Big Technology Podcast - God, 'The Current Thing,' And Apple — With Antonio Garcia Martinez

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

Antonio Garcia Martinez is an early Facebook employee, author of Chaos Monkeys, former Apple engineer, and writes the Pull Request on Substack. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a wide-ranging discussion touching on what he learned about Apple's ad platform in his short tenure at the company, how he's navigated being held as a symbol for new-right politics and then pushed back on its pro-Putin narrative, what the meme about Ukraine support being "the current thing" really means, and why he's converting to Judaism if he disdains dogma.

LinkedIn Presents Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation, of the tech world and beyond. Our guest today is Antonio Garcia-Martinez. He's the author of Chaos Monkeys, which was an NPR, Best Book of the Year, an early Facebook employee, a notoriously former Apple engineer. He's currently a senior fellow at the Lincoln Network and author of Pull Request on Substack. He also has a podcast by the same name.

Antonio, welcome to the show. Thanks, Alex, for having me. Yeah, so I think we should start with how we met because, I don't know, it was kind of an interesting interaction and it may set the stage here. So I had written this story for BuzzFeed News when I was there, but how I had bought an AR-15 using Facebook, which was against Facebook's policies to do a private purchase of an AR-15 there. You had, like, tweeted the story or something and said that, like, you know, this is, the tweet's gone now, but I think it was something along the lines of, like, this is everything that's wrong with, you know, the media today.

I mean, I wouldn't say I didn't say it. It's entirely possible. I was that much of an asshole in 2016. But I don't know that I would quite heap all the sins of tech journalism. on your poor head, Alex, and that one piece about wire. Because I think in retrospect, I think we had a conversation about it later, and I kind of respected the fact that you actually bought a firearm and you kept it and you kind of did the do, so to speak, rather than just talk about it.

But I'm not denying I said it either. It's not really possible I did. Yeah. Well, I think the thing that happened afterwards was, you know, I slid into your DMs and was like, you know, let's talk about this. Because, you know, for the piece, I did use Facebook to buy the firearm. and it was part of the gun control discussion at the time and you're a gun owner and so um you know i i was expecting a reaction um but also like like like you had mentioned i kept the gun because

otherwise it would be a straw purchase and there were plenty of reporters that had like bought guns and like handed it to the cops or like returned it right away or didn't return it but they sold it to someone else right away and you saw you sign on the on the form that you're the ultimate acquire. And if you don't plan on keeping the gun, you can go to jail because it's a straw purchase. And so I had made the point of doing that. And when I pointed that out to you, it was interesting because, like, we were then able to have, like, a pretty constructive discussion about it. And I thought that was valuable. Yeah. And for those who don't know what a straw purchaser is, because it's kind of a gun term. It's basically, you know, felons in most states, I think all states

can't own or buy firearms. So they send somebody with a clean record and that person effectively resales the guns, which is totally legal. And for all the talk of ghost guns and this and that, how guns end up in the hands of the wrong people is typically a straw purchaser with a clean record who goes to a state where you can buy whatever. And then you'll often go across state lines and that sell it to somebody informally for cash who should not be owning a gun. So exactly. Yeah. But Antonio, it's interesting because like you're, you, you are like, it seems to me that you're like anti-dogma. And, you know, I also am wary of dogma. You know, I don't think we should spend the whole podcast on this, but, you know, I grew up religious and I'm still spiritual and,

you know, you're. And so like there's, there's, but there's definitely like a skepticism in me of like people saying, well, this is how it is. This is how it should be. Don't question it. And that comes about from my background. And it seems like you have something similar, but you're also in the middle of doing a conversion to Judaism and becoming religious. So how do that, how do you square those two? Well, so I'll get to the religious thing as a second thing. Just in terms of contrarianism, think one thing, this whole Ukraine situation, I think, has dropped kind of like a bomb into what was the quiet, like, post-2020 media escape of discourse, right? And I think what it's shown is that a lot of people that we thought were sort of independent thinkers are actually just contrarian assholes,

right, who will just flip against the existing sort of narrative, which maybe has a high-level social function. It doesn't make them particularly good people. But I think that level of sort of knee-jerk, media contrarianism starts to serve its purpose less and less when there's like an outside thing that actually exists in reality. And that thing is, for example, civilians getting bombed or brutalized in various ways. And then at that point, the sort of ironic semiotics of whatever the thing is, is a little bit less important than actually getting the story straight. And if you're in a society or if you have enough influence in an audience to actually move the needle on public opinion, in some sense, you do have a duty in some

sense to move that public opinion in what one would consider to be a morally good or at least socially beneficent end rather than just sitting there ironizing endlessly about, again, very world world world events. And so in some sense, my patience for that level of contrarian assfulness, I think dropped a lot in the context of the Ukraine story. Right, which is something we're going to get into in the second half. Yeah. Okay, address the religion thing. Yeah. Oh, well. Yeah. I'll leave the conversion questions out. I'm just a personal curiosity to me, but how do you square those two things? But again, that's the thing.

I mean, calling Bolshev on something is like the most Jewish thing ever. I mean, if you read the Talmud, I mean, the Jews invented Reddit before Reddit, obviously. If you read the Talmud, particularly as it's typically formatted, which is the text in the middle, and then a bunch of reply guys, like literally the comments right on a Twitter thread, all around it, all of them trolling each other, right? So, you know, Rabbi Moshe said so-and-so, and then Rabbi so-and-so, oh, no, no, no, he's utterly full of it because of this and that, and then referred to some other place with like a link to some other place in the text, right?

And so that, that, I think, again, I think when people think of religion in the United States or in, you know, the Western world, Christianity is kind of the spiritual backdrop, even if those people aren't Christian. And in that world, doctrine and dogma can be very important. And not to say that I was raised Catholic, not to say in Catholicism, there isn't a culture of intellectual debate. There certainly is. But the enforcement of rigid dogma of, you know, and I think, I think Catholics are unfairly tarred as always being inquisitorial. I mean, that was a long time ago and doesn't express the entirety of religion, but there was an inquisition in a chase of heretics and the enforcement of faith norms of what you believe and think, not just in Christianity and in Islam and whatever, again, it's very important in what a theologian would call orthodoxic religions, right? Religions that are about correct belief and correct faith rather than correct practice, right? There's kind of a quip in one of the conversion books I read that was like, you know, Jews, Jews agree on what, on what. what every Jew should do, and therefore they're free to think whatever the hell they want. And so I think, although, again, it's within a very, I don't know if that's true. Well, but it's, I would say, it's within a very sophisticated legal tradition that stems from a level of legal argument. So, yeah, it's certainly not anything you can do, but look at,

look at the various strains and branches of Judaism that all call themselves Jews from reform to, to, to, to the heredity. And there's a big spectrum there, a way bigger spectrum than you would find within Catholicism, for example, in my opinion, in terms of what is true, what do we actually believe, not within level of practice, because there's like weekend Catholics, Catholicism, of course, but I don't know. I think there's a lot more debate in Judaism than there is in Catholicism, which has a catechism, which is approved by the Vatican, doesn't change very often, and it's like, basically this is the way it is, right? So I don't know, to me it doesn't seem like taking on an enormous amount of dogma and doctrine. I, you know, I think religion, I think

Walter Benjamin has a quote in which he said, or no, it's William James, sorry, in the varieties of religious experience. That religion is the belief that there's some unseen order to which human society should be converging towards, right? Like that, at its highest level, in my opinion, is a definition of religion. And, you know, the Jews have one vision of that and Christians another. Yeah. Oh, I really disagree with that statement. Really? Like, yeah, because I feel like when you get to the more stringent levels of religion, it's not, it's not that and it's more so just like um you know a practice of of serving god through certain right certain mechanisms and a belief an orthodoxy of belief um which is where you get

orthodox you know religion from so anyway we could we could go on forever about this but um unless i mean but but james's definition would include well you've got to put on the to fill in every morning right that's also part of the unseen order right and and habad is there to make sure that every you does that or tries to make everybody do that, right? Yeah, they definitely do on my, my block in Brooklyn. Oh, you probably, you probably get snagged all the time. Yeah, yeah, I do. I'm like, all right, guys.

Anyway, I've made my choice. So, so, you know, I was going to, I do want to cover Apple versus Facebook and Elon Musk thing. But since we're already into it, I feel like it's worth like getting, you know, you talked a little bit about contrarianism. So I'm going to flip the, the script. year on this show. And I think we're going to go, um, with, you know, your politics first and the reaction to some of the stuff that's happened to you. And then we'll move into the more Rick and order stuff of, um, oh, I have, I have a politics. Alex, I don't think I have a politics.

Well, yeah, and that's what I want to hear. Um, because you, you may, you may, I may not have a politics, but you've certainly been, um, held up by different political, you know, systems as, um, well, yeah, look, I want, let me ask you about it. And then we can talk about it. Okay. So, look, I, I feel like it's important to talk about your firing at Apple first. You know, one of the questions I've had is, you know, it's interesting to me that it became so surprising. I mean, I think you've mentioned that, that you wrote the book not expecting to ever have, you wrote Chaos Monkeys, which is inevitably what the uprising at Apple was about. You wrote the book not expecting to be able to work in tech again. And, you know, I know that

your belief there was that, you know, it was because you exposed some of the, frivolity in the tech world. But it's also, I mean, it has to be all encompassing. Like, you must have written that book, you know, knowing that, that if you were to go back into a tech company, let's say Apple or whatever it is, that, you know, you would face a potential of some sort of uprising. And we did have, you know, Cher Scarlett on the show a couple weeks ago. And like she talked about like this passage about you comparing Facebook to legalize crack and a mother, you know, killing her baby because, you know, Farville was so addicted. Hold on. Hold on. So addictive. Yeah. Just to be clear, I was commenting, I was commenting on a news report that came

out just then. Right. A mother who had, I forget the exact deeds of the story because it was ages ago and it was one of these lurid gossip things. But it was a mother who had somehow injured her child or something because, yeah, she was playing Farmville too much or something. Just to be clear, I wasn't describing this in a normative way. I was quoting a news article that came out at the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But. Yeah. But. You said, such a company could certainly figure out a way to sell shoes. Twitter was cute and all, but it didn't have a casualty rate yet, no matter how much this Lady Gaga person was tweeting Facebook it was.

And the Lady Gaga was there because, again, it's part of the drama of it, but I went to like one of the M&A meetings. My little failed startup got bought by Twitter and in one of the meetings, like Lady Gaga showed up and I'm so uncool and so out of it, I'm like, wait, who? And like, they made a big deal about the person being there and it was just totally lost them. Anyhow, there's a lot of context in your statement you're quoting. Yeah, good, good. So, so yeah, that's what we're here for. Yeah. Yeah, okay, so.

Were you that surprised when it all went down? Well, yeah, of course. I mean, like, I just tweeted. Look, I, again, I'm not, I've obviously not a cool person who's big into popular media, as you could tell from not knowing who Lady Gaga was in 2011 or 12 or whatever it was. I just recently watched my full, a full Seinfeld episode for the first time of my entire life. Oh, right. Yeah. I've, of course, seen scenes of it. And I get some of the references, right? Like, osmottically, how can you not. know about Seinfeld, but I never actually just, like, sat down and watched the 30 minutes or whatever. And I did, prompted by the girlfriend. And I don't know, it was a random episode. I don't think it was even like the saltiest or anything. It was just like some episode she was watching that I tuned into. And it's just amazing, right? I mean, Chaos Monkeys is like a Mormon picnic compared to like an average episode of Seinfeld from whenever, I don't know what year that episode came out, but the show was big in like, what, the 90s. And so I would just say that

many things have changed, right? In the before times, and by before times, I mean as little as four years ago, right? One can write sort of hyperbolic, very gonzo works of narrative nonfiction, and it was not necessarily seen as a bad thing. Everything wasn't this hyper-sensitive quest to make everyone feel good about themselves, right? Which is what most culture has actually become. And again, if you see any, again, not even particularly edgy stuff like Seinfeld, which was like the most popular show at the time, one of the longest running comedies, I think people nowadays would be absolutely. shocked by it. Anyhow, I'm not making a normative projection about the world. I'm just saying social mores have changed radically in even very few years. And so getting back to your point, I think I have made this point publicly before that I thought cast monkeys might be a little bit spicy and hot, but it wasn't because of, and again, most of the book is about the startup game. It's about modern digital advertising. It's like super wonky, businessy stuff told in this kind of slightly gonzo tone. Almost none of it is about personal life, dating in Sanford, any of that stuff. A lot of that stuff was included because

my editors thought, and I agreed that injecting a little bit of personal stuff into it makes it a more salable book and less of a like wonky tech fest, which let's face it as kind of a snooze fest. The book was marketed and framed as like a Michael Lewis, like an early Michael Lewis liar's poker type romp through a field. And it was written as such. But the things I thought it would get me into trouble is because, A, again, it's much less so now. But there used to be this sort of code of silence that hung around startups and tech. Techies, I think because tech journalists, you know, present company, either exclude or included, are often very antagonistic to tech. And so the thought of like spilling the beans has as a very negative connotation and

it also just seems frivolous. Before Chaos Monkeys came out, I tried thinking of like, what's the last like insider tech book? That's not some dumb like LinkedIn thumpfluencer bullshit, like an actual interesting piece of literary nonfiction. The only one I could think of is a book called Startup by Jerry Kaplan that came out in like 1998 or something, which is actually a pretty good book. I went and reread it before I wrote Chaos Monkeys. But, you know, it feels some of it is timeless because it's the human predicament. Some of it feels very, very dated because the tech world in the late 90s obviously is completely unlike today. And so what I thought would get me canceled was just a snide look at, look, I compare Facebook's culture. And I use Facebook as a

proxy for Silicon Valley more broadly. Like, I don't think Facebook is uniquely evil. In many ways, I think it's a better company than most. But, you know, this bizarre, cultish fascination with the company's origin story, the belief in this great leader, the headquarters covered in posters, everyone wearing what seemed like uniforms. I almost joked it seemed like some weird techno-communism. Of course, life in real communist countries like Cuba is nothing like Facebook's campus, but it does have this bizarre sort of totalitarian, it's sort of a totalitarian sense. state with like a hippie commune in one package, right? And so that's mostly what I made fun of in the 400 or whatever plus pages of chaos monkeys. And that's what I thought would get me into

trouble. I actually wrote it in Europe thinking, well, I might have to reboot my career. I have I can live in work in Europe. And so I thought, oh, I might have to reboot my career in Europe. And so I actually wrote the beginning of chaos monkeys in Berlin. But I eventually decided to come back. And again, that's what I thought would get me into a little bit hot water. But I'm like, at the time, I was like so angry about everything and just pissed off and just in a place. of this like, okay, I'm going to write the biggest satire ever. And that's what produced that book. So, um, right. And the stuff that actually, you know, did end up getting you in trouble you've, I think you've mentioned that. If you were to do it again, you would pull it back of it.

Uh, probably. I mean, just because it's distracting. Again, if, if the only lesson you take away from chaos monkeys is some throwaway joke comment that we've all made, by the way, about, oh, dating in the city is so terrible or whatever, right? That's it. That was the joke. Like, if that, if I knew that would overshadow what I thought was the actual goal, of the book, which is documenting how kind of weird and crazy Silicon Valley life is. Yeah, I mean, it just, it wasn't worth it in the end, some thoroughly. Now, I'm actually more interested in what happened to you after the Apple situation. I mean, the book, you've talked a lot about the book.

But, you know, it seems to me like you've, you've kind of been held up by the right or at least by, you know, the very vocally anti-woke as like this kind of symbol. And I don't know about that. What do you think? I mean, I've seen it. It's definitely happened. I don't know. It must be, yeah, how have you felt it?

The Apple thing, A, I think it's, I don't think it's that interesting as an episode. It was very short. It was one, it was one weird little chapter in, by tech standards, kind of long career in tech with lots of ups and downs and various things to it. So to me, it's not this all-consuming thing. And, you know, I don't even like talking about it much because, again, to me, I don't think it was that interesting a thing. I mean, the only way my story is interesting is that I think it was part of a cycle within the bigger tech community. And you saw it in other companies, Shopify, Coinbase, where, you know, employees would sort of rally, create a slack mob about some issue, either try to get somebody fired or try to get the company to make a statement about X. And I think in the context of that, I was one interesting footnote in that.

So that thing I find kind of interesting. But yeah, the me part of it, I don't know. I don't find it that. Yeah. Well, I also find it interesting that like, you know, so take James DeMore, for instance, like he tried to play. and I don't think your situation is, you know, similar with James, but like, you know, he had, he had like a, you know, he was made a symbol and just played all the way into it. But I find something that's really interesting to you when we were talking about the current thing in the past is that, like, you, you know, whatever groups want to hold you up, you've kind of said, I'm just going to say, you know, what I think about things. And you've actually been kind of, you know, battling back against some of this reflexive, like, pro Russia, pro pro.

Yes. Kremlin thing and like you know there's this meme about like what can you explain first of all like and I want to get into that because it's interesting to see that like you know instead of writing with that you know you've pushed back a little bit and and so I'd kind of like to hear like what that's been like and also if you could explain like what the current thing is because there's this thing that like I'm for the current thing and it's like you know all these like popular social causes and the Ukrainian flag and kind of making fun of people who are like pro Ukraine because you know, they seem to like get a bar or all social causes. And you've actually said,

hey, wait a second. Like, you know, we actually should be pro-Ukraine here. Stop being like reflexively anti, you know, anything that like a certain group of people says. So unpack that for me. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, I not only, you know, push back against me. I went to Ukraine. I wanted to see it for real. I mean, I think that's what's missing here, right? That I think where all of us are so wrapped up, myself included, by the way, I'm not, I'm not exempting myself. But I think all of us are so wrapped up into the mediated nature of reality. through these, you know, quote-unquote black mirrors in our pockets, that I think we, particularly in a country like the United States,

where a lot of our crises of any stripe, of both sides, whatever, right? I'm not just pointing to one side here, are frankly kind of made up or, you know, blown up in ways. Like, look, bombs aren't falling. Nobody's dying, right? You're not wondering your next thing of food comes. And it's easier to reliveize against tragedy, but I think doing that at some point gives you some perspective, right? And the reality is that the United States has been like careening between perceived you know, existential threats that weren't really existential threats for like five or six

years. And all of it mediated, you know, via Twitter, such that the identity politics of who you are are no longer about some political manifesto and this is the way the world should be and this is my slate of public policies. It's like, do you believe in this thing and who else believes in this thing and how you identify your tribe via that mechanism, right? I think that's basically eaten everybody's brain. At least everyone who spends too much time on Twitter, right? And what the Ukraine situation I think highlights is that guess what it's you know we you know the singularity hasn't quite happened right we're not living in a purely pixelated reality there actually is a real real out there right where people where civilians get shot and killed or you know women get

raped in wartime or there's a massive battle going on or an entire country mobilizes there actually is a real thing out there right and that we even if indirectly by molding public opinion or by donating or time or money or whatever can actually impact that real thing somehow. And I think irony is like the most corrosive or one of the most corrosive things in the world. This guy, Ian Bogost, who's like a columnist at the Atlantic and a professor at Georgia Tech, he wrote a book about games, but he has this like chapter long riff in it about the dangers of irony, which is my favorite part of that book.

And ironic detachment is basically the, in my opinion, the smug cowardice of someone who's not willing to take a position on things and actually engage in the real world because it would be too emotionally painful or would actually require something in the form of real, you know, mental or physical sacrifice, right? It's a little bit of the too cool for school sort of reality, but it doesn't actually make you too cool. It just makes you detached and dissociated and frankly kind of irrelevant, right, to the greater world. And so I think the current thing thing, which is itself a current thing, and the sense that, and this has been cited by McLuhan, by Neil Postman, by Douglas Rushkoff, right? There's this sort of eternal present, I think is

what Rushkoff called it, or maybe I coined that, I can't remember, but there's a sort of eternal present of the internet, right? There's always the heated, hot thing that you're focusing on today, that you're going to forget tomorrow, and you live in this state of constant anxious, you know, absorption into this ever-changing thing, and it's driving us all crazy. And so I think, talking about the current thing, I think, is a very politically laden way of referring to that, which, you know, I think is real. It's hardly, I don't think it's wrong. But I think, again, the current thing is itself a current thing, right? And like I just tweeted, irony is unlike negative signs, right? If you, if you study irony ironically, right? If you look at

ironic detachment with a level of ironic attachment, it doesn't suddenly make you a sincere realist with a truer view of the world, right? It just drives you deeper down, the rabbit hole irony and all the ills that that irony can cause. So I'm not quite sure. And again, never mind the sort of, in my opinion, the moral cost of ironizing what is very real human suffering that this country and us collectively, again, as a nation, can maybe do something about. And so I think it's a dangerous form of irony. And again, you can ironize about the irony because, oh, well, but what about this other thing that we should be worried about? But it's like, well, okay, but who cares.

Let me put, yeah, let me put a finer point on it, right? So, you know, this current thing thing is basically like, I feel like it's coming from like folks who are like, you know,

trying to point out like the woke, trying to put like being anti-woke saying, you know, these people care about BLM and LGBT issues and they're holding a Ukraine flag. And it's like woke to be pro-Ukraine. So therefore we should be pro-Pooten. And you've come out like pretty stridently, you know,

against that stance saying, hey, wait a second, this is not part of the U.S. culture war. So I am curious. And yeah, I'm curious like, you know, you definitely have a hold with those folks because of the Apple thing and because of probably you're writing afterwards. So what's it been like, you know,

basically telling them to shut up on this issue? Yeah, well, I don't know. I mean, this new right, I mean, they're very pissy, they're very loud. They have practically no electoral constituency whatsoever. But I don't know. I think it's also wrong, right? Like, it's just not true that you're,

Ukraine is a current thing. Like, sorry, I'm in the heart of the current thing, which is just San Francisco. And for a bunch of reasons I won't go into, I've been looking at places to maybe live here or rent here or whatever. Like, I walk around, sure, you see a couple of Ukraine flags, but you still see way more Belon posters. And it's not like they swapped out one for the other. Like, I fully agree that things like critical race theory, the pronoun thing, wokeness, like there's definitely like a woke board that has taken over more and more of society. I wouldn't deny that exists. But to claim that, oh, no, now Ukraine is like, like, no, that's not even true. I'm sure if you actually look at Twitter stats of like how many people are tweeting

about Ukraine versus historically over the same period, tweeted about the BLM rights and all the rest of it, it would seem small in the scheme of things. Like, I don't think it's even an accurate diagnosis of the reality, but even assuming it was, let's say it is, then it's still wrong, right? Because Ukrainian cause is still the right type to think in that conflict. By the way, I, you know, I wouldn't give this right, perhaps the, or I'm, the support there for Russia, I think is maybe not quite as after the fact and reflective as you're describing it. It is the case that many of these people were actually pro-Putton sort of before this even happened, right? Of course. Because Russia, and again, I think this is where, and I read a piece in

Barry Weiss's thing about it, this is where I think a lot of the new right resembles the old left, right? In that, A, they're very critical of America and what the American government can do in the world. Two, they hold the U.S. responsible for everything that happens in the world, right? Apparently, Zelensky is in power, not because he won an election alliance lie, but because, you know, the State Department made a few phone calls 15 years ago or whatever, right? Which is the same conversations I was having with Berkeley hippies about Chile and Pinochet, for example, 20 years ago, right? Oh, the U.S. controls everything and is responsible for everything, but the U.S. should control nothing, but American values should take over the world. It was this bizarre

schizophrenia, and you see it on the right as much as you do them left. In any case, they're fans of Putin because, you know, Putin isn't into gender pronouns, and he's anti-woke or whatever, and he's seen as some defender of tri-Christianity. Never mind, never mind that the church intendants in his country is super low, the marriage rate is super low, the birth rate is So, like, all these things that these people on the right tend to obsess about, you know, Russia isn't exactly delivering on. And at the end of the day, again, it's hard to look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine and see some wonderful defense of Christian society when, in fact, it's like a total violent butchery is what it is. But again, I think that that's the problem that I think you've, you stew in perpetual irony and you live in this blizzard of images and you lose connection to the reality of it. It's shocking.

I mean, one of the things that shocks me about these people, none of them actually. go to Poland or Ukraine to see what it's actually like. Like, I went, right? And I don't know Slavic languages. I don't know the area. I literally just pick up and went, kind of improvising as it went along. Nobody actually goes. Nobody actually lives there.

Again, it's like the same thing with like the hippies talking about how great Cuban health care was 20 years ago. It's like, you know, motherfucker, get on the plane to Havana already. Go live there like a Cuban, not as an American tourist with dollars. Go live there as a Cuban and see what it's like. Of course, nobody ever did. And of course, none of these people are actually going to pick up and leave the blue cities that they tend to live in and actually go live in Minsk or Moscow, right?

It's the same. It's a Larp. it's an act in a way and so i don't know that that sort of larpy hypocrisy just drives me nuts and so yeah yeah i mean i do think that like this and there's some great stories about it but this is really exposed like um some people who are like just uh you know doctrine contrarians who will always be against the quote unquote current thing or whatever or anything that's popular it's like okay they get some stuff right but like they just look like complete idiots right now i mean there's massacres going on in ukraine and people yeah yeah they look like fucking morons and the thing is

I mean, their audience is a big enough, right? And they have, you know, they've got their little solar system of sims around them that, like, I don't like things on Twitter. So they're probably not aware of it. But yeah, but they look basically like moron. Like, it's hard to take these people serious anymore. I should say, in the defense of some of the new right,

I think the new right is actually an interesting movement. And there's some interesting authors there. They actually do have what, you know, it's not just like alt-right chaner is coming up with memes. There actually is an intellectual vein there. But I think is worth mining and thinking about and talking about. People like Patrick Deneen, you know, even Adrian Rameel, who's a Harvard professor.

I mean, they do have actual intellectual there. I don't want to tar that entire movement with like, oh, they're all just Putin stands engaging in stupid little Twitter games. Like, there is something to that movement that is worth, and I hope to write about it more in the future, actually, as a teaser. But, yeah, for many of them, I think, they don't rise to that level. And, yeah, there were always just major confarians. And now they're stuck, right?

Because as it turns out, if you look at most polls, the Ukraine cause is pretty popular in the U.S., not just among coastal elites, right? Again, they're characterizing it as the next BLM, but I saw a Ukraine flag flying with American flag in Virginia C, Nevada, outside a house that I have in, like, the Redis County where people walk around open carrying guns on their hips and stuff,

and they've got Ukraine flags flying. In fact, there was a poll that AP, I actually linked to it, AP did a poll, and across the board, Republicans, even more than Democrats, thought that Biden wasn't strong enough on Russia and Putin and felt that the U.S. should do more about Ukraine.

And so, again, I think the most vocal members of this new right, people like Tucker Carlson, J.D. Vance, kind of finally got the memo and dialed it back, their rhetoric back a little bit, right? J.D. Vance certainly did. Not least of which, because Ohio has a very large Ukrainian American population that wasn't very happy about his comments about Ukraine. But, you know, it's hard to be a populist if your views aren't very popular. And the reality is that many Americans are actually very sympathetic. I mean, I, you know, I live in Nevada and like, this is like, Thomas Friedman style anecdotes, but whatever, like I talked to random people. I picked up my cat, so I disappeared for a month of this Polish tree, like literally pack my bags left and like didn't know when I'd come back. And my poor cat, I mean, it was a very nice kitty hotel, but she was there for like almost a month. And I got back and, you know, these are common, you know, everyday American people, you know, outside of Reno. And I'm, and she's like, you know, we were worried about you. We thought maybe you wouldn't come back because something happened in Ukraine. I'm like, no, no, it's okay. Like it wasn't that

dangerous. She's like, you know, it's terrible what's happening over there. That Putin guy, man, what a monster. And, you know, unprompted by me, just random comment while I'm picking up my cat. I don't know what media see watches, probably CNN or Fox or something mainstream. But, you know, random woman on the street. And she's like, yeah, this is, this is horrible what's happening here. Like, like, I don't think, a lot of this new right claims to speak for the common man and I don't think, or woman. And I don't think they actually do, to be honest. Right. And they've also, I mean, they've also been wrong so much, like on vaccines, for instance. on Ukraine. And, you know, I mean, I personally want the right to be rational to push the left

to be, you know, I don't know, to push the left so that there's like, you know, a real debate of ideas versus what's going on now, which is just kind of depressing. Okay, I have to get to a break. Antonio Garcia Martinez is with us. He is the author of Chaos Monkeys. He's a senior fellow at the Lincoln Network and author of Pull Request on Substack. You can find him there. You can also find and at Antonio GM on Twitter. I have one more question about this, and then we're going to get into the Apple, Facebook stuff,

and maybe a little bit of Elon and Twitter. If we have time, we'll be back right after this. Hey, everyone, let me tell you about the Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read the Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative takes on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show,

where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So search for The Hustled Daily Show and your favorite podcast app like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Antonio Garcia Martinez. He is the author of Chaos Monkeys, an NPR best book of year, an early Facebook employee, a former April engineer, which we've covered, and also author of pull request on substack. He also has a podcast by the same name. Antonio, let me lead off the second segment with the question I've been wondering.

You know, you've said a lot about journalists. Do you consider yourself a journalist? Like, where do you fall on that spectrum? It's a good question. I remember one of the spats I had with Cara was her claiming I didn't do reporting when it was weird because I actually had two reported pieces and wired. And I can't think of the last time, Cara, that I knew reporting. Not to, not to being Cara, I actually like her and consider her kind of a friend

acquaintance. But I think it's my way of saying, I think it's hard to define. There's no like journalism badge that you wear, as you know. And I think journalism itself, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, spans the full realm from like reporting on county zoning hearings, which is boring but very factual and vital for local communities, to things like opinion, to things like, you know, narrative features that read more like, you know, novels or nonfiction books. And it's all stamped as journalism. And, you know, as you know, I mean, were both examples of it, the notion of journalism has changed over the time, and it's changed more recently with things like substacks. You've got people that unquestionably would have

been called journalists if they had been working for one company, you know, who have very successful careers and substacks. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, look, I did report it pieces for wire. Like, I actually reported from Cuba. I went on the road at 2018 Texas midterms and was like canvassing with a bunch of progressives using tech. So like, I've done the reporter thing, fact checked. I just went. went to Poland, Ukraine, interviewed a bunch of people, audio, photos, the whole thing. So it's hard to look at it and say, well, no, I'm not a report. I'm not a journalist. It's like, well, if this isn't journalism, then what is? But on the other hand, you know,

a lot of what's on pull requests is in that more nebulous area between, sure, there's some factual basis. I'm not writing a serialized novel, obviously. But on the other hand, there's a lot of AGM in there just to refer to myself in the third person as like a brand. Right. And, you know, And then that's, in some sense, as you know, that's part of why people sign up. They sign up to hear your voice. The world parsed through your voice, you know, is what they're signing up for, which is what journalism traditionally was in the past. One of the pieces I did at Wired is one of the more viral ones was the headline, the head

was pretty good. It was something like, you know, Benjamin Franklin would have been a Twitter shit poster or something along those lines. And it's true because he would have. I mean, if you look at Ben Franklin's life or even John Adams, who was a journalist, or was it Sam Adams' brother? I can't remember that. No, I think John Adams was the lawyer,

Sam Adams, with a journalist. In any case, a lot of the early founding fathers, in terms of their quote-unquote journalism, there were pamphleteers, right? I mean, Thomas Payne was a pamphleteer with the equivalent of a substack of his time, right? And he was one of the most prominent sort of thinkers and writers of the time.

So it's hard to have a definition of journalism today that would have excluded most of what passed for journalism before, like, 1870. And so, yeah, no, I think to that degree, but you know what? A lot of people that wouldn't consider them journalists are journalists. For example, a lot of the substacks that talk about, like, tech topics, like, you know, somebody like Pachy McCormick, for example, who's like a Web3 investor, advisor, whatever, creator, he has a substack I follow. And, you know, I think that's as, well, better than any journalism on Web3.

He's, I mean, if that isn't journalism, I'm not quite sure what is, right? Right. And you can find other examples. So I don't know. I think we need a more expansive, you know, definition of journalism with a full understanding that occasionally it is opinion. You're coming at it with a point of view. I think what, you know, it's funny, America's, of the many worlds I straddle, right? One is that I think the U.S. is an exceptional nation in both good and bad ways. And often it's so exceptional and so big. It doesn't understand

how weird it really is. So this American Anglo-Saxon tradition or American tradition really of objectivity of both sidesism, of separating op-eds from reporting is pretty unusual. If you look at the rest of the Western world, if you look at other countries like France, Germany, Spain, there isn't such a harsh division. Like someone writes a story that's like reported. There's quotes, there's facts, but then there's a point of view, right? Which is, well, that's part analysis and part op-ed, and it's in the same section. There's not like a separate section for it.

And I don't know. I'm personally more of a fan of that. I think it's personally more sophisticated. And in Europe, like most even large countries, that have sophisticated media markets have at least two or three papers spanning the full political spectrum. And if you want the right wing view on reality, you've got it. If you want the far right wing view on reality, you've got it. You've got kind of the centrist view it's there. And if you've got some far left commie view, it's also there. Right. And I think the

sophisticated reader can read one or two newspapers and figure out what reality is. And I think that's a lot better, frankly, than not to name names, but papers like the New York Times or Washington Post, for example, claiming that like, well, I just name names, whatever. Democracy dies in darkness. And then they don't cover the Hunter Biden laptop story because whatever, right? It's like, well, clearly it's not like if you look at fraud and newspaper ring, right? It's not like they make shit up that can't be independently confirmed because that would be easily denied. It's more like, what do you choose to focus the tension on? What do you choose to cover?

How do you choose to frame stories? Yeah. And I would say that like coming at it with a point of view is good. It can build trust. Like right now, trust in the media is so low that a lot of their good work is for not. And I don't know. I'm optimistic about the substack thing. People get to know us.

They, and they can, you know, and look, you're not going to get trust from a reader. You're not going to have readers opening or coming back to podcasts, for instance. If you routinely are intellectually dishonest and hide facts, like, you know, you could say these are the facts and these are how I interpret them. And I kind of find that interesting. I mean, the word thing is, though, I totally agree with it. And I think even the ever unsolvable local news problem, because local news is unprofitable, could be solved via some substack model, where I'm less, and again, I love.

subsec, and I'm super pro, and I know the founder is like, I'm super pro sepsych, but I think one area where the subsec model either breaks down or at least can't handle right now is like, I just retweeted today there's, I'm not one that easily praises the New York Times, but credit where credit is due. They have this phenomenal piece on the atrocities that happened in Bukha in the suburb of Kiv that the Russians occupied for a while and turned into like a literally a living hell. Terrifying stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they literally mapped out every death that they could confirm, something like a few dozen people. They mapped it out. They tracked down. They tracked down each individual story. They talked to the families. They looked at physical evidence.

They talked to Ukrainian sources on it. I don't know how many people were involved in that byline. I'm guessing it had to have been half a dozen, plus all the data and technologists. People don't realize New York Times hires as many technologists and data scientists as like a large tech company does these days, right? There's probably a cast of dozens that made that piece. And I thought that was very valuable. And I'm not quite sure how Substack manages to cover that ground. But I'm mentally picturing Hamish and Chris, the founders of Substack somewhere, saying, But no, Antonio, we've got a plan for that. And they probably do.

But at least right now, there's no way to reproduce that on subside. Yeah. So there we go. You're a blue check journalist like one of us. God damn it. But it kind of goes to show that. I don't know. Anyway, sometimes the broad criticisms can miss some of the nuance.

Okay. I can't let you leave here without getting into some of the Facebook Apple stuff, some of the actual, like, you know, nuts and bolts of what's going on in the tech. Actually, I wanted to start with this, but we got derailed into some really interesting territory. So definitely wanted to cover that. But you know, you were hired at Apple to build an ad system there. And I find it so interesting that Apple has like cut off tracking for Facebook, you know, outside of the apps. If they're outside of, outside of, yeah, their own apps, if Apple is itself building a ad system.

So and how it's sort of been, you know, fairly undercover and people are holding Apple as the, you know, had a privacy and, you know, this yeah this beacon of privacy you know whereas like they've cut facebook off and they're trying to build a similar product so you you were in the inside briefly but you were there yep what's going on what is apple up to yeah well i you know i can't i know i can't talk about what i work say as much as you can say yeah yeah well i i mean i have published about it and you know and you can look at their public statements or what's going on on companies like google and kind of figure out what's going on if if you know how this world works and i and i have if you go back to pull request. I did some pieces like in June, July of last year about this new privacy model

that's on device. We can get that in a second. I think it is worth maybe summarizing just briefly, Alex. I know you have a sophisticated audience, but I've talked to many sophisticated audience, and it's amazing how people actually know how things like ads and attribution actually work in the monon world. Let me maybe do like a 30-second mini lecture on what the Facebook thing was. So this thing is called ATT, ads tracking and transparency. And what happened? This has been brewing for a while. This was not like a surprise announcement. but they actually did pull a trigger on it. What it means is that any app, not just Facebook,

but it obviously impacts Facebook, any app that can't get their users to opt in won't be able to individually track users on iOS devices, on iPhone and iPads. Why is that important? Why does it matter? Okay. There's a whole world that's actually quite interesting

and unsolved and super important, like literally what underlies, like literally trillions of dollars of market cap and billions of dollars of revenue called attribution. What does that mean? you go and see an ad for a thing, you see a news feed post, you watch a video, whatever, you interact with media and possibly prompted by that, you click on a thing and you install an app and you use the app and then you upgrade to their paid service and you spend money, right?

You have just transited what's called the marketing funnel, right? Meaning it's wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. You saw a bunch of stuff, a bunch of people saw a bunch of stuff, you clicked, you engaged, you spent money. If you're the owner of the app that you interacted with, what does that person other than knowing that you spent money, which is good, they want to know, okay, like, how did this person get here? Was it because of a Facebook ad? Was it an Instagram post? Was it a TikTok video? Was it a billboard on the 101? Like, what was it? Right. And that business

of tying in the money that you got through the media you own and operate, right? That's money coming in. And the money you spent on media that your user saw upstream of that, right? That's money going out. The ratio of those two numbers, the money coming in and the money going out is the most important number in the ads world, that's the ROI. That's how much money you, like, you put in a dollar to the advertising digital machine, how much do you get out? Is it a buck 30 or is it 80 cents, right? Because if it's a buck 30, it's a lot better than if it's 80 cents, right? You know, there's this sort of apocryphal quote from Stalin that I like quoting because it's kind of macab, which is, you know, it's not who, it's not who votes that matters, right?

It's who counts the votes that matters, right? Which is a very cynical, so it's honest, like you say. Well, in the ad tech world, it's not who clicks. or where they click that matters, it's who counts the clicks that matters, right? And who assigns credit to those clicks, right, that matters. And so, for example, there was a recent example of this that I won't summarize because it's too long, but basically Google considers, if you click on one of their ads, they'll take all the credit for all the downstream sales for that thing. Even if you just enter the name of the company in Google to, like, navigate there because

you're lazy and you don't know the URL, so you just Google for it, Google will claim that whatever, however much they charge you for that ad, all of them. all of that value accrues to them, not the fact that you watched, you know, 10 Facebook videos about it, and that's where it's really against you, right? So that's how the sort of kingmaker role of attribution comes in. So the end of lecture on attribution. How does the ATT Apple thing play into that? Well, if you can't connect, if you can't connect the person who just spent 30 bucks

in your e-commerce store with the person who saw the ad three weeks ago on Facebook, if you can't make that direct connection, you can't do the math. you can't figure out that, oh, Facebook ads are actually working, you know, targeted this way are actually working really well. You can't tell. You just don't know. And you can't optimize. And you can optimize. So it's like, I don't know. I made money, but I don't know. I don't know what this person saw. I don't know whether to correct credit an Apple search ad or a Facebook feed ad or a Twitter promoted post or whatever the hell else. The whole system. And what makes the Facebook ad process great is that you can run, you know, basically unlimited ads and then just double down on the stuff

that's working. Right, right, which is the sort of iterative process of advertising. Right. And so Apple, which I do think, by the way, I don't think it's a purely cynical tactic, does believe in privacy and all that. There's a massive privacy work inside. Tim Cook has made public statements about it. Yeah, I don't think it's- Reporting bears that out too. Right, right. I don't think it's a cynical ploy, although it just so happens to line up with their strategic interest. But because of that, they're making it that all this form of identity tying together attribution targeting all that is on a purely opt-in basis. And of course, what are the opt-e, you know, lack of opt-out is not the same as presence of opt-in.

Obviously, the presence of opt-in is a lot less than the reverse of those who opt-out. And so the opt-in rate, it's been variously reported, but it's low. It's like anywhere from 15 to 30%. Who knows? But it's very low. And so that means that Facebook or any other company, to be clear, can't actually tie together those experiences. That means Facebook can't run its optimization engine, which is typically pretty good at showing you the right ad.

And so, you know, Facebook had a, I think it was this past quarter, you probably know, because you watch the ordnings calls probably, but I think it was this past quarter that they reported for the first time on decreasing usage, and also they actually publicly declared that ATT is actually hitting revenue, I think, correct me if I'm wrong Alex,

but I think they actually said that in their call. And so Facebook stock took a big hit, probably the first big dives ever because of that. So, yeah, I mean, seen from a cynical point of view, I mean, and by the way, Facebook always had this fear, right? Like, they've been reputed,

and I won't deny it, to have been working on a phone in the past. And why is that? Because Zuck's great fear, is that at the end of the day, Facebook is just another app on two companies, app stores, right? Ultimately, at the end of the day, seen from Tim Cook's perch, Facebook is just one more app in the app store. Yeah, it's the most vulnerable big tech company without a job. Right.

Without a question, right, because they don't actually own the user, right? That's the problem. And so now Apple is turning the screws for a bunch of reasons. Again, I don't think it's just cynical, but they are turning the screws. And yeah, they're creating, again, this is publicly reported. I'm not revealing anything private here, but they have ads. They have ads inside their Apple news product. They've got ads in their search product.

And they have an ads team, right, that I was hired at. And so, yeah, the fact that Apple is no longer just a hardware maker, right? I mean, they're making, it's not just ads, right? There's a bunch of software now that Apple makes them. It's actually pretty good. It used to kind of suck and Google's was better or whatever, but I think now it's actually pretty good. And so, yeah, they're getting into the ads business, which, again, I think is interesting. But isn't that cynical then for Apple?

I mean, cut off your number of competitor there and then actually run the same product. And also, how serious is Apple about, like, it? It's right now like a small line item, but how serious is Apple about expanding this? Yeah, I can't, I can't get into those details. I think I don't think it's a hobby, put it that way. Okay. Again, I think, you know, I mean, they hired you. So, well, well, right.

Well, yeah, not as if like somehow I'm like the biggest hire in history of the world by anything. But yeah, sure. And not just me. I mean. It's so weird that you built a thing for Facebook and then they went in and said, Facebook doesn't respect your privacy and then hired you to build the same thing. You know, you're weaving this very interesting, ready for Netflix narrative around it. I don't find it that strange.

I mean, finding people who have created ads systems from scratch is not that easy. There aren't that many of those people, right? Those that there are are super senior, older than me, and are so rich, you can't hire them to do anything. I am not that. And I'm not that old. And so, you know, they got me. I'm trying to say that if Apple had really stuck to its guns or was really all about this message, then they would just say, okay, we're going to cut off the tracking for Facebook,

and we're not going to do it ourselves. And we're not going to do ads. sure you mean they're doing this whole thing about like you know i don't know if this is the exact words but sort of like if you don't pay for it then you are the product or you know but now they're now they're getting in the same business i think that's i think that same it's little reductionist i mean look the reality is well but the ads ads pays for lots of things that wouldn't exist otherwise again people see ads as a necessary evil you know i'm pro ads i don't i mean you know i'm pro ads i'm big technology is ad supported but like i'm not out there

making these big statements about like how, you know, this ad-supported businesses are the end of the world. Okay. Right. Well, Alex, you're going to force me to the opposition of putting my Apple hat on again. I think if you look at the way Apple is doing it, and again, you can get this from their public statements. You know, they're doing published research on this now, so it's not, it's not confidential. The way they're engineering this, and they're not the only ones doing this, by the way, Google is doing this. A company I worked at a branch is also doing this. There's a number of, like, the industry as a whole is moving in this direction. It's not just Apple, although I think Apple is one of the more interesting players. The way this, this world is moving,

like the old paradigm you and I have lived in for the past 15 years where, like, you do things on a device and then all your data goes into this nefarious cloud. Weird stuff happens, and then you get ads and experiences, and all the computation and all the data lives in the cloud. That world is going away. More and more computation, now that most interaction on mobile phones is actually via the apps themselves, like you're not going, mobile web is not where most people actually spend money and interact with the world. It's through the native apps themselves. That's native code running on the app,

talking to local data very often. More and more that's going to happen. And so what a lot of these companies are doing for privacy reasons and also for just optimization reasons is putting a lot of the data in the models on the app itself. And that makes the models run better for a bunch of reasons, although they're a lot harder to engineer. And then two, and again, I don't think Apple's lying here

when it says this or being deceptive. It's saying, well, it's more private. Like the data never leaves your phone. If you really want to opt out, throw away the phone, and that's it. The data's gone. And that's not true with the way things have been engineered this far, where you're relying on delete buttons and opt-outs that you never quite know if they're true or not. So I think, yeah, I think there's several trends converging here.

One, Apple is deciding to actually write software and have a media business. I mean, they have iTunes, they have Apple TV. They're not just a phone maker anymore, right? They might make cars, who knows, apparently there's a car program. I only know about that because what's been publicly report. Yes, there is a car program. Right, yeah. And so, you know, they're getting into that business and then they're also the privacy thing,

the on-device privacy thing. More and more, Google's doing it as well, will be moving on device and your device will be storing your data. And yeah, you'll have more privacy control. Again, as another thing, it just so happens to benefit those who control the device, right? Google and Apple have an advantage. If everything goes on device, Google and Apple are definitely in an advantageous position compared to apps like Facebook and other ones.

Yeah. Do you think Facebook is screwed? No. I mean, come on. WhatsApp is massive. Instagram is still popular. That's user. That's user stuff. This is about making money. I mean, the stock did go down a tremendous amount after their earnings came out and said they're going to make $10 billion less because of this in a year. Yeah. No. I mean, I screwed is a very binary term. I think Facebook, look, if there's one thing I think that Zuck should be praised for is always taking a very long-sided view on things. I mean, he, you know, it sounds a little ridiculous, but he sees himself as like, you know, this Roman emperor figure or whatever. And, you know, they were very far-sighted about things, at least when I was there.

And I think his big, he realizes that Facebook user growth has to stop at some point. I mean, in the last chapter in Chaos Monkeys, I warned that, like, growth has been so high for so long. At some point, you just run out of humans on the internet, right? And I think I predicted when it would happen, and I got it roughly right, because if you just, if you just project it out, like, at some point, you just run out of people. And so, you know, Facebook has run out of people. And people at Facebook knew this was coming. And so I think the VR bet, Oculus, is a bet on the future of media, right? It's like, okay, the next way that humans are going to intermediate their social lives is not going to be through this phone.

That cycle is over. We dominated it. It's over. You know, the next thing is actually literally bolting the phone to your face and creating more immersive virtual reality experience. And if so, then we're there. Right. And so I think that whether Facebook is screwed or not is, A, whether that transition happens. and if it does happen, if Facebook actually dominates it.

So that, to me, is like a more high-stakes thing than, yeah, sure. I mean, Facebook revenue might take whatever it is, 10, 15% haircut going forward because of this ATT thing. But if they don't jump on whatever's next and, you know, recently they've not been very good at jumping on whatever's next, then that really is like Facebook is fucked territory. What do you make of the theory? I think Zach Goyalias brought this up in your podcast with Jason Callicannis recently, but of the theory that Apple sees Facebook as the, it's making.

competitor in virtual reality and augmented reality, which it also wants in, and is taking a stab at its revenue in order to prevent it from becoming mature enough to compete. I don't know. That would require a level of insight into Apple management that, frankly, I don't possess. I don't know. I think it's an easy story to say, but I have no idea. Let's say hypothetically, you know, I was a reporter that was going to cover where Apple, no, sorry, we're a device manufacturer that was cutting Facebook's ability to track off of

Facebook and working on its own ad product. Where's the story going next? Like, what do you think the questions are that are worth asking? Where do you think it's worth focusing on when it comes to Apple's ad play? What are the next big interesting story is going to be? Well, I think it's the evolution of this idea, right? Like the transition to on device, right? Again, changes everything. And if they really do engineer their ad system along the lines of this on device trend, a lot of things will change, right? There's this thing called federated learning where you train model on the device and in the cloud, the model of privacy around it changes. I often this doesn't sound ad-related, but it's somewhat in this purview. There was this whole story,

it was several months ago, about their, you know, CSAM child pornography material filtering system that came out a few months ago that caused a lot of a big hiccup. Because if you recall the story, right, they shipped this new thing that would basically scan your phone for evidence of, you know, CSAM, which is the term of art that basically is child pornography. And I think what freaked out a lot of people is that it exactly embodied this on-device paradigm where, like, the code was running on your, was on your phone. And again, it supposedly only scanned things that would have been backed up to iCloud,

so it's only things that would have made it to the cloud, but the code wasn't running in the cloud, at least per Apple. And so I think, and it's weird because, again, like, if you buy the story that on-device is more privacy safe. you should have been pleased by this, like in some sense it's better that it's on your device and in the cloud.

That's not the way the public reaction went. People felt more violated and objected to it even more because of that. And so if that's true, like more broadly, like I know child pornography is like loaded for a hundred different moral reasons, but if that's true for everything, like ads targeting,

usage data, like more normal, less polarizing stuff, if people also have that reaction, that whole vision might get threatened, right? If you can't build on device, then the whole thrust of this argument kind of goes away. and yeah right but no i i think it was more that like apple had been so long telling us that like what happens on your phone stays on your phone and and that you know it was the privacy company and then it was like we're actually going to be scanning your device i don't think people

gave a shit about like the actual process that they used it was more the act i i guess so but then but then you know then project that story out let's say i'm not saying they are but let's say they do ship like an on device ad system type thing that runs models on your phone looks at a bunch of data on your phone like say, you know, things you do on random third-party apps end up on your phone and Apple uses that data. How are people going to react to that?

Are they going to be like, oh, this feels better because it's on a device I control? Are they going to feel also intruded upon like they did last time? Oh my God. How could they not feel intruded upon after Apple's been through this whole campaign of like, you know, advertising is bad?

And now they're going to be like, our form of advertising is bad because we do it is better because we do it in a slightly different way. To me, it seems like an argument that's not going to hold much. water you think it will antona you're also like way more pro apple than i thought you would be maybe and this is leading me to believe that maybe i should be i don't hate the company right but it's yeah anyway sorry i'll let you talk i just i just dropped three thousand dollars on apple products i just

i have like an aging macbook air that it's like on its last leg so i went and bought a macbook pro and uh and uh and uh ipad air and i haven't owned an ipad in ages it's really quite cool anyway so i'm not anti apple i think i think their management was total chicken shits and and and panicked, frankly, in the face of a revolt that wasn't very popular. As I've said more than once, I think it was something like 1%, maybe not even,

of Apple employees that signed this petition, right? Like, that's what happened. Like, a lot of these came, and again, I only see myself as part of, I only see myself as part of a bigger phenomenon, but if you look at, you know, the Rogan thing or the Coinbase thing, or like all these places where there's like a supposed revolt,

you realize it's like 30 people in a fucking channel who are just hogging the debate and making themselves seem big. Right. But if you just slowed the role a little bit, and kind of calm down and looked at what's actually going on and what's actually being asked, you'd find that, like, 90% of, like, people in the trenches making your company work, either don't give a shit or actually you're opposed to the politics and just want these people to shut the fuck up and get out the door.

I'm not even talking about, like, you're firing. I'm talking more about, like, I don't know, like, as an ad guy being like, yeah, well, you know, Apple, I guess, like, I wasn't expecting you to hold up. And I know we're getting close to time. So we can, we can close on, you know, on this note. And, or maybe we can, you know, let you respond here. But I wasn't expecting you to be like, yeah, Apple is like, you know, doing this virtuous thing. I was kind of expecting you to kind of shrug your shoulders and be like, yeah, it's advertising.

And, you know, this is ruthless competition. This is capitalism. And, and there they go. Okay. But how could I, how could I hold that view and then have agreed to work there? Yeah. Obviously. I mean, if I would take moral issue with Apple, I mean, their labor policy in China, for example, just to raise another specter, is something that I would maybe, and I did think about it when I joined, actually.

And I didn't like it. and it left a little bit of bad taste in my mouth, but I took the offer anyhow. I can't say I didn't. And so if anything would piss me off about Apple, it would be that. It wouldn't be the fact that they're following a broad industry trend. Again, it's not just Apple. It's Google, it's brand.

It's a bunch of companies, right? They're following a broad industry trend that probably will deliver more value to users and probably is more privacy safe, to be honest, right? Like, I can't, I don't know. I can't argue against that just because that company and I had like a TIF, right? Like, it's still true. So, yeah. So you think we're all better.

off with this on device tracking versus I'll be honest and look I've been covering advertising I've worked I sold ad tech I bought ads so you know I've spent time in the industry it kind of seems like a you know way to make the companies feel a little bit better about what they're doing but ultimately the same the same thing in the end and also like I'm not entirely opposed to like targeted advertising and and so it's kind of the whole thing seems a little strange to me. I think it's an easier pill to swallow or argument to buy if you focus yourself to think about, well, what's the alternative?

The alternative is all your data living in the cloud, often held in good faith by first parties that know you as a user and want to keep you and aren't going to do totally sketchy shit, but very often not held by third parties who don't give a damn about you and see you as a lemon just to be squeezed for data and money, right? and who might superficially comply with certain data privacy rules or not, and it's difficult to confirm. And so compared to that world.

Okay, it does sound better. I don't know. This is, yeah, I mean, right. Like, again, compared to that third world, like literally all your data is just being funneled, just spewed into the world, some people are good, some people are kind of in between

and some people are total, fucking sketchy. Compared to that world, putting all your eggs in one basket called Apple that, again, I'd be the first, sky to shit on Apple if I had to, but it's a company that more or less is above board, at least not as regards to this labor policy, and is trying to keep you as a long-term

customer. I don't know. I would trust the device manufacturer more. And also as a technology, and I know techies do this all the time. They justify a policy because, oh, well, the technology is inevitable, but I think it's inevitable that more and more computation will move to the edge and on the device rather

than being in the cloud. Even as network speeds get faster and 5G comes in, like it's never going to be as fast as code running on the device. It's just never going to be that fast. And so I think this is kind of inevitable. And so trying to engineer a world that's just going to happen and try to get the world's mind around that and to get legislation and privacy norms around that,

I think is the best way to go forward. And I just want to state for the record, I don't view Apple. I don't view Apple as, I'm not an Apple hater. But I also think that the company escapes by oftentimes without any criticism of what it does, even when it's doing sometimes the same thing in parallel as other companies. but you know oh yeah that's definitely true like we used to constantly joke in facebook like all the

heat we're catching like do you know what google does with your data compared to facebook like they're the ones who yeah that's that's true but you know it's also a form of what aboutism it's like oh well but what about it's like right yeah which is in my opinion a weak argument so no it's a good point and i will say that like you know i'm business reporter and i love a good bare knuckle fight you know when it comes to two companies duking it out against each other and so like I find what Apple is doing somewhat cynical, but I also think that like, hey, you know, this is, this is what capitalism is. This is what the market economies are. Companies see advantages and they go for it. They try to exploit the weaknesses in the other

companies. And I think that's really super fun to watch. And when it comes to, you know, Apple's words, that's where I think it's time to, you know, it's better to hold them to the fire. Nobody's an angel in this world, especially, you know, a multi-trillion dollar company. But man, you know, it's kind of like this is, this is what it's all about. You seek out your competitors' weaknesses and then you go full steam ahead. And, you know, it is a little cynical. I think what Apple's doing, but this is, this is business. Yeah. No, I mean, it is a little cynical. But, you know, these companies all hate each other, right? They're all constantly trying to remind each other. Like, the best antitrust is three very smart, ego-driven people just trying to all murder each other. That's the best way to.

to keep them in check. I mean, the argument that Facebook's a monopoly now seems so ridiculous to me. But, yeah, you think they're monopoly? You think they're a monopoly? Well, yeah, interesting. Not a global monopoly, because, again, they don't ultimately own their user. And I think the popularity of things like TikTok or the continued popularity of Twitter makes it less strong statement.

But I don't know, WhatsApp. I mean, the combination of WhatsApp and Instagram is pretty powerful. And I've written pieces in the past arguing not exactly for antitrust, but at least rationalizing and saying, well, it's not the craziest. And again, you can make the statement of two levels. One is within current antitrust law is antitrust law. The answer is almost certainly no. But I would say that that's because antitrust law is dated and dates from the age of railroad tycoons. And so it doesn't even play in a world in which the product itself is free because most of current antitrust laws are on consumer harm.

And pricing and consumer harm, you can't claim that there's any consumer harm in a thing that's basically free. But I would frame it as like lack of consumer benefit while also giving enormous advantages of scale to the company itself, which I think having Instagram and WhatsApp and Facebook under one roof absolutely does give to Facebook and doesn't drive particular value. I mean, you can even see it in like, again, I still bleed blue and kind of like Facebook, but some of their gestures to prove that like the cross-app thing is valuable is a little pathetic. Like I remember right when this whole anti-stress thing started when you started WhatsApp, like a little message that by Facebook would say under it. So people understood that like, oh yeah, you're getting value. because this is by Facebook on the WhatsApp thing. Or right after they tried integrating on the back end, like Instagram's messaging with Facebook

to show that there's some sort of cross-app synergy there. Anyhow, it's clear that they're trying to kind of like word off the antitrust threat by merging those apps, which, hey, maybe I shouldn't be so cynical. Maybe this was the plan all along. But anyhow, yeah, I agree, though, that with the ATT move, it's hard to claim that Facebook's as big of a monopoly as, say, Apple or Google. Like Apple, and this is also a sign of their brilliance, right?

they literally designed the chips, the hardware itself, and the software and pixels you're looking at, right? Like, it's hard to point at any other company that is so completely vertically integrated and successful at everything is Apple is. Yeah. And also a bit like you just mentioned you bought all these Apple products. I'm using Apple products. Like to start to take aim at that integration is going to end up harming, probably harming consumers in the end because, you know, the devices work well. So. Yeah. I mean, they're clearly trying to create a network effective devices. Like I set up my new iPad Air, and I literally didn't have to touch it. I just brought my iPhone within proximity of it, and it just kind of worked. And it's like, wow. And then, you know, the way that,

even dumb little stuff like they share Wi-Fi passwords with each other now, so I only have to enter it on one device. They're clearly trying to create a network of devices to keep you locked within the Apple mold. But, you know, that's also where I think it gets a little bit monopolistic. I mean, I think it becomes monopolistic where they use an advantage in one domain, the privilege your project in that product in another domain, where that product is actually inferior, right? It's kind of like Internet Explorer. Like, the product kind of sucked. But Microsoft was just pushing it because they controlled the desktop. When Apple gets to the point that their iPad actually sucks compared to the competitor,

but you're only buying it because they've literally baked into the fact that it only works well with another iPhone, that's where I'm like, eh, antitrust. But so long as the iPad Air is still like the market lead, like it's still good, independent of the rest of it, I don't know. Yeah, you're right. It is pretty good. Like, I have to say I had a delightful user experience as a user of Apple products recently. Damn, Antonio, we've covered a lot of ground today. I talk fast, so it helps. maybe it's good no no just the right speed i think we can uh i don't even know what to call this

episode like god the current thing in apple or something like that maybe that's the title but you're repeating yourself you're repeating yourself well thanks so much for coming on um do you want to let people know where they can find you online to uh engage with your stuff or yell at you yeah i mean i you know i'm i'm a total very too online person so antonio gm on twitter has links to everything. You can just go to the pool request.com, goes to my substack. I'm on an app called Colin, which is really great. It's kind of like Twitter spaces, but better. And I have a podcast on there. You can also listen to me anywhere, you know, find podcasts or downloaded. It all

screams to Apple podcasts and pocketcasts and Stitcher and all that stuff too. It's a lot of places. And then I occasionally also write for more conventional normally publications every once in a while or other substacks. So yeah, a lot of places you can find me, but Twitter is kind of grand zero for it all. Yep. You can see Antonio on Twitter, taking down my stories and tweeting a bunch of other stuff. So it's a good place to find him. I enjoy the follow.

All right. Well, listen, Antonio, thank you for coming on. It's always great to talk. And you always do press my thinking. So I appreciate that. Cool, Alex. Thanks for having me on. Yep.

Thanks for being here. Thank you, Nate Gwotny for doing the editing and mastering the audio. Appreciate it. Thank you, LinkedIn, for having me as part of the podcast. Podcast Network. I'm excited to be working with you guys. Thanks, of course, to all of you, the listeners. Appreciate you coming back week after week. We have another great show coming up next week.

Charles Duhigg is going to be on to talk about what happened to SPACs. He recently wrote a story about Jamath Polyopatia when he was pushing SPACs. Less than a year ago, it seemed like the hottest thing. We will talk about what the heck happened because it's definitely not that anymore. So thanks again for being here with us. Until next time, we will wish you a great week. Thank you.