Your smartphone has a built-in frailty that will force it to fail in approximately 2-3 years. Manal al-Sharif reports on how Big Tech designs products to fail so they can sell us another again.
8 October 2021 | Manal al-Sharif MW Media (Image: Marcus Reubenstein)
Have you ever felt manipulated to do something you didn’t really need to do, but were convinced to do it anyway?
As consumers, we are being manipulated by the media, big companies, and politicians all the time. It’s their game. And they’re good at it. Big Tech in particular is getting craftier in their search for new and better ways to manipulate consumer purchasing behaviour.
Until you realize how easily it is for your mind to be manipulated, you remain the puppet of someone else’s game.
Evita Ochel, educator and writer
Planned obsolescence is an integral part of their strategy. The policy of designing a consumer product to fail before its natural lifespan. The purpose of this is to compel consumers to buy the newer model within long before they really need to.
For example, your smartphone has a built-in frailty that will force it to fail in approximately 2-3 years. This isn’t because the phone itself will reach the end of its natural life in that time, but rather because it fits the manufacturer’s marketing plans and sales quotas.
Tech companies use four main techniques to ensure their consumer devices will be cast aside for newer models:
- Hardware malfunction
- Repair hindrance
- Software and hardware discontinuation
- Cultural obsolescence
Hardware malfunction
Your smartphone contains a Lithium-ion battery that will begin to falter after approximately 300-500 charge cycles. If you have an Apple iPhone, that battery is glued in place and protected by proprietary Pentalobe screws, making it difficult and expensive to replace. Because a newer version of your phone will come out every two to three years, it becomes hard to justify paying for a costly battery replacement when you can put that money towards a new phone.
Repair hindrance
Expensive battery replacement is only one annoyance that can arise when trying to keep a phone for more than a few years. If your device breaks, you won’t find any manufacturer-sanctioned repair guides online. And repairs covered under warranty often take weeks or months to complete.
And if you break your smartphone screen, be prepared to pay a high premium on through the manufacturer or their authorised retailers.
The choice offered to you is clear: either pay high costs to have the manufacturer repair the device or buy a new one. Any personal agency demonstrated outside of these two options leaves you on your own with a void warranty.
New York repair guy fights Big Tech
Louis Rossmann is an American repair technician, YouTube personality, and right to repair activist, who owns the Rossmann Repair Group, a computer repair shop in New York City. He specialises in logic board-level repair of MacBooks and has waged an ongoing battle Apple and other tech companies, alleging it refuses to conduct simple repairs on faulty products, instead using high pressure sales people to entice customers to upgrade to new products.
He has appeared as an expert witness in lawsuits against Apple, given testimony on tech companies ‘built in’ design flaws before a number of US State legislatures and has been engaged in an ongoing battle with Apple which has allegedly attempted to impede his ability to repair Apple products and procure Apple parts.
In October 2018 he appeared in a television news investigation story on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in which he said Apple stores were charging customers as much as $1,200 for logic board replacements when its technicians were aware the problem was simply a loose pin in the MacBook’s backlight which could be repaired without parts in a matter of minutes. A few days after the story aired US Customs seized a shipment of aftermarket Apple batteries he had legally purchased from China.
Software and hardware discontinuation
If the repair costs aren’t substantial enough to entice you into buying a new phone, the manufacturer will likely only support your device with software updates for a short time, often compromising security as well as the functionality of your device beyond that artificial cut-off.
Android device manufacturers like Google typically stop supporting software updates of their smartphones after 3 years. Therefore the phone also becomes vulnerable to hacks and software malfunctions. The device becomes technologically obsolete.
And when Apple released their new wireless AirPod headphones in 2018, while simultaneously removing the headphone jack from the existing iPhone, it forced millions of consumers to purchase the new AirPods and discard their old headphones.
Cultural obsolescence
In 2020, Samsung released 15 new smartphone models, while Apple released 5 new iPhones. In the same year, the top smartphone producers sold 1.38 billion devices globally.
The new releases are accompanied by flashy ad campaigns, seducing you with the latest updates. It’s hard not to ask yourself, “Am I missing out by not upgrading?” Before you know it, you’re trading in your perfectly good smartphone for the manufacturer’s “Best Phone Ever”.
Your fear of missing out, FOMO, is momentarily quelled, at least until next time
Cultural obsolescence is Big Tech’s most cunning technique. Its amounts to psychological manipulation, apealing to your personal convenience, aesthetic presentation and maintaining status with your peers. And it goes way beyond our smartphones.
Planned obsolescence is present in almost everything we consume – laptops, kitchen appliances, cars and sporting gear to name just a few. It generates big profits for the companies that engage in this practice, and it is virtually impossible to regulate.
Environmental impact
Another effect of planned obsolescence is how it adds to to a the enormous increase of e-waste. In 2019, e-waste reached 53.6 million tons globally, which is a 21% increase in e-waste production in the past five years. Only 17 per cent of that e-waste was recycled. The rest went to landfills or was illegally shipped from higher-income countries to lower-income countries.
Moreover, the manufacturing process to create one phone, tablet or other “smart” device emits 40-80 kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When we throw away a device prematurely, rather than utilizing it for as long as possible or recycling it, we further deplete the planet of rare-earth elements used to create the next one.
Fighting back
Governments and activists are starting to create awareness and to take action. Europe’s Green New Deal includes a Circular Economy Action Plan which is designed to reduce the use of natural resources, create less waste, and empower average consumers. Europe has also been leading the push for a universal charger for smartphones to reduce waste related to consumer electronics.
A global collective of law experts recently crafted a legal definition of ‘Ecocide’ meant to aid lawmakers when prosecuting big corporations for environmental decimation.
Ecocide is officially defined as
Unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.
The hope is that Ecocide will eventually be added to the list of International Criminal Court crimes that can be prosecuted.
The Right to Repair movement has gained significant traction in the past few years. Activists in the EU, US, and Australia aligned with the movement have helped spur the introduction and passage of legislation to force manufacturers to provide access to repair knowledge and tools.
France introduced an anti-waste law in 2020 that has created a repair index for electronics and appliances. Shoppers are now greeted with color-coded labels that define a product’s ease of reparability.
But it is also up to us. To find out more, and to learn what we can all do to combat the manipulation of Big Tech and help reduce e-waste, check out the Tech4Evil podcast.
Manal al-Sharif is a women’s rights activist, author, speaker, and a cyber security expert. She was named one of the top 10 world’s digital revolutionaries by Newsweek and one of the top 100 women in tech by Forbes. She writes for the NY Times and the Washington Post. Her Amazon bestseller memoir, Daring to Drive: a Saudi Woman’s Awakening, tells her story of leading the Women’s Right to Drive movement in her home country, Saudi Arabia. This article was published at Michael West Media.
