. Nobody wants the F-150. Well, not the lightning version, but yeah. The F-150, the gas version. That's the most popular truck.

[00:18:16] People are buying more of that truck than any other truck on the planet, sir. That's true. Yep. It's the most popular truck. The gas version of the F-150. Yeah. Why? Why? Because it's just been seen since about the 90s as the most reliable. It's robust. Comparatively, it's inexpensive. It's reliable. You don't have all the problems with the EV stuff. Look, a lot of the EV manufacturers are dropping whole lines, Jay. Yeah. I mean, in my opinion, it's actually not the best truck. You know, you're better off, I think, with a Toyota Tundra or something if you want long-term reliability and things.

[00:18:46] But they're more expensive. And, you know, there's also a bit of a Buy American kind of thing that goes into that, too. That's right. But all I'm telling you is these EVs aren't doing too well, Jay. I know. It's going to make Cybertrucks a collector's item. I need to get one while I still can. Good luck with that. Yeah, you're right. All right. I don't know how to respond to this one. But there's a group called Spots Now, Jay. This is very interesting.

[00:19:12] And they launched a free AI podcast ad planner thing. And it's kind of weird. So it helps people, I guess, get if you want to buy or, you know, advertise on podcasts and anything else. You use this planner. And it says Amazon plans major change in ad measurements. So Spots Now has launched what they call Super Agent.

[00:19:36] That's the free AI assistant that helps advertisers research podcasts and create campaigns related to it, using information on more than 59,000 active shows. So a lot of shows are left out. But there's 59,000 active shows on this thing. And the company says its database includes, like, all kinds of histories, more than 100 different data points on these podcasters and on these shows and stuff like that.

[00:20:03] Podcast publishers can use the tool to identify prospective sponsors and all this kind of stuff. So it's really a cool tool to help people kind of match people who want to advertise with great shows to advertise on, giving you all this broken down data. Okay. That sounds cool. But here's the problem. Amazon is now going to change how they count display advertisements on its shopping pages.

[00:20:32] Starts January 1st, 2027. And impressions will count when an advertisement appears on a shopper's screen, not when it starts to download. Now, that's an interesting twist, if you will. You know, you would think it would always be on the screen. I mean, that's the way it would be anyway. But, no, it used to be when they downloaded it. And they say that it's going to change. Okay. This is a measurement change.

[00:20:59] They say it won't really reflect in fewer advertisements or anything else. But they say that they'll have 63% fewer impressions this way. Means they've got to pay out. Now, this is where, you know, everybody tells me that Sam Bushman doesn't understand digital because they're like, how many listeners do you have? And I'm like, I don't really know. They're like, well, you don't understand digital. We can count those listeners, Sam. We can know. So, no, you don't know. I do know. And this proves my point without a doubt. So, they just changed this now.

[00:21:28] 63% reduction in impressions. That is huge, Jay. And no one even realizes the shift. Yeah. They'll figure it out, though. I mean, because people will see revenue go down. And then you'll see that pendulum shift back probably with some kind of correction or adjustment.

[00:21:46] I think they're just trying to get, not only are they trying to maximize what they have to pay out or minimize really what they have to pay out, but they're also trying to achieve that balance so that they can, you know, do that as much as possible. But here's the point, though. If you do it just on the download before it appears on anybody's screen, you don't even know how many people viewed that thing, Jay. And so, people tell me, oh, you can know. We can count the numbers. Yeah, they can click a counter. Tick, tick, tick, and ratchet up the views.

[00:22:15] But if it's on the download side, you don't even know how many of those people are even seeing it or get it or whatever else. Now they're changing it to at least it's on your screen. But see, how many people realize that there's a gazillion nuances like that in the way different companies compare different things? How long you watch versus are we talking impressions or are we talking about clicks or are we talking about it happens when you download? How much of it do you download? What if you download part of it? Does it trick the counter? But all I'm telling you is this stuff is so complicated.

[00:22:43] Anybody who tells me they can gauge this stuff is absolutely up in the night. What if you use a podcast aggregator where you're downloading these shows but maybe you never even actually get to listen to them because you're busy or whatever? That's my whole point. And what if bots are downloading them, too? What if I want my show to be important so I just write bots and just run it and, hey, it's downloading 24-7 my shows? Yeah, and you can do that. I mean, there's places where you can rent that and you can say, hey, I need to get my listenership up.

[00:23:10] And they'll run a giant farm of cell phones or whatever and download your podcast a bunch of times. Anyway, I'm just telling you it's crazy and that's a big change that I wanted people to know about. And, again, you don't need to know all the nuances of the change. What you need to understand, in my mind, from a bring the tech down to the kitchen table discussion, every company has different ways that they gauge listenership, viewership, readership. Right. Whether you click on it, whether you have an impression on your screen, whether it's based on the download,

[00:23:36] whether it's you watched for 30 seconds or you watched for five minutes or you all these different variables. And the problem is you can't even compare company against company and their numbers because they all do it differently. That's exactly right. Now, who changed this? Amazon changed this, right? Everybody changes it all the time. And supposedly, what about YouTube? What about, okay, so I just want everybody to understand this stuff is a moving target. And when you think we can really compare and we really know, they don't have any idea.

[00:24:07] That's exactly right. And these guys, they're kind of shooting from the hip as they're developing these strategies of what counts as a click, how long do you have to listen to say that you got that. And it goes both ways before the advertisers, the people that are paying for it, and the listeners that are listening to it. This whole episode's gone, Jay. I know it. Time flies when you're having fun, ladies and gentlemen. We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to. You got a partner in tech. How about a free consultation?

[00:24:34] NetworkProvidersInc.com to get that done and check out the audio and video versions of the shows. Check it out. I'm Sam Bushman. He's Jay Harrison. Make it a great tech day, will you? Thanks.