Hey everyone 👋
Welcome to another issue of What The Tech series - still waiting on those comments and questions from folks who read this - do leave some - appreciate it!
This week is all about slippery slopes.
Here’s the thing, as a tech optimist, I don’t like claiming the slippery slope argument usually. But given how the news cycle has been the past 6 months, the stories we have today might be the few times - the slope is freakin real.
Its the same pattern again and again: privacy gets chipped away, ownership gets blurred, “safety” becomes an excuse for control.
And we’ve talked about these topics at length in many recent articles such as:
And today, I have gathered some news items for you which aren’t crises on their own.
But each of them can very well be the starting point of one pretty soon.
Story 1: A new subscription service - for your car
Links to refer to:
What happened: Volkswagen announced that drivers can pay a subscription or a one-time fee to unlock extra horsepower. BMW tried a similar model with seat heaters, Tesla has long sold ADAS features this way. VW says higher performance adds to warranty and repair costs, so it should be optional.
On paper, this doesn’t sound crazy. £600 for a lifetime unlock isn’t a shocking amount, and car buyers are used to paying more for higher trims. But this is different: the car already has the full hardware, the “upgrade” is just software permission.
Automakers have long hated manufacturing complexity. A model line can have a dozen variants, each tuned and tested separately. Subscriptions solve that headache: build one standard car, ship the same hardware to everyone, and then lock or unlock features based on what you pay.
That’s the real story here. EVs make this especially easy. One car, one battery, one set of hardware. Pay extra, you get faster acceleration, better ADAS, or more range.
Don’t pay, your car is artificially capped. That lets companies control not just performance, but resale, repair, even how long your car stays usable.
Today it’s an optional £600 horsepower boost.
Tomorrow it’s battery life, repair rights, or safety features locked behind a monthly fee.
Once you accept that you don’t own the features already in your car, you’ve started sliding. This is exactly the kind of thing where I can claim ‘that’s how they get ya’.
And I wouldn’t be surprised that more companies roll out these ‘performance’ packages (recurring revenue is gold compared to one-time sales) pretty soon since VW has its influence in the car world.
Would you be okay paying extra for extra performance? Given the fact that your car was already capable of it, it’s not like you are switching out the engine, just paying to turn on an imaginary toggle.
Story 2: They are taking your apps away
Links to refer to:
Google will require developer verification for Android apps outside the Play Store
Google to Verify All Android Developers in 4 Countries to Block Malicious Apps
What happened: Google announced that by 2027, all Android developers - even those distributing apps outside the Play Store - must be verified. The official reason: reducing scams, spam, and malware.
So here’s the thing, as the ‘go to tech guy’ in my friends and family, in a country where tech savviness is still few and far between, and to add on top unsecure and cheap tech is what most folks have in their hands. I consider this as a good news.
Close your eyes, walk around here, grab anyone’s Android phone, and more often than not you will at least find 1 app that SHOULD NOT be in there. So if verifying developers helps with malicious apps? That will be good in my books.
But then you come to the slope - and it gets slippery (I can’t stop making this reference, damn it).
See, the reason Android is as popular as it is, because of its openness.
Compared to Apple, Android has always been the go to device for the tinkerers, custom’ers (wink wink), and so on, so forth.
Right now it’s just verifying devs, which most logical folks can agree can be a good thing, no one wants rando/malicious folks providing their apps.
But where does this stop?
It is clear that Google is doing this following how Apple maliciously agreed to EU rules of allowing 3rd party stores. Now Google, sitting on the other side, who never had any issues with sideloading, is getting their foot in the door.
It starts with dev verification, but then what? Do they start blocking devs like Apple too?
What if someone wants to create a clone of a Google service app? Then what?
Google says that they don’t care about what the App is, they just care about that the person signing (cool word for developing the release) is verified and real. They even used a weird airport luggage vs check in analogy that made no sense for this. When Google has to compare app security to baggage claim, you know the message isn’t landing
So now what? Power users will have to go back to the old days of flashing custom ROMs like LineageOS just to regain control. That shouldn’t be the fallback in 2025.
And who says even that will be allowed for long. AOSP is already kinda in a ditch, and recently Google made their stuff closed source. So unless you’re a big company that can fund the dev time to make its own OS, the open smartphone future is slipping away.
Place your bets, will Google stop at just verification? Or actually gate what devs get to make an App for Android?
Story 3: AI or just upscaling?
Links to refer to:
What happened: YouTube has been caught running an “AI experiment” on Shorts that looks more like automated upscaling. Videos are being silently tweaked in resolution, leaving creators unsure if it’s real AI or just a cosmetic boost.
YouTube gets called out for using GenAI to upscale their videos and what do they respond with?
“Oh it’s not GenAI, it’s the traditional dada abu AI”
And that is exactly what is wrong with this news.
See, technically speaking, “Nothing” as of now is true “AI”.
AI has just become the defacto marketing term whenever computer does cool stuff that is automated or trained?
5 Years ago, AI used to mean Machine learning, now AI means generative models….that are also based on principles of ML.
You want to learn more about what current AI landscape is like, recommend hearing my rambling on here:
So how does it help - saying this isn’t GenAI, oh no, this is the ‘traditional’ nice AI.
That’s not the point, is it Google?
The problem isn’t the filter. Or the fact that videos are processed, all online videos are.
The problem is that this is yet another ‘slope’ we are slipping on today.
It starts with ‘denoising’ and ‘upscaling’ - but where does it stop? Do you start auto translating voices next to help creators ‘get a broader audience’? How far do you push the bill? That your models are so trained on content creators - that you don’t need them anymore?
This is yet another example of, what you accept today, you might end up regretting tomorrow.
Not to mention that the uncurated shorts/reels feed these days today is already mostly AI assisted.
Dead internet theory is becoming a reality sooner than we realize.
And that’s enough gloom for one week. As usual, not a lot of happy news these days - but that’s why we write about ‘nicer’ stuff in our other articles.
One way to make this a better series for you though is by leaving feedback below.
If these stories left you curious, confused, or just plain annoyed, send me your questions. Enough of them and we’ll spin up a dedicated #AskWTT section every week. Maybe even in video format?
Drop a comment or reply to this email.
Platform Highlights
So I have already listed some articles in the intro section that go over the larger issues these days with Privacy, Right to Repair, and Ownership in general.
Down the road we plan to bring even more deep dives and articles on how you can inform yourself of better choices. I would highly suggest reading our recent Linux article - coz Desktop OS’s aren’t doing any better either:
That being said, we are wrapping up our August 30 day Challenge in our community server. Learn more about it here.
We have been running this challenge for 12 months now, and each month folks from all backgrounds challenge themselves to work consistently towards a goal.
If you’re someone who struggles with consistency and execution, do join the community and sign up for the next round.
See you in there!
As always, with or without my help - I wish you the best.