Offline with Jon Favreau - The Episode China Doesn’t Want You to Hear

Episode Date: January 19, 2025

The Supreme Court is the latest branch of government to kicktok TikTok to the curb—at least under its present Chinese ownership. Max and Jon break down what may happen to the app over the next few days and explain how a newly inaugurated President Trump could change its fate. Until then, Americans are fleeing the presumed CCP-controlled platform for an explicitly CCP-controlled platform: RedNote. The guys wade through the online takes and discuss whether the TikTok ban is actually a violation of First Amendment rights, why Mark Zuckerberg’s MAGAfication might be related to TikTok’s demise and how Joe Biden incorporated Offline talking points into his farewell address. 

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After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Invest in the health and longevity of your skin with Oneskin. Your future self we sent you. Invest in the health and longevity of your skin with OneSkin. Your future self will thank you. Now you know who's not doing a lot of e-commerce on Red Note, the Dalai Lama. No, but you know what? I would buy some merch.

I would buy some merch from the Lama. I would subscribe to his Patreon. I would me and the CIA For that patreon. No, I'm kidding That's there there's a long-running tik-tok meme that the Dalai Lama is funded by this. He's a CIA op Which goes to show you how crazy is the people think tik-tok is Chinese propaganda. That's so wacky Very weird and before you yell at me. Yes. I know that the CA was involved in Tibet many decades ago, please don't send me messages about this. Definitely send them. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Max Fisher. So Max, have you joined Red Note yet? Well Jon, to

that I would say, zu shi師萬歲,小黃酥. Which means? Which means, may Red Note live for 10,000 years. Welcome back, everyone. Welcome to Offline, sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party. As we always have been. Sign on to CCP.CN slash crooked for your discount. Don't forget all your data.

There is so much to cover this week. Oh my god. Like literally just right up until the moment we started recording there's more news. There's news breaking this second. So Max and I are going to spend the show combing through it all, including President Biden's parting warning about the tech-industrial complex, the growing list of tech oligarchs

set to attend Trump's inauguration on Monday. And Max and I are going to talk about the current state of the internet and social media as we head into another Trump administration tomorrow, if you're listening to this on Sunday. But first, this morning, Friday, January 17th, when we were recording this, the United States Supreme Court,

in a unanimous ruling, nine, zero. You don't see a lot of those. Upheld the lower court's decision to allow the nationwide TikTok ban to proceed. That means that on Sunday, January 19th, the day this episode airs, the TikTok ban will officially take effect. If you're confused about what this means, so is everyone else. But here's our best idea of what the ban will look like.

Theoretically, users should still be able to access TikTok. The law does not require the app to immediately go dark. It just bars US app stores from distributing, maintaining, or updating the app, allowing TikTok to slowly fizzle out. However, people familiar with TikTok's plans told Reuters that as of Wednesday, TikTok planned to shutter its US operations after the ban goes into effect, and that users attempting to open the app would see a pop-up message directing them to a website with information about the ban. Once again, we're recording this on Friday afternoon,

so we do not know what TikTok will have decided to do with the app by the again, we're recording this on Friday afternoon. So we do not know what TikTok will have decided to do with the app by the time you're listening to this. But it also seems like the Biden administration after saying, well, there's nothing we can do about this. The band's going to go into effect is now saying they're not going to enforce the band in the like day between, you know, the band Biden leaving and Trump coming in. So we don't know. We don't know. But the best way to see what's become of TikTok on Sunday is to open the app on your phone. Or don't. Or let someone else open on their phone. On their phone. Yeah.

As long as you don't have any shared contacts. Unless you just want to just give your phone to the Chinese Communist Party. Which we kind of are. And maybe everyone else in the world. But we'll see. Let's rewind a little bit and talk about the reaction to the TikTok ban, which has been chill. Sure.

As the ban quickly approached this week, TikTok users, especially those with large followings, very publicly went through all the stages of grief. There was also a conspiratorial undertone about exactly why this ban came to pass. Here's a viral TikTok from a prominent user called Soupy Time. Fascist countries ban apps. Fascist countries ban websites.

Fascist countries ban apps and websites under the guise of threats to national security. If TikTok goes dark, the government deliberately and knowingly took away your free speech. Do not accept national security for an answer ever. Tick tock. Tick tock. Hey, that's nice. Tick tock noise at the end there.

That's the sound of your brain melting. Max, how would you respond to TikTokers and constitutional scholars like Soopi? So initially I felt a little bit iffy about like, how much should we really like unload on this kind of thing? Because like, you know, you heard Soopi, they're just like a young person in their bedroom and it's like, is it punching down? We talked about like, does it feel bad? And then I looked at Suppy times Paige and she has 5.2 million subscribers.

That would make her larger than the second largest loong paper in America, twice the size of the Washington Post. And you know, with great power comes a great responsibility. So I think given that, I mean, this video has 12 million views, there are tons of videos like this that are- We should also note that Supe does not usually discuss politics, news, government, like on her,

just so people know, it's not like that Supe is where you go on TikTok to find out about current events or anything like that, but she felt so strongly about the band that she decided to say this. And the platform, of course, flattens that experience. You see this video and many others like it in your feed telling you that the government is doing a fascism

and trying to censor your free speech, so that's the message that you're getting, and I think it's fair to interrogate people who have that scale of a platform and say, are they telling you the truth or not? And also this is just representative of how TikTok works and the kind of news and information that it gives you. You might've noticed there were no facts in that video.

There was no evidence provided. There was no, you know, here's what happened. There was no interrogation of like actual reality. It was just kind of like emotion and rage. but I do think that it is worth taking... Authoritarian governments, I don't know about fascists, but authoritarian governments do shut down apps. Yes. The China, for example, doesn't allow TikTok. Right, I know, I know.

To operate within China. A fact that I think would blow a lot of brains, or people's brains if they get... So, but let's, I think we should take this seriously because I think reasonable people could be coming to this and thinking like, wait, isn't this bad? Why are they shutting down this app and not the other apps? Like, is this national security stuff real? So let's like, there's some like counterpoints

that we can go through, but like let's ask at a fundamental level, why did they pass this law? Is it to censor speech on TikTok? And I think that there are a few pretty good indicators. The answer to that is no. Number one, if they were passing this law to try to shut down speech on TikTok, to censor TikTok because they don't like what people are saying, they did a bad job with that because

the law does not require shutting down TikTok. All it requires is that the Chinese owners divest to a US-based owner, which ByteDance, TikTok's owner, declined to do. They said, we don't want to do that, or the Chinese government specifically vetoed that. So TikTok could continue publishing all of this information,

they're just choosing not to sell to a US owner, even though they would get 50 to $100 billion for that. Another big data point- It's a flag. Right, that's a flag. Call that a flag. That tells you something for that. Another big data point... It's a flag. Right, that's a flag. Call that a flag. That tells you something, yeah. Another big data point is that the government did this exact same thing

five years ago to Grindr. Grindr, which is, you know, a hookup app, is owned or was owned by a Chinese company, and the exact same thing, they passed a law saying you have to divest the US owners on the exact same grounds, and Grindr did that. Now, was Grindr educating the masses on the exact same grounds and Grindr did that. Now, was Grindr educating the masses on the evils of US imperialism? I don't know that it was

necessarily. So it's hard to say that they shut down Grindr for that reason. So if it's the same law with the same motivations, I don't know if you can extend that. As you mentioned, China banned TikTok. The sponsors of this legislation, including the Biden administration, have said it's for spying and misinformation concerns. And the evidence that they have marshaled for this that is publicly available, which is all by the way that the Supreme Court considered, they made a big point of saying we are not going to even look at the evidence that the Biden administration gave us that they sealed for national security reasons.

We don't think that should be the basis for this kind of law. TikTok gathers so much of your data off of your phone that if you so much as have an email contact in your life who has TikTok, even if you do not have TikTok yourself, TikTok has all of your data. They have your name, your photo, your phone number, they have your contacts. Chinese law requires TikTok to hand over that information to the government and you would never know if they did. Chinese law also requires TikTok to do whatever China says they have to do with the algorithm. Now, you might believe reasonable people could conclude that is not sufficient reason to force by dance to divest TikTok for national security reasons, but it is pretty clearly their motivation.

So I am pretty persuaded that's why they did it and not to censor people's speech. Tick-tock lost almost every single argument it made before the court. Again, this is a court that has agreed 9-0. You got Sam Alito. You got Sotomayor saying sure. Gotanju Brown Jackson and Clarence Thomas on the same page here. Again, it was, I don't think any legislation has passed the last Congress

with such overwhelming bipartisan majorities as this has. And I don't know if you noticed, but we're in a time of intense polarization where the parties tend to not agree on much that they even have agreed on in the past and somehow this got through. Like you said, in addition to not just giving all of your data to the Chinese government, but also any emails or any contacts in your phone

that didn't even have tech talk right so now Chinese government Which is an adversary yeah of the United States. I'll spell use that word. Yeah Yeah, I think they would use that word it really they would produce that word now They have what name phone number emails for like a hundred and seventy million plus Americans who are using tick-tock plus People in their contacts. Sure. A lot of people. TikTok also gathers data that includes the content of their users private messages. Yep. Which a lot of other apps don't do. Right.

So again, you can look at all that and be like, I don't care. Right? Like I don't care if Xi Jinping and the CCP have all that stuff. Right. Fine. But the US government, which is charged with, among other things, protecting national security in the United States, it's certainly something that they,

you know, it's in their, it's in their value book. Yeah. Right? That's in their purview. Yes, right. To do something like this. And the way our democratic system works is that, you know, we elect people, they make laws, we have courts, the courts determine the laws, so like that,

that's what happened here. Right. No conspiracy, you can disagree with it, absolutely. Sure, sure. And there are pros and cons to this, right? We've talked about it ad nauseam on this show many times. But it's not, there's no conspiracy here. Well, let's go through a few of the big objections

that people raise to this. And I think like reasonable objections that people might have, because I think they are worth talking through and like helpful to hear the background on. A big one that I think is especially relevant to the data privacy concerns is like, why should I care about TikTok harvesting my data

or manipulating me when US-owned social media companies are just as bad? Like, doesn't this prove that there's some sort of double standard here when the US government will go after a foreign-owned social media company and not the US-owned social media companies? And the answer to that is that they are going and not the US owned social media companies. And the answer to that is that they are going after the US owned social media companies very, very aggressively.

They are regulated. It's just that because they are owned by Americans, the legal avenues for that are different. Instead of just passing a law and saying you have to divest, you have to go through regulatory agencies, you have to go through Congress. That is something that they started on like basically day one of the Biden administration and these huge Regulatory cases have been moving their way through the system you and Lena con talked about a really really big one coming to fruition Against matter. So if you look at it and saying why why are they just targeting tick-tock? They're not just targeting tick-tock But also I think there is a difference between

Some tech oligarch billionaire and their company, what we're about to say. Finding out, having all your data so that they can feed you ads and sell you more shit. Invasive, not great for sure. And I don't know, a foreign adversary having all the data and flying a drone over your house in wartime. Yeah. Or knowing location data for our government officials and our spies and a whole bunch of... It's just...

The reason we have laws about foreign-owned companies is for this very reason. And it's not because we are all nativist and we don't like foreigners. Right. It is for governments, not countries, but governments that are adversaries of the United States. Right. Which it's, this is the world.

That's what happens. There are governments that are adversaries. And I think that speaks to another objection that I hear from people, which is like, hey, isn't it, isn't it kind of messed up or authoritarian to ban foreign ownership of a company like this? And the answer I always give to that is it's actually extraordinarily common across democracies around the world

to regulate foreign ownership of media companies because the media is so important to just the national functioning. We are just less familiar with it as Americans because our media companies are so globally dominant that we rarely have to do it. But like Canada has a ton of laws in the books regulating foreign ownership of their media companies. It's just like a normal thing to do that is done for like non-authoritarian reasons all the time.

And I think like the big argument against this that you hear from like people like Soupy Time or a lot of people on TikTok or like there was a slate piece just making this point, which is something like people like Soupy Time or a lot of people on TikTok or like there was a slate piece just making this point, which is something like people saying something, some version of I learned about things on TikTok that feel really important and meaningful to me. And I don't like that the government is taking away. And I don't really care if the reason is good or is not good.

I just don't think it's good that the government is taking away my access to that information. And my answer to that is that I know it might feel like if your only news source is social media, that it's giving you raw, real good information, but you are being misinformed. Just full stop. You are being misinformed. You are being manipulated. That is what social media does. That is how social media algorithms are designed to operate. They're designed to manipulate your emotions. They're designed to addict you. Also, you're being misinformed about the fact

that that's your only choice. Exactly, right. Which is a big, you know, like, there are plenty of different outlets around the world that can show you what is going on in Gaza, for example, that are not TikTok. Gaza is always the one I hear. And it makes me crazy because I hear so many people who I know

never read the news say in the last couple of years, you know, I never understood what was happening in Israel-Palestine until I heard about it on TikTok and I fucking spent 10 years of my life writing about it, trying to get people to care. I know so many people who like risked their lives reporting on this conflict, trying to get people to care and I know so many people who like risk their lives Reporting on this conflict trying to get people to care and I am sympathetic that it's we can't all keep up with everything And if you learned about it for the first time in a tik-tok video, okay, that's good I'm not blaming you care right right You're reporting on this but the idea that it only exists on tick-tock. We're just telling you it doesn't But all of those videos you saw where it's like the mainstream media

will never tell you this thing about Gaza. I swear to you the information in that video is ganged probably word for word from a fucking New York Times story that ran that morning. It is just like it's become a punchline with like every reporter I know that you pull up any viral video. We all get sent these viral videos and it's like why don't you and the media you're such liars and propagandists you won't tell us this and it's like, why don't you and the media, you're such liars and propagandists, you won't tell us this. And it's like, well, that's literally a story we published that some influencer repackaged to addict you to try to sell you,

you know, oh, you should only listen to me, don't listen to mainstream media. All of which is to say that folks like these big TikTok users who we are talking about, I understand that it might feel to you like this vital source of information is being taken away. It is not. It is an app that is designed to manipulate and addict you while you're sitting on your sofa with infotainment and endless infinite scroll viral videos and to feel like it's giving you vital information

to keep you scrolling because it gives you a little emotional boost. And if what you care about is being informed, that is amazing. There are so many much better ways to do that. And I will say this is all on the consuming news and information on TikTok side of this. I also have a lot of empathy for the creators on TikTok who make a living on TikTok who are thinking, I don't have anything to

do with news politics. No propaganda can flow through my TikToks because I'm just doing makeup tutorials or I'm doing, you know, selling whatever. Nothing wrong with that. Right. And it is tough that those people have built up their own businesses, essentially, or trying to make a living. And then it sort of yanked out from under them, right?

I think it was interesting Chuck Schumer made that point on the floor of the Senate. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm sure he knew exactly what he was talking about. It was kind of funny to hear him talking about our influencers who need to keep their following when he's making his case for keeping TikTok. I'm sure that was like a direct,

like someone on the staff, the influencers came in. It was probably not Chuck Schumer. They sat with the LA, the LA was like, hey boss, met with some creators. Which great, that's democracy. And it's to your point that there's a lot of people who do derive their income from this. And again, that's why it's a shitty situation and it's not easy.

And I think ideally you would want to figure out a way for a lot of those people to make a living on another video sharing app that was not controlled by a foreign government who does not wish us well. Or by Dan's Consult. Right. Or by Dan's Consult. There's a reason that was the first choice in the legislation. Offline is brought to you by Vaya. Did the holiday season mess with your routine?

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After you purchase, they ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you again. via.co.offline. Use code OFFLINE. This year, enhance your everyday with Viya. Many TikTok users, furious at the ban and looking for a way to punish US regulators, downloaded and joined Xiaohongshu, a social media app popular in China

that is better known by its English name, Red Note. As of taping, Red Note was the number one app on the Apple app store. Lots to unpack here, Max. Could you explain a little bit about what kind of app Red Note is? Tell us a bit about how TikTok users who joined the app have reacted to it. I believe you may have some tweets to share. Oh, I do. I do.

So I thought it was funny in telling that all these people migrated to Red Note because they heard on TikTok that Red Note is the Chinese TikTok, and that is just not correct. So it's just your standard misinformation. It's more of an Instagram-Pinterest combo. It is usually described as an Instagram-Pinterest combo. It is geared around e-commerce more so than viral videos, which is actually like the Chinese app economy Start is built around e-commerce. Whereas ours is built around advertising kind of interesting difference. Yeah It is subject to Chinese online censorship rules because it is an app that exists on the other side of the great firewall

It exists in the Chinese internet. That means that you know who's not doing a lot of e-commerce on red note the Dalai Lama That means that you know who's not doing a lot of e-commerce on red note the Dalai Lama No, but you know what I would buy some merch yeah, I would buy some rich from the Lamma I Would I would subscribe to his patreon I would me me and the CIA For that patreon no I'm kidding that sir There's a long-running a long running TikTok meme that the Dalai Lama is funded by. He's a CIA op, which goes to show you how crazy is the people think TikTok is Chinese propaganda. That's so wacky.

And before you yell at me, yes, I know that the CIA was involved in Tibet many decades ago, please don't send me messages about this. Definitely send them. Anyway, so because it is subject to Chinese censorship rules, the way that censorship works in China is that these companies have private moderators, but they just get rules every day from the Chinese government. And they censor news stories, they censor political commentary, what words you're allowed to use, they pick which hashtags, they will just mute them constantly or block them if

they don't like them. They censor a ton of history. It bars anything that the government deems to, quote, disrupt social order or undermine social stability. And a lot of the new Red Note users are learning very quickly that that includes a blanket ban in China on any expression of any LGBTQ identity whatsoever, which is just the tip of the iceberg of the censorship there, but is something you hit up against very quickly. Tellingly, Chinese officials are already ordering Red Note to block Chinese users from seeing any posts by these new US users. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. Which again tells you about China's wonderful commitment to free speech, unlike the American imperialists. Okay. Some tweets. They are on Xiaohongxu debunking the Uighur Muslim concentration camp myth. like the American imperialists. Okay, some tweets. They're on Xiao Hongxu debunking the Uyghur Muslim concentration camp myth. Oh my God, State Department down five million.

That has a- What does the State Department down five million mean at the end of that? I've seen that tweet go around and I don't understand what that means. So I think the implication is that I saw on the news that China is doing a cultural genocide of the Uighur?

Minority therefore it must be State Department propaganda therefore I saw a video that says this human rights abuse isn't happening while State Department owned And someone responded. Yep. I met a girl here in the States was from China. She told me it's all eyes Well, that's good enough for me Someone posted a thread on red note between Chinese and US users. Some of these threads are kind of charming. They're kind of fun. Having cultural contact like this is great and is a wonderful thing.

A Chinese user asked American users, why do you get both weekend days off and you don't have to work overtime? And an American user responded, you know, you could consider forming a union and maybe go on strike to protest. Not something you can do in China. No, they will kill you. There's one more where American Red Note users, TikTok refugees, asked some Chinese users about this rule that you're not allowed to express LGBTQ identities on any Chinese social app. And someone responded, no discrimination, no encouragement, no publicity.

LGBT is an ordinary person. And all the American users responded, and these are the woke TikTokers, wow, love this answer. This is how it should be. Best answer ever. See, that's wisdom right there. That was a good answer.

Wish this was the norm. Damn, crystal clear, exactly what I want to say. So some people are just not very bright, I think, is what's happening here. So this is a person on Blue Sky who was sort of reporting on all the American TikTok refugees going on Red Note, their interactions with the Red Note users from China. Right. And I'm just going to start halfway down the thread here, very long thread on Blue Sky. It says, and all the Americans are so touched by how kind, welcoming, and generous

the Red Note users have been with their time and hospitality. And so Americans started diving into actual Red Note content, grocery hauls, recipes, day in the life, et cetera. And they're confused because the US government has spent 30 years telling us how horrible China is, but their groceries are cheap, high quality, and plentiful. They're eating lobster and crab on a Monday at lunch not an anniversary dinner Their jobs provide incredible varied healthy lunches and an hour to eat them their street style and fashion is impeccable

Their health care is provided their public transport is cheap clean and widely available One big thing on red note is getting recommendations on where to eat breakfast which can be had for a dollar Americans are like OMG. we're the poor ones. So I will say street fashion in Beijing and Shanghai, it's no fucking joke. Oh, I know. It's cool. No, I know that.

Yeah, the premise of all of this is like, wow, we're undoing American propaganda by finding out that Chinese people are cool. What are you talking about? Who said that? Nobody has ever said that. Also, do you not think, imagine an authoritarian government is doing bad things and has total control over the government and social media apps? And the images are positive. It's shocking. Do you not think that they would make sure that the bad

stuff doesn't slip through? I know. That's the whole thing. Right. You're not saying the poverty on, and I don't want this to be like. We have all failed. That's all I'm saying. No, I'm not. That's why I don't want to pick on this. This is a collective failure in the United States, in the education system, in what other

generations have done and not done for younger generations, the social media apps, the everything we've talked about on this show, the government, just all across. No one's hands are clean here. I do keep, I keep seeing videos like this, comments, these posts, and I keep having the reaction, oh, this is just someone who, and I swear I'm not saying this to beat up on people or to be derogative.

These are people who have never read a newspaper or a book or Wikipedia article. Now that has, it has always been true that lots of people don't consume the news. That's, you know, I wish they did, but that doesn't mean they're bad people. But what's happening now is we have this weird information environment where the entertainment app also purports to be a news app. And now if you're on Red Note, it purports to be a cross-cultural encounter app. So the low information people in the United States now think that they are getting news, but it's just this weird stuff that's bubble wrapped for them on their viral video app. And again, you're completely forgiven.

I don't know everything about the Chinese government, Chinese politics. I am not even close to an expert on that. There's plenty of things in history that I should brush up on that I don't know that maybe I learned once. So it's not like, but when you don't know something about history or a foreign government,

you should not just go to a social media video sharing app, be it for and owned or not, for information. And this goes back to the fact that we are just flooded with the take to fact ratio everywhere in our information environment is way fucking off. And we say this as a take company here. It's a take podcast, right? But like- Takes are part of the media diet.

Takes are part of the media diet, and that's fine. It's just like every other food group, right? It's good to have your portion of takes, but like there's gotta be facts places, and there's gotta be agreed upon facts, and there's gotta be history that we don't rewrite. That is like just what happened, you know? And it's trouble.

It's a good illustration of how social media works to hook you and then misinforms you in the process of like, the like Red Note refugee take that is going to go viral is the one that says, hey, if you move from TikTok to Red Note, it means that you were destroying American imperialism and you were actually a brave radical revolutionary who was like breaking the bonds of war and conflict in our world.

And that's not true, but it's going to go viral because it feels really good. It's very emotionally affirming. So you're going to mass retweet on it. The most effective misinformation is not the information is the information that confirms your beliefs. Yes. Right. Even if it's if it's wrong, right? Not that's not the information that you're like, wait, beliefs. Yes. Right. Even if it's wrong. Right.

Not the information that you're like, wait, that seems false. Right. And I mean, it's something that, I think this is true of the, like, they're getting rid of TikTok because they want to censor our speech. That is something that really enables you as a TikTok user.

So of course, it's going to be cognitively more attractive to you, so you're going to be more primed to believe it. Then it's like, well, they're getting rid of it for these national security reasons that maybe you do or do not agree with. We'll be right back before we jump to break. Some quick housekeeping. As we've mentioned, we set up a disaster relief fund

to benefit people impacted by the horrific wildfires here in Los Angeles. Super easy for you to make one donation that's split among incredible charities doing really important work for our neighbors and friends. As of recording Pods of America on Thursday, we had raised almost $200,000. You have raised almost $200,000.

You've donated almost $200,000. The folks at the LA Food Bank reached out to someone on our team to say that there's been like 150,000 meals, basically, just based on the donations through the Boats of America Relief Fund. They're really grateful and happy, and they're getting all kinds of donations right now from tons of different people. But it's really helpful. So thank you for all you've done and keep it up.

It's votesaveamerica.com slash relief. Also this week on Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams. Check it out. We mentioned in this episode the Zuckerberg getting rid of DEI. Stacey is gonna take on DEI programs and what's going on with it. She has NYU law professor Kenji Yoshino to talk to tackle the myths, legal arguments, and share why DEI isn't the problem, it's the solution. Tune into this episode now on the assembly required feed.

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we do have some good news for you. The Washington Post has reported that President-elect Trump is considering an executive order that would suspend enforcement of the ban for 60 to 90 days. That provision is already in the law that you can, that the government can extend by 60 to 90 days if there is a deal in the offing. And so this would buy the administration time to negotiate a sale repeal the ban or find an alternative solution and Lo and behold the tick-tock CEO will be sitting behind Trump at the inauguration And also to talk is sponsoring a party at Trump's inauguration. Again, just total coincidence. Yep and of course

Trump's incoming national security advisor went on Trump's favorite program, Fox and Friends. Again a program that you know gives us defense secretaries and other cabinet members. And he did say there that Trump wants to figure out a deal to save TikTok. How many days do you think until Trump figures this out? So do you think he's going to, he's going to save it? Yes. Really? Yes.

I, so I think that's interesting. I want to hear him. He's going to save it. I have a whole, yeah, this, this is to me, the ultimate triumph of populism and the ultimate failure of our institutions. And I will go off on that in a minute. Okay, that's why I do what it, so I think that obviously he's sending a lot of signals

that he wants to save it, inviting the chief of TikTok to sit at the dais at the inauguration. Mark Zuckerberg is also going to be at the dais and we're going to talk more about the Zuckerberg stuff, but like one of his big asks to Trump and one of the reasons he, Mark Zuckerberg is going full MAGA is he really wants Trump to ban TikTok because he will far and away be the number one beneficiary

that his Instagram Reels is their main competitor. So I think that what he is going to do here, regardless of where he ultimately lands, he wants to draw this out. He wants to put Zuckerberg and the TikTok chief right there and implicitly tell them by putting them there and by having this big will I or won't I say, whoever does the most corrupt favors for me, whoever engineers your platform to be the most pro-maga,

whoever throws me, funnels the most money to my hotels, I'm gonna make the decision in your favor. And it's pretty canny to have this kind of corruption bidding war between tick-tock and meta I think from Trump's point of view the man He's a simple mind

Successful one. Yeah. Yeah, and he likes to do what's popular and Being a China hawk, particularly on economic issues for him. He's not like as much of a China military hawk as like his new secretary of state Marco Rubio and some other people in his administration and many Republicans, but he is a sort of an economic, you know, he's, we're gonna do all the terrorists, right? But he knows that railing against China

and China screwing us over is quite popular politically. He also now knows that the TikTok ban is unpopular and he knows that he did quite well with young people and he knows and has been told at least that now TikTok is not just proof that young people like him but a place for him to get his message out and the other thing he loves is having places in this information environment to get his message out. And the other thing he loves is having places in this information environment to get his message out. He loves a good propaganda machine.

He does seem to have taken the message TikTok likes Trump. And if TikTok likes Trump, then Trump likes TikTok. And you know, who's been telling him that message is I'm sure Kellyanne Conway, lobbyist for TikTok, also counselor to Donald Trump. And I don't think you have to imagine anything more nefarious than Kellyann thinking, this is my client and all I have to do with Trump is be like, they like you, they really like you. And he's like, cool. That's great.

So I think what he'll do is either one of the, he can do two things. One, um, his incoming attorney general, if she's confirmed Pam Bondi, she could just, uh, decline to enforce the ban. Now that only lasts you through the Trump administration because then the next AG could just enforce the ban. Or, and I believe it was Casey Newton who called this one when the law first passed, is that Trump could, the law allows for the president to decide what divesting actually means. And yeah, it's like very broad in the provision in the law.

So it could mean selling one of their offices. So the deal could be not what we're thinking, right? Which is the whole 20 billion, whatever it's worth. It could be like selling some portion of TikTok off and then Trump can say, I did it, it's divested. And now TikTok goes, Trump saved TikTok, everyone cheered Trump. And then he'll go saber-addle to China anyway, because he doesn't really care.

And it's a defeat for our institutions because they're the ones who are supposed to be looking out for our goodwill, regardless of what's popular moment to moment. It's so perfectly encapsulates how bad we fucked everything up in this country. Which is that like, even on this issue where conservative Republicans,

liberal Democrats in Congress, originally Donald Trump when he was president and his administration, then Joe Biden and his administration, this Supreme Court of all Supreme Courts, the most political Supreme Court, 9-0. Every institutional center of power in this country is like, hey everyone, we're all coming together

to say that we must do this. And just doesn't explain it. That's the other failure, right? Doesn't communicate it in a way that most people understand because our institutions know that they are right, but don't think that they have to explain why they are right.

You don't think they sold it? No. I don't think they sold it at all. How much of that do you think is because of the- We know about it because we do this for Olympic. How much of that do you think is specific to like Joe Biden is maybe not not himself someone who could say, go on the morning shows?

I don't think any member of Congress was out there that persuasively on this issue. And I think they all are used to doing, especially people in the national security apparatus, are used to doing this whole thing where it's like, trust us, we've seen the intel, we know. Now, oftentimes, they are right. But why should they expect people to believe them? And we're in a situation

where trust in our institutions is so low, and all the people in our institutions can do is be like, no, no, no, no, trust us. And they're not making their case. And so the most sort of base kind of populism, which is what we're getting now from people who are misinformed on social media, addicted to these apps, is like, hey, sure, this seems conspiratorial that they're taking this away from me. And all you need is a demagogue like Trump

to come around and be like, the people are right, and I'm with the people. And all these people are like, yeah, Mr. Trump. You get it. Look, I hear all of that is true. I hear all of that. I do think a lot of it, just to my mind, does come back to the social media ecosystem.

Just to think of one example, someone in the Biden administration, who I certainly feel has done a lot to sell their policies. Lena Conn of the FTC, she was on the show, she's been doing this huge media tour, she's everywhere, which is like unusual for the FTC chair, not someone who you usually hear from. And I like, you know, when we were talking earlier about like, yes, they are trying to regulate US social media companies who are doing all these cases. I can't tell you how many people I talk to who are really smart, who read the news, who just don't know about that.

Yeah. Who just don't know that that's happening. And I think a lot of that is because more and more of us, I mean, part of it is because it is dry. The way that that works, it is slow. More and more of us get our news from social media, including me more than I wish I did. And what it is going to feed you is this kind of like outrage or institutions are failing you.

That doesn't mean that they're not. That doesn't mean that they're zero true to that, but they are going to just feed you evidence for that and they're not going to show you evidence to the counter. Like the example I always think of is climate and how many young people think that the two parties are the same on climate and neither of them are doing anything. And they did this, the biggest climate bill in history and I think they did a lot to try to promote it. Now, I agree in this case, they also did not sell it,

but I do think that we can't just put it on that because even times when they have done the work to sell it, people still don't get the message. Totally agree. I just think that we haven't tried. No, in this case, I agree. And it goes back to like, it is unfair that this is the situation in which we find ourselves.

It is grossly unfair, and it is not the fault of our institutions. But like we have as people who want to have institutions that work, not just defend institution, but have institutions that work in a functioning democracy. Like it is on us to figure out creative ways to break through the clutter. Because I don't think that these, the oligarchs aren't doing it. Yeah. Trump's not doing it. They're sure not.

No. You know, Wiener Con's out there. She was, she tried her hardest. Yeah, I know. She said your platform is not what you wish it was. So it's like, we have to just deal with the world as it is. Yeah. And we have to figure out a way to break through that.

I wonder how much of that in this specific case was because they all use TikTok in the election. I think it's. It's probably a big piece of it. I think so. Yeah. All right. Let's move away from TikTok for now.

On Wednesday, as ordered by the Supreme Court on Wednesday night, President Biden used his farewell address to highlight his concerns for the fate of the nation. Among them, the rise of an oligarchy of the ultra wealthy, which though unnamed includes surely tech CEOs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk, the three richest people in the world, who will be sitting again with the TikTok CEO right behind Trump, along with the members of Congress, the presidents, the ex presidents,

they're all gonna be there. Our fifth branch of government. Yep, and echoing Eisenhower, President Biden dubbed the rising threats of misinformation, AI, and the decline of the free press as the, quote, tech industrial complex. Let's listen to a clip. Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact checking.

The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platform accountable to protect our children, our families, and our very democracy. Joe Biden's farewell address will be on the offline feed as a special episode. So, we haven't talked about, like, what was your reaction when you heard that? I'm like, wow, Joe Biden leads hard into an offline topic and his farewell address.

I was pleasantly surprised. I listen, I have always thought that, you know, I don't love everything about Joe Biden. I don't love everything he did, but I always thought at his best, he believed in the importance of institutions and understood the severity and the urgency of the threat to them. And I think when he came into office, that was primarily our democratic institutions or courts, our legislative process or electoral process and I am surprised and impressed that someone of his let's say advanced age is as acutely aware as he seems to be based on this speech of how much that threat has shifted to our information environments,

not just how we get news but that manipulates our behavior and manipulates how our brains work. And it made me curious who on his staff honestly is writing this, which is not to say I don't think he believes it, but you know, clearly that he's got some team behind him who is invested in this. And it makes me hopeful that those people are going to continue to be involved in this fight. I think I think they spent a lot of time thinking through AI.

Yes. Clearly not in a way that has pleased the AI industry. Which is a sign that it's working. Right. A sign that it was, that these are pretty good policies. I think they might have stumbled into this. This is my theory on this. They are very, Biden especially, and the people who've been around him the longest very upset by the press he gets they think everything is unfair

Yeah, and I think they have there's a little like tick-tock made the kids woke. Yeah Okay, that's not like sure, you know like the mm-hmm. He made reference to the fact checkers Yeah, you know cuz he's he's Joe Biden's in the world where, you know, facts are all on his side. Yeah. Yeah. And the classless at the Washington Post and he's given four Pinocchios for something. Half of you don't know what I'm talking about. Good for you.

Is he still out there? I have no idea. Okay. I actually don't know. He's a low, I used to sit next to him. He's a lovely guy. But people, people used to, you know, care about fact checks and Joe Biden. Yes. Politics. That's politics.

That's true. And he's, you know, he's talking all these interviews about the editors are, he said in the farewell address, the editors are gone. Then we talk about also, but like the gatekeepers are gone. And I think that I think it's acute for them because they feel like every White House feels besieged. We feel we felt besieged in there. You're in a foxhole.

Of course. But I think they feel particularly so and are a little bitter as they leave. And so I think it has, I think that's one of the reasons. I think that combination. Yeah, I believe that. I do think Jeff Seinz, the White House Chief of Staff, spent a lot of time thinking about AI and so has the government. That makes sense.

I could see those two things coming together and look, wrong path to the right destination is still the right destination. For sure. I am glad that you is still the right destination. For sure. I am glad that you brought up the AAPolicy. Frankly, I had forgotten how much time they spent on that. And again, we're going to talk about this, but the severity of the backlash from Silicon Valley to these rules, I think, shows that they were real guardrails

that got created in recent history. When's the last time that happened that guardrails weren't just protected but created? Well this is a perfect... I want to talk about this because you suggested listening to a podcast. Which I do begrudgingly. Barry Weiss's podcast. Particularly the episode where she interviews Mark Andreessen. Yeah. Who's one of Silicon Valley's most influential investors. He voted for and supported Democrats for a long time. And sort of had this much like others in Silicon Valley, this sort of awakening where now he's like a big Trump supporter. Yep.

And Barry Wise sits down with him and asks him about all this. I listened to the whole thing. Oh, you did? Yes, I did. Oh, wow. I only listened to clips of it. Wow. I know.

I know. Yeah. First of all, it's going to feel weird to say, Barry Weiss does a good job interviewing. Does she? OK. She does a very, like I know, I'm very familiar with Barry Weiss's views. Sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Like, I get it. Yeah. But she does a pretty... He lays out this view. I'm very familiar with Barry Weiss's views. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I bet, like, I get it. Yeah, yeah. But she doesn't pre- Okay. He lays out this view-

I know. Of Washington and the Democratic Party and politics that it's odd because, like, I don't- I found myself not disagreeing with a lot of what he said. Really? I found myself disagreeing with the reality he constructed. Oh, I see. I was like, what you are saying would be crazy if it were true, right?

But I think he has confused, and I'm now concerned that Zuckerberg and all the rest of them have confused the rantings and ravings of some folks on the left or in the resistance or whatever else on social media. It's like how democratic politicians, policymakers, other people think. And I think it's back to social media.

Like I think it's now created some schism. Yeah. It's like just why, but the way the Andreessen was talking is like that the Biden administration was the most anti- administration in in history ever that with AI they basically said they brought them all into the White House and said we are going to have we're going to be a couple big AI companies the government's going to fully control them there's going to be no startups allowed it's going to be just like during the Cold War with the develop with

the Manhattan Project literally compared to Manhattan Project and like people not being able to like do nuclear weapons startups. And, and they just want full control over it. And because they have full control over it, then they're going to make it woke. And they're going to like start a racing history and all the police shit's going to happen and blah, blah, blah. And then also they hate tech because he has staffers in his administration that just they just hate capitalism and they hate rich people and they say it all they say it openly that they hate capitalism and hate rich people and hate people making

money and I'm just like what is going on here? And it's weird too because he was like it's so different than the people in the Obama administration and blah blah blah and the Clinton administration and I'm like I like I was in the Obama administration I don't I don't look in the Obama administration and blah, blah, blah, and the Clinton administration. And I'm like, I was in the Obama administration. I don't look at the Biden administration and think that they're that much different. So let me, yes, I agree with all that. Let me sum up like what he said, because this has been presented both by him

and kind of like by his cohort as his big manifesto for why his segment of the tech industry embraced Trump. And like Mark Andreessen, it's like he's not a guy we talk about a lot. I think he will probably come up a lot this year. He's a very powerful guy in Silicon Valley. He's one of the money guys, very influential. Made a ton of money. Made a ton of money on Netscape.

His real role has been as a venture capitalist where he funds a bunch of startups. This is why he's so concerned about are they going to allow startups in AI? He's a fucking bad news. He and his partner at Andreessen Horowitz, his VC firm, I like, I write about them a bunch in the book. Like they've really like presage a lot of the turn towards bad stuff in Silicon Valley. We'll get into that later.

So his big manifesto had like two big pillars to it for why they turned right. One of which I think is like not the real reason and the other one which I think is the one that is I think not there were reason is like Cultural grievances he refers to it as the deal we used to have the deal where we you left us alone We invented cool amazing stuff And then by the way we donated all of those profits to philanthropy because we're amazing guys And then you left us alone

And you also celebrated us culturally and now you yell at us and I got called bad names on the internet And you called me you think that max is just like exaggerating. No, this is He basically lays this out this this is not I will express my views on what he is saying But this is this is what he is saying He said that dem the Democrats blamed Silicon Valley for letting Russian hackers engineer Trump's election. That never happened. In fact, at some point he was like, they think that there's no way Trump could have won were it not for Putin and Russia.

That's not true. No one has ever said that. And now, yeah. Random resistance person on Twitter, right? With the Ukrainian flag in the bio? Yeah, maybe. Maybe. But like, not a lot of real people. He also claimed on Ross but like not not a lot of real people He also claimed on a lot of not a lot of powerful

He claimed on Ross Douthat's podcast quote the federal government radicalized hard under Hillary Clinton and Ross Douthat said wait, don't you mean Donald Trump and He said no Hillary Clinton was in charge of the federal government while Donald Trump was president So it's just it's just wackadoosh it So I think that I think all of this culture war grievance stuff used to celebrate us and now you're mean to us So we had no choice but to turn fascist I think that's just like he's saying that because it feels good to like blame his critics and being like actually you're the ones who Are humiliated now. I think the real reason is it's 100% regulatory.

The Democrats tried to regulate us. And I don't think it's actually so much a change in the attitude from Democrats or the White House. I think it's a change in Silicon Valley, where the Silicon Valley business model over the last few years, not for all of it, but for the segment that Marc Andreessen represents, is increasingly built on illegality.

It's built on anti-competitive behavior, buying up your competitors, monopolistic behavior, illegally mining user data, child user data, especially crypto, which is an illegal unregulated security that Mark Andreessen is just very effective at manipulating the market for, for money. I also learned about this. They're very upset about this. They think debanking, right? Which is totally made up. Mark Andreessen made up. It's straight up disinformation.

You listen to it and you're like, what is he talking about? It's not a real telling in his telling the Biden administration has gone around to people who are supportive of crypto and some other people that they don't like. I guess people in the, he said that some people in the first Trump administration say this happened to them and just debanks them, which is meaning that like, you can't open a bank account, you have to have all your money in cash because the government says that the banks won't let you even have an account.

You can't do banking anymore and it ruins your life. It's like, I'm like, that sounds pretty scary. Is that, maybe it is, I don't know. It is so much not happening that Mark Andreessen himself specifically later acknowledged, oops, I got that wrong. That is not a thing that is happening. He said it again on Barry Ois's podcast. He did the whole thing on the debanking. Did he really?

He wants investigations when Trump gets into power. It's 100% a thing that they made up. And the reason that they made it up, of course, is to turn, it's the same thing with all of this like Zuckerberg stuff, turn the regulators into the villains in the eyes of MAGA culture war, so that when the regulators say, hey, these tech companies are exploiting people, they're hurting people, they're taking your money through these illegal crypto gambling schemes,

they can say, whoa, more regulator, whoa, culture war, they're trying to silence your free speech and try to get the like MAGA cause to shut that down. So it's just, I think it is literally just comes down to all the culture war stuff I think is smoke screen and noise. It comes down to the Democrats are going to enforce the laws that we increasingly want to make our money by breaking.

And Trump is saying he won't enforce those laws if we bribe him, which we are more than happy to do. I thought another riff he went on in the podcast that was probably the most chilling to me, and also like explains a lot, is he, it's one point says, he goes, look, there is no such thing as democracy. It's oligarchy, they're all oligarchies.

Jesus, I didn't hear this. And he said, throughout history, yeah, and he was like, what it really is, is every society, even the ones that call themselves democracy, and call themselves representative democracy, is governed by an elite. And that elite is an oligarchy. And really, every change of government and everything else is just one group of elites

swapped out for another group of elites. And- I know exactly where he's getting this. And this is, and he's like a now, the United States for the last however many years now has been governed by this liberal, cultural elite. These are the people that broke the deal for him. And now they're all woke and thought police and they cannot be trusted to usher in artificial intelligence

because there's so much, there's danger if they use their thought police cancellation shit on that and what, he's got a whole thing. But it really is, and the elite that's come in here, he believes that because he and others in Silicon Valley build new things and innovate, this is his techno-optimist. They do good things, they should be in charge.

And everyone else who's in charge are just like government bureaucrats and people who are political and they don't have like real talent, the real talent is the building of the technology. And those are the people who should be in charge. This is, it's a very specific worldview that starts with Peter Thiel, who is another big tech investor, Silicon Valley guy,

who got Mark Zuckerberg, his start at Facebook, to the first big investment to Facebook, that it just like, it traces back to the specific series of podcasts about like Roman history, which is how they get to this idea that elites should rule. It's just like very specific media ecosystem. I'm sure that we will talk about it at some point. One other, I think like really important data point for understanding the segment of the

tech world that has embraced MAGAism is I know you guys talked on PSA about the Zuckerberg like MAGA stuff like going on Rogan. You guys had all of it, all the big like MAGA stuff like going on Rogan you guys had all of it all the big like Moderation policy changes that are meant to appease Trump and all like going on Rogan and talk about masculinity one piece of that that I think is actually really telling for understanding where we are going with this is Specifically the way that he maga fide his own workplace and not like getting rid of DEI, no more diversity in hiring, workplace protections.

Something that really jumped out to me specifically is he's made a big point of saying we took the tampons out of what Metta refers to as their men's rooms, which is just these policies are designed and the fact that they are broadcasted are designed to deliberately hurt Metta's own employees as a way to demonstrate Allegiance to the MAGA culture war and the reason that I want to highlight this Zuckerberg is willing to target his own employees the people who build his products who we need to keep to make his companies profitable The people he passes in the hallway and is hurting them because he thinks it will score him points with MagoWorld. So what do you think he's going to do to the billions of people who use his products? And then when asked about it and asked about his history as someone who okayed that, he

blamed it on Sheryl Sandberg. Incredible. Absolutely. Incredible. Yeah. His long time number two, who left a couple years ago and is now... Blamed it all on Sher. Yeah right under the bus I know he would look it's not like mark has any power at Facebook. He's just the little guy He's just Cheryl Sandberg's intern and he was saying I don't know about all this when Cheryl Sandberg was doing all this stuff I think I mean, do you think that the like the workforce is gonna do anything here in Silicon Valley?

the like the workforce is going to do anything here in Silicon Valley? Because I mean, and Andreessen says this, too. He's like, look, as much as we feel like we've won here, it's still 90 10, you know, donations to Democrats, the workforce. And that's true. Yes. And I think that is true. I wonder what happens with a lot of these employees, because I there's a lot of people at Metta, people I know at Metta who are like, fuck this. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I've been talking to people who have been talking about like they they're outraged, they log on to their workplace discussion platform, and it's just like a waterfall of outraged comments, which of course Meta is just systematically deleting because they believe in free speech so much that you're not allowed to criticize your own employer privately. Honestly, they have a couple things in common. Yeah. Honestly, they have a couple things in common. Yeah.

I mean, look, it is important to remember that Andreessen, Zuckerberg, they don't represent the bulk of Silicon Valley. Most people there are liberal, they are democratic. The workers there have shown the power previously to influence their company's behavior. Like the last big time this happened, maybe one of the only big times, was in 2020 when Zuckerberg was passing all these policies that were very, not passing, implementing all these policies that were very favorable to Trump and basically saying it's fine if Trump wants to tell the police to shoot protesters en masse.

And a bunch of the employees like really made a big stink about that internally, some of them quit and made a big show about that. And we're like talking about things the company did, which is not cheap because it means giving up this huge payout that they give people when they leave to sign an NDA. And it really did push them in a better direction in the next few months over the course of the 2020 election. So I hope that it happens. It's very hard for Silicon Valley workers to come together because there are so many

of them. They're very spread out. They don't have like a union or any other kind of like mechanism for them to collectively coordinate to pressure their employer, which is why the threshold is so high for it. But it is a thing that can happen and I do hope that the folks who are listening to this in Silicon Valley, I mean first of all know that like I understand that you don't go along with this and you don't agree with this and like I hope that you remember that you have some power here. And I also hope that the people in Silicon Valley who do have a lot of power and other

founders, other VCs, other tech people who could speak up, who are leaders in the tech industry who don't agree with this. Because I think those people could make a real difference too. Because they are heard. they have big platforms, and they, in theory, should not be as cowed because they're wealthy. Although if you're launching, it's hard because if you ever want to launch a startup,

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All right. Let's talk about where we go from here as a couple of social media addicts facing down another four years of Trump and his new alliance with all of these men who built these platforms. I will say that I've given some serious thought over the last couple of weeks, especially as to whether social media, all social media, not just Twitter, as we always talk about, is useful or beneficial enough any longer to justify staying on it anymore. And useful enough to me, to my job. And I don't know, I think to me,

it's like an LA resident too. I think the response to the fires on social media, that really, that sort of did it for me. I think it woke a lot of people up to like, social media is really bad. It's really bad. It's been, it was bad during, it's bad in the aftermath.

And when I say bad, it's, yes, it's misinformation. It's also just like the, like in a, when a crisis happens, what do you need? You need people to be able to get good information, to be able to respond collectively, to help each other out. And look, I should say that, you know, you look on Instagram and there are,

you find out about places to donate, places to volunteer, people who are helping people. So there is value there, right? Yeah. And- There's always been some value there. We've talked about the watch duty app, right? Yeah.

Which has been telling LA residents where the fires are, evacuation, like better than the government has. Yeah. And so like all of that stuff's useful. But I think that the fact that we have this, the way that we communicate now is on these platforms where in moments of crisis or when disaster strikes, the first thing we get now is anger, fear, rage bait, misinformation, smugness, performative weirdness. and also there's just like a, there's something about you're in this crisis,

you see a post where someone just lost their home and then you see a post of like someone in Barbados smiling on vacation. And then you see, then you get an ad for something just ridiculous. Sure. And then you have, then you get an ad for something just ridiculous. Sure. And then you have a piece of misinformation and then there's a sports score. It's just like, the way that information comes at us now, when you are part of the crisis or disaster,

and you're seeing sort of the rest of the world. It forces you to confront how useless it is. Yes. And counterproductive. The thing that kept getting me is I kept like, when we were thinking about Evacuate or like planning on evacuating, I kept pulling up my phone hoping to get the Twitter of 10 years ago, which would show me, you know, which highways are safe to evacuate through.

Like is the 10 on fire? Is the five safe? Is it crowded? Like what's the safe way out? Like where are the fires? And what I instead saw was some combination of like misinformation or a lot of people like sneeringly explaining how

if the government weren't so fucking stupid, it would be so easy to put out the fires because they know how to put out the fires. And like, obviously Karen Bass would do X, Y, and Z if she weren't so corrupt and then the fires would be out like that. And it's like, that's not how that works. You're just chasing some like affirmation and rage bait.

And I think seeing, I feel like I heard from a lot of people in LA, seeing all of the like condescension and smugness and misinformation on social media, like just flip them off of it. And they were just like, this is just not a good force in our lives. We, I won't bring up the whole thing because we talked about it on Pod Save

America, but we have the, this relief fund through Votes Save America. Yeah. We had posted it for days, no problem. And then we posted it and like, we quote tweeted the clip of me with Gavin Newsom and put it there. And then everyone on the right or a lot of people on the right, a lot of people who work at right wing outlets, not just random Twitter users.

Quite a lot of journalists. Yeah, they accused us of running a scam. We're just profit, this was our moment when I was- How dare you raise money for fire victims. Right, as our city's burning, we thought, and we all know people impacted, and some of us were evacuated, we're all like, this is a good time to make some money

and build an email. But anyway, someone... To be clear, neither of which happened. Neither of which happened. But while this was going on on Twitter, and I was doing what I always do, which is now yelling on Twitter, I'm still doing it. An organizer that I've known, he DM'd me and was like very kindly,

he was like, sending this with love. But he said one thing he's been thinking about over the last several months is that Twitter is just, it's no longer the platform it was. Threads and Instagram are going that way as well. And what he meant by no longer it was is like, I don't even know if it's useful for organizing, for raising money for like what you guys are doing. You're trying to do this good.

You're putting your clips from your podcast on there. And like, I don't, like for a while it was like, okay, maybe there's a little use, then it's like, maybe it's just net neutral and then you're like is it actually like that more that link now we raised a lot after Saturday when that link went up we raised like most of the money in the fund more than we had in the last several days because I guess great but like thank you Molly Hemingway. Yeah exactly. Yeah, thank you. Thank you Eric Erickson

And all of our friends at red state in the free beacon National review all of our favorites Anyway, but like I don't I don't know that it's I don't know that it's worthwhile anymore You know, I don't and so that's the threats for the job, right? For like politics, which I think is a whole other conversation which we should get into at some point We should have a good come having an episode about this but also like for personally I'm like I don't and I've been doing a lot more Instagram because I've been trying to do less Twitter and Because I just think Twitter sucks now

And Instagram is becoming like this now too because because you very, very quickly get through your follows, new Instagrams, and now it's all suggested posts, and the suggested posts are not great. I know. I think Instagram has been pushing in this direction for a while too, and especially with the changes now where they're gonna allow news again in politics, I'm sure it's gonna push hard in that direction. And I just don't, I don't know. Are you you gonna change anything about your how are you thinking about this? Well, so I think we are all feeling this way like we have a clip from oh, yeah It's a lot of a lot of fun clips this week last culture Ristas Which this the lead-up to this is like us they were talking about the fires now useless the apps work for it

Okay It's a fucking dark day for social media when I log on and I see that people have all the fucking answers when it's like you clearly don't and can't. I think it's officially curtains. Oh, God. Yeah. Take it. Take it at this point. Zuck being Zuck. Like it's just it's over.

Curtains for social. Curtains for social is so funny. I love it. I have been we've been using like my friends are all sayingains for Soch is so funny. I love it. I have been, we've been using, like my friends are all saying Curtains for Soch to each other now. But is to say, it's like, it's not just us. It's not just like politics addicts who are tired of getting yelled at or whatever.

It's like everybody is feeling this way. So I had a, actually like a real spiral about this, this week. Like really feeling bad about it. This story does circle back to a happy ending. So it's not going to be a real spiral about this this week. Like really feeling bad about it. This story does circle back to a happy ending. So it's not going to be a doom spiral. But here's a representative scrape of social media as I experienced it this week. Everything with the fires, TikTok, the tens of millions of views to outright misinformation on the ban. Twitter, one of the top most viral tweets I saw is a viral tweet with three and a half million views 60,000 interactions claiming that Joe Rogan is a CIA op to control the population

The mainstream media is in on it the leaders of the mainstream media led a controlled demolition of all newspapers to herd its readers From newspapers to Rogan millions of views everybody agreeing everybody agreeing with it. On Instagram, one of the biggest things that went viral this week was Ethel Cain the pop star pushing the hashtag you're going to love this one, kill more CEOs. Oh yeah, heard about that. And part of the justification for why we should all be going out and killing CEOs is that both parties are the same on climate and refuse to act because they're both equally corrupt on climate, which as we've discussed is just actually not correct. But to confirm a literal oil industry CEO to be the energy secretary. And it's not just that Republicans are bad on climate, which is not new information.

It's the fact that the Democrats passed this huge climate bill. Spent the very little capital Joe Biden had. Right. On this. On little capital Joe Biden had. Right, on this. On climate of all the issues. And a lot of the people in the constituency for that literally don't know what happened because they get their news from social media apps that lie to them about climate policy because doomerism and nihilism perform better and then that leads people like our friend Ethel Cain to think we need to start killing CEOs.

I'm not even going to get into what I saw on Blue Sky because it would frankly take way too long to unpack and would not be interesting to anyone except like you and five other people, but it was also bad. And it just, it really made me spiral because it started to feel to me like some critical mass of our society has just willfully chosen this and is just choosing to say,

you know what, I want to be misinformed. I want to be misinformed because it's affirming, it's engaging, it's entertaining, it's better than reading the news. And that was scary to me because I spent my fucking life on the premise that it is helpful to inform people and they want to be informed. That they want good information, that they want helpful analysis that will entangle things for them, that they want accountability journalism. And it feels scary if you just like your life's work and people are that they want helpful analysis that will entangle things for them, that they want accountability journalism, and it feels scary if you just like your life's work and people are like,

actually I would rather be on the viral video app that I know misinforms me. What I realized that made me feel better is that, like wait a minute, we know from polls that most people like actually don't like this. Right. They don't like being on their phones. They're not happy about it. Most people support- And they don't want to be misinformed. They don't like this. They don't like being on their phones. They're not happy about it. Most people support- And they don't wanna be misinformed.

Right, they will, I mean. I do think, I don't think anyone goes into it being like, I love being misinformed. I think- We make choices. We make choices, but I also think that we are, again, talked about this a lot, but I think there is a disconnection, alienation, social

alienation issue, loneliness. And we are longing for connection. And this is the connection and it's making us feel something, angry, scared, happy, joking around, whatever it may be, we're feeling something. And we are thinking that we are part of a community when we're there. And again, it's the illusion of a community, but an illusion of connection, but that's what people, I think that's what that's the addictive quality of it.

I think it's a lot of that. I think it's also like, there are literally physically different parts of our brain that process information simultaneously. And there's a part of our brain that process it through emotion and identity that latches onto misinformation because it makes us feel good and sometimes we indulge that knowingly. There's a part of our brain that actually does want to understand the truth. The part of our brain that acts on emotion and identity literally operates faster.

You get the hormone boost from that before the rational part of your brain even kicks in, which means when you have these apps that are shoving the identity-affirming misinformation in front of you, that's what I mean by you choose it. Yeah. Well, no, people are listening to this and they're probably like, okay, John told us he was gonna post more as a resolution. He's tried to quit, now he's on there.

He said he's not gonna get in fights. No, I understand, we're all over the place. He's getting on more fights. And then I like, look, when I was Saturday, you know, fighting about the Vote Save America thing, I was miserable all day Saturday, miserable day. And Emily's like, why are you so upset? And at the end of Saturday, I'm like,

I told her the whole story and I'm like, I know better. I've talked about this, I have a show about it and I'm still doing it. I do it all the time, we all do it all the time. It is hard not to get pulled into it. It's hard not to feel it, because you open up the app and it's what everybody is doing. Everybody's behaving that way, so it feels like consensus.

And this was also part of my feeling better, is that the apps were telling me everyone is choosing misinformation, but what do I know the apps do? They present a false consensus based on the small handful of people who use the apps the most, who post on it the most. And the thing I also remembered is that we as a society never chose this. All of these apps were marketed to us as like, stay in touch with your friends, share photos

with your pals, and then news and information snuck into them. And then we all kind of like got addicted to it, we knew that it was bad we all know that we hate it and I think that like I got some candy in my van it is it is a lot of that and look a lot of us are addicted I have a hard time not opening up but anything that has been trained into us against our wills and that is what the social media companies are doing which we know they're doing it because they used to say openly we are trying to train them users to be addicted to our platforms. You can have untrained.

And in order to want to be untrained, you have to see that it is happening to you in the first place, and that is hard to do. And I know I make the comparison to cigarettes a lot, but the line between when we realized that cigarettes were A, addictive, and B, harmful for our health, and when we as a society started to actually reduce our rates of addiction, it took a long time. It took like 40 years. I think that we are probably on a faster timeline than that because where we are right now in regulating social media is way ahead of where we were in regulating cigarettes 10 years into understanding that cigarettes were harmful.

But I'm trying to remember that just because we knew social media was bad eight years ago when Trump was elected the first time and now we're all even more addicted to social media and newspapers are crumbling even more because so many people get their news on these platforms does not mean that hope is lost because we are all starting to understand what these platforms are doing to us and that we don't want it and that it's bad for us even if in the moment it's really really hard to remember that and it's much easier to indulge it well and like on the journey to banning or on the journey to like reducing smoking or getting people to You know who are addicted to who are alcoholics or addicted to drug like on that whole journey Yeah, is a lot of people rationalizing. Yeah, that's true. No, no, no my cigarettes. Okay, and no

No, I found some information that actually smoking is good for you And also that I'm I can I can drink and I'm fine. I can have a couple drinks. It's not a big deal. What are you talking about? Like there's always resistance in your own mind when you're dealing with addictive behaviors. And it is tricky with social platforms because something that people in Silicon Valley will point out that has some truth to it is that it's not like social platforms provide zero social utility. Cigarettes provide zero social utility other than looking cool as hell. Social media is like not exclusively

bad for you. It is more bad for you than it is good, but I would not tell people delete every social media app on your phone because I wouldn't do that. There's versions of social media that could work. There's versions that work even at its most harmful. There are things I find useful for it as a way to like aggregate links to get good information. Answer your question. Like what am I doing with my media diet is that, um, I feel like something I learned when we did the offline challenge last year or two years ago, or I don't

know what time is anymore is that the hardest part of cutting down social media use is cutting down use of your phone. When you're on your phone, it's really, really hard not to open that app. So I'm spending more time physically separated from my phone. I just spend a few hours a day, overnight I leave it in another room and it's been transformative.

It's made like a huge difference. I'm gonna start doing that more. I know, every time is a flat circle, but it's okay. I really recommend it. Just putting your phone in another space, You will find that you use it much less Alright guys long show good show That's our show for today. If you like what you heard remember to follow Kirk and media on Instagram Twitter and red note See you on challenge Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau, along

with Max Fisher. The show is produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Illich-Frank. Jordan Cantor is our sound editor. Audio support from Charlotte Landis and Kyle Sedguin. Dilan Villanueva produces our videos each week. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, and Adrian Hill for production support. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Thank you.