Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/3/22 - Weekly Roundup: Taylor Lorenz, Balenciaga, Blockfi, Twitter Election Interference

Episode Date: December 3, 2022

Krystal and Saagar bring the news about Taylor Lorenz defending China's lockdowns, Balenciaga's Child Photo Shoot, Saagar losing thousands on Blockfi, and Twitter interfering with past elections.Breaking Points is doing live shows in NYC and Boston!CODE: BREAKINGPOINTS for both venues!NYC: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/03005D6A3318087FBOSTON: https://thewilbur.com/artist/breaking-points/To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it means the absolute world to have your support. What are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. The gift that keeps on giving, the Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post. Couldn't resist this one. Couldn't resist because it's also actually deeply revealing of like a true insanity that runs through a very over-representative group and yet powerful one that exists in American media. So Taylor has taken to Twitter to actually defend China's zero COVID policy with outright actual misinformation and just revealing what the end state for a lot of these branch COVIDians really is. So let's put this up there on the screen. So she replies to a tweet that talks about a Chinese

business consultant talking, justifying zero COVID by saying that in 10 years, the West will be brought to its knees because of long COVID, which will decimate most of its labor force. She says, quote, TBH, he's right. Millions of people in the Western world are becoming permanently disabled and chronically ill with an incurable conditions that destroys our ability to live a normal life. And our leaders and majority of media are simply ignoring it and misleading people about the risk. Secondary, in a response officially to the zero COVID protests, here's what she says, quote, there is no, quote, lasting natural immunity to COVID. You can get COVID over and over and over again because there are so many endlessly evolving strains and antibodies wane. Also,

choosing not to kill off millions of vulnerable people, as the U.S. is doing, isn't a critical flaw. And, you know, when you look and you think deeply about that, first on the longstanding natural immunity. Now, it is, from what I have read and what I have seen, it is true that your natural immunity can wane and that you can get COVID again. However, and as I understand it, the severity of the actual disease decreases over time as you continue to get it. And one of the whole theories around it is that constantly evolving COVID through natural immunity and through it going through the population is eventually becomes much more like the common cold in the way that people can live with it. So let's put that aside on the outright medical misinformation. Secondary though,

what's the alternative? What she's defending here is a zero COVID total lockdown policy where people in Xinjiang literally burn to death because they're holed up in their houses and can't leave or unable to get food. Like the idea that we're, quote, choosing to kill off millions of vulnerable people is ludicrous. Vulnerable people can get a booster shot anytime that they want. They are also, and we should, you know, pursue policies that make it so that not as many people get diabetes and not as many people are obese here in the U.S. But something tells me that she would say that that was ableist. So I don't even think she actually supports any policy on that. Regardless, there is this deep and unhealthy strain with this, you know, this idea that millions of people are being

permanently disabled. There's no evidence of that. Zero on long COVID. I'm not going to say long COVID is totally fake, although I think most of the people who claim to have it is totally fake. And what I see in general is like a neuroses that is manifesting itself online amongst people who can totally work from home and are, you know, basically take givers like her. I saw another woman who was like, I finally got it. I got COVID. She was looking at it as a moral failing on her part that by getting COVID, she was like, I skipped everything for the last several years and I still got it. I'm like, yeah, that's the point is it can happen. So don't skip everything. Right. If you're really afraid, you know, really afraid. Okay. You know, you can

consider your booster. You could consider wearing a mask. Yeah, go to an event, wear a mask. But even then, you know, as we have proven and basically shown says, like, a majority of the media are just ignoring long COVID and the, you know, the risks to the population. I find it so funny. And I see this not just from Taylor, but I see it from other people who have a similar, like, COVID lockdown forever kind of mentality. They are disproportionately represented. The media was so late to where the most of the population was in terms of how they were actually living their lives. I mean, we're still having this year, like, how to be safe, it's Thanksgiving, when, you know, I mean, some tiny sliver of people are very concerned about that. If you have, like, underlying health risks and whatever, yeah, you worry about it and be careful and safe and all that stuff. But the media was much,

much later. They were much more on the side of the like Taylor Lorenzes of the world than they were of the way that most of the American population was ultimately living. And I have always thought that what has made the COVID procedure conversation difficult is that you have two competing values. You have the idea of like health and we're in it together and we have to like do things to protect each other. And then you have the idea of liberty and freedom. And so like these are competing values. And I understand how people can come down in different places about how heavily to weigh different things, what they value in their own lives, what they think makes sense as a national policy.

And I think we have worked through that in a not always optimal way, but we have worked through that together as a country. I do not find it to be an acceptable point on the spectrum to be where Taylor Lorenz is here of being like, what China is doing is actually the right policy. I mean, she says, because she's quote tweeting a Washington Post tweet here where they describe the Beijing's COVID zero strategy as having a critical flaw because, you know, you have these insane lockdowns. And she's like, no, it's not a critical flaw, actually. She's actively advocating for insane authoritarian crackdown, lockdown procedures of the type that people in China are now rebelling against after watching some of their, you know, some of their fellow citizens die in an apartment fire because they literally couldn't get out of their apartment.

So it's revealing to me that that is like actually where you are on the spectrum. You are on full authoritarian. And again, there are many places on that spectrum of balancing like safety and freedom. There are many places on that spectrum that I think are acceptable answers. Full authoritarianism is not one of them. Just my perspective. Should go without saying, you would think in the United States. But here we are today, folks. Okay, let's get to Balenciaga. You guys, I don't know if you've been following this online, but this is really, really something.

So, of course, luxury fashion house, storied, renowned fashion house, Balenciaga. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Under fire over what they describe here in the New York Post as creepy ads, I would say disgusting, disturbing ads of kids with bondage outfits. We are not going to put these photos up on the screen, but I will describe them to you. Young children, I'm talking maybe four years old, standing and positioned in somewhat suggestive positions, holding these teddy bears that are wearing BDSM gear. In some of the pictures, there's also other like chain choker looking things in the pictures. And it is incredibly disturbing. And you're just looking at it, you're like, how in the hell did this get greenlit by anyone, let alone actually

go forward and become a major ad campaign and get released to the public with no one going, what the hell are you thinking about here? So there's been huge fallout from this, obviously, because Balenciaga is associated with all sorts of celebrities, including in particular Kim Kardashian. They'd already dropped Kanye, so I guess he doesn't have to say anything about it. But they were still associated with Kim Kardashian. She just put out a statement. She says, I've been quiet for the past few days,

not because I haven't been disgusted and outraged by the recent Balenciaga campaigns, but because I wanted an opportunity to speak to their team to understand for myself how this could have happened. Question we all have. As a mother of four, I've been shaken by the disturbing images. The safety of children must be held with the highest regard, and any attempts to normalize child abuse of any kind should have no place in our society, period. I appreciate Balenciaga's removal of the campaigns and their apology and speaking with them. I believe they understand the seriousness of the issue and will take the necessary measures for this to never happen again. As for my future with Balenciaga, I'm currently re-evaluating my relationship with the brand, basing it off their

willingness to accept accountability for something that should have never happened to begin with and the actions I am expecting to see them take to protect children. So she's taking a little bit of a wait and see attitude here. Ultimately, people after this disturbing, really terrible ad campaign came to light with these kids and the bondage bears and whatever the hell was going on there. People also found another ad campaign where on a desk were strewn some papers that looked just sort of like casually laid out. And some of the papers, if you look closely, are to involve a landmark legal case, which is with regard to child pornography. So people looked at that too and are like, what the hell is going on at Balenciaga?

Now, they've put out they apologized. They put out their own statement. They also, by the way, which I think is I don't know, they're suing one of the companies that put that produced the ad. I think that in particular had the like child porn legal document situation. They say we'd like to address the controversy surrounding our ad campaigns. We strongly condemn child abuse abuse. It was never our intent to include it in our narrative. The two separate ad campaigns in question reflect a series of grievous errors for which Balenciaga takes responsibility. The first campaign they say the one with the kids and the BDSM bears. They say it was a wrong choice by Balenciaga, combined with our failure in assessing and validating images. The responsibility for this lies with Balenciaga alone. And then with the other one regarding the legal papers, they try to shift blame to the ad company and say, listen, we take full accountability for a lack of oversight and control. They should have not had those documents in the background, but they didn't really know

what was going on. And then they go through, we're conducting investigations, closely revising our organization, collective ways of working, reinforcing the structures around our creative processes and validation steps. And we're laying the groundwork with organizations who specialize in child protection and aims at ending child abuse and exploitation. So there you go. I don't even really know what to make of this. I mean, clearly there's a sick person who was involved and maybe multiple sick people who, I mean, here's something I believe. I don't believe for a second that those papers just ended up on the desk in the photo by accident. I just don't believe it. That's the one that is so weird. They claim that it came from a TV set.

No, I'm like, you randomly grabbed this from a TV set. Some child porn, legal documents. Child porn. Yeah, something tells me that there's a sick individual involved in this process. But, I mean, it does go to a really gross element on Balenciaga's part, which is, you know, they claim independence from this entire ad campaign. But I'm not so sure because there have been other allegations around, like, having baby dolls at fashion shows, some other really sick stuff. And, you know, for us, it's very hard for us to parse like what is a, like what is conspiracy and then what is actually true. But, you know, from what I have seen, the photos are correct in terms of their use of dolls that they had people wearing at fashion

shows. And really on this ad campaign. I mean, they're trying to blame this ad company, suing them for $25 million so far for extensive damages. But does the campaign really—do the photo shoots just happen in a vacuum? Like, somebody somewhere had to have editorial direction to try and put these teddy bears and put these kids in, like like, I mean, they don't even deny sexualized positions, their acceptance of that campaign. Okay. They, you know, they say this was a wrong choice by Balenciaga. So that's the thing I keep coming back to is think of all of the people that were involved in this. And no one was like, guys, this is gross. Maybe let's come up with a different concept that doesn't involve kids hanging out with, you know, teddy bears with BDSM gear and like choker collars on the table.

I mean, I want to know what the parents were thinking. I want to know what the photographer was thinking. I want to know what the people who came up with the campaign was thinking. I want to know what Balenciaga was thinking, thinking that this was okay to go forward with. It's disturbing on every single level. It's not the first time the fashion industry has played with like, you know, indulging the fantasies of pedophiles to appear like glamorous or artsy or whatever the hell they think they're doing here. I remember watching that documentary on Victoria's Secret and Les Wexner. They had a fashion show that the whole theme was like children's bedtime stories. And it was weird. But at least, I mean, they had grownups who were wearing like kids clothes and carrying around like lollipops. I'm just like, what were you thinking about with this? So I don't know what to say about this.

I just can't understand how every single person who was involved in this, how no one raised their hand and said, you know what, guys, let's kill this. This is not right. This is not good. Yeah, I think what is really crazy, too, is that there are two separate ad campaigns. And one, as you said, clearly was directed by Balenciaga. I also have no reason, I think, at this point to not think that they thought it was going to be good because apparently part of their whole ad campaign is about forcing consumers to grapple with the meaning of, quote, taste. So they're constantly trying to push the boundary.

Be edgy, provocative, artsy, whatever. So you can see it in a pretentious fashion way, but I think involving children, that's sick and deranged. So look, I just think of the very basics. I think there needs to be a very thorough investigation by possibly a law enforcement entity. I really think there's a sick person who is involved with those papers. There is something going on. You don't just happen to place those papers there. Like that is some, it could be one, it could be some others who

clearly are getting their rocks off, like even thinking about it and trying to put it out in the public sphere, possibly trying to normalize it. And then at the executive level, I mean, look, I don't know exactly what's happening here, but at a basic child exploitation, like, you know, they very much could be, they could be, they could go after them for even putting kids in a situation like that, like they shouldn't – even the models themselves like should not be exposed to the sickness. So I don't have anything to say except for it's sick and I hope that somebody will listen to it. I think Kim's statement is kind of weak too. I mean she's clearly trying to sound the right notes here. I'm very concerned and this is disturbing.

I don't understand how this could have happened. But at the end she's like, yeah, I'm staying with him. We're evaluating our relationship. What is the point of being a billionaire if you can't say screw you to people who play footsie with pedophilia? Yeah. What is the point? I mean, to go back to our previous segment about crypto, she was one of the ones who was like actually called out by the SEC for pushing one of these scam crypto schemes that ultimately ends up completely collapsing. Of course, she gets paid in cash, so it doesn't matter to her what happens to all the people who ultimately invested in this pile of dog poo that ends up instantly collapsing. So

not a lot of scruples there. No, I really don't get it. You know, she is herself, she's a mom, she has multiple small kids. It's like, you should know better than anybody about how sick this is. And, you know, I don't know. I really don't know what to say. Let's get to a fun story. Is it, Tyler? It involves me personally. Well, I get to say it here, so, you know, it's not totally a loss on my side. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Cryptocurrency lender BlockFi has now filed for bankruptcy, the latest casualty in the crypto turmoil after FTX's collapse. Now, full disclosure, and I will get to the exact dollar amount I had, a sizable sum on BlockFi, of which I had long been a customer of theirs. And so this actually personally hurts. What BlockFi is like, where did they fit in the ecosystem? What did they actually do? It was, okay, so at its core, it was a trading platform. But the core innovation that the major

players, BlockFi, Gemini, and a few others had is their ability to pay very high interest on crypto assets. So the idea would be, and this is what some of us fell for, was that you could take an asset which is fully convertible to US dollars, like GUSD, Gemini, US dollar coin, pegged one-to-one. You could buy that. They would take your dollars and effectively loan it out as leverage for trading on its platform. Meantime, you had a token which was fully convertible, and they were paying you interest on that. So to make it- So you put your money in. Yeah. They go and make bets with it. They use your actual dollars to loan out. So if I wanted to make leveraged bets on their platform, I could do so. And I could take loans based on the value of my assets. Me as a customer,

why was I taking advantage of it? Well, the best way to think of it is essentially like a mega high interest banking account. As in, you show me a place in 2021, which is paying 9% interest on dollars. So that's what I was taking advantage of. Some of us didn't pull it out at the right moment. And it turns out that, well, FDIC exists for a reason, guys. Learn from my pain. It's basically like having money in the bank in the 1920s, during the crash of 29, when they're like, your money's not in the bank anymore. You're like, wait, what do you mean? Where is it? Yeah. So anyway, we invented a lot of capital controls on banks and regulations after the fact. This is essentially one of the reasons they were able to pay such high interest rates, is because they had such leverage and large bets being placed on the platform. It wasn't as egregious as FTX, but it was essentially

financial instrumentation that was being developed at a more sophisticated level for crypto as the asset prices went up. Well, and partly, and we'll get to this, they got in trouble with the SEC for not sort of acknowledging that these accounts and this money was basically securities. Yes. And so they had to pay, they had a massive settlement, $100 million, with the SEC over failing to fully disclose and register these accounts as securities, which was what they really were. Correct. And so let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, the Wall Street Journal piece,

which is what they point to. This shows you as well, the $30 million that you referenced. They still owe to the SEC. To owe to the SEC. What they point to actually in the journal Collapse is that this is all still linked to FTX. So there were two things existentially a problem for BlockFi. Number one was the overall downturn in crypto because, and this shows you really the fakery, which is they were using the asset price of the crypto highly volatile asset and then borrowing dollars based upon that. But then you essentially get margin

called when you have assets that are going to diminish in price by 300% or whatever over a period of one year. That was already a major blow to the company. But really what put them over the edge was FTX because they had a huge stake actually in FTX and many of the tokens that again, there were things being borrowed against the value of those tokens, which go to zero overnight. So this is FTX contagion. I mean, this was a multi-billion dollar company. It had a lot of assets. It now owes, it has 10 creditors, which it owes $1.2 billion to. Saga's not one of those. I will not be one of those. I wish I was in the top 10. I would not be one of those folks. But I do want to point out, and you found this article, let's put this Mother Jones piece up

on the screen, because this is important. There were a lot of people who were not filthy rich, who had money on these crypto exchanges. They wanted to invest, and they lost everything on FTX. And now a lot of people also lost everything that they had on BlockFi. And what they point to are really majority younger men, much like me, 25 to 30 years old, who saw these not only enormous returns, but really, you know, sophistication. Sorry, they saw people getting rich. They saw, you know, opportunities there that don't exist in traditional banking or even in equities markets. And they're like, hey, this is an opportunity to like jump ahead in line on the system. This is my opportunity to buy a house. And, you know, we could sit here and, you know, cry for the SEC to not get $30 million.

But it's a lot of guys who were trying to save up for a down payment. A mortgage who looked at this as their life-saving shot. And I'm not going to say, you know, it's been a crippling blow, although it's still pretty bad, for what I lost. But a lot of these guys, it was their actual life savings, which is gone, like six figures. Yeah, it's really sad. Yeah, I mean, you had people who really believed in the dream, who, you know, like a lot of young people are looking at the housing market, are feeling like I am never going to be able to afford to buy a house. They interviewed one guy who's trying to buy a home in his home city of Vancouver, which is one of the most expensive real estate markets

in the entire world. You know, and they thought, okay, this is an escape from the situation that I'm in right now. And they went all in. And they particularly in this article, why I thought it was important and why I thought it was interesting and why I thought it was sad is because they tie it directly to people who are trying to buy homes. And they have some numbers here from Redfin finding that one in nine first-time home buyers said that selling cryptocurrency helped them save for a down payment. Wow. 8.8% of buyers in the third quarter of 2020 claimed they had used crypto gains to buy their houses. So the number of people who were using crypto gains when the market was hot,

when it was going up and up and up, was steadily increasing. And it makes sense because, I mean, we cover here. You have to have a six-figure income now to afford the mortgage payment on your average American house. We've also covered how you need so much cash up front that basically if you aren't independently wealthy or you don't have parents who are going to give you a few hundred grand as your down payment, you're just screwed. And so I can totally understand how people saw this as like, okay, you know, I'm in this job. You know, maybe I'm doing okay in the job, but I can never imagine how I'm going to get off of this treadmill and actually be able to start to build some wealth and just have the basics of the American dream of the house. And so they, you know, they fall

for the rhetoric. They fall for the hype. They end up going all in. And it's really sad. It just is really sad. You know, they interviewed somebody here who, like, he hasn't told his wife yet. She didn't really know how much he had in. And they talked to somebody who normally was really on top of, like, moving what he had around and making sure that it wasn't going to get lost. But he, like, went out of town for a weekend. And in that time, FTX goes bankrupt. And you're just like, you're done. So the level of just pain that this caused. With FTX alone, you had over a million people who lost a huge amount of money. Some of it really significant to them.

Some of that they thought was going to be what really changed their life. And they were ultimately completely defrauded. Yeah. I mean, look, on a personal level, this is a good lesson. And let's put it up there on the screen. This is the exact dollar amount. It's $5,590. So I'll live, but, you know, it hurts.

And the reason that I did this was greed. I mean, let's be honest, which is at the time, there was no asset paying 9%. You know, like, you're looking at a company like this. You're like, hey, it can't go bankrupt. Like, how is that possible? It's a multibillion-dollar company. There's no way. What could go wrong? You're like, they're paying 9% interest. They're like how is that possible? It's a multi-billion dollar company. There's no way. What could go wrong?

You're like, they're paying 9% interest. They're like, there's no bank account on earth that's paying 9% interest. You don't want to put money in the equities. This was my thinking. I was like, well, you don't want to put money in the S&P 500 because that's volatile. You're like, that could go up and down. It's got 20-something percent. It's down 14%.

You're like, this is safe. You're just sitting there. It's your cash. You're just earning interest on that. I wasn't doing any crazy leverage. But look, that's a good lesson that these FDIC and other institutions, they exist for a reason. Very painful lessons that we all had to learn in the 1920s. And yeah, I mean, I think I have a micro-collar.

I didn't put my life savings in there. Although at the time when I invested all that, that was a lot of money for me. And that was one of those important, this is an important lesson to see. You're like, wow, like these, the trust in the institutions and like, you know, you buy into, oh, well, it's a regulated company, right? Like even though they had their fine on the FCC, they had billions of dollars on platform, you know, all this is all fake. It literally dried up overnight. It's gone. Because it's ultimately built on nothing. Yeah. I mean, crypto is not pegged to anything. It's not pegged to anything. I mean, it's literally just an invented currency. And I know people say, well, so is fiat currency. Yeah. But the American dollar is backed by the

American government. Like it's a thing. We have an army. We have a Federal Reserve. We have a treasury. We have a whole lot of people, like, paying taxes. There's a lot of stuff there. And you can use a dollar to buy goods and services, which never came to fruition in any real way with crypto. So the whole thing could sustain as long as you had people believing in the dream and getting more people in and more people in. And as long as you had people believing in the dream and getting more people in and more people in. And as long as the balloon kept inflating, it was fine. But then the minute that, and this was, you know, this was part of what exposed that some of the rhetoric around this wasn't true. You know, the crypto was the first thing to collapse on the market, start to turn south. And that's counter to some of the rhetoric in the community. And so the minute

that the air starts to come out of that balloon, it's just domino after domino after domino and this being, sadly, the latest one. Sorry, Sagar. Let's go. It's all right. Look, again, it's one of those things where it's a lesson. At least I get to share it with everybody here.

So don't fall for the easy schemes. And I have seen- Some things are too good to be true. I mean, it does come down to that, right? It was too good to be true. I was like, I couldn't believe, I cannot believe it's paying like 8% or 9% interest. Like, this is nuts. And I was like, wait. So it's like, you don't even have to risk it. You just put it in there and you get your interest on your money. Look, I got lucky. 2017, I bought Bitcoin. Even where it is right now, I was a long-awaited believer in this. It was one of those things where it's like,

you literally couldn't exist outside of the, in the equities markets. So I fell for the hype just like everybody else. And anyway, it's a painful reminder, but at least I get to share it with all you fine people. Let's go to the next part. Elon actually said something very interesting of which I will personally be paying a lot of attention to. He was replying to a tweet where he says, the obvious reality, as longtime users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust and safety for a very long time and has, quote, interfered in elections. Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent, and even-handed. Now, I have a lot of questions about what interfered in election means. There's a lot of different

ways to read that. You could read it as colloquial, as banning the Hunter Biden laptop story has implications under elections, most likely. That's what he means. However, what I'm really interested in is DHS and specifically state government cooperation with Twitter's teams that we may not even know of. What is banned? What is not? What is considered misinformation? After Ken's great scoop, which he broke and talked about here on our show the day of, the amount of cooperation happening between the national security agencies and the major social media companies on what's considered misinformation or not is far deeper than any of us even know. So while I am very sympathetic to the argument about banning the Hunter Biden laptop story

is election interference, I actually do think it's true. How you regulate and all of that is a much bigger question. It could go a lot deeper than that in terms of what the Twitter files could show us. Look, it's probably hopium on my part, but I would really like to see what exactly that entails. Yeah, same. It also comes on the heels of a new blog post published by Twitter, which I think is very interesting because this has to remain consistent, again, what we talked about with both European, US, and other country standards. Put it up there. He says, Twitter 2.0, our continued commitment to the public conversation.

Twitter's mission is to promote and protect the public conversation, to be the town square of the internet. We have always understood to reach this goal, we must give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Today, we are a new company embarking on a new chapter. Our steadfast commitment to that mission has not changed. We have always understood that our business and revenue are interconnected with our mission. Brand safety is only possible when human safety is the top priority. All of this remains true today. This is the interesting part. What has changed, however, is our approach to experimentation. As you have seen, Twitter is embracing public testing. We believe this will

open and transparent approach to innovation is healthy. We believe that as a service of this importance, we will benefit from feedback at scale. We do this work to improve Twitter for our customers, partners, and the people who use it across the world. So the reason why this is important is it's trying to balance, Crystal, the free speech element. But when you continue to read, it's actually more of a message to advertisers. It says, we want to assure you, none of our policies have changed. Our troughed and safety team continues this diligent work to keep a platform safe from hateful conduct. When urgent events manifest on the platform, we ensure all 10 content moderators have the guidance they need

to address violative content. As we improve, bad actors will also develop new methods. They're like, we're working on this. Finally, we will make mistakes. We will learn. So I think this is both trying to balance as an official statement of company policy, free speech, but also to the advertisers being like, no, we do have some of this under control. I read this. Fundamental tension. I read this also as a memo to European regulators because like we were saying before,

one of the things that the European regulators are apparently concerned about is the sort of haphazard approach to who's banned and who's unbanned. And so what he's trying to say here is like, nothing's really changed. They do throw in this line. I thought this was the most significant line

where they say what has changed is our approach to experimentation. As you've seen, Twitter's embracing public testing. We believe this open and transparent approach to innovation is healthy, blah, blah, blah. So they're trying to say like, oh, the Twitter polls and the various things that we try, this is just a little bit of experimentation. But overall, our policies are consistent with what you have allowed in the past. European regulators was how I read that anyway. Yeah, I think you're probably correct. There's also another interesting point that came out last night. Let's put it up there on the screen. There was a meeting between Tim Cook and Elon yesterday. Elon actually tweeted out a video of getting a tour of the Apple campus. He says,

quote, good conversation amongst other things. We resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store. Tim was very clear. Apple never considered doing so. So a little personal diplomacy on the part of Tim Cook. It's kind of interesting. I talked previously about that book, Super Pumped, that I read. Tim was actually very involved and does actually get involved at the App Store level with major companies.

He actually called Travis Kalanick in when he was the CEO of Uber to have him explain himself on how Uber could remain on the platform. But clearly, Tim Cook saw it as one of those things that has to be really nipped in the bud. I will say this about Tim Cook. As a diplomat, he is one of the best to ever have a job. Oh, absolutely. There's a book I read, blanking on the name,

by a guy from the New York Times called Apple After Steve Jobs. It's kind of a sad story because the point is that Apple really stopped innovating at the very highest level with new products, but they quadrupled their stock price and revenue because they started looking at it as a platform, as a service on which you can continue to upsell customers and lock people into the ecosystem. Tim Cook is like that business manager, squeezing value out of the value that's been created. But also as a diplomat, like his personal diplomacy with Xi Jinping, with Trump, he played Trump like a complete fiddle to make sure that Apple was not impacted by any Chinese tariffs. And also, you know, at a business level, anytime he sees a potential threat to the brand, like about being censorship and all that, he always skates in. Well, I'm disappointed by this outcome because personally, again, I found it useful.

It is useful. Along being at war with Apple because, remember, we had a great conversation about, like, this is a monopoly. That's why a monopoly is bad. And here's the exorbitant fees that they're charging and, like, capricious decision-making that's totally non-transparent. They put these companies through the paces, and nobody should have this much control. So I'm a little disappointed at this resolution. Personally, I liked the two of them being in war. The point is that he's a good diplomat because he doesn't want anybody to know what's going on.

He doesn't want to have that conversation, does he? He didn't like those news stories, so he's found a way to move beyond it. Correct. This is an iHeart Podcast.