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[Music]
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Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisser and I'm Scott
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Galloway. Well, welcome live from our uh our podcast in France in con
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con. Cara Sweer. It's can. All right. I realize you took French for the eighth
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time in the 11th grade, but it's can. All right. In any case, we're here taping and we're here in front of a live
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audience. So, welcome everyone. Thanks for coming. So, we have we have a lot to get to
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today, but I want to first How's it going for you? How's your your I'm not going to even say the word can con. Um,
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look, I absolutely love it here. I'm sincere. I think it's wonderful. I love the French. I love France. I love But I
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heard you're disliked. You're like the anger pillow for the ad ad business. Oh, so this is how I make money here. They
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basically have me show up to some event and then they say to me, "We've heard you believe that brand is dead and I do
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my thing." Like, so seriously, the economy about one and a half% of the economy every year GDB goes to
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marketing. And as we've seen over the last 20 or 30 years, more and more of that one and a half% is going to, for
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lack of a better term, digital platforms, right? Pretty soon, Meta's Beach is going to be San Trope and Denu
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and WPP are going to be in some bad pub 7 miles inland. So, we know what's
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happening, but brand still matters. I'm just like, it's being built differently. If you're banking your career on trying
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to get a big brand that's spent a bunch of money on media, which is advertising, which in my opinion is nothing but
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attacks, inflicted on the poor and the technologically illiterate, your industry, you're in trouble. And then
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they have someone very articulate. this guy Rory Sutherland, this like really h handsome, charming British guy, weighs
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in about the power of brand. And the whole audience goes crazy and it's like,
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"Thank God, maybe we'll get invited back next year." And this is literally like an award ceremony for the Pepsi
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commercial. Nobody is watching. Back to you, Cara. Okay. Um, I can see that happening. So, you're like the bad
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villain on the anger pillow. No, but you're like wrestling. You're like the villain. You're like You're the villain.
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And then they come in and try to see and I tell jokes that offend people and they're like, "Oh my god, I hate him." Hook them for next year. Yeah, they'll
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come for anyways. In any case, you um but it's been a good time because they keep paying me. Okay, you could be the
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yellow pages. If I can cash your check, I'll talk about the yellow pages. Anyways, I'm a [ __ ] I'm an expensive
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[ __ ] But be clear, I'm a [ __ ] Daddy's a [ __ ] I absolutely If you're in this room, it means you're likely in
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the top 5% of income earners globally. It means you have rights. It means you have access most likely to family
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planning. It means you can marry anybody you want. And you have the opportunity to hang out in one of the most beautiful
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places in the world and be carefree. You probably have a great job, although it may not seem like a great job. And you
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live in a democracy in an age where there's less measles and reubella for the time being. Unless the [ __ ] up their
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head up their ass, people take over continue to take over our HHS. Don't know how I got there, but I like to take
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a moment as I zoom in on a zodiac over the [ __ ] Kotazour and recognize just
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how [ __ ] lucky we are. Yeah. Anyways, back to you. All right.
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So, you get a sense of how this marriage goes. I'm totally thinking of something else while he's talking. Just, you know,
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I'm like, we really need ham at the house when I get back in my house. Um, I
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had two lattes. Not a good idea. Okay, I can see that. We have a lot to talk about. I mean, there's so much going on and we've got But I do have to give two
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things. A shout out. I can't believe I'm [ __ ] saying this. Tucker Carlson taking down Ted Cruz was delightful. I I
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I would I would recommend you watch it. It was about I don't agree with Ducker Carlson on Iran, by the way. But the way
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he showed how incompetent and ignorant Ted Cruz is was spectacular, I have to
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say. Um so I'm going to give him a call out. The second thing um I want to just say is uh today I was just having lunch
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with uh Emma who runs the Wall Street Journal and uh she's amazing editor and
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uh Linda Yakarino of Twitter said that their story was untrue. This is not
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true. This isn't not factual what they were saying and I would like today to just say the Wall Street Journal did an
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amazing job on that story about uh ex suing advertisers. I've talked to dozens
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of advertisers. It's absolutely happening and I want to say team Wall Street Journal. So, great job by Emma
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and she did a great job. So, um and it's it's it's truly a heinous thing to to to
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do a provable lie. I just don't understand it. And it's ridiculous. And so, you either do well by making great
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products, but you don't sue people into marketing. I just I don't even understand that. Anyway, just to say
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that. But anyway, let's get back to France. We have a lot to go go through today. Activists in Venice have began protesting the upcoming wedding of Jeff
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Bezos and Lauren Sanchez. The wedding cost is estimated to be as high as $21.5 million. Over 200 guests are expected,
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reportedly including Katy Perry, Gail King, and Oprah Winfrey. Scott, if you had to give a toast there, what would
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the toast be? There you are. I've given four toasted weddings, which is a humble brag of
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saying I'm in a lot of wedding parties. I'm being serious. I give three pieces of advice to the groom. I say one,
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biggest unlock in relationships is don't keep score. Mhm. Decide the kind of father, husband, friend you want to be
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and hold yourself to that standard because you'll always inflate your own contributions and minimize theirs. And if you keep score, as I did as a younger
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man, you end up with fewer friends and fewer healthy relationships than you should. You weren't expecting a serious
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one, too. I know I wasn't. I was waiting for the good job on the HGH, but go ahead. Uh, two, always express affection
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and physical desire. I think women want to be wanted. I think that sex and
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affection say I choose you. I think it's really really important to maintain that
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just out of control fire in a relationship. Yeah, he's got that one that's happening. You can see it's the difference between friends awkwardly.
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It's bonding regardless of what The Atlantic or the New York Times will tell you, we are sexual beings and we want to
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be wanted. And three, never ever let your wife be cold or hungry. Oprah's
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about to kill you at this point in the toast, but go ahead. I would love to go to that wedding. I'm here for his
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midlife crisis. I think it'd be cheaper if he just if he just got a canary yellow Corvette tea top and crash it
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into a hair plugs clinic. That would be a lot. I think it's going to be amazing wedding. I would love to go to that
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wedding. I think it's going to be Come on. Summer in Venice with Oh, it's just
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disastrous. Well, I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go. Lady tagged me on Instagram. I'm sorry. Yeah, we should
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have been invited. Anyway, that's a nice to show, Scott. But I thought you'd say something much different, but here we go. All right. Speaking of your
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boyfriend, uh, Macron, he says he will ban social media for children under 15 if progress is not made uh, at the EU
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level. France is already making efforts to force social media sites like X and Reddit to have age verification systems by classifying them as pornographic
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sites. Mcron's escalation comes after the country had a fatal school stabbing in the suburbs of Paris and says age
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verification will be opposed on sites uh, selling knives online. Uh Greece, France, and Spain are pursuing are
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pushing the EU to limit the amount of time teenagers can spend online. Scott, should we move to France? We're for
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this. We are absolutely for this idea of age verification even though it's not popular among the tech set. Yeah, we
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we've said a bunch of times I I meet a lot of people with kids. If your kids are below the age of 10, that's great.
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If your kids are over the age of 22 and got through this mess, great. It's the people uh unfortunately I'm one of those
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people who has kids who are 14 and 17 that had to grow up in an unregulated environment where we had very charming
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people holding book parties on the beach as they were figuring out business models to encourage young girls to cut more self-cut. Um teen suicide is up 62%
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in the last decade. 62%. And some of that is bulldozer parenting. We as parents do clear out all the obstacles
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for our kids such that they show up to NYU and they've never gotten their heart broken. They've never had no, they've never gotten a C and they literally
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freak out. Some of it is got a D, but go ahead. As parents, some of it is is is
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bulldozer concier parenting, but there's no doubt about it. When kids express
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frustration or bullying online, they the algorithms pick up on it and
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will literally start sending the message that is like suicidal ideiation. And until someone goes to jail, this is
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going to continue. Um, I think the most consequential academic in the world right now is my colleague Jonathan
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height. I think he's played a huge role in this movement. But Greece, Spain, New Zealand are all putting in wonderful age
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limits. Do you imagine the US would do it? I think it's coming. Already 11 states. I think it's happening. Europe's
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leading the way on this. But think about it. We age gate. We age gate alcohol,
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the military, pornography, driving, but we're letting a 14-year-old go on social
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media and get bullied. And the algorithms pick up on it and love it
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because it creates more Nissan ads. And it's especially rough on young girls cuz
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again, I'm a sexist. I believe typically 95% of people born as male or female are
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more prone to certain behaviors than the other gender. That doesn't mean there should be any less rights or any less
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opportunity, but until we lean into these wonderful attributes that most of us have an easier time leaning into and
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some negative attributes, I don't think we're going to make real progress. And here's one of those attributes. Boys
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bully physically and verbally. Girls bully relationally. And we've put [ __ ] nuclear weapons in their hands
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of 14-year-old girls. Have you checked out your go on uh there's some really
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good apps where you can go on. I believe in a police state. You can't get your kid off of social media because
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unfortunately unless it's a collective action, they become isolated and more depressed. But I go on and I look at my
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14-year-old social media. And the really crazy [ __ ] is amongst the girls cuz it's
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tactical and it's smart and it's cutting. The guys are just like, "Fuck
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you, jerk." Or, you know, whatever. And then it's over. And but the girls are really,
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we are going to look back on this age and we're going to think, okay, income inequality was out of control. A slow
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burn to fascism from the greatest experiment in history, America was out of control. But I'm confident we're going to repel that. We're gonna really
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regret, I think, the coarssing of our discourse. But the thing we'll really regret, the thing we'll look back on
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this age and think, how did we let this happen? So, I think we're going to look back and think, how did we let this happen to kids? One of the things that
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is hard to do is regulate yourself when you yourself are addicted. I think the problem is adults are addicted and can't
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look down and doom scroll or uh or whatever. They don't they don't regulate themselves and manage to get themselves
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into whatever hold they're in. And so it's not unusual that kids would although I would say I think one thing
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that you're not seeing is a lot of kids are rejecting it like are not are taking things off. They're you know I've told
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you the story. My son said he took a whole bunch of them off because he felt bad. Mine does that and then he goes back. Does yours go back? Not at all.
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No. He 6% of teens are clinically addicted to alcohol or drugs. 24% are
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addicted to social media. Absolutely. I mean it's an issue. Well, it' be interesting to see what happens. I think the first step is is the school stuff is
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getting them out of schools, getting these and that's happening everywhere. Now, an interesting wrinkle which I was a little bit more nervous about was
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they're putting cameras in schools and using AI to watch behaviors and bullying
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and things like that and then also monitoring the f some of the phone chats like you were talking about. I find that
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to be a little bit disturbing the idea of monitoring behavior in that way and using AI to help it. I find that like a
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step too far. I think parents should be doing this, teachers should be doing this. Yeah. And we shouldn't leave it to teachers to do it, by the way. It should
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be the parents themselves, but it's often impossible because parents themselves again are addicted. Um, but these kind of rules, I don't I don't see
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it passing in the US because I think the tech companies I mean, I was surprised it happened. They're too powerful and
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they like to pretend that they're all really good for us and that's what they said. You know, they try to like this idea that it's all going to be better
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and they're taking action. They are. But look what was in the thing. I mean, again, I'm [ __ ] agreeing with
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Marjorie Taylor Green. The fact that states can't I mean, today Marsha Blackburn's been a leader on this. God,
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I'm on Tulsi Gabbard's side today, too. Like, what in the [ __ ] Um, but uh commonality, trying to bring people
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together. Civility. Civility. I hate that word, by the way. I'm sorry. Only
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straight white men can think civility is our biggest problem. Um, but I I'll I'll move along.
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Um, okay. Anyway, we hope it get past. We're very We love Mcronone and we think he's very sexy. Both of us, Scott, more
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than I. Um, okay. That guy's a tall drink of lemonade, right? Hello, daddy.
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At this point, a few beers on show there. Did you Did you see the guy online who's putting Trump's words into
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a gay guy? He's a gay guy. The best with the chain. He's the best with the chain. And he sounds like Well, of course, as
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we as I've said, Elon and uh uh Trump breaking up is the first breakup of pride. Um anyway, uh let's go on a quick
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break. When we come back, Meta makes some big moves and not everyone is happy. What a surprise.
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Support for Pivot comes from IBM. Bigger isn't always better, especially with AI.
00:13:26
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00:13:33
Rightsize your models at ibm.com. The AI built for business. IBM. Scott,
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we're back live from Con. Uh Meta Meta just announced that it's
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putting ads on WhatsApp for the first time. This is something they talked about and one of the founders of
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WhatsApp said over my dead body. So I guess he's not living anymore. Uh the ads will appear in the updates uh tab of
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the app which is visited by 1.5 billion people a day. Meta says there are no plans to put ads in chats or personal
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messages. I'm sure yet is in there and silently and all conversations still
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stay encrypted. Meta shares rose 2.5% on the announcement. Um I I think the
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question is are they confident about the outcome of the antitrust uh trial? Meta
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just did 14 billion deal to acquire also a 49% stake in Scale AI a startup that
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supplies training data for AI models. Um Google is Scale AI's largest customer
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and not happy about the metad deal. It's reportly cutting ties with scale. Microsoft and XAI are also pulling back.
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Um, I have heard from federal regulators who feel like this deal isn't going to go through at all. Even though Microsoft
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did a similar thing when it bought inflection, the deal with scale AI. Yes, it's like that. It's one of those deals
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where it's sort of an aqua hire kind of situation. Um, they they're getting the 49% not control of it. It's it's it's an
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it's an acquisition period and I think the government's even this government is not going to allow this to happen. So,
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talk a little bit about these ads in the app. Of course, they'll put ads anywhere. They'll put on We'll put ads on Mark Zuckerberg's ass if it would
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work for them. But go ahead. What do you think? It wouldn't work for them. I'm surprised it took so long. Yeah, me too.
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Um, it won't be the revenue gener It'll be incremental growth. It'll add one or two percentage points to their growth
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each year, which will which is great. Um, but if you look at if you look at
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ads, Meta's ability to monetize a consumer in the US, they get about 75 bucks a year in ads if you're on Meta
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platforms in the US. Their average I think across their whole network is more like 12 or 14 because the markets actually their strongest in with
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WhatsApp are the lowest. It is very hard to monetize attention in India right now because a couple hundred million people
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in India are not consumers meaning they don't have any excess income for stuff. So it won't be the revenue boost I think
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that analysts think it'll be. What I think it is, and no one's talking about it, is I think it's sort of an AT&T and Verizon killer because it'll give them,
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you know, my sense is WhatsApp is slowly becoming just the best telco and it's
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free. For the first time, I've thought, wow, I have AT&T and somehow they have figured out a way through taxes and me
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ignoring the bill and not calling and complaining. I pay 4 to600 bucks a month for AT&T.
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And a couple times recently, I thought I'll call back on WhatsApp because it's better. And if they can figure out a way
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to make more investments in technology and outpace the technology investments of AT&T or Verizon and offer free
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service to everyone globally and it becomes a self-expressive benefit where it feels cooler to be on WhatsApp now.
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Yeah. I I just think I got a lot of WhatsApp. You know, it's interesting. They could go back to that terrible
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phone they did. Do you remember many years ago? They had a phone was like home or whatever it was called. Who had
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a phone? Facebook had the phone and then they got out of it. It was, you know, who was run by? Chimath Polyhapatia ran
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that division and it was a huge fail. I know. Ha. Exactly. Speaking of HGH. Um,
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uh, what explain I mean could they do that? Could they go back? Because they
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had a phone. It failed. Microsoft had a phone, Amazon had a phone. They all had phones. And that was their move was to
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to sort of go into that business. But AT&T, Verizon sort of sewed it up along with Google and Apple. Uh I saw this as
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I thought it was good news for Meta. Probably the two. So they don't need a phone is what you're saying. They just
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need the WhatsApp phone service. I think there just so many amazing hardware manufacturers now. They're better off just being the operating system that
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that garners money and advertis. I don't think they're in that business anymore. But I think I saw I read this as worse
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news for AT&T and Verizon than it was an increase in revenues for uh so ad's not
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a big deal and ad's not just a thing. Well I mean four out of five people are on a
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meta platform I think every 48 hours outside of China. So my sense is that uh
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I think the ads will be fairly unobtrusive. I think they'll get more and more targeted. they'll have more and more data to put into their flywheel,
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you know, but it's where WhatsApp is strongest is where they have the lowest monetization. So, I think it'll be a
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longer road to the revenue. You're very bullish on Meta right now. And also the scale AI deal is his, you know, they've
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been sucking wind in the AI area. He thinks so and I think he's right. And so, he's making a big move, which is
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very typical of Zuckerberg like when he bought Instagram, when he did all kinds of things, he always makes the big aggressive pivot for himself. I don't
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think I think this one was a rare misstep. He's arguably the best acquirer in history. Instagram bought for a
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billion. Later, Marissa Mayer made the worst acquisition in tech history. She bought Tumblr for 1.1 billion. And I
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think 7 years later, it was sold for 3 million. Yeah. And meanwhile, Instagram is probably objectively worth2 to $300
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billion if it was an independent company. And then everyone thought he was crazy for spending 19 billion on
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WhatsApp that had no revenue. Yeah. and that's ended up now he arguably bought the largest telco globally for $19
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billion. That looks like a genius acquisition. This one's a little bit different because they were trying to be cute. When you buy 49% of a company,
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you're not triggering what's called a change of control. Meaning that the SEC looks at it differently. And technically
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the FTC and the DOJ have a different set of rules to apply to a minority investment. There was 49 for a reason.
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They technically they're not in control. But this is what happens when you take 49% of a company. You're on top. You're
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in char you're in charge. They also made its founder the head of their AI now. Essentially, he's head of the AI lab or
00:19:32
whatever that they're making, but they're effectively in charge now. Uh uh meta and they thought that and scale AI
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is going now back to all the their other so scale is essentially an attempt to
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optimize content for generative AI. Remember the SEO world? Remember how
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there used to be companies and people here 10 years ago who had businesses that optimize you for search? These guys
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are now in the business of optimizing for generative AI, right? It's a great company, super smart people. By the way,
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it's going to go the same way of SEO. I think in 10 years that whole industry is gone. But Meta saw reason to bring these
00:20:06
very smart people in to help optimize content for generative AI discovery. They thought they'd be cute and only buy
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49% of it and Microsoft got away with it essentially. Well, but what Right. But
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what their clients now, Scale AI, have said, "That's fine." Yeah. But a dog we
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don't like has peed on you and we're just not getting near you. We're done. We're Google's out. I think this I think
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he overpaid for this acquisition. Yeah. I think this was a rare a rare misstep, but we'll see. We'll see what happens
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with him. It'll be interesting. Um, but I I do like I have to say the one thing Zuckerberg compared to a lot of people
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is his management style is very he's a very strong manager in that he makes a brilliant businessman. He's also a
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sociopath and has done more damage to young people while making more money than anyone else in history. Well done. That's it. Well done. Yeah. Well, we
00:20:55
like your management style. Anyway, brilliant. Yeah. Uh, next up, a chatbot revolution is killing news publishers as
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AO replaces Google searches. News sites aren't getting much needed referral traffic. We've talked about this.
00:21:07
Organic search traffic to Huff Post and Washington Post reportedly down 50% over the last 3 years. Google search volume
00:21:13
on Apple's Safari browser just fell for the first time in 20 years. TV news is feeling the pinch with social media
00:21:18
reportedly now surpassing TV as Americ's top news source. And over at Amazon, Danny Jasse told employees that AI would
00:21:25
come for their jobs. What a nice memo to get from your CEO. You suck. I'm going to fire you. Um Amazon is the second
00:21:31
largest private employer in the US. They It's a huge company. a million people, whatever. The number is enormous. Um,
00:21:38
this this thing everyone should have seen coming here in advertising. Every publisher that didn't see what they were
00:21:44
going to do coming. At first, they stole your content by and push and got in the
00:21:49
catbird seat and pushed stuff to you. So, you were beholden to them. And now they're just taking your [ __ ] and
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putting it up. And I have to say it's very effective because I that's what I that's the first thing. I don't go any further than the first AI thing because
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it's gotten increasingly better. I mean, what's the point of going except then I then go organically to people's sites
00:22:10
like the New York Times, but it's a real killer for the clickbait websites. It's a death sentence for them. Much like
00:22:15
what happened to Demand Media many years ago when Google did the when they did that redo whatever panda or whatever the
00:22:21
[ __ ] they called it. Yeah. So, I mention this probably once a month on the podcast because I'm desperate for your
00:22:27
affirmation, but I was on I was on the board of the New York Times from 08 to 2010. They didn't like you, I heard. Um,
00:22:35
not true. They kicked me off after 24 months. Okay. Um, Ssberers, really, really talented, thoughtful people.
00:22:42
Seriously, choosing my words very carefully. Uh we had something called about.com and it
00:22:49
was essentially a content farm and we'd have somebody who did a whole thing on southern cooking and then we would
00:22:55
optimize it for Google and then Google would send traffic and we'd split revenue from them and the site was doing
00:23:01
really well and we could have sold it for a billion dollars. And I remember saying why on earth would we not sell this thing? This is not our business.
00:23:07
billion dollars, a lot of money. And they said no because the management team wanted to accessorize an analog outfit
00:23:12
with digital earrings, thinking it made them look younger, right? It was their bell bottoms or whatever it was. They
00:23:18
thought it made them seem hipper. And then one night, literally overnight, uh,
00:23:24
Google changed their algorithm and 40% of our traffic went away like that. Like 40%. And I had this conversation and I
00:23:31
have this conversation with any entrepreneur. I have this conversation with Jessica Yellen, News Not Noise, which I absolutely love. She's dependent
00:23:37
upon Meta. Yeah. I'm like, the only thing a partner of Meta and Alphabet
00:23:43
have in common over the medium and long term is you're going to get [ __ ] Yeah. They will run their fingers
00:23:48
through your hair, send you traffic, call you partners, invite you to the cool party tonight, and then slowly but
00:23:54
surely, the moment you have anything resembling real margin that they can come from, they will tweak their algorithm and suck it out. Google used
00:24:02
to be the best place to go. Now, the first two or three pages are where they can go to further monetize. And the
00:24:09
thing that really bothers me about these generative AI descriptions now is if you
00:24:14
type in um give me the major themes from car switchers uh book burnbook, it'll
00:24:20
list links to Amazon where they can buy the book, but it summarizes it. Yeah, it does. Which means they've crawled your
00:24:26
content, right? Which means they haven't Are they paying Penguin Portfolio Random House or Simon and Schustster? So, this
00:24:33
is a moment in time. Going back to the New York Times, I suggested that we form a consortium and stop letting Google
00:24:39
crawl our data. I'm like, they've convinced us that this is good for us and they're sending us traffic to run
00:24:45
shitty banner ads that nobody watches that we get 50 cent CPMs on and they run
00:24:50
stuff across the right rail that is much more targeted and they get a dollar for. So, they're giving us two pennies.
00:24:55
They're taking a buck from our gorgeous content, right? And we're supposed to be happy about it. and they said, "No,
00:25:01
we're in the business of eyeballs." Da da da. This is before they went subscription. That was a moment in time where we could have pushed back on
00:25:07
search where if we'd all banded together as content creators and said, "We're going to license it to Bing, which was
00:25:12
still a player at a time, or to Google, we could have extracted a lot of money." We are at that moment in time right now
00:25:19
with AI. Yeah. And that is you need we need very a very aggressive very intelligent group of people and a lot of
00:25:26
money for lawyers to go to every one of these guys and say we have evidence everywhere that you are crawling our
00:25:32
amazing content that includes people who are willing to go to war zones and risk their lives. It includes people that
00:25:37
spent a lot of money on graduate education such that they can fact check and write reasonably well and compelling
00:25:43
narrative. And you are crawling their data and running these synopsis and not
00:25:48
paying them. Right. Exactly. And the Times and others spent you made that point about the factecking on the
00:25:54
article about me that you got called. He's here in the room. Ben is here. But um the puff piece. Yes. The puff piece.
00:26:00
The puff piece. No, it was not. It was very hard-hitting. Um uh anyway,
00:26:05
literally I got a call. Can you talk about her leadership skills? Oh god.
00:26:10
Make it stop. Puff piece. Did you see my puff piece in
00:26:16
the FT? Yes, I did. Daddy got a little love. That's right. It's too bad everybody
00:26:22
reads the news. Yeah. FT piece. How many people read the New York
00:26:28
Times piece? Everybody. Right. Thank you. Okay. Anyway, literally. Okay. Just so you know, you're all cynical. This is
00:26:34
what advertising has become. Advertising media used to shape culture. now follows me to the [ __ ] urologist on
00:26:40
Instagram. Congratulations. Well done. In anyway, in any case, they will do it again and they will do it again and again and they have no interest. I will
00:26:46
give you one very quick when I I was at Google when they started and Larry Page
00:26:52
was taking me around showing me the office and there was a room and I've told this story full of television sets and they were all on and it was
00:26:58
everything at Google was weird at the time. You'd turn a corner and there'd be a tent or there's something. It was all, it was a very strange, quirky culture.
00:27:05
And I was like, "Oh, a room of televisions like Circuit City essentially." And I said, "What are you doing?" At this point, Larry was
00:27:12
carrying a pollution meter around his neck because he was worried about pollution. And I was like, "No matter
00:27:17
what you do, Carmen, you're going to die." I did the moonruck line to him. And he's like, "What is that? What do
00:27:23
you mean I'm going to die?" I'm like, "You're going to die." Like, this was the kind of conversation. But we get to this room, it's full of TVs. I'm like,
00:27:28
"What are you doing in there?" And he goes, "We're taping TV." And I, this is exactly where he talks. And I go,
00:27:34
"Taping TV?" He goes, "Yes, all of TV." And I said, "You're taping TV for what?" They were crawling it through closed
00:27:40
captioning so they could search it. And and I said, "Did you get any of the copyright to do that?" And they were
00:27:46
doing the same with books. Yeah. Very soon after. And he goes, "Why would I need to do that?" And I was like, "Cuz
00:27:52
other people own that content, not you. And you're a [ __ ] shoplifter." And he was like, "I think it's going to be good
00:27:58
for the world." I said, "I think it's going to be good for you because no one's going to do it after." And we had this big debate right there. But this is
00:28:03
in the DNA of these companies. Let me tell you, shoplifting and thievery is in
00:28:09
the thing. And Walt Moser got it right when he called them information thieves many years ago. And I think that's absolutely true. Um, and then they then
00:28:16
they serve you the the solution for it. Like they they they give you info cancer and then say we have the medicine to
00:28:23
cure you of info cancer, which they don't, which is a line from Mountain Head this week. Anyway, uh speaking of
00:28:28
of things that might cause cancer, um when we come back, we'll talk about Trump launching a mobile plan. And we're
00:28:34
back live from con
00:28:41
that we got some time for questions here. The Trump Organization has announced a mobile phone plan for and a $4.99 smartphone they said will be made
00:28:47
in the US. This is not true. You cannot make a phone in the US, but they don't care if they lie about things like that.
00:28:53
Trump mobile offer plans under $50. It's like the Bible. uh will offer plants
00:28:58
under $50 a month. The T1 uh smartphone appears to have a gold covering with an American flag. Obviously, gold is best.
00:29:05
Um for those who haven't seen that, it's a great skit on Apple. Gold is best. Get the gold. Um this device will run on
00:29:12
Google's Android operating system and uh Trump organization says it will be made in the US. Again, it's not possible. Uh
00:29:18
but meanwhile, in the podcasting uh world, uh the boys of Smartless have also launched their own mobile phone
00:29:24
company. Uh I don't think we're not going to be doing that. just so you know. But th this is this is ridiculous.
00:29:29
I Shira OV did a great thing. She tried to sign up. They charged her immediately. She can't get her service.
00:29:35
It's very confusing. It's obviously just he probably did they did a deal with
00:29:40
someone. It's not Trump isn't running it. It's like stakes except now people buy it essentially. Um any thoughts on
00:29:46
this creating a mobile service? Well, why would we create a mobile service?
00:29:52
The grift in the criminality and the monetization of the White House has become so outrageous. It just doesn't feel strange. If Obama or Reagan or
00:30:00
Carter had tried to launch a phone service, Fox News would have had their just their hair on fire for 7 days
00:30:07
straight. But because we now have a president who opens a Swiss banking account, the Qatar or anyone else can
00:30:13
say, "I'm putting a hund00 million in tonight at 12:03 a.m. and nobody knows. And by the way, could you stop sending
00:30:18
shipments of arms to these people? Or, you know, basically the White House is now for sale. The criminality is just so
00:30:25
outrageous that we now see the monetization of something that this
00:30:31
should not happen. This is crazy. But it almost feels like, oh, that's not a big deal, right? Sending your kids to Qatar,
00:30:37
who is the political mouthpiece and funer of Hamas, and then taking a $400 million bribe from them. Well, if you
00:30:44
can do that, okay, let him launch a phone. So, this what's so sad about this, by the way, you can get the exact
00:30:50
same plans. Someone did a did an analysis because some of these plans are great because you are being overcharged by Verizon and AT&T. So, some of these
00:30:57
other plans are terrific like that because they basically ride on Verizon and AT&T. They pay them. Um, and some of
00:31:04
them are wonderful and it shouldn't the prices should not be these prices. Well, not to get too deep into the weeds here,
00:31:09
but there's a duopoly. a small number of companies own the networks and the FDC
00:31:14
and the DOJ said came in and said you have to lease them out to people to start what's called an MVNO and a lot of
00:31:20
great companies including Mint Mobile came in with very with fantastic advertising and acquired a bunch of
00:31:26
customers and then they basically sell to one of the big guys they end up being kind of niche customer acquis acquisition vehicles for the duopoly
00:31:32
that is Verizon but you can get the same plan for less for less money but I don't I I like
00:31:39
these little niche uh offerings if people are that crazy about Trump and they want to do it. But they it's just
00:31:46
insane that somebody who has the power of the purse, power of laws gets to
00:31:51
decide the most important decisions globally that sets the tone for the rest of the world is selling a [ __ ] phone.
00:31:58
I mean, come on. It just we become so numb to how terrible and uh uh
00:32:04
inappropriate all of this is and just the incredible erosion. I have found I'm
00:32:10
on a bunch of panels and I have found I'm the anger pillow for K. They set me up. You say brand is dead and then they
00:32:15
have a very articulate British person say why brand matters more than ever and and I have felt I don't want to say
00:32:21
anti-American resentment but I just think globally our brand you want to talk about brands there has never been a
00:32:27
brand erosion of a brand as big fallen as far as fast as the US in the last 151
00:32:33
days. Well Tesla but go ahead. Fair enough. Um uh that's fair and
00:32:40
that's still going but down. But if you think about it, we we used to be the good guys. People people said, "Okay,
00:32:46
they get it wrong, but generally speaking, the White House has an occupant in there that may be dumb, maybe not that's unfair, not dumb, maybe
00:32:53
not the brightest person in the world, may be arrogant, maybe imperialist, bad
00:32:58
wars, but generally speaking, our hearts in the right place. I've always found that. And what I'm sensing when we go
00:33:04
abroad is a certain level of fear. Like I think people quite frankly took America a little bit for granted. They
00:33:09
sort of said, "Oh, you're smart. You're nice. You have more weapons than anybody. That's kind of nice." And then when they realized, "Okay, our rich
00:33:16
uncle Sam's gone [ __ ] crazy." They're like, "Wow, we kind of miss our uncle. We kind of miss the old uncle. That felt
00:33:22
pretty good." And also, there's a real decent level. I find that I It's not I
00:33:28
don't want to say there's an anti-American thing in France. We're still wonderful allies. We push back fascism together. But what I notice
00:33:35
visibly when I'm on panels, someone makes an anti-American joke and that people just love it. That people just
00:33:41
love it now. So that erosion in brand equity certainly has enormous impact on it. It means that one of the largest
00:33:48
exports in our nation, you know, US education where we make $42 billion a year, we make 40 billion selling TV
00:33:55
shows and movies overseas. We make $42 billion getting the richest kid from El Salvador to come to NYU Stern and pay
00:34:01
288,000 in tuition over four years. All those numbers are accurate. We get the best and brightest the flows of human
00:34:08
capital in the US. People people have one aspiration of the best and brightest typically and that is to come to the US.
00:34:15
If you're noticing a terrorist cell forming and people wanting to get on planes to DC or to San Francisco, there
00:34:22
are a lot of people who say, you know what, Americans are good people and they notify our embassy. They highlight
00:34:27
security threats. I have always run global companies, small companies, but global companies. And I was found when I
00:34:33
walked into Samsung or to LVMH or Toyota in, you know, Tokyo, um, Seoul or Paris
00:34:43
and I took for granted, you know what, people generally like Americans. They generally speaking think you're
00:34:48
obnoxious, funny, but they like us. They think, oh, you're not now, though. We're going to have to That's my point. That's
00:34:54
my point is that that brand erosion, I mean, you're in the business of brand. Brand erosion means less margins. It
00:35:00
means less consideration. It means less profits. The erosion in goodwill will translate to an economic hardship and uh
00:35:08
making our soft targets much bigger targets because we're no longer the family which is which is making out like
00:35:15
bandits and I mean bandits. I mean I'm stressing bandits. What what could they sell next? Then I want to get to questions because we only got a few
00:35:20
minutes. I have no idea. I think erectile dysfunction drugs. Well, if you think about advertising advertising used
00:35:27
to shape culture. Now it sells creatine to self-hating people like me. Anyway, he's back. Excellent. All right, one
00:35:33
more quick break and then we'll take some questions from the audience. Scott, we're back. Let's take some questions right here. Do you think Trump and Musk
00:35:39
are going to kiss and make up? No, I do not. No, I think Trump has he's used his Musk has outlived his usefulness and
00:35:47
he's he's a he's a live wire. Um, and he takes away too much attention and Trump doesn't need him at this point. He's got
00:35:53
his billions of dollars. He's got his presidency. uh he'll probably get off scot-free. Not everyone in that
00:35:59
administration will get off scot-free, but Trump certainly will. Um and so I I think he doesn't need him. And I the
00:36:05
only thing is Musk is not like I said, it's not like Omar Rosa leaving. There will be if if if Scott although he has
00:36:12
qualities of Omar Rosa, although I like her a lot better. Um I think that she will um I think that he will he could
00:36:19
cause trouble. You just never know what he's going to do. Um, so I think that's one of he has some power, especially on
00:36:25
if he changes the algorithm on Twitter. He could [ __ ] with him there. He could [ __ ] with him a lot of places. That said, there's plenty of people rushing
00:36:31
in to take his place and and Trump's got most of tech by the ball. So, uh, for
00:36:37
some reason, I don't know why because they have they could certainly do damage to him, too. I don't know. Very quick
00:36:43
or I'll spray you. No, no, I'm not going quick. You don't you don't love the
00:36:48
whole me. You don't love me. Bowen Yang is waiting. Oh, I'll go quick. Um, the
00:36:54
gays are waiting to come on. They want to see the gays. This happens every day. This is this is a much bigger, bolder,
00:37:00
cattier, stupider version of the following. And it happens millions of times in corporate America. My company was acquired. Uh, I didn't like working
00:37:08
there. They didn't like me. I didn't like them. That's a little harsh. Different culture. And they said,
00:37:13
"Okay." Uh, I said, "I want out." And they said, "Fine, we want you out." and
00:37:18
I they gave me a [ __ ] ton of money and I signed non-disparagement and non-compete agreements. That is effectively what's
00:37:25
going on here. They have fired him. He wanted input on CIA, NASA, uh, and IRS
00:37:31
picks. They said, "No, you've overstepped your boundaries. We need you out." He started [ __ ] posting them, calling the president a pedophile.
00:37:36
Didn't seem to bother him when he wanted subsidies. Can you think of anything worse you could call somebody? And
00:37:41
meanwhile, all the the right-wing media that was saying, "Release the Epstein files." There's all these Democrats.
00:37:47
They're all of a sudden like, "Oh, that's not true. That's his Trump. He just hung out with Epstein for fun." I
00:37:52
just love how all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, conspiracy." Anyways, they basically said to him, "Boss, we're not going to give you extra money, but we're
00:37:58
not going to put Tesla and SpaceX out of business, but you have to sign a non-disparagement. This is a firing."
00:38:04
And he's basically been told, "Okay, if you want us to take SpaceX from 300 billion to 30 billion by losing all
00:38:10
contracts and you want us to take Tesla from 950 to 50, you better shut the [ __ ] up. Sign here." And this happens every
00:38:17
day in corporations. He's much more leverage than you really. If if Starling falls apart, he's got a lot of problems.
00:38:23
And Tesla's on a downward spiral, which has something to do with his Trump sport, but a lot to do with his lack of
00:38:28
good cars. That's really, I mean, at the very heart of it. I just wanted to ask if you guys could share any predictions about uh the remedies that we're going
00:38:35
to see in both of the DOJ Google cases. Um I think goo I think probably they'll have to uh break it up. I think they'll
00:38:42
they'll have to be spinning something off. I think that judge is really smart actually know a lot about him. Um but I
00:38:49
I think Google's on the ropes on that one. The Facebook one, I'm not sure because some people felt it wasn't a
00:38:55
particularly strong case and Facebook's being ultraaggressive. Um and they've got some support for the idea that they
00:39:01
do have come I I think it's a better case that they brought back that Lena Khan then resubmitted but I think a lot
00:39:07
of people feel that that possibly uh Facebook will possibly I think the judge
00:39:12
will rule against them but it will go to appeals it'll go on and on and on but I think the Google one is a sign probably a significant issue and it will keep
00:39:19
it'll keep going but the Google one is more and it's very clear what h what's happened there and they should not be on
00:39:25
every side of every market including you know YouTube is now television. You know, they they control so much stuff
00:39:32
and it's so obvious that they should be broken up in some fashion. But rolling back the Instagram purchase, I don't see
00:39:38
it happening. Yeah. There's a lot of moving parts here, but I think if Alphabet stock continues to underperform and for some reason it goes down, I
00:39:45
think that they will decide to prophylactically spin YouTube because I think once an asset Alphabet trades at a
00:39:52
P of I think 16, the S&P trades at 24. The average S&P company is not nearly as impressive as Alphabet. At some point,
00:39:59
the shareholders of Alphabet will go, "All right, the hole is worth less than the sum of its parts." So, maybe we can
00:40:04
kill two birds with one stone. Go to the DOJ or the FTC and say, "What if we spin uh YouTube, which would probably be
00:40:10
worth more than Netflix, it captures 11% of viewership. Netflix catches captures 7.7." So I think if they see that tea
00:40:18
leaves that it would be good for shareholders and potentially uh uh maintain the wolves the FDC and
00:40:24
DOJ wolves at the door. I think you'll see a spin. Having said that, every prediction I have made around DOJ and
00:40:30
FDC over the last decade has been entirely wrong. But the Trump administration hasn't pulled back on
00:40:35
this which is interesting. I don't you know I think they probably thought they might get a little bit of but it doesn't matter. This is in front of a judge and
00:40:41
we'll see what happens. but they don't seem particularly interested in helping these companies, but I do think Google's
00:40:47
probably going to have to spend something off at some point. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to
00:40:53
our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, let me give it to you. Read
00:40:58
us out. You think I know? I'm not going to wait for you. Go ahead. Go. All the people we value the hook situation. Can
00:41:04
you please Today's show was produced by Laren, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie interest in this
00:41:09
episode. Thanks also to Gibbro Mero and Dan Shalon and Shak Kerwas Fox Media Executive producer podcast. Thank you to
00:41:15
Lawrence Stark, Ra Sha, and Jackie Sanguid. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks
00:41:21
for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine atmmyag.com/pod.
00:41:27
We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thank you so much. We love
00:41:33
you. We love you.
00:41:39
Thank you. Come here. [Music]
