Big Technology Podcast - The Media and The Sub, Musk vs. Zuck, A Key TikTok Exec Exits

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Ranjan Roy of Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the week's tech news. We cover: 1) The OceanGate Sub 2) Whether we should celebrate or condemn 'risk' 3) The Media's focus on the sub vs. migrant deaths 4) Mark Zuckerberg vs. Elon Musk's impending 'cage match' 5) The Walrus 6) Spotify's podcasting struggles 7) TikTok COO V Pappas leaves the company 8) Reddit's path to conflict -- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [e-mail]

Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. It's been a huge week of news. We have the missing submersible now found, unfortunately, disintegrated on the bottom of the ocean floor. Of course, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, they want to fight each other. Who's going to win? We'll handicap the odds for you right here and talk about what the implications of this fight. That may or may not happen. Probably won't happen. will be. We also have a big executive departure at TikTok, and finally, some of the rubber hitting the road in terms of Spotify's podcast strategy that hasn't really gone, according to plan. So much to talk about. We're joined, as always, by Ron John Roy of margins. Ron John, welcome.

It's good to be back. I had a week off last week, but ready to talk a little musk and zuck, among other things, of course. So let's start this week with this missing submersible that has now unfortunately been found destroyed so it was called the titan it's a sub submarine from oceans gate and it was this experimental sub of course the news has been populated by the story of the sub all throughout but there are some secondary stories i mean people people listening probably know exactly what's going on but there's some like the broader story is something that's really worth going into so first of all what do you make of what happened in this in this whole situation It is a terrifying, tragic situation, and I will admit I got caught up in following this kind of minute by minute tweet by tweet.

I think, again, for listeners who may not have been keeping up, a submersible was going down to the deep depths of the ocean to try to see the remnants of the Titanic. It lost connection with its people running it. and then about in just 15 minutes later it should have been a two and a half hour voyage down and then for a few days there was a rescue operation we were trying to find it they were there was theoretically about four days of oxygen for the passengers I believe it was five passengers exactly and now we just found out that it is confirmed that the sub imploded in what sounded like a very quick and painless death versus a lot of the other scenarios that were being thrown around. And there's a lot to this. I think around this company that has been trying to

kind of cut corners, cut costs, innovate very quickly to create something using materials like carbon fiber rather than, you know, the traditional materials used in these type of devices that James Cameron seemed very unhappy about. I think there's a lot to this story. So this is why I wanted to talk about it, because there's been an undercurrent in the tech industry in favor of the makers of the sub. Let me read you something from Mike Solana who writes the substack pirate wires. And he's actually going to be on the show coming up in a couple of weeks. So I'm excited to hopefully speak about this with him. But we should talk about it right now. He's basically pointed to all of all the people who said this sub should not have taken risks as

kind of losers and basically said that without risk, what do you have? Here's a selection from his newsletter. So he talks about how Stockton Rush, the CEO, is quoted. This is quote about the lack safety and it's sort of emblematic of like the real Silicon Valley mentality so Stockton Rush who was the CEO of Ocean's Gate who did die in that and that submersible said at some point safety is just a waste i mean if you just want to be safe don't get out of bed don't get in your car don't do anything and Salana says and yes this sounds very bad in the context of what happened but here's the thing isn't it also true there's no man alive today descended from the first men who forage for first mushrooms versus fruit fruits and vegetables

sorting out for the rest of humanity which were poor which were poisonous but thank god those crazy ancient caveman era for those crazy ancient caveman era hippies he talks about marie curie discovering polonium and radium and unfortunately dying as a result of the radiation exposure the explorers that have died before we charted the ocean and the men that have died in combat fighting to protect the country or the fishermen that die so you can have crab legs at your supermarket basically what he's saying is anyone who said this was a reckless risk, think about all the other people taking reckless risks in the past and where we would be without them. Yes, so I see where he's going with this. And I agree. Like there were moments at my where I was

like, yeah, you want to go two and a half miles down to the depths of the sea and see things that no other human has seen. Obviously, you know you're taking a risk. However, this is not positioned as high-risk thing. It's positioned as essentially tourism. That's like every time I get on a plane, should I be thinking, well, if it goes down, I guess that's okay that, you know, we're pioneers, we're explorers, we're cavemen, we're trying to make this happen. So I think the idea of what is true exploration and what is actually just tourism and everyday passenger a business. I mean, I think separating those two out is incredibly important. My question is, did Stockton, Russia, Was that part of his pitch to the passengers?

Did he start the ride by saying, hey, guys, safety is just a waste. Don't worry. Let's think about the cavemen and radiation poisoning. Right. So there's parts where Solana is definitely right in terms of people need to take risks in order to have discovery. But there's parts where I think are completely wrong. One of the examples he gives in this piece is about solo climbing.

Think about Alex Honnold as he climbed El Capitan and Yosemite without ropes. his decision was reckless right but he never said anything the likes of what stockton said about safety in fact if anyone watched the movie free solo you see that it takes years of painstaking preparation bit by bit where safety is actually paramount you put safety at the front i think the idea of being reckless about safety and taking risks conflating those two is actually ridiculous the people who take risks are often more intent about safety than anybody else because they know what can go wrong and actually that's what leads to these breakthroughs is people that have been saying i am going to take a risk but i'll be damn sure that i will take every bit of precaution possible before i go ahead and do

that and that's not what happened here and so i think people are pointing out that these people in the submarines were fools have a point that yeah i don't want to like dance on their graves but if you go out there and you flaunt the fact that safety is ridiculous and then you die because of your lack of safety precautions it is almost an example of like you're proving the opposite point right that safety is paramount yeah and and i also think i mean this really fits well into the whole conversation around full self-driving and to bring it back to Elon and Tesla because i was listening to the new york times uh the daily podcast had an interview with someone who's been you know at the forefront of submersible exploration for years and he was very concerned about what is going to do to the field again

you get in a tiny little submersible whatever it is and go down to the bottom of the ocean i'm sure every one of those people still recognize that there's a tremendous amount of risk but they have that mentality that they want to be pioneers but what does it do to the long-term viability of any kind of you know, the exploratory forum where you're trying to make it mainstream. Because think about full self-driving, the idea that let's push the entire industry forward, let's cut corners, let's try to actually make this a thing, and we're going to say that we are the road to actually making it real. But instead, what happens is now everything is much messier from a regulatory perspective

because, you know, it was pushed in such a way. And that's, I think, what you're seeing here. You think that full self-driving in the Tesla cars, Do you think that's led to more accidents and more crashes than actual human operators? Because I've read the statistics about full self-driving. I mean, this is sort of a tangent, but let's talk about it because I got to push back on you here a little bit. It does seem like there haven't been as many accidents as I thought there would be. No, my argument about full self-driving, I would guess, and I do believe that it will be safer than human drivers in the long run.

However, to get it to achieve widespread adoption, there has to be some cooperation between, the national highway transit safety authority or regulators or who the people who built the highways or the people who build infrastructure. There has to be some coordination and accepted behaviors and norms around how you're pushing this technology to make it acceptable and work across everyone everywhere. Because again, the first time, or I guess an Uber self-driving car had already killed someone. And of course, that's going to happen. But understanding who's liable, how are they liable, This stuff, it can't just be pioneers and cavemen eating mushrooms or whatever else, or Marie Curie, you know, exposing herself to radiation.

That's all great. But if we're going to create some kind of like widespread adoption of technology, the whole Uber just go in, guns blazing regulators be damned. I think we saw that that just did not work over the last decade. And I think it slows down innovation and technological adoption versus. is the alternative. And I think, I mean, I was, I will admit, this actually made me, this whole thing made me more interested in going in a submersible. I'm not going to deny it. Exactly. I didn't really know it existed that well.

Not me neither. But this is a thing. I think that what you're talking about is actually kind of a disproof to some of the things that you've been saying because you need, at least I think, you need some of the recklessness in the beginning if you're going to make progress because they push the standard forward. And then eventually industry followers, follows and regulators make it safe you know it's sort of like the god i'm going to you know say the example that we always get that that i think is so ridiculous but there's some truth to it that cars came first and then came the seat belt but they first were like let's get these cars on the road and then they're like ah okay when they crash people go through the windshield let's try to figure out to stop that so i think

it's a one-two process yeah but again i would say aviation is a different approach right so yes the very very first people who are flying it's are the cavemen eating mushroom as Mike Solano would say. That's just stuck in my head right now. The first men foraging for the first mushrooms. But the moment it becomes any kind of business, the moment you start going beyond the first men and the first mushrooms and to everyday people and saying,

like, this is a business, we have a service. At that point, it has to be safer. It has to be, if you're going to actually make it an institution, if you're going to make it in an industry it's got to be safer i agree and that's probably what's going to come now i mean i don't think anyone's getting into tin can't submersible anytime soon until they they read all the fine print which i don't think the people who went in this actually did or didn't consider enough obviously there's another side of this story that's actually quite fascinating which is the media side of the story and you dropped this in our notes before the call

but um the new republic actually had this story i thought it was really good talking about how that you know we've seen so much i mean it was a full week story covering this submersible meanwhile there was a boat filled with refugees and migrants off the coast of greek with 800 people that sank earlier in the month and there was almost no media attention in fact i'll say i have a pretty broad consumption of media you know a part of the job i didn't even know that this the ship went down and it's sick that the media this is the sort of the critique it's sick that the media has been covering this submersible so intently and can't pay attention to the ship with the migrants. I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I'm first going to turn it over to you and see what

you think, Ranjan. I think I'm not surprised that a story, you know, involving 800 migrants off the Greek coast is not getting the same airplay as four billionaires and a captain on a submersable, especially the like a part of me almost was wondering who who took over from chris licked at cnn because there's a handful of people okay but obviously good for them for cnn i'm sure has been on this non-stop i mean i think it's just a reminder again that this is the type of story that is just made for summertime american media consumption this is like all the especially four days of oxygen left How long are they going to make it?

How is it going to go? I mean, it's almost sad, but you can just see how well this, well-structured this is for ongoing media consumption, like the Malaysian plane. Right. So I had a few thoughts when I first saw this. First of all, I was like, you know, it is true that the media should be paying attention to other tragedies and likes to just chase after this type of thing. And there's really no excuse for it.

So I thought that that was a good critique. I think there should be more coverage. The one thing that I will say about it is that, or the other thing I will say about it, is that this is a supply and demand marketplace, which often gets lost in the discussions of the media, right? And so media are responding to their audiences. And if people will not read stories about tragedies

off the Greek coast with migrants in a ship, then they're just going to have less of those stories that will come out. And if people are gonna click like crazy on this submersible thing, then they will put out more stories. And that is what happens. I think that the audience-driven side

of media decisions really does get left out often. And I'm sure what happened in this case was that people just went banana. So it's sort of like, is it a media problem? Yes, but it's also really a society problem. Like for all the people saying we need more coverage of this, like effectively, it's just not getting attention from folks. And at a certain point, how long do media companies, you know, I mean, of course, like,

I think of course there should be coverage here. But it's also like you, in some ways, the media companies will always listen to their audience because those are the people that are reading and consuming and they're going to produce the stuff they're interested in. That's a tough, tough segue into what the next story is then, because Musk v. Zuck. Yeah. So speaking of stuff that media likes and people are interested in. We have a potential huge fight coming.

I mean, God, it was, that is, dude, I think that's the worst transition in the history. In the history of podcast, but we're going to keep going. We're going to keep going. We're going on. We were debating earlier, do we cover this, but we're going to do it. I think this is an important story to cover. So for folks who are just learning of this, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg might fight in a UFC cage after effectively what happened was Mark Zuckerberg is trying to build a Twitter clone within, Facebook and his executives have said that this could be the same thing as Twitter,

but just run by saner management. And Elon Musk took exception by that. By the way, Elon has a long history of disparaging Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. So he tweeted earlier, this is from CNBC, earlier this year, he tweeted that Instagram makes people depressed and that Facebook was lame. And then he also tweeted, I don't use Facebook and never have. Just don't like Facebook. Gives me the willies. sorry. And he's also tweeted about WhatsApp that it cannot be trusted, which is like against the

entire selling proposition of WhatsApp. So effectively, Musk and Zuck, they do not get along at all, which is interesting. I didn't think that this would be. I kind of thought there might be some, some, you know, collegiality between the two of them. I don't know why, but they obviously hate each other. And Musk suggested that he would fight Zuckerberg in a cage match. And then Zuckerberg posted that to Instagram and said, name a location. And I'll just say what's happening now. So this is actually, we're actually talking to the UFC about doing this. So Dana White told TMC sports, he said, Mark Zuckerberg hit me up first and said, is he serious? And then he reached out to Elon Musk and Elon said, yeah, I'm dead serious. So White is surmising that this could end up

bringing in over a billion dollars in pay-per-view revenue if it actually happens. So I'm curious. what you have to say about this ron john first of all handicapped for for us who would win second of all is this thing actually going to happen and third who you're rooting for it's a tough one on the handicap because again mark Zuckerberg we've gone over this on this show has posted a number of photos of him winning and crushing other people we've never actually seen any of the combat we've never actually seen him we've never seen him lose so no no that's not true anymore there is a video circulating of him getting uh basically um knocked out by somebody or technical lockout or the ref stopping the fight okay i had not seen

that i i'd seen the new york times uh i think it was joe bernstein had a piece where apparently it was reported that he had lost consciousness during one of the matches right um but then they tried to clear but yeah that video was out once joe wrote about that in the times that was coming out and that video is now out shared by the person who beat him uh his wife actually posted it to twitter or shared it with someone who tweeted it so if you tweet mark so If you search something like Mark Zuckerberg wrestling or Mark Zuckerberg, you know, knocked out or something on Twitter, you can find that video. If you want to, if you're trying to figure out what to do with your weekend, this is potentially

a good, good plan for you. I know what I'm doing right after. Okay. I'm going to try to find the serious angle to this story. And here's what it's going to be. The fact that this is being covered, but the way it's being covered by CNBC, by Bloomberg, the tweets about it. I've been kind of keeping notes about this around, again, people are advertising this as though

it is the WWE or UFC or as though this is like, you know, in the cage, Zuck v. Musk, who's going to win? And it still absolutely blows my mind. One quarter or maybe two quarters now for meta of a comeback. And Zuck is jumping all into this. Musk obviously will take any attention he can get but the question is here's what i'm going to ask what's musk trying to distract from he's the king of any time there's something else going on he goes over the top with some kind of other thing that grabs everyone's attention the diversion um i feel there's something again that he is the fact that he how much he's been leaning into this and i think he is the world's greatest tweeter and he knows exactly what he's doing and this is fun to push for a little bit but i feel he's only going to lean

into this this heavily if there's something else coming out i disagree i think that musk is talented at getting attention we know that we understand that's why he became the most prolific tweeter the most popular twitter and then eventually bought the platform when he didn't like the rules so i think that this is just an example of musk seeing that there's some energy and interest and then just going all the way in to try to exploit that to his best ability Well, how far is going all the way in? I mean, I do hope they fight. I don't want to, I don't want to handicap the fight.

I want to handicap, does the fight happen? I would say no. I would say there's probably 25% chance that it happens. What do you think? I would take the under on that. I would say significantly less. I feel this is, again, this is drawing attention. This is pulling it.

Again, like the quote we hadn't here from Wedbush Securities, analyst Dan Ives. this is real bad blood this is a beef that has lasted over years it's getting more and more nasty and it looks like the only way it's going to be settled is in the cage this is a guy who's supposed to be a serious analyst on cnbc who gets the credibility to talk about tesla seriously in every instance yet this is the kind of stuff that's being said right now but maybe dan knows about this and this i mean the enmity between the two of them the fact that musk has been bashing facebook for so long and Zuckerberg's ready to fight him maybe Dan is on to something i know this if this fight happens you and i we got to do a live youtube show uh where we he watched this fight and just we

you know we'll do the court side announcing as it goes down i'm in i'm in for that because i know it's not happening i will handicap it i think zuckerberg would obviously win but uh elan has this move he says i have this great move that i call the walrus where i just lie on top of my opponent and do nothing. So I think that if Elon was able to get Zuckerberg and the walrus, then that would be, you know, challenging to get out of. But I'm already trying to think, uh, I think Andre the giant way back had a move where he ran back and forth and just sat on the person. So, or maybe that was earthquake, if you remember it. I don't know. That was a long time ago, but I don't remember earthquake. I mean, Rikishi from back in the day would, would definitely do it. Oh, he had the move.

I guess, I guess it, they, uh, it evolved over, uh, big men. in the WWE right but I I anyway I would not I don't think Elon lasts around with Zuckerberg to be quite honest I think he lasts maybe a minute until no not not even a question yeah again I again what what was the Mar the Mark the Mark the Zuckerberg Murph post where what did he say he can do for Memorial Day where it's like running some amount doing some amount of push-ups do you you what I'm talking about. Yeah, it was named after one of the fallen servicemen, like the MRF or something like that. Yeah, and he gave a time that seemed under 40 minutes.

Yeah, and then it came out that he actually stopped in between every exercise and did. And then he was like, well, it's more of a circuit training. So, but again, he's in shape. He's, I'm not denying. He clearly is putting in the effort and putting in the time, unlike Elon. So yes, I'm with you. I would take, I would put the odds on Zuck significantly. higher than musk the best possible fight you could see is the fight starts out musk immediately jumps

on zuckerberg does the walrus and then zuckerberg turns it on him i don't know i think i would take tim cook in all of this because no way that man has talked about waking up at 4 a m to go to the gym i read this summer i remember and i was like i think tim cook secretly he's a killer i think tim would uh he would be able to take musk out but i think zuckerberg for zuck remember part of fighting is rage and the amount of stuff that Tim Cook has done to Zuckerberg's business you think that Zuckerberg is going to not channel all that rage and his training Tim Cook has been crushing Zuckerberg in the business realm now I think I think that would carry over to the cage listen I think speaking of will this happen Tim Cook would never fight would be terrible for

Apple but I think Zucker you don't understand Tim Cook he's secretly a killer clearly I have to do more to the to any listeners that is completely ingest Okay, good. Confirmation. What I'm saying is, is actually a killer in the cage. What I'm saying is Zuckerberg versus, versus Musk, could actually happen. Tim Cook would watch it. It's not. It's not. Tim Cook would really enjoy it secretly. You would? Oh, yes, of course. Speaking of fights, there's a really interesting fight brewing between Spotify executives and Harry and Megan.

So first of all, Spotify has been on this, there's a much better segue than our last one. um spotify has been on this like um real kick recently uh well over the past couple years trying to buy podcasts like the jo rogan podcast call her daddy um and bet that those hits would end up creating like a really nice business for it it hasn't worked and this is from the verge in the world in the world of podcasts a series from an acclaimed field maker best selling author or even a former president can barely register on the charts and after years of chasing this hit making strategy it all seems to be falling apart so i just want to pause and say you can put all the former presidents and former royalty you want they're not going to stack up against big technology

podcast friday edition it's just not going to happen but it's sorry baroque sorry but it is very interesting to see how spotify has sort of done an about face on this strategy and it really has kind of come to ahead with harry and megan um and i'm going to get into bill simmons who's a podcaster and a and a Spotify executive. I'm going to get into his comments after this, but first, a moment to react to Ron John. Yeah, I think the really interesting part of this story, again, Spotify was it $230 million for Gimlet in 2019, the ringer for $200 million in 2020. I think Joe Rogan, they paid $100 million to just pouring money into this. I think this is yet another business situation that totally captured, you know, the rise of pandemic consumption and extrapolation out from

that consumption and just being completely wrong about it. You know, this is basically clubhouse is the microcosm of what happened to Spotify in that everyone thinking, okay, podcast usage utilization is up this much, people, this time spent listening is this much, revenue is up this much. So let's extrapolate that out at consistent growth rates for the next three to five years. so we can justify these kind of investments. And it just didn't work. And I think it makes sense that it should have been a very strong part of the business.

It makes sense that, again, becoming your go-to audio platform, personally as a person who, as someone who's subscribed to Spotify since 2011, I always wish that they'd actually split out the app like Apple does into a separate podcast app. And I would have been a happy subscriber. It's made the app experience a little bit messier for me, but it should have been a reasonable, decent business. Again, also the idea of podcast advertising being done in network, so you don't have to buy your own advertisements, but you can actually just be part of the network and then actually

get ads delivered through the overall network. That actually is very valuable. I mean, as you as a podcaster, it's less lucrative per ad, but at least takes all the selling and that part of it away. so all of this should have been fine but they just went in too big they went the the expectations were too high yeah and you start making bets this is what happens right when you start to spray money over the over all over the place you end up making a few bets that like work out okay lots of bets that had potential but we're disappointing and some bets that are absolute disasters and harry

and megan was an absolute disaster and i want to read just a few comments that bill simmons made about them it's pretty unbelievable so this is um you know he just he just uh said this recently about about them he says they're effing though the effing grifters that that's the podcast we should have launched with them i got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the zoom i had with harry to try to help him with a podcast idea it's one of my best stories he also talked about them in january 22 i completely missed this this what he said about harry shoot this guy to the sun i'm so tired of this guy. What does he bring to the table? He just whines about stuff and keeps giving interviews. Who cares? Who cares about your life? You weren't even the favorite son. You live

in effing Montecito and you just sell documentaries and podcasts and nobody cares about what you have to say about anything unless you talk about the royal family and you just complain about them. I mean, they had a contract with these people for $20 million. It's unbelievable how badly that it went. This is why I think deep down I'm an optimist, Alex. And it's because finally, the world makes sense with Harry and Megan is that when all of this was happening, I was like, even from a pure content standpoint, it was repetitive. It made no sense. It's like how many times can you say the same thing over and over again? I don't know if you saw, I think it was the most recent Chris Rock special. He gets into it over, you know, the Harry and Megan media machine and

and how it just became repetitive, repetitive and ridiculous. So I don't know. I think this is just a sign that, you know, sometimes the arc of justice bent. What's the saying again? Ben's towards history. An arc of history bends towards justice. Arc of history bends towards justice.

Oh, my God. And then we went there. Ari and Megan being called effing grifters, I think, is a sign that we're there. Folks, we're live here on LinkedIn this week, and we did just get a comment saying that they're still and on harry and megan so you know the man is popular but you know what's interesting because hit the experience that they had with spotify and there was a great new yorker article that was written

by his ghost writer which you it's just a bus read it's such a good story one of my favorite stories this year talking about how much of a pain he was to work with i mean i guess that sort of comes with the territory though you're part of the royal family but he's a prince he's a prince he's royalty like right exactly is anyone thinking that uh yeah just for producing a regular podcast that he would be you know super diligent and hardworking and uh i don't know i think i think maybe they left the royal family you would imagine that that they would but no yeah just get harry give us something interesting join the podcast come on next friday and uh and uh let's talk about tech harry we know that you love podcasting but you probably hate scripting so we're just giving you the floor here that was the

problem that was the problem yeah he he didn't like the scripting the scripted nature of the show we will give him a free reign to speak his mind about technology news love it all right harry you're welcome we're here on big technology podcast ron jrondroy of margins great first half a lot of very interesting consequential stories in the second half we are going to get to some more great stuff we might cover amazon and the ftc if we have time but we're definitely going to talk about some leadership changes at tictock so more on that when we're 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 Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast. Ranjan Roy is here with us. Welcome back, Ranjan. We've missed you the last week. It's nice to have you back.

Let's talk about the fact that V. Pappas, who was the C.O. at TikTok is leaving. Very, like, important executive, basically their number one U.S. person is gone. One of the things that I found that was really interesting is they replaced them with a Disney executive, former Disney executives, Zania Mucha, who became their chief brand. and communications officer and not their chief operating officer. To me, that just suggests that TikTok, you know, the U.S. operation is largely an offshoot of what goes on in China and they just think that they need better comms. But I'm curious what you have to say about it.

Yeah, that's the exactly correct observation. It's the idea that all of the TikTok US and the entire like approach of from a, it's brand and communications, it's trying to say over and over and over again as many times is possible. No, we have no connection to our parent bite dance in China while your operations, your algorithm, your infrastructure is still tied to the parent company. I think this is an incredibly important story because if we look at the rise of the poppice, do you remember Kevin Mayor, his two-month stint as CEO of TikTok back in 2020? It was incredible. He came in, you know, senior exec at Disney.

I think he was supposed to succeed Iger, didn't get the job, so left. Right. And then become CEO of TikTok is going to make, turn this into, you know, a formidable opponent against Facebook, whoever else. And then just leaves two months into the job. And then VPopis comes in and cleans it up into her credit, you know, continues the growth and like turning it into a real operating business successfully. But then Shodzichu, who came in as CEO, I think in the last year, he very quickly,

Singaporean-based, very quickly became the face of the company, testified in front of Congress, did reasonably well, I think, by all accounts. More and more, he's even been getting more of a remit Lemon 8 is the new social app from ByteDance. He's been giving authority over that app as well. So clearly he's becoming like the, you know, the. boss, clearly becoming the most important player in this, and obviously that pushed her out. But I think what does that say about how TikTok is trying to position itself in America and the American market?

Every time they try to seem like they're moving more towards becoming an American company or integrated in America, cut off from the parent, they get tied more closely. Yeah, I'll share my one interaction with V. Pappas, who commented at after the hearing that Cho Chu had in Congress, they said we're committed to providing a safe, secure platform that fosters an inclusive place for our amazing, diverse community call home. It's a shame today's conversation felt rooted in xenophobia.

Thank you to our employees who worked tirelessly to protect our platform in our community. So basically saying any member of Congress who had questions about the safety and security of TikTok was being xenophobic, okay. I tweeted this, calling real, concerns about data security and content filtering xenophobic certainly an interesting approach to take right i was i mean could have been it was more charitable than i

probably should have been they respond happily happy to discuss alex okay so i say all right is this an opportunity for dialogue here i said open invite to the podcast want to do it there or we could talk privately and i never heard back so i have to say that go ahead that that that whole line of narrative around the idea that any questioning of TikTok's relationship with Bite Tants is xenophobic, I think is crazy. I think it's the idea. It's like it's a very real concern. It's a very real question. They do nothing to actually effectively disprove the fact that they are connected, but then using that as a defense, I don't know, is the most disingenuous thing I could imagine but I mean her career it was really interesting because she came up through YouTube she

basically created she like built the entire creator business and made YouTube the place for creators and did such an incredible job of that and did an amazing job of that at TikTok as well that she really has delivered in these places and really built out the creator side of these businesses is something enviable to everyone else in the industry so I think that side is impressive but But I mean, yeah, obviously, or hopefully more of the story comes out over time and we learn more about this kind of corporate drama. But I think it means to me that TikTok is going to continue this kind of route of saying we're separate, but not doing anything. In fact, moving in the opposite direction and just becoming closer and closer to the parent company bite dance. Again, the fact that Showchu is getting remit over another bite dance app, how does that not show that clearly, you know, this is a bite dance company. It's a bite dance show.

Yeah. And that's what I thought. The idea that V. Pappas leaves and the communications head comes in. It's like, well, that tells you all you need to know. So let's not just a communications head. Apparently Zena Mucha, according to an old New York Times profile, was called the direct. of revenge. I think she'd worked it for Pataki at the time for the New York governor. So I'm curious to see how she takes the, where she takes the company. It should be fun and interesting. Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't know if this whole like taking revenge method is going to play very well for a company that's as embattled as TikTok. I mean, of course there's a degree of pushback, but you can't, you're not, you're not the same as you were when you were Disney. It's just a very, very different position, beloved American company, a company that's potentially on the outs with members of the regulatory body in the U.S. and members of Congress.

Why don't we end? We actually covered the Reddit situation a little bit. One more thing on that. I was just thinking about, I kind of wish corporations actually openly had a chief revenge officer, a VP of revenge. I was just thinking about that. I mean, Twitter, if anyone, Elon, if you're listening, if any, would do that, I think it would be him. But at a certain point, if corporations just started

openly and honestly naming their executives for what they do, I think the world would be a more fun and interesting place. Well, I'll say that our summer intern, Doug, is our VP of Revenge here at Big Technologies. So I just want to let you know that if you're, if you're going to mess this summer, there's going to be retribution. Watch out for Doug, summer interns, VP of Revenge. By the way, thanks. Doug is here with us. He's helping to put the titles on for LinkedIn and YouTube. We do appreciate him being here. And if you mess in the comments, Doug is going to have fulfill his duties here in the Revenge Department of the podcast.

All right. Let's go to the last story, which is Reddit. We touched a little bit on Reddit last week with Sarah Fisher. But Ron John, you've been actually covering this Reddit stuff for a while. And I'm curious to get your perspective on whether the company's business will continue to succeed as we move forward. Yeah. So I had written about this actually in September 2021.

And Reddit, I think what's really important to the story right now is looking at its journey and how it lived in a really, really interesting way and lived and developed. So Reddit, again, founded as I think one of the original YC companies or maybe in the second class, sold very quickly to advance publications, which is the home of Condé Nast, magazines like Wired and a bunch of others. But what happened was they had bought it at a time when, you know, they wanted to show some bona fides and being digital. but then never did anything with it, never had real pressure from a revenue or profitability

standpoint, a growth standpoint. And Reddit just kind of lived in the background at advanced publications for years all through the late 2000s into the early 2010s. And to me, that is such an interesting, like almost scientific test of how to build a really community-driven platform when it's almost essentially operating as a nonprofit now fast forward a number of years and this is what i wrote in september 2021 i had remember i started seeing on the design side so many more aggressive prompts to download the app all right yeah endless suggested like half of the app became suggested posts and suggested suggested subreddits rather than what you're already subscribing to and i'm a very very avid reddit user endless videos and photos in the

feed on the mobile app. So you saw it starting to happen. But now we're at a point, right? Reddit was valued at $10 billion in their 2021 funding round. Again, similar to Spotify's podcast, another story of pandemic era behavior being extrapolated out. And last year, Reddit's revenue rose 38% to 2022, but we're already way behind forecast. It was to $670 million. It was supposed to be at $1 billion. So right now we're at a point where Reddit was supposed to IPO, invest, are supposed to get out last year. They don't. Market freezes. Now, Reddit is doing as any, by any standard measures, is doing great as a business, 38% growth, but is nowhere near that $10 billion valuation. Fidelity already marked it down 41%. So everything from a financial standpoint

is slowing down, increasing pressure. So of course, the CEO, Steve Huffman, when they're cutting off API access to third-party apps like Apollo, they have to. They have to start, you know, trying to extract every penny that they can, which completely runs counter to the entire ethos of Reddit and the entire reason people love Reddit. And I think this is a really, really bad place for the platform. I think it's such a sign that having a massive valuation and massive fundraising rounds for what's supposed to be a purely relative. low-tech community-driven platform that worked really, really well. It was always the moment they raised that $10 billion evaluation round from Fidelity and

everyone in December 2021, it was almost the death knell of the platform. Yeah. I mean, that's a great point. And it just does, it does go to show you that sometimes when you try to put like IPO level expectations or VC level expectations, it just doesn't work for every business, even if it's a technology business and it could end up being counterproductive. It's probably what we have here. Yeah, it's it's building out a solid advertising business. Reddit should be able to. Everything should by any measures. Again, $670 million in revenue last year is not small, but relative to all

its peers, especially relative to its traffic, it is small. So I don't know. I think it's going to be really interesting to see how this goes. And Steve Huffman's behavior, he's clearly been coached or has chosen himself to triple down on these actions and say, like, you know, we're willing to lose all these moderators and people who spend their own time to make this stuff happen. Again, from like a unit economics perspective, this also should be the most profitable business on earth. You provide the infrastructure and people spend their own time moderating these communities and growing them. It's one of those, I don't know.

I'm sad. If I lose Reddit, I don't know where I'm going to go, I guess, blue sky or something. Yeah, one day you'll have to do a session where you teach me how you use Reddit. I mean, I use it the old-fashioned way, right, Google stuff and then read the Reddit comments. But I do feel like really willing Reddit is a superpower. It's funny. I've thought about this in the past. Like, Reddit is what Reddit does the best is radicalize you about specific

interests, even productive and positive ones. Again, like cooking, once you go on Reddit, it goes from like, oh, I'm just going to make a meal to I'm like sharing pictures and being critiqued about the like grain of my steak and how I'm cooking it. Or yeah, no, it basically it gets you connected to other people who are just really intense about interest. So yeah, I think it's an incredible place. And I'm sad if it gets killed. And thanks to my greatest nemesis overfunding and inflated expectations. What an optimistic show we've had this week. But seriously, Ranjan, it was great spending time. Well, no, Harry, Harry and Megan have been seen properly. So the world is okay. Okay, sounds great. Thank you for joining Ranjan. Great talking with you,

as always. Yep, good to be here. All right, folks. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks again to Ron John. Thank you, Doug Gorman, our VP of Revenge and head of graphics here, a big technology podcast. Thank you, LinkedIn for having me as part of your podcast network. We'll see you next Wednesday with Meredith Whitaker, who's the CEO of Signal. And then Ron Jen and I will be back next week. We will definitely be back next week. We will definitely be back next week. We'll see you next time from the FTC. And hopefully more. I'm going to try to get Jason Delray to come on. He has this great new book about Amazon. If he doesn't do it next week, we'll definitely have them on sometime in the future. All right. Thanks so much for listening. And we'll see you next time on Big Tech. Technology Podcast.