Big Technology Podcast - Why Elites Are Losing Trust — With Vivian Schiller

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

Vivian Schiller is the executive director of Aspen Digital, former head of news at Twitter, and former CEO of NPR. She joins Big Technology Podcast for a discussion of why the public distrusts elites. This conversation takes place in Davos — as the World Economic Forum conducts its annual meeting — and dissects its controversial initiatives such as the "Great Reset." Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss the latest with big tech and Joe Biden's tech agenda.

LinkedIn Presents Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversations of the tech world and beyond. And we are coming to you this week from Davos in collaboration with the Web3 Foundation and Unfinished. Our guest today is Vivian Schiller. She is the executive director at Aspen Digital, the former head of news at Twitter, which is fun and we'll talk about and the former CEO of NPR. Vivian, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's great having you here. We're going to get into everything happening at Davos. I think this will be an episode that will focus mostly on elites. Before we get into it, I want to let folks know that I'll be continuing this discussion on my LinkedIn page like we do with each conversation. So if you have questions or feedback, come on over there. There'll be a specific post about this episode and we look forward to hearing from you.

So, Vivian, this is interesting. It's our first time in Davos. Right now, the meeting of the world economic forum is going on. It's an annual meeting of really the world's elites, business leaders, corporate leaders. We had never seen it before. It's a great time to discuss our impressions of it. I'll start. It kind of gives me the willies to be here. It feels like those in power are finding ways to continue to stay in power. And that's what this meeting is all about. looks, that's what it looks like from the outside. Neither of us, I think, have been led into the main discussion. What do you think? Well, yeah, that's the thing is, you know, people have asked me or, you know, my colleagues at home going, how's Davos? What is it like? And my answer is, I actually have no idea. I mean, I've been here for a few days now, but it's hard to really put my finger on what the experience is, partly because, like you said, I am not one of the anointed. I don't have the fancy white badge that gets me into the Congress center where the where the wef meetings are happening. So, you know, we are amongst the scrum walking up and down

the promenade where, which is more like a trade show, you know, that has taken over this mountain town road than anything else. So I don't, I mean, is that the Davos experience? I don't know. I've never been here before. That said, it's been fun to run. to a lot of old friends and to meet new ones. So it's been interesting in that sense, but it's a little weird. Yeah. And the forum has come under fire, at least in the past few years, for something that they called the Great Reset, which is this agenda that they've put forward basically saying that they want to take advantage of the opportunity that COVID gives them in order to reset. And some of the things that they talk about, I mean, here I have some of it

from their agenda here. So they say to achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. And they also say the future of, they're trying to influence the future of state, global relations, the directions of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models, and the management of a global commas. Now, the world economic form has come out and said this message wasn't.

received well, well, no kidding. Yeah, really. It does, it seems a little inappropriate for gathering. I mean, I understand the desire to improve society. But the way that they phrase it really is, in the words of some, you put saying the quiet part out loud, where, you know, you ask why people are turned off by groups like this. And it really is, I think, a fact that they say out loud that they're trying to influence, like some of some things that you would never want, you know, groups like this try to influence

social contracts, societies and economies. I mean, what, and it's influential people here that are trying to do it. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's two big problems, two categories of problems. One, my God, the elitism is just, you know, and I say this as, you know, you and I are arguably or many would look at us as the elite. I'm looking at this group going, wow, really? I mean, it's the ultimate ivory tower and sort of the hubris of suggesting that this small

group of mostly white men. That's changing a little bit, but I think not much, can sort of, you know, pull the strings to try to affect, you know, populations around the world and control them is, you know, problematic. And the other thing is, and I guess these two things are related, it's sort of flying in the face of a backlash to what, and I'm, if you're not looking at me, I am using air quotes, globalists, you know, the rise of autocracies around. the world, the anti-democratic forces, including in the United States, you know, they feed on the world economic forums of the world and say, this is exactly what we're fighting against, you know, the sort of ethno-nationalists that are on the rise.

And it is, that's absolutely correct. And it is interesting that the forum continues to, you know, seem to conduct business as usual with little self-reflection, except for this. I'm going to play a clip from one of the recent meetings, and this is, if there are folks here who are realignment listeners who have come over through there, this is from breaking points. So shout out to Saga and Jetty for highlighting this clip on a recent show.

At Davos, a few years ago, the Edle-Lew survey showed us that the good news is the elite across the world, trust each other more and more. So we can come together and design and do beautiful things. things together. The bad news is that in every single country they were polling, the majority of people trusted that elite less. Pretty unbelievable. Elites trust each other more, but the people in the countries they're coming from are trusting them less. Why is that? Well, for all the reasons that we've been talking about, I mean, there's so many, look, you know, there are many brilliant minds

around the world, trying to dissect the sort of this trend that we're seeing happening around the world, which is sort of an anti-global perspective, a more nationalist, a more ethno-nationalist agenda in so many countries, which frankly reviles expertise, evidence. knowledge and education. I mean, I see this so starkly in the United States with the rise of the far right. Sorry, I'm immediately jumping over there. And it is, you know, a lot of the messages don't listen to these elites. Listen to us. We are the populists. It's a very anti-democratic movement. You know, the elites, I guess, are not helping the matter by sort of staying above the fray in many cases. But, um, It's really sort of scary what's happening in so many places. Yeah. And so you hint at it, but I'm curious what you think it fuels,

what fuels these movements. Now, of course, like, you know, some of it is messaging, but there must, in people's lives, they must feel,

like I was actually looking on Twitter right before you jumped in, and Klaus Schwab, who's the head of the World Economic Forum, is trending. I'm like, oh, what did he make a speech or something like that?

And it's filled with hate for him. And people must be, seeing something in their everyday lives that are not making them trust the people who are running governments and the people who are running corporations, the Davos set. What do you think that is? What's going on there? There's a lot of things that are happening simultaneously. Economic inequality, a global pandemic, the climate change, as I mentioned, sort of the rise of populism. And a lot of it being fueled by very effective propaganda, I will call it propaganda, coming from many

corners and fueled in large part by many social media platforms. So it's this toxic brew of actual real-life challenges that are, and then our platforms that are tapping into our passions and fueling our outrage, this is a problem in every country around the world, and it leads to serious real-life consequences. So is the answer then that, you know, these elites really need to clean up the stuff that gives fuel to some of the anti-elite fuel. Well, you know, the interesting thing is if you look at the most recent Edelman survey, which you reference, which is such a valuable tool, yes, that, you know,

people don't trust elites, but if you look at sort of the categories of, Do people trust government officials? Absolutely not. Do people trust, you know, journalists and media? Sorry for you and me, but absolutely not. The interesting thing is the highest level of trust in terms of category actually is corporate leaders and companies. I'm not necessarily talking about the, you know, the people who are gathering here in DaVos, although frankly many of them are here. But the fact that companies, I guess, maybe by default, because what other institutions are left? for you to trust, have, have, and maybe because it's, you know, these companies are part of people's lives or, you know, members of the public work for these companies, they are employees, that there is a higher level of trust and it actually gives corporations an opportunity to use that trust for good. This is something I've been talking about a lot here when it comes to all kinds of societal issues. That's different. Let me just be really clear. That's different than what I'm talking about in terms of the world economic form. I'm talking about in the way that they

communicate with their employees, in the way that they communicate with their public, their customers, how they spend their money. Don't forget corporations are the economic engine for social media. So what are they spending on? How much money are they giving to META? How much money are giving to other platforms? You know, they have tremendous power. So I took your question in a slightly different direction, but I wanted to make the point. It is a good point. And it is a good point. it's something that I think about a lot. And we can talk about tech regulation and stuff in the second half. But it's something I think about a lot when it comes to regulating the tech companies because you look at the approval. There's no denying it. You look at the approval rating of

Amazon and companies like Google. They're like second to the military. Then you look at the approval rating of journalists and members of Congress. And it's at the bottom of the barrel. Yeah. It's really unbelievable. But I'm curious, why you think that is because aren't a lot, so like, I wonder if people are actually directing their ire about what, because the economy is a natural product of what the corporations do, and the economy is one that is creating winners and losers society. When things like CEO pay, for instance, where it's multiple times, I mean CEO pay, how many, you know, median salaries can you fit into, you know, average typical pay that's going to a CEO?

And of course, they earn the money, but the disparities are really some of the future. mixing up logic with feelings, just like an elite. You're such an elite. You're trying to use evidence and logic. And actually, the sense of, you know, for better for worse, when people feel trust, it's not necessarily the logical consequence of the thought process that you just went through. And it's easy to see why people, like in the United States, you know, have such low trust for members of Congress. And the media, first of all, members of Congress, you know, it's just become, you know, Congress has become a more and more of a toxic place. And because Congress is so polarized, there's very little getting done.

It's hard to feel good about, no matter what party you are, to feel good about what's happening or, as a case, maybe not happening in Congress. And when it comes to the media, don't forget the word media is very broad. So the media includes evidence-based, you know, fact-based, sourced journalism. but it also includes a lot of junk, frankly, or propaganda or things that your cousin posted on Facebook as some kind of piece of evidence. And to most people, all of that is the media. And a lot of it is untrustworthy. A lot of it is stirring up emotions. A lot of it is just, you know, propagating and just downright falsehoods. All of that is media. And because our society, not just in the United States, but everywhere. So, polarized, people are feeling

very tribal about their media. So when they say, do they trust the media, they trust their own media, they don't trust the other guy. But that's what's bringing those numbers down. Yeah. And I'm not saying, you know, they should trust us. They shouldn't trust them. I think that there's, I mean, you know, maybe that's the case. But I think that there is, there is reason across the board. And I am, again, like, I think that you're right, where is this feeling coming from is my is my question yeah and go ahead no I just want to say one other thing we were talking about a lot of the real world problems that are that are feeding into this emotion and then and then being sort of amplified by social media we talked about economic

disparities we talked about the pandemic we talked about climate change we also didn't talk about I should have mentioned and I want to just make the point here that and this is so true in the United States, and I know in other parts of the world, racism, I'm just going to call it what it is, you know, a lot of times people use sugarcoat that expression, but there is still tremendous racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, bubbling below the surface that is now being given greater voice and horrifyingly greater acceptance because there are platforms where it has been allowed to propagate. So that is also, without a doubt, one, you know, feeding into frustration around the world,

particularly for underrepresented communities and understandably so. It is also interesting. In the U.S. in particular, where, you know, the Democratic Party says that they're, you know, against that, or trying to fight against, you know, the tide of racism, you have more and more Latino voters who are moving towards the Republican Party. Yeah. What do you think about that? Yeah.

I, uh, maybe the message isn't landing. Maybe the message isn't landing. And I also think that I'm going to add one more thing. There's, there's an attitude issue too, in my opinion, where like, oftentimes people feel that there's, you know, the elites are, like, this stuff that I'm reading about, the great reset. that, you know, an organization would have the audacity to talk about shaping all these important things. It doesn't come top down. It does come bottom up. And there is a smugness with some of these organizations where they feel that they actually have the answers. And, you know,

that must be dictated to the bottom down versus have this come up democratically. And what's the answer? A nationalist can say, these people who have been promising you democracy don't really care about it. What we care about. And we actually are speaking to you. And you don't have, you know, what do you have to lose at this point? Yeah, yeah. The far right and the populists are quite good at messaging. That's a fact. Let's talk, you know, a bit more about corporations because there's been this move towards stakeholder versus shareholder capitalism.

Shareholder capitalism is all about trying to make the most money you possibly can. Stakeholder capitalism, which has been advanced by the group here, is all about companies getting more involved in social issues. I wonder if that's working because, you know, I think that both the far right and the far left are skeptical of that. And I was reading a piece about it earlier about this great reset, which said that, you know, stakeholder capitalism is giving corporations more power over society and democratic institutions less. What is your view on it? I mean, yeah. Well, look, you know, first of all, you know, the companies that we're talking about, you know, ultimately, are beholden to their, no matter, yes, putting aside stakeholder motivations, they are

beholden to their share, they are legally beholden to their shareholders. So that's number one. So you can understand why a company might be reluctant to take a stand on a controversial issue for fear of alienating their customer base. So that's completely understandable. On the other hand, I think more and more CEOs don't have a choice but to take stand on certain issues. For starters, before you even talk about customers and before you even talk about, you know, politicians, let's talk about the employee base. The employee basis of these companies are more and more empowered to speak up and to express themselves to their leadership about what they demand from the company that they work for. I mean, look at Disney as sort of the poster

child for this issue. The CEO tried to avoid getting embroiled. Disney, of course, you know, its most important property, Disney World is in Florida, where there have been a number of extremely controversial pieces of legislation, state legislation being introduced, including about, you know, banning the teaching of, you know, various forms of, you know, LBGT, Q... Don't say gay bill. Reality. Don't say gay bill. Thank you. That's what I was looking for. And Disney tried to just not comment, saying, you know, you can understand the motivation. I completely get it.

We're just going to stay out of this. We're a big part of the economic engine. We have a lot of employees in Florida. And so the CEO was silence. But the employees wouldn't stand for it. And absolutely demanded that Disney speak out against the don't say gay bill. which they did, and now they have become the absolute bullseye target for Governor DeSantis to say, you know, Disney is this woke company and we're going to take away all of their, you know, their economic benefits that they get from the state, never mind that the citizens of the state would then have to pay for it. And, you know, you can't win. But you also can't stay on the sidelines. Yeah, and it's so crazy, I think, for a Republican governor to now talk about corporations you need to bend to government will or the government will enforce. its power, and it goes against any conservative value.

The hypocrisy is just sort of stunning and, yeah, and shameless. Yeah. I think that, you know, I've given it a lot of crap at this point in the podcast, but I do think that this idea of stakeholder capitalism is important. We have had a long period of time where companies would just do the ruthless thing because that's what they felt that they had to do based off of what our society wanted and that we, there's this, there was this crazy belief that if you were. were to do the most, the thing to maximize shareholder value, then society gets better directly

as a result, where clearly that's just not the case. And I, you know, maybe you can call me Pollyanna, but I do see a lot of companies that actually are rising to the moment. And, you know, we'll see how far it goes. But I think that there is a recognition that actually sort of values-based leadership can be lead to the best business outcome. We'll see how far that stretches as we move into, say, at least see the United States, a post-R-V-W-V-W-W-W-W-W-D world where companies are going to have to make decisions about whether they're going to potentially violate state law by paying for employees to leave the state, to get an abortion. I mean, it's going to get very, very tricky. But I do see a lot of companies

doing the right thing, you know, even on the global stage. Yeah. And it's also the way that you, we, at a certain point in our society, we actually believed in building a strong middle class through the way our corporations were to treat employees. Now, I won't dispute that we're living in the wealthiest moment in time and actually the median household is doing better now than they have in the past. But there was this attitude back in the day where like Ford, for instance, would want to pay its employees enough so that they'd be able to buy the cars. And now we have corporations where that's really not the case.

And, you know, maybe stakeholder capitalism isn't that you grind your front-line workers into the ground to the point where they have medical issues. They can't pay their bills. They're on food stamps. And actually is paying, and maybe this is me asking too much of our economy right now. Paying a living wage. Well, so we see the rise of unions forming in many pockets around the country in the United States. It is interesting because we're actually starting to see that in the tech world where for the first time, Amazon warehouse has been unionized.

Although soon after one that was nearby lost. And I'm trying to, you know, for my reporting, discern whether this is a movement or a moment. And it does seem that Amazon's targeting of Chris Smalls, who was the union organizer in Staten Island, actually was a key reason why that warehouse or fulfillment center, as they like to call it, unionized. I wonder, do you think that this moment can have, and we're seeing some unionization pushes, and said, Apple, do you think this moment can actually be the launch of something, or is it just an anomaly? I tend to think it's an anomaly, but maybe I'm wrong. Well, unlike the Wef elites, I don't have all the answers. I'm so sorry, Alex, so I really don't know.

So, but it's been interesting, certainly, to follow. A lot of media organizations are unionizing, too. It's interesting that journalists are unionizing at greater levels in the United States. That matters not just, I mean, it's a small industry compared to other industries. On the other hand, these are the people that tell the stories. Yeah, it's interesting. I was at BuzzFeed News when there was the middle of unionization push. I don't, I mean, I don't know if it was successful because, you know, they did unionize, but the newsrooms being cut in half. I wonder how you think that will, or more than half since the heyday. How do you think the fact that the media business is so tough to make it?

in, how does that kind of square with these unionization pushes and newsrooms? Well, unionization doesn't necessarily guarantee that your company's going to be successful and be able to continue to pay you. When it's done right, a union movement just make sure that you are paid for the work that you do. But of course, you can't protect your job in the long run. And a lot of these, you know, the buzz feeds of the world, that's sort of middle strata of kind of early startups, a lot of them are, this is a whole other podcast that we'll do

another time, but, you know, are really are failing now. It's sad. Yes. Vivian Schiller is here. She is the executive director at Aspen Digital. Former head of news at Twitter, why don't we talk about Twitter and other big tech companies on the other side of this break? 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 two 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 with Vivian Schiller. Vivian, I want to say thank you for coming into my conversation with Nick Clegg. It was great to have you there. Quite interesting. We've talked about it afterwards. So I want to break down on some of what he said. But I also am curious, you know, I mentioned this in the interview with him.

And it's kind of been my favorite stat to cite recently. But Facebook was worth a trillion dollars last summer. Now it's worth about half of that. How do you think this economic downturn is going to change the way that we look at? the way these tech companies operate? I mean, I'm skeptical that it will, we'll see. You know, the, even with all that, even with all those losses, you know, the numbers we're talking about are still pretty astronomical. I, you know, I'm sorry that these executives have, you know, lost a few, a billion of their net worth, but I just wonder if it's really going to impact, you know, unless things really fall apart, it's really going to impact their, their strategy.

And so you've been, you've run news organizations before. Indeed. You're a journalist. Nick and I talked a little bit about how Facebook pulled, shut down basically news site pages or blocked their links on Facebook when Australia tried to make it pay to run those links on its site. What do you think about that? Yeah. Well, first of all, Nick Clegg is really not lacking in confidence. That was the, that was the biggest.

impression um you know i found i'll come back to your comment a second but he really sort of you you did a great job of you know presenting him with with all of the all of the uh accusations that have been leveled against them many of them true and he kind of waved everything off um and sort of dismissed it as a lot of grumbling but i have to say uh i uh i felt pretty angry when i heard him say when you were asking him about you know the subsidies. And look, there's a lot of problems with that Australia law. That's a subject for the other day. Kind of like a Rupert Murdoch thing to try. Yeah, exactly. But the fact that he said that he, he said that he felt that it wasn't Facebook's place to subsidize an industry that is, and I'm, this is not an exact quote, but directionally correct, that is getting so much more value from them than they are. So that news organizations are getting so much, getting all the value. from Facebook and giving none of it in return, I found that deeply offensive and also

completely untrue. I mean, you know, this is why, this is why, you know, Facebook has not treated news organizations well. It is not treated, I think, the public well when it comes to making sure that fair and accurate information is amplified and false and harmful speech is not. And the notion that Facebook is giving all the value to news organizations and getting none in return is just utter nonsense. Right. And he did mention that Facebook has been pulling back on news in a big way. I think he said maybe 3% of content on Facebook is news. And that's not really a user-generated decision. That's a Facebook algorithmic. decision. I wonder if it's better for the news industry and Facebook to just, you know,

have a divorce. Because if it would basically mean, okay, news organizations are going to lose traffic, but it was traffic. It wasn't audience largely. And then Facebook can get on with doing the friends and family thing. Well, there's two issues with that. One is societal and one is economic. The societal issue is if there is not quality news organizations represented on Facebook feed. What will continue to be there are lies, rumors, innuendos, not evidence-based information. So, and, you know, Facebook is very popular. So I would be concerned if there was no counter whatsoever to a lot of the nonsense that proliferates on Facebook. So that's the societal issue. The economic issue is that, you know, Facebook and other platforms are, you know,

hoovering up most of the advertising revenue. Now, I'm not blaming, unlike many, I don't fault the platforms for the fact that they have built a better advertising vehicle than, say, newspapers. But the consequences for news organizations to be absent from that dialogue, you know, it's going to just exacerbate the economic problems of, news institutions yeah and i always for my for my you know many news business i always wonder like how much should i engage with the platforms or not and i am wary of doing business with facebook i am doing business with lincoln and i'm pretty happy about it but well lincoln's

yes lincoln is not facebook exactly almost none of these other platforms are facebook and you know facebook does have this history of i mean it's experimental as a tech company you have to experiment and sometimes that will mean putting money towards something then pull it back but I feel like the news industry has had the rug pulled from under its feet so many times that it's like... Live video! Yes, oh my goodness. That's the entire future. Oops, a few months later, never mind.

That lasted for a half second. You're talking here also about TikTok and how we've... It's actually kind of interesting how news has started to evolve on TikTok, especially news about the Ukraine war. What's your view on... I mean, the ascent is unbelievable. I just did a report talking about how people not... spend more time daily on TikTok. People who use TikTok now spend more time daily on the platform than the average user on Facebook ever did, which is just astonishing. That is astonishing.

What's your view on the rise of TikTok? And yeah, I'd like to hear your perspective on how it's going to be used for news. Well, they built a pretty compelling product. So, you know, do you use it? Power to them. Yeah. Yeah. I use it. I use it. I delete it. I use it. I'm so addicted to it. I know. I know. I'm like, I can't do this. I have to actually do some Netflix instead. Yeah, yeah. I'm a lurker, though. I'm a lurker. I have, I don't do the dances. Yeah, yeah. I watch the videos. Maybe another life. No, no. Of course, I'm a lurker and I, and I, too, really like it. One, you know, what I would like to say, well, it's necessary for me to be well-versed in TikTok because of my job. But the fact is I find it very entertaining. It's really fun. And yeah, it is valuable for news. And we've seen a lot of, you know, even for, you know, we've seen a lot of really interesting, creative, user-generated, um, uh, quality news and information. on TikTok, you know, the famous TikToker who starts off with a makeup tutorial and then sort of

to try to, you know, turn away everybody other than the women that this TikTokers trying to reach and then talking about the plight of the Uyghurs, you know, that kind of thing is really, really compelling. That said, you know, what we're, in fact, the panel that I'm moderating here in Davos is going to, in a little while is going to get into this. We're going to talk about how in Russia, TikTok has actually been, you know, and you can, and depending on who you talk to, either inadvertently or on purpose, aiding and abetting the Russian propaganda efforts inside Russia. And you have to wonder if a company that is controlled by Beijing, what those motivations are. So this is not, do not forget the Chinese ownership.

that is a really, really important part of the TikTok story that hasn't fully played out yet. Yeah, I think their cultural power is fascinating. We've seen it in the U.S. where from reports that I've read, they actually had made some mistakes early on, taken down some content in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, and then kind of turned up the volume on Black Lives Matter, which ended up sent. lots of Gen Z kids out into the streets during those protests. There's also the famous example of, I don't think this was TikTok manipulating the algorithm, but how TikTokers saw that Donald Trump was holding a rally and had this meme where they began en masse buying tickets leading the Trump campaign

to think that there was going to be a massive turnout. And it turns out that no one showed up. It was extremely embarrassing for the campaign, which had overflow capacity set up for TikTok to. that never planned to show up. It is great cultural power, and I do wonder, like you do, about what happens when China, which is the government has shown not only a willingness, but an enthusiasm to go and tinker with content and tinker with algorithms. Well, these are private companies. Yeah, these are private companies.

They control the algorithms. They are protected by the First Amendment and by Section 230 to moderate their content as they see fit. So, you know, buyer beware. How do we know? How did we know if they would it just take a whistleblower if they put their thumb on the scale? Well, that's, you know, one of the things that we've been advocating at that Aspen Institute is part of our Commission on Information Disorder is greater transparency from the platforms to researchers and academics who can actually, the more information they have anonymized content, we're not talking about giving personal information to academics and researchers and journalists, but be able to track how stories move. and to be able to track what's, you know, being algorithmically amplified and what hasn't and why across all of the platforms. This is vitally, vitally important. So that's one of our strong recommendations for that very reason.

You can they'll ever follow through with that? There's actually some movements around transparency. It's not as controversial as other, you know, other suggested, you know, changes to laws like, you know, around Section 230, for example. I'm going to now connect this discussion to a little bit of what we. talked about earlier. I'm going to go back again to what Sagarin Jetti was talking about with the WEF. He says, billionaires are good at one thing. It's the reason why they, you know, made so much money, but it makes them think they're qualified to do anything. That brings us now to our next platform, which is Twitter, and Elon Musk's pursuit of the company. Now, it's fascinating

back and forth, you know, is he going to buy it? Is he not? The more Tesla stock goes down, the less likely I think it is to happen. But I want to ask you this. So you worked there as a head of news. Twitter was always telling us as reporters that people sort of underappreciated the cultural value and it wasn't reflected in the share price. Is it ironic that Elon Musk, who fully did appreciate the cultural value to the point that he wanted to go and use it, is the one who actually saw that argument through and made an offer to buy the company, which they accepted? Yeah, first of all, anybody that tells you they understand what's going on in the mind of Elon Musk is selling the bill of... No, I don't know. And I have no idea. All I can, you know, I can barely follow the bouncing ball. So, you know, I don't know what his motivation is. I mean, it strikes me just where I'm sitting, that, you know, Twitter is his favorite toy and he's a rich guy, so he wants to buy the toy company. That's always the way it's felt to me.

Really? Because he does, I mean, he, it does fit a pattern, though, because he does start these. companies, with his view, ways that he can improve the world for SpaceX trying to, you know, get human civilization on more than one planet or Tesla trying to move us to electronic vehicles. Twitter, I could see the ideological. I think it's a little bit different. First of all, he started those companies. And his motivations around Twitter are suspect. I don't, you know, he says he wants to, yeah, he claims he wants to improve the world.

But first of all, in all of his public pronouncements about Twitter, what he has demonstrated is ignorance about the way Twitter operates around content moderation, around what, you know, he throws out the term free speech. Well, everybody's free speech, of course. You know, that's motherhood and apple pie. But when you get, when you dig a little bit deeper, he's just, he's, he's all over the place. He doesn't seem to have a vision for what it is he wants to fix at Twitter. doesn't seem to have a vision for how Twitter works. He doesn't seem to understand how Twitter makes money or doesn't make money. And now he seems to be getting cold feet about the deal altogether. One thing that seems apparent, too, is that he, you know, he seems to be getting a lot

of adulation for, you know, things that he said about Twitter from the far right. And now it feels like he's playing more and more to them. So that's a little disturbing. What do you think happens? I don't know. I think he wants out that deal. Oh, no, it seems like he wants out of the deal, but I kind of love that the Twitter board, you know, we can, you know, I have my own complaints about how the Twitter board has handled a lot of things. But I do like right now that they're playing hardball with them saying, what do you mean pause? There's no such thing as a pause. This deal is on. You need to fulfill your end of the bargain. So we'll see what happens. It does feel strange to me. I mean, the employees, we talked about this last week actually when I was on CNBC, but the employees cheered the fact that the board and the company leadership. is holding steadfast. Yeah, yeah. However, I mean, maybe they'll get a payout, but however, it's likely that there's

going to be mass layoffs if he comes in. Honestly, I think Twitter's in trouble either way. Right. If he comes in, yeah. If he walks away, that share price is going to fall through the floor. I mean, Parag will remain the CEO, and I think he's done a terrible job. He hasn't shown any vision. He's fired all his executives.

No reassure him, and he's fired. He's either fired or they've left. Yeah. He tells us he wants to go in a different direction with the country. company, but we don't know which one it is. Well, this is a sad thing about Twitter. It's always had such leadership problems, you know, from from the very beginning. Just read Nick Bilton's book. You know, I was so naive. Nick Bilton, who was my old colleague when we were both at the New York Times together, wrote a book called Hatching Twitter about all of the drama and the leadership

issues in the early days of Twitter. And I remember when I was getting ready to join, this was in 2013. The book came out and I thought, oh, lucky me. I'm joining the organization, the company, after they've sorted out all of these issues, it's all behind them. Well, you know, as the narrow way to say, she would find out that the issues were not resolved. Yeah. And I actually thought, so I covered the company extremely closely for the five years that I was at BuzzFeed. And I still cover them closely. I thought that Jack Dorsey did a decent job.

They were shipping product under him. He was the best. He was the best of the CEOs. He was good. And it's so odd to see him now kind of throw that whole company under the bus. and encourage Elon to take it private and, you know, everything that, that, I mean, of course, there's, he, maybe he felt that, um, ideologically, the employees took a turn and he kind of couldn't control it anymore. Yeah. But it is so bizarre.

I know. When he came in, you know, I, when I was there, he, he was not CEO. He came in as CEO after I left. And the CEO, he, he was a vast improvement over the previous leadership, um, that was in place when I was at Twitter. And, uh, so yeah, I thought he did, of, of the various CEOs. that Twitter has had, I thought he was one of the best. But yeah, I don't know what's happened to him. That's odd. And the business, actually, he left the business in a good direction. Yeah, exactly. Up 37% the revenue 2021 over 2020. We'll see what happens in

2022. It's going to be a mess. Yeah. Joe Biden's tech agenda. We heard a lot about the government getting involved in technology under Trump. I don't think I've heard a single thing from the Biden administration about wanting to do anything. When I'm comes to tech except for maybe the disinformation governance board. And Biden had been pretty outspoken about like wanting to break up Facebook. I mean, he has bigger problems right now. But what do you think is happening there? Well, in fairness, they have a pretty aggressive FTC right now in the Biden administration. And Lena Khan has not had her majority of commissioners until quite recently. She just approved the fifth one. Exactly. So I think we may see some

actions. I think if anything's going to happen, you know, let's, let's watch the FTC. I think that's going to, that's going to be interesting over the next, you know, over the next two plus years and maybe beyond, we'll see. But yeah, the White House itself yet hasn't really made a lot of moves. It's got some heavy hitters, but not made a lot of moves. And the, yeah, the information, I always get the name on, the information governance. This information governance. Disinformation governance board was a, was there, the, now that I understand what the intent is, it actually was quite a good idea. In fact, it maps to another one of the recommendations from our commission on information disorder, which is to have a coordinating body, not a new agency, not an overlord, but just a coordinating body to know which parts of the government are doing what, which was the intention. But they really messed up the rollout.

First of all, disinformation governance board, you know, I'm not the first to say sounds downright or well. It does. It sounds like, I mean, it's a terrible name. And so they put out the name and then they didn't explain what it was. The clearest articulation I heard of what it was intended to be was the briefings that they held once they decided to end the disinformation governance board. And the, you know, and the would-be head of it, Nina Jankewitz, stepped down. They kind of hung her out to dry. You know, she either chose not to or was not, you know, was not given permission to make statements about what their intention was. So, you know, it was just really, really unfortunate kind of cell phone.

What was it supposed to do? It was supposed to be an internal clearinghouse is not even, that's even going too far. a body that would be aware of the various research that is being done on the outside and the inside of government around information disorder and information flows. It was not going to dictate anything. It didn't have any power or control to affect any acts. It was supposed to be a place where a hub that understood what various parts of government were doing. And that is still needed. And now I fear it'll never happen because, you know, they're not going to want to go down that road again. What various parts of the government were doing in regard to disinformation research? Yeah, research because, you know, the State Department is involved with certain, you know, areas of this, the OSTP, the FCC, the FTC, you know, the NTIA, you name it, the whole alphabet soup.

There are various agencies and institutions that are, you know, either touch, you know, broadcasters, touch the platform. Terms touch, you know, are either aware or engaged with various information outlets domestically and abroad. But there's nothing nefarious about it. Right. And this is something that every government is done. It's, you know, it's the government. I mean, it's the federal government and to be aware of what commercial entities are doing and how information is tracking and how that might or may or may not cause harm to citizens is one of the responsibilities of federal government. Yeah, it's interesting, because we do have the First Amendment.

And so, of course, there's no, the government can't enforce stuff to be taken down. Oh, my gosh. And I, but I have not, look, I'm not here to defend. I'm not part of the government. I'm not here to be their spokesperson to defend them. But I have heard not one inkling of a suggestion that this was about government oversight over speech or what anybody is saying or even what the platforms are allowed to do or not do in terms of their First Amendment rights to regulating speech. So a lot of times, so we've spoken a little bit today about disinformation, you know, lack of trust in news. Oftentimes this conversation misses one of the most important things, which I know you're aware of and care a lot about.

And that is the decline of local news. If you don't have a reporter in your town and all you're getting is the national stuff, you can't trust, can't trust what you see because there's no relation to it. So, or you can, but it's just a lot harder. So where do you see the direction of local news going in the U.S.? Maybe more broadly? I mean, right? We have some interesting experiments. Axios, for instance, has things, is the next line of publishers that thinks that it can get local news right.

And I think they just acquired a local news newsletter in San Francisco. They did. And they're moving this way. What do you think the state is there? This is a critical, critical issue, not just in the United States. States, but everywhere in the world. Study after study over the course of generations has shown that people trust their local news organization.

People hate the media writ large, but they trust their local news organization. And so, and local news institutions are not just, they serve so many purposes in a community. They serve to stitch a community together in terms of civic pride. they hold government officials or local businesses accountable just by showing up in, you know, whether it's in school board meetings or hearings or what have you, as a preventative measure against corruption. It keeps the local populations safe and informed about critical issues in their community. And when these go away, what fills the void is either national news, which, first of all,

is not as relevant to a local, you know, a citizen of a local community, but also tends to be more polarizing for a variety of reasons. But also what fills the void are what are called pink slime slights, which are basically propaganda outlets masquerading as journalism, or, you know, next door, Facebook groups, what have you. And local officials and local businesses, nobody's watching the store. It makes corruption a greater possibility. And it can tear a community apart not to have that kind of critical institution. You know, some of the work that we're doing at the Aspen Institute is focusing on trying to think about local journalism as infrastructure

in the same way that you think about roads and bridges and libraries. How do we think about the information needs of communities and why that is an institution infrastructural pillar, just like, again, you know, like I said, schools and libraries. It's absolutely important. There are some great experiments that are going on in not-for-profit journalism, particularly some wonderful work being done to make sure that communities of color and other underrepresented communities are being represented and able to tell their own stories and get that out in the world. And yes, institutes like Axios are doing some great experiments but overall local journalism has declined the business model of of your has collapsed

and trying to cobble together the revenue to keep it alive is is very very difficult we're talked a lot about problems why don't we end talking about solutions on this show oh god do you have any uh no that's why i'm asking the questions um but i yeah i do want to hear if you think there's an optimistic path where we end up in a society where we have, you know, less polarization and less divisions. So I'm going to, this is going to be a really twisted way to begin an answer about optimism, but I want to just bring up the Russia-Ukraine war, which is horrific. Let me just be really clear how horrific this war is for so many reasons. But first and foremost, for the sovereign nation of the Ukraine that was completely brutally attacked.

unprovoked and has seen it's just so much death and destruction and a diaspora of its citizens around the world. That said, the fact that a democracy was so starkly attacked and its borders breached, I think in some ways, shined a bright light on how important a democracy as a democracy like Ukraine. And it is galvanized Europe in a way that I think people, have really surprised people. You know, I look at the way sort of Poland has stepped up. Poland that's had its own sort of autocracy issues. Now there is the defender of democracy in Ukraine.

And the way support has come in from all over the world. And I would like to believe that it has raised an appreciation for why democracy is so important and worth defending. And if we believe that democracy is worth defending, that has a trickle-down. effect on so many of the other disorders that we've been talking about, the information disorders, you know, whether it's about, you know, the platforms, whether it's about journalism. I think all of those things can benefit from sort of a global sense of unity around this critical mission. Yeah, I, while you're speaking, first of all, I agree. I think that it reminded me of Antonio Garcia-Martinez was on the podcast a couple weeks ago.

ago. And he said that like in his very red neighborhood, there's now Ukraine flags hanging outside. And there's this meme of people making fun of, you know, I support the current thing, which has like a person, you know, surrounded by like LGBT flags and Ukraine flags and saying, you know, these people are, there's no core to them. And they're just for the latest social issue. And Antonio said, no, you know, this is not. You can't, this is not a current thing situation. It's about doing what. right? And it does bring so many people around together. Of course, which never happened. And hopefully there's a swift end. But it is a war is clarifying event. Exactly. And it's bringing some real clarification. Exactly. Vivian Schiller, thank you so much for joining. Thank you. It's been fun. Great having you on. All right, everybody. Well, we have, this was a good tease because coming up on Monday, we have another conversation with Nick Thompson, who is the CEO of the Atlantic. We're talking all about trust in the media. So if you enjoyed this one, please stay tuned for that one.

thank you simon hipkins from key pictures for uh doing doing the recording and the audio we have again discussion is going to happen about this episode on lincoln so please check it out we're also posting the videos on youtube my page alex cantorwitz so go check those out as well um that will do it for us it's been a heck of a week packing the feed with three episodes this week to coming your way next week and then we'll go back to our regularly scheduled cadence and if you've been following along we really appreciate if it's your first time at big technology podcast i invite you to subscribe um and if you're a long time listener we would love a rating um rating goes a long way so if you're willing to do that on apple podcasts or spotify that would be amazing until next

time take care