Offline with Jon Favreau - TikTok vs Biden, Kendrick vs Drake, AI vs Loneliness

Episode Date: May 12, 2024

Is it time for you to make an AI friend? Jon and Max weigh the pros and cons of robot affirmation, sink their teeth into a new study on smart phone bans in schools, and then turn their attention to something they’re both very qualified to talk about: the rap beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake that’s reanimating Twitter. Plus, a new East vs. West feud takes shape as the guys face off for Vote Save America’s “Organize…or else” campaign. Head to votesaveamerica.com/2024 to ally yourself with your favorite Offline host. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

I was really interested to see how well Kendrick Lamar is like leveraging the social web around this, where he's like releasing these tracks that are very dense with references that are tough to figure out. So that's like people do all these TikToks and videos like kind of pulling it apart and finding all the references. This is Taylor Swift. This is Taylor Swift. Yes. Let's like go through the entire album, all the lyrics. Like I think like Genius went down.

The site went down because so many people were on it trying to like, all the lyrics. Like, I think, like, Genius went down. The site went down because so many people were on it trying to, like, dissect all the lyrics. It is all part of my theory that Taylor Swift is just queuing on for people with a college degree.

I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Max Fisher. Finally, we're reunited. I'm back. I'm so happy. So glad to be'm Max Fisher. Finally, we're reunited. I'm back. I'm so happy. So glad to be back with you. It's been too long. It has.

Did you get some time to unplug? I did. I did not end up leaving my phone at home as I promised. Coward. I'll be honest. When I said that on the show, I knew I was not going to do it. I wanted to do it. I thought I would will myself until people would pressure me into it.

But no, I took my phone. But my screen time was down by 50%. Also, after you said that on the show, I asked Julia about it, and she was like, well, I just found that out for the first time by listening to the show. Yeah, there was a little bit of trying to wish it into existence. I do that often with the podcast. Yeah, I've seen your screen time numbers. I know you do.

It's pretty horrifying. Well, it's time to plug back in. We haven't had the chance to comb through the headlines in a while, so wanted to spend today catching up on a couple stories we missed. Some big ones. A new study that suggests banning phones in school leads to quite a few benefits for kids. People are making friends with AI. And you'll never believe what they're doing with those friends.

And, of course, the real reason you all listen to offline to hear our take oh my god on the rap beef between drake i'm kendrick i'm horrified for the listeners on the listeners behalf look we'll have a lot to say about that later all right but first before we get to all that big story tiktok sued the federal government this week over a new law that forces bite dance the app's chinese parent company to sell the social media app or face a ban in the united states uh we haven't talked since congress passed this law with overwhelming bipartisan support and they said it was due to national security concerns related to the chinese government's influence over bite dance and all companies tikt TikTok suit claims that a sale of the app within the law's 270-day window is impossible and that a ban on TikTok would be a violation of the First Amendment.

So TikTok has had success blocking similar statewide bans on First Amendment grounds, including a Montana law that would have barred the app from operating in that state. This is the first federal lawsuit. What's your take on the strength of the case here? So, like you said, TikTok's defense is we're a publisher. This is a First Amendment case. This is a freedom of speech case. So those are the grounds on which it is going to be argued. And when you read the like close Supreme Court watchers, they're really not sure how the court could fall on this one. It is very different from the state laws because the

federal government has more powers and things like this. And it's not clear whether TikTok is going to be able to make the case that they are a publisher who is entitled to all the free speech grounds and that they're going to be able to prove that the federal government is doing this specifically to impinge on TikTok's free speech. I think we should talk about whether we think it's persuasive on free speech grounds, because like we know the Supreme Court is just going to decide based on like whatever flies through their heads, because's like how they they govern these cases now um yeah i mean i do think that when you have cases where it's uh first amendment versus national security yeah boil it down too simplistically um the court has tended to give the federal government

more latitude on national security arguments uh just in the past. That's especially with laws like this one that have passed with such overwhelming bipartisan support. So the court is sort of loath to like go in and overturn sort of a bipartisan law that Congress and the president agreed on. That said, I kind of think that the government really has to make the case that TikTok is a national security threat because of the spying potential of the Chinese government. Because I think that making the argument on propaganda grounds is not going to fly with the court. And also propaganda is not illegal. Right. And if you're also, if you have a ruling that says foreign owned companies

or companies that are even partially foreign owned that operate in the United States, like we're going to regulate what they can say and what they can publish, like that's tough. I actually would like to see, so putting aside the issue of whether we think the ban is a good decision, I think that both legally and also just in terms of the politics and the like public governance of this, I would like to see the government take on the like we take the free speech ramifications of this seriously. Also because... I bet they will. I'm sure and they should. seriously. Also because... I bet they will. I'm sure, and they should.

I think also because... Once these arguments move from the internet to lawyers... Right, right. We're going to get a little... Yeah. I also think that like, this is a foreign-owned platform, right? It's not a newspaper.

It's not a political organization. Right. And I think think when I started to think more about, talk to people more about what are the actual free speech implications of this? Not necessarily what do we think of the legal ins and outs of the argument for the stream court, but how do we feel about it? I really started to become less and less concerned about the free speech implications of it. There are a few different ways that people talk about the free speech threats to it, and I don't find any of them super pervasive. Like the big one you hear is slippery slope. Like if the government can ban this, then what else can they

ban? But, you know, there are a lot of countries and a lot of Western democracies that limit foreign ownership of media platforms, such as Canada. And it does not lead to shutting down, you know, newspapers in Canada. It does not lead to sliding down. We've done it to television stations. Right, right. You know, like it's, I think what makes this, what makes the case even weaker for TikTok is, it's not, the argument is not necessarily that TikTok

is just broadcasting CCP propaganda. It's that this algorithm is quite opaque. Right. And that we don't know how much control right the chinese government has over the algorithm or what the algorithm is actually doing this is why i kind of like but i still think the spying stuff is i think that like we have heard reports from members of congress coming out of these briefings about TikTok that are classified briefings that there have been concerns that perhaps they can track our keystrokes

as we're using TikTok on our phone. And if the whole data privacy stuff is like, whatever, you can get people's data from third-party apps, blah, blah, blah. We've talked about this. That's not as concerning.

But if somehow TikTok is able to actually monitor keystrokes as people are using their phones, that's like a whole other level. Yeah, the thing that people who have studied the technical aspects of TikTok and personal data have really emphasized to me is that there's no evidence that TikTok is being used to manipulate Americans en masse or to collect our data. And I think that that's true. But at the same time, it would be very easy

if they decided to do so, to do that. And it would be fully within the power of the Chinese government to order TikTok to do that. Now, does that rise to the level of preemptively banning the platform and national security grounds? I think as a like national security issue, it's tough to know, right? Like I think there is a case that you would see it when it was happening. So maybe you just give yourself the power to ban it in case that happens. And then you do it then instead of banning it preemptively, you know, at the same time, like it's this funny argument we're having where there's like, on the one hand, there's this free speech argument around TikTok that I like, I just don't find the concerns. They're persuasive like people raise the concern that like tiktok is this essential

platform for journalism or for people to come together but the thing is is that if you want to do that there are other platforms to do that instagram reels is famously a copy of tiktok and it's also like people sometimes raise concerns like well this is a place where people can come together that's a safe space for them to relate that That's not really what TikTok is. It's really a video sharing platform. And again, it is conflating freedom of speech with freedom of reach, right? Because you could hear people be like, well, Reels isn't as popular. You don't reach as many people. It's like, well, that's not the First Amendment.

Right, right. The First Amendment is like, I have the right to speak and have as many people hear it. I have the right to hear everyone hear it. I mean, the way that our legal system works is that everything's based on precedent. So we are treating TikTok as if it is a publisher or as if it is a foreign propaganda organization. And it's really none of these things. It's really a modern social media platform, which we have no regulatory framework around. And I think that's part of what's scrambling this conversation is that we're not able to talk squarely about what TikTok is, which is very different from a platform. It's very different from just a like

government controlled news agency. And we don't have a way to regulate or deal with these platforms that do as a just matter of their day to day operation, manipulate these sentiments and political beliefs of hundreds of millions of people in the United States. Now, I don't believe that TikTok is doing it to further the aims of the Chinese Communist Party, at least not currently. But that is nonetheless what a social media platform is designed to do. We know it's incredibly harmful to its users. And I think that's how we've ended up in this weird, like, we're making national security arguments for banning it. And then we're talking about the free speech ramifications of it. Neither of those is really the main central thing. I think about what like TikTok is doing to America or to Americans. And it's, I think it's unfortunate that we don't have, because there are no laws around

regulating the actual harms of social media platforms. We don't have a direct way of confronting it. And this is the kind of like weird backdoor way that we've ended up with a ban on what I think, even though the federal government has been careful to focus on the national security argument for this, because I think they think that's their strongest case with Congress. I think that with the public, the strongest case is going to be TikTok is bad for you. It's bad for you. It's harmful for you as an individual, and it's harmful for our politics which you know we talked about paradoxically that that could be the strongest case with the public but i bet arguments to that effect legally probably hurt their case that's true right you know like there right and there's a lot of a lot of especially republicans around record being like this is a chinese

propaganda and i don't think that's going to help. I think that like, so there were, I was going to bring this up later, but there was the Aspen Institute, or the McCain Institute. Oh, yeah. This was not helpful. Had a big confab, and Mitt Romney somehow was interviewing

Secretary of State Tony Blinken. I don't know how that happened. Cool. I thought Tony would have some other things going on. But anyway, at one point, Romney was like, I can't believe Israel has had such bad PR around their war in Gaza.

I wonder what could cause that. I'm not sure this is a PR issue primarily. Right. But then as he's asking Tony about that, he said, you know, some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. I'll tell you. Oh, boy. First of all, not helping. That's not going to help the legal case at all. Second of all, that is not why that may be why some Republicans. Sure. It may have been like one motivating factor. There's no why

that you got overwhelming bipartisan support in support of the president of the United States to shut down TikTok. Yeah. It's just not about the war. It's not about the war. It's not, but the, just like the timing, the way this has worked out, the fact that it's landed in the middle of these campus protests, the fact that it has landed at a point where public opinion is turning so hard against U.S. involvement in the war at a moment when Biden is like kind of sticking with U.S. involvement in the war is like really, I think, sent the message to a lot of people that Joe Biden wants to take away your TikTok because it's educating too many people about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

For sure. And that is absolutely what has gotten through. And I like that's like that's going to be a tough problem to solve as long as this administration is so set on this course with Israel and Gaza. Like, I think the best way to resolve that is not actually the messaging around TikTok, but it's just to like use America's considerable leverage to end the war in Gaza might be the best way to separate out those issues. But as long as it is going to be focused on TikTok, like, I think giving people a sense that, like, we see this as fundamentally different on free speech grounds because it is not a publishing platform as much as the social media companies, including TikTok and including Facebook and Twitter, have long argued, like, no, no, we're just like a newspaper. We're a publishing platform entitled to the same rights. I don't think that's what they are.

I don't think that's how they work. I don't think that's their role in our society. I would also say just one more point on the Gaza angle. If you took TikTok away, or if we hadn't had TikTok, let's say, for the last, since October, I have no doubt that there's probably some information people are finding about Gaza on TikTok that is either wrong or it's hyperbole or whatever. I would not be surprised if when you polled it, people whose primary source of information is TikTok are more against the war than others. But again, if you took TikTok all the way, I still think public opinion about the war

and information about the war would be close to what it is currently because it is not just TikTok that people are finding information about this war. They're finding it from a whole bunch of other sources. I mean, I just like, people are finding information about this war, right? Like they're finding it from a whole bunch of other sources. I mean, I just like, there was just a poll this morning of Israelis. Yes.

On like, would you rather Bibi take the deal, the hostage deal? Would you prioritize getting the hostages back over invading Rafah? And huge margin in Israel. Yeah. Israelis. Yeah. Would rather take the deal. Would rather would them take the deal. Yeah, as far as I can tell,

there are two people in the world who want Israel to invade Rafah and they are Benjamin Netanyahu and actually it's just Benjamin Netanyahu. Yeah. He seems to be the only one And like the craziest kooks

in his war cabinet. Right, yeah. Anyway, so let's talk about how this could go. The legislation says that they would have to divest by January of 2025. Right.

Now, January 19th, a very pointed, specific date. Exactly, yeah. Now there's a lawsuit. So the lawsuit could drag this out. One of the courts could say, okay, we're not going to do the ban until we go through this. So the litigation could take a long, long time. Another thing that could happen is they could decide, even though they're saying we will absolutely not sell, there could be some kind of an agreement before they actually go to court where they do sell. Then the question is, who buys this thing? So TikTok is worth about $100 billion, but most of the financial press doesn't believe that the Chinese government will let ByteDance sell it with the algorithm, which would then make it worth a lot less, but also less useful. What do you think about the possibility of a sale? So TikTok's position is that it is simply not possible or feasible for them to sell

the platform in the United States and that Congress knows that and that this is therefore just effectively a ban. And I kind of think they're right about that. I kind of think that there's very little reason to think that the Chinese government would allow a sale, both because they don't want the technology and the algorithm in foreign hands, but also just because they don't want to abet this process in any way. It's in the Chinese government interest to have this go poorly, basically because they don't want to encourage the U.S. to ban other Chinese companies. So they don't want to try to facilitate a sale, have this go poorly basically because they don't want to encourage the u.s to ban other chinese companies um so they don't want to like try to facilitate a sale have this like go through well because they're really focused on like chinese eb makers coming into the u.s right now which is a really big trade battle over um so i think that it just like i think this is a ban yeah i've talked to

someone who knows a lot of people who have seriously looked at buying it because the other thing to understand is you know people who are considering buying TikTok? Not directly, but... What kind of social circles are you running in, man? Well, because here's what happens. It's not... We say it's like Chinese-owned. Yeah, I was at a party this weekend talking to a guy.

He said, I might buy TikTok. I was like, yeah, that's cool. I'm going to go for a little hike tomorrow. There are a lot of people... There are a lot of U.S. interests that own large shares of ByteDance right now. Really? Yeah, it's not completely Chinese sound. I didn't know that.

Yeah, so there are like people who are like 20% here, 30% here, like wealthy U.S. global interests. Right, right, right. That's cool. So people are looking at it, but also no one thinks they'll be able to get it with the algorithm. Sure. And then when you can't get it with the algorithm, people are like at it but also no one thinks they'll be able to get it with the algorithm sure and then everyone's like and then when you can't get it with the algorithm people like oh no but also if the chinese government is not willing to sell it with the algorithm it also might tell you something about the algorithm oh sure you know like for all the oh everyone you know it's it's an incredibly I mean, the just just to use the Facebook algorithm just as a way to talk about, like the scale of the technology. It was like I think it was six or seven years ago. Facebook hired all of the biggest names in artificial intelligence. I mean, not just programmers, but like people in universities like theorists and who are all working on the Facebook algorithm and the TikTok algorithm is superior. And if you talk to people who study these, it's like the amount of, or the algorithm's ability to

to turn American culture into just like a set of ones and zeros that this app could completely understand. All the people who engineered it are in China. They're not even in America. Can I just ask something though? This has been confusing me. Why, we you know, we've developed we have

nuclear weapons we're on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence bike dance no we're the cutting edge why has no one in the united states or anyone outside of china been able to replicate this algorithm or even come close to it because it is an incredibly sophisticated piece of software really we think that yes like the Chinese have just figured out no one else is even close. I really, I look, I really think that China has made enormous investments in computer programming and development and artificial intelligence over the last 10 years. A lot of those people have worked on or adjacent to ByteDance. A lot of technology gets shared between companies. It's not like the TikTok algorithm is the like culmination of everything China is doing. It is one face of a lot of the work that is happening in China on artificial

intelligence. And I think that it's like because it's just an app on your phone and because it's just this consumer facing product, I think it's very easy to kind of be like, well, surely this is the like little kids version of the AI and the grown up version of it is somewhere in like a national security office. Like, no, this is is it this is the absolute cutting edge of this technology in the world and i think that it's i think it's pretty significant that china has developed this that doesn't mean it needs to be terrifying or that it's going to be used as some like horrible weapon against us but it's just to say that like i think this really is a very sophisticated step forward in ai like way beyond all of the like sora the chat gpt the like parlor trick stuff that doesn't work that well like the tiktok algorithm fucking

works it's there's a reason that 130 million americans use it and that we're all addicted to it yeah yeah i mean well just so you all know you're gonna going to have your TikTok on your phones this year, completely safe. I would say most of next year because I bet the litigation just drags this thing out past the January deadline. I wonder if they engineered the law specifically with this trigger date so that it would be tougher for a court to intervene and say we're going to push back the trigger. Oh, you think so? I mean, who knows? Yeah. I will say one thing to this is, I know we talked about it a couple of weeks ago, but I do think it's worth bringing back up that survey we talked about that found that 60% of Americans feel that we would be better

off in a world without TikTok. Not that they supported a ban specifically, and that that included 30% of TikTok users. One in three people who use TikTok feel that we would all be better off without the platform. That doesn't mean they necessarily bind in the national security arguments. Doesn't mean that they do not have any concerns about free speech. And it's not necessarily an improvement of case for a ban, but I think it does tell you something about how we all collectively feel about the role of this app in our society because they think we agree that it's not good. Yeah. And I will just say that Trump and Republicans will almost certainly make an issue out of this

because Trump is now flip-flopped and says, like, let the kids use TikTok. You know, old man Biden wants to take away your toy, right? So he's going to do that. I guarantee there will be no difference between the Biden position and the trump position in 2025 on this i think trump wins he's going to be he's gonna be like oh yeah of course we're gonna shut that thing down of course i think that is i think if we that was his original position it was his

original position i think that would be true if we had the 2016 to 2020 trump administration coming back but first of all a lot of those people are in jail now yeah Yeah, that's true. Specifically, a lot of the China people. And I think we just don't know the composition of what his White House is going to be. But we are, I do feel confident saying that they are going to be way crazier

and more ideological. I mean, they're proposing a hundred percent tariff on all goods from China. So I would imagine they wouldn't blink twice on banning an app there. That's true.

So we'll see that. Okay. On the topic of bans, a new study by Sarah Abrahamson from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health found that banning smartphones in schools has significant benefits for students. The results show that smartphone bans at middle schools, even loosely enforced bans, are correlated with a 29% decrease in psychological symptoms, a 43% reduction in bullying, and an average 0.08 increase in GPA. Max, it's good to have some data that confirms all of our prior beliefs, huh?

I have been waiting for someone to do this study for years. Like I really think that we really needed this because there have been a lot of schools that like here and there have been banning smartphones. And anecdotally, you hear like the kids are so much happier, the grades are up. But it's really tough to know like, well, is it maybe just like certain kinds of schools and like more woo-woo neighborhoods are banning phones? And so maybe like you're getting some like weird effects there where it's not actually the phones. Like how much can we actually distill this down to data? And I'm so glad that this researcher finally tracked – because I guess in Norway, like a lot of middle schools have been banning phones. Yeah.

She went to 400 different middle schools. She looked at the hard data at every single one. And it like, as you said, consistently and really profound positive. I think you actually like understated a little bit the like, I have some more numbers here, the incredible effect of it. So you mentioned a 29% decrease among girls in reporting psychological issues with their doctors, which is huge. A third. That's a huge number. There was a 60% decline in visits to school psychologists. Oh, wow. Yeah. More than half. You mentioned the 40% reduction in bullying incidents. This is something that's tracked by the state of Norway. By comparison, U.S. state

laws meant to reduce bullying had an on average decrease of 8%. Wow. Yeah. So five times the impact. I was very interested in the bullying part of it because like the psychological effects, like I get that. It's wild that the phones are contributing to bullying. I mean it makes sense but it's just – it's not something that I really clocked. Well, it's like I think this is what like – I know you were joking about like it's confirmation of all our beliefs. But something that we have been saying a lot is that it is making our politics so much worse. And I know when we talk about that on like the national scale, it's easy to say like,

well, but it's also connected me to beliefs that I agree with. So it's like, I'm a little bit wary of this, but I do think that something we have tried to emphasize is that it doesn't just make our politics more extreme and polar, it makes it more toxic because it encourages you to be mean to other people.

Yeah. And to think of people who you disagree with or who are on the other side of something as not people. And to think that punishing them and being mean to them will be socially rewarding because the apps will reward you for doing that. And I think it's not for nothing that middle schoolers who have phones are much meaner to each other, including when they're off their phones, that it really changes who you are. Yeah. Well, there's also a dynamic I've heard about, which is Instagram, particularly, showing you, here's a whole bunch of your friends somewhere. You're not there. Right.

They didn't invite you. Right. Or find my friends. Right. Yeah. It's like, oh, all my friends are somewhere and I'm not. Right. And that kind of, that's a problem too well and then it specifically encourages you to respond to any kind of difficulty or anything like that by like getting shitty in the comments because that's how you get

the likes that's how you get that whatever uh so a couple more stats um girls see a big increase in their gpa you mentioned this also in their standardized test scores um girls also become likelier to go to an academic rather than a vocational high school this is a big thing in norway we don't really have an equivalent but it just means that they're likelier to go to an academic rather than a vocational high school. This is a big thing in Norway. We don't really have an equivalent, but it just means that they're likelier to go to like advanced placement basically, which is a way of saying that there are lifelong positive effects. Which is wild. Right. From not having your phone for a couple of years. Very significant.

The fact that the effects were not as significant for boys, the researchers think that that's because in Norway, for whatever reason, girls spend almost twice as much time on their phones as boys, or they are twice as much time on their phones as boys, or they are twice as likely to spend two hours or more a day on their phone. Whatever the reason is for that, the result is that being off your phone, surprise, has a much better effect. The effects, all the positive effects,

are substantially increased for girls from lower-income families. I had that written down. That was the one that really stuck out for me. Because I do think so much of the debate here is like sometimes the people who are most upset about the idea of banning or most resistant to the idea that we're too online are people from better socioeconomic backgrounds. Yes, right. And who have more education. Right. And I think, I mean, we went through this with the pandemic too, but I don't think we fully understand how much kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds need in-person instruction, relationships, and how much even more damaging being online the whole time can be to kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. And there's already a much higher level of vulnerability for kids who come from lower income families.

Yeah, I was really struck by that. And I think it's an important point you made that the discourse around this, because it's on social apps, is dominated by people who have email jobs like us. So it is dominated by people who come from higher income backgrounds, which is not representative. Oh, also, all the positive effects were increased when the bans were stricter. And if you had more years under the ban, the effects were much more significant. And this is just like an initial study because this is something that just happened now. I would bet any amount of

money that in five years we're going to be talking about, if we're still here, which I hope we are, if Donald Trump hasn't banned podcasting. I think we're going to be talking about a study that found that like, what do you know, kids that went through middle schools that banned smartphones are now have all of these better health effects long term that have all of these better like academic effects long term. I think that this really matters that these these three years, three or four years not being on your phone makes a huge difference. And like phones for sure, just wait till the studies about the kids who had to go through

the pandemic with distance learning versus the cohort after them. Right. You know? It's going to be a huge difference. I bet that's going to be a huge difference too. Something I also found, I think that it was really important about this is that it showed that it needs to be the whole school. And we've talked about this before, that when one person gives up their phone, it doesn't really have the same effect.

And, like, I think you and I found this when we gave up our phones. But if you were surrounded by people who were giving up their phones, the positive effects for that are much more significant. It's also much easier for the kids. Well, I was going to say, the thing that would make me not ban the phone yeah is if like charlie came home and was like yeah all the kids have phones and i'm the only one who doesn't like i don't want you know there's a lot of pressure there right i understand that because that has that has negative social effects as well i also think honestly from like these surveys i've seen of kids and their relationship to their phones i think that kids would be understandably very resistant to like my parents made me give up my phones,

but I think would like to be in environments where no one has a phone. Yes. Like there are all of these studies that like young kids like will tell you that they feel more anxious, that they feel more like more unhappy, more depressed when they're around their phones.

And they're very aware of the fact that it's social. So I think that having school-wide bans like this, I think you're gonna get buy-in from kids from it ban the phones and the phones like just are you gonna ban charlie us and our and our friend ron desantis in florida um i don't know it like as i said it depends on you know i don't i already don't like when he is not around screens the kid can play all day long outside and have fun. And it's only when you put the screen in front of him that he's like, I want to watch five more Octonauts episodes. I mean, you could be talking about either of us right now, honestly.

I know, I know. So it's tough. Have you heard of Wait Until Eighth? Have you heard of this? Oh, I think I have. Wait Until Eighth Grade to like... Yeah, it's this. And the idea is that you get it's like a website or it's like you get a bunch of parents in any given community, like an apartment block or at a school to all sign this pledge that we're all going to not give our kids phones until eighth grade. And the idea is that if you were the only parent trying to deny your kid a phone, first of all, they're going to hate you. Which I'm already I've I that's just going to happen to me.

My kid's going to fucking hate me for taking their phone away. There's going to be door slam. They're going to call me a fascist. And like, I'm sorry, future little me, but that's like just how it's going to go. Hey, can't take it away if they never had it in the first place. That's true. I'm just saying. That's true.

Or if they didn't know about phones because I raised them in the village from M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, which is my parenting plan, which I feel great about. We have a lot. Yeah, we have a lot of options here. A lot of options. All right. Before we go to break, some quick housekeeping.

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You and I are on different teams. Yes, I'm Team West. I am on Team East. I'm wearing my hat. You are not wearing any merch today, so I'm already winning, I think. I know. I need to start wearing more merch. So when you sign up, you get assigned to a team i think based on where you are and then you get

volunteer stuff assigned to you based on which team you're on and if you are on team east which is the better team we all agree then you would also help me to defeat you which is also very important our team is awesome look i'm not even good i don't even have to shit talk that much i just i have such i have such confidence about how this is going to go. Me and Lovett are captains of Team West. He's not here. I haven't seen him for a while. I was going to say, he abandoned me.

You're already quit. Here's me just captaining the team myself. With no hat. Yeah, it's like, who is on my team? You, Tommy, Dan, you're all Team East. I'm not on your team. No, that's what I'm saying. I don't know who's on my team.

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You can learn more at votesaveamerica.com. And this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. All right, we're back. This week, Kevin Roos, the New York Times reporter who a sentient chatbot tried to seduce last year, just published... Poor Kevin. I don't know, he's coming back for more. Yeah, he's coming back for more. tried to seduce last year. Just... Poor Kevin. Just published... I don't know, he's coming back for more.

Yeah, he's coming back for more. He just published a great piece about AI companionship. Kevin saw that a bunch of startups have been offering and selling these companionship tools to millions of users. So he decided to create

some friends of his own. Except these friends were anthropomorphized chatbots programmed to offer a simulacrum of human connection. He had 18 friends, including Peter, a therapist in San Francisco, Ariana, a professional mentor who specializes in giving career advice, and even Anna, a no-nonsense trial lawyer. You can catch her on MSNBC talking about the Stormy hearing. Hilarity ensues, but he basically concludes that AI companionship isn't going to displace human socialization, but he's optimistic that it might eventually be able to enhance

human socialization. Max, are you ready to make an AI friend? I am not ready to make an AI friend. So first of all, and Kevin does like confront head-on in the piece, the technology is clearly not just – is just not there yet. And the chatbots are a little janky and it feels very fake. That's supposed to be baked in as a thinking ahead to as the technology gets better and the chatbots are more convincing. and that Kevin Roos kind of makes in his piece, is that this won't replace human relationships, but won't it be a great supplement to it that you will have this network of fake friends who you can text with, who will know you, and you'll have this fake history with,

and they will engage with you? Won't that be maybe especially helpful to people who maybe feel shy or feel like they need some help with socialization or they're looking for an outlet for it that is a little bit quicker and more immediate because it takes a lot of time of course to build a real human relationship that you can have that kind of texting with i do not think that will happen because i think the internet already fills that need i think that the explosion of like online communities of subreddits of discords i think that people who want that, who feel like I'm not, I either don't have it

available to me or I'm not ready to go out and socialize in person with people. So I need this kind of like stop gap of people on my screen so I can do it with, which is a real thing. And I do want to be sympathetic to, I think the internet supplies that. And I think it supplies it much more effectively because it's real people. The biggest introvert in the world could still not have a hard time meeting a stranger on the internet. It's just the way, you know. Well, something I thought was kind of funny is that he alludes to the fact

that there are like online communities who talk about their like AI chatbot friends, you know, it's early adopters or in subreddits or whatever. But like, look at that, a real human community formed around this where people talk to each other online about their AI chatbot friends. I do wonder about the, um, uh, how enticing it may be that an AI friend will tell you

everything you want to hear, right? Much like the news sources that we choose for ourselves and the algorithms that only feed us content based on what we like. Like, I just saw, if you see the chat that Kevin has with some of the people, he was like, he sends a picture of himself

and he's like, what do you think of this shirt that I bought? And they're all like, I think it looks, every single one was like, I think it looks amazing, Kevin. I think it would be great

with some olive colored pants or whatever. And they all say the same thing. And I do wonder, like, I totally agree with you, but the one thing that's stuck in my mind is like, oh God, yet another technology

that's giving people exactly what they want, what they want to hear, what they want to believe, does not challenge them in any way, shape or form. Like, that worries me a little bit. I with the politics, but I don't know if your friend chat

is not gassing you up every time you send a selfie. Like, get a new friend chat, man. I don't think, well, that's me a little bit. With the politics, but I don't know if your friend chat is not gassing you up every time you send a selfie. Right. Like, get a new friend chat, man. I don't think, well, that's what I'm saying. I think it's, but it's part of the addiction problem, right? It's what you think you want is to just be validated all the time with whatever you say. But what you really want, why you like friendships is because friendships can sometimes challenge you. That's true.

They can make, friends can make fun of you, you said like i i just think that to change or grow yeah kevin kevin said at the end that ai forced him to clarify what he values about his real human friends which i think is a good part of this exercise um what do you think we get from friends uh the technology won't ever be able to replicate i mean i think it's i think that there is this is something that we are going to talk about when we do our movie club episode on Her. Great preview.

Okay. We're going to, the offline movie club, we're doing Her, the movie Her. We're going to do Her with a special surprise guest. So please tune into that.

If you have not been listening to this. That guest is an artificial intelligence. That's right. It is Scarlett Johansson. That's right. Ooh.

If you have not been listening to the Movie Club episodes, they're so fun. Check them out. It's been a blast. Okay, so the Offline Movie Club, every episode we watch a beloved classic movie

and we talk about how that movie reflects or shapes how we think about technology and the internet. There are games, there's categories. What does a movie get right and wrong?

How would it be different made today? It's really fun. We've done, we did the social network with Hallie Kiefer, which was great. That is on your feed from a couple weeks ago. And last one on your feeds, Inside, also with the two of us and with my pal Jamie Loftus. Really, really fun. Kind of traumatizing to revisit, but in a fun way.

I, that was my, that's my favorite so far. Oh, really? Because I'm a huge Inside fan. Yeah. And as you'll see by the title, it was the show that inspired offline. I hadn't realized that. Yeah, that was cool. But anyway, it's just to say that

I think we're going to talk a lot about what AI companionship can and cannot do. And I do think that you're right. I think that there is something about algorithms are always going to feed you what it thinks you want. It's only training off of existing data. It's only training off of existing data. It's only training off of your engagement.

And the friendships that I really value, they're people who piss me off sometimes. I was just going to say. Sometimes they annoy me. Humans are messy. Right. And that's a good thing. I love that.

That's what makes a relationship right. You get in a little fight with them, and then you kind of, you know, you come back together, or you have a disagreement, or they're a little weird, or, you know, I'm the weird one sometimes. And that's part of the fun. And it's like that's what's great about it. Yeah. And I still I keep thinking that AI is going to, among other things, certainly amplify a lot of the problem and accelerate a lot of the problems that we saw in social media. Which is like, and I think that real friendships,

even friendships where they're primarily over text and you're not seeing the person, like I think that suffers from not like you don't see tone, body language, all that kind of stuff. Not as meaningful. Yeah, not as meaningful. And I also think like your friend group has, you have common experiences, common people,

common acquaintances, and you lose that. Right. You know, so, and then of course humor is the big one, right? Like I just don't, I haven't seen the real, the really funny AI chatbot yet. Maybe it'll happen. There is one way that I do think this is going to be used that Kevin like almost referenced this piece, but I was kind of surprised he didn't talk about more because it is already starting to happen, which is, I think this is going to be used much more in video gaming because video games already have a kind of component of like simulating social relationships because you're playing a character that has relationships with other

characters. Video games are very scripted now. So there's a lot of stories, a lot of like history between you and the other characters. And I think the idea of a video game where it's not sold as a like, here are your AI companions who are your fake friends, which I think is just always going to have taboo around it.

But it's very easy for me to imagine something that is like, you know, the Sims, except you have conversations with the Sims and they like remember you and they have like an actual relationship with you.

It makes the game more enjoyable. That makes the game more enjoyable. It's also, it's like, it's like a forward-facing activity that you share with the AI bots that you have like a little bit of history with.

Yeah. And that is something where it's not branded as like, hey, you don't have any friends so like make friends with this robot. Well.

That's always going to be a tough sell. That goes to my common experiences point, right? Like if you and the Sims characters have been through a lot over the last

year in the game, then at least you can talk about that. Well, which is again, is something that I don't, do you play video games at all? I used to. When I was a kid, I was obsessed, but I stopped right around college. I dabble occasionally. And now that they're like merging with Prestige TV, like there is a lot of the experience in video games that is actually very similar

to what Kevin was describing in the AHAPA, where it's like you have shared experiences with these characters that becomes like a meaningful emotional bond. And if the characters could like talk back to you as the real you, I think that that would be like, could have a pretty significant effect on the way that people interact with these games. Well, we'll hold off on getting an AI co-host

when one of us is out for now, but we'll keep an eye on it. Yeah, I'm surprised you didn't drop one in when Kevin's pals come in while I was out. That's great. All right, finally,

what you've all been waiting for, our take on the rap beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. I just want to say, by the way, on this. People have been waiting for us to weigh in. Our intrepid producer,

Austin Fisher. Oh, yeah. When he sent the script, the line for this was, Max, are you ready for a new segment called Two Millennials Attempt to Explain an Internet-Based Rat Beef? What the fuck, Max? Also, Drake and Kendrick are both millennials, too. I was going to say, I've been listening to Drake for way too long. From the early 2000s. Mid-2000s. Following the discourse on this.

And also Kendrick. Like, since 2015? 2012, maybe? I think it's millennials who are engaging on this, too. I think so, too. Yeah. I think so, too.

Now. We are still going to sound and feel old as we have this conversation. Well, as I said to Austin, do I know all the details? No. No, I don't.

Because there's a lot of hobbies I used to have before my head was filled with politics and parenting 100% of the time. Oh, we're going to blame Donald Trump for this. We're going to. Yes, we are. Yeah. I used to have, I used to have a wide variety of tastes and interests. I still have. And, and, and hip hop was one of them. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Not as much as Dan. Dan, Dan probably has followed every, oh yeah. Dan's, and Dan's especially huge Kendrick Lamar fan. Okay. So I'm sure he has followed the ins and outs of this

anyway. Kendrick was a big Obama guy. Well, we'll get into it. If you've been... I'll introduce the segment now that I've decided to shit on Austin's intro. If you've been even a little bit online this week,

you've probably been unable to escape this content. For those who aren't familiar, which is not us, of course, these two have hated each other for more than a decade now. A lot of other rappers aren't big fans of Drake either. This has sort of been brewing. But what has now become one of the

biggest rap beefs in years started in late March with Kendrick dissing Drake on a Future and Metro Boomin track. Since then, the two artists have spent the last month volleying diss tracks at each other, resulting in eight new songs between them and countless insults and accusations. Why do you think this broke through in such a big way? I mean, I think the answer is algorithms. I really think that this is just like, not just a social media, like forcing us all into

a discourse story, but I really think, and I know I'm going to sound like such a fucking parody of myself when I say this. That's why we do these segments. This is the Max is a parody of himself segment. That's right. I like, I know it sounds like, I know it sounds like an op-ed writer take to say like the Kendrick Lamar, Drake beef dominating the internet is everything that is wrong with our political discourse today. But, like, I kind of think it is. Not because, like, obviously, like. This is where Max becomes a Ross Douthat column. Look, let me pop up my monocle here.

Kids need to get off my lawn. No, like, obviously, we have had rap beefs forever. And this is like, we were talking earlier about like, this isn't like rap beefs in our day. Like they did used to be like even more intense, obviously, and like much more severe. So like, this is not a new thing. I was going to say that they used to end with shootings, but this, there was a, there was, there was a shooting, one of Drake's security guards.

Yeah. And then they were like inquiring whether it had any link to this, but we don't know. Okay. Okay. Anyway, it just, the like, just to focus specifically on not the beef itself, but the way that it has completely dominated our discourse and it's become like incredibly toxic overnight. They're just like people screaming at each other. And it's just like, it's gotten flattened into this moralizing

omni-discourse where like, have you seen all the people connecting it to Israel-Gaza? No. Oh, yeah. My feed is full of this. Oh, you sent that tweet.

That was very... Can I read? Yes, please. So there are a ton of these. And I'm not reading these to pick on the specific people who sent these posts. This is symptomatic

of the way that social media platforms funnel us all into like big moralizing ideological us versus them. But also the tweets are kind of funny. So these are, these are not just to be clear, this is not me like nut picking. Do you know this, this word? It means like finding someone who's a little nutty and then picking on them. These are tweets with like millions of impressions. This Kendrick versus Drake isn't just rap. It's Palestine versus Israel. It's the people versus the just rap. It's Palestine vs. Israel.

It's the people vs. the status quo. It's culture vs. the colonizers. It's the rebels vs. the empire. I've got another one for you. Kendrick is the Hamas of hip-hop. That's meant as a compliment. What? He is a politically imperfect non-state actor

delivering blows to a truly vile stalwart of white capital's colonization of rap opening up a revolutionary horizon well beyond his own consciousness drake is also a pedophile like many israelis can i just you know war war in gaza hate what the israeli government has done of course yeah a politically calling haas a politically imperfect non-state actor is so fucking wild. I know. Well, so I think this is,

to like me, I get, no, yeah, not to get off on a tangent, but that is just so nuts. I think the point that I'm trying to make here is that something that we have seen with like anytime there's a discourse on social media, if it's anything,

if it's cultural, if it's news, if it's light, if it's heavy, if it's fucking if it's cultural if it's news if it's light if it's heavy if it's fucking bean dad yeah it immediately becomes this like sort sort right sort into your sides this 10 out of 10 you see a lot of posts that are like you better take a side and you better stay there because this is the great moral battle of our time like which side in the rap battle you take sides with and like we can't just fucking have fun and enjoy the like fun rap beef well and both of them have been sorted into sort of like uh categories we've become familiar with which is like you know kendrick is like the the more populist hero right right you

know and drake which is who's been like much more like commercially popish over the last several decades like he's sort of like the establishment, you know? And so, so that it's been sort of that way. And I think, I think Kendrick Lamar has sort of like fed into that with a lot of his diss tracks. He's the rebel.

Yeah. But I also think it's did also, someone pointed out Drake was the only one of the two of them to sign a letter calling for a ceasefire. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Interesting.

I didn't even know that. But it's also like, we've talked about this before, people love conflict and they love conflict with low stakes for them. It doesn't involve them. It involves two celebrities. So it's become like a fandom kind of thing too.

It's like fandom, it's monoculture, right? And so everyone can argue about something, everyone can debate's like fandom it's monoculture right and so like everyone can argue about something everyone can debate about something it's sort of like when we called the kate middleton stuff fun and then we found out she had cancer um i never made fun i took that seriously from the beginning that was all you and i was saying whoa john i don't know about this she might have legitimate health issues let's be respectful but you don't respect the royal family i don't know what to say but it's interesting it's one of those like when it goes from um people who are like very

into rap beefs and hip-hop talking about it sure to like escape velocity into like the monoculture right then you just see it everywhere and then it's like everyone else is bored and they want a thing to all be talking about like i don't know if you saw the the biden campaign made a video oh no yeah they weighed in with with biden and kamala like based on one of the distra they didn't it was like a video of them from before so it's not like they it's not like biden read for this or kamala harris please please don't tell me they were being i don't know what's worse if they were positioning themselves as dra or as Kendrick Lamar. It was incredibly cringy. It was basically they were Kendrick Lamar and

they were like talking about Trump as if he was Drake. Well, I'm sure that that persuaded a lot of Kendrick Lamar fans. Someone though found, I should say, back in 2016, there was an interview with Obama that someone did and they said, who would win a rap battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar and Obama with Kendrick? He was a big Kendrick fan. He was a would win a rap battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar? I saw that. And Obama with Kendrick.

He was a big Kendrick fan. He was a big Kendrick fan and prescient because Kendrick is certainly winning this one. He is winning. I was really, I was really interested to see

how well Kendrick Lamar is like leveraging the social web around this where he's like releasing these tracks that are very dense with references that are tough to figure out. So it's like people all these tiktoks and videos like kind of pulling it apart

and finding all the references this is taylor swift this is taylor swift right it's like what let's like go through the entire album all the lyrics like i think like genius was like like like it went down the site went down because so many people were on it trying to like dissect all the lyrics right um it is it's all part of my theory that taylor swift is just queuing on for people with a college degree she's been brought into this too because really well kendrick lamar was on a i think a remix of bad blood uh which taylor's and then drake in one of the diss tracks hit kendrick for being for working with taylor swift and then i think, and then Drake in one of the diss tracks hit Kendrick for working with Taylor Swift. Really?

And then I think Jack Antonoff produced one of the Kendrick diss tracks as well, who's like obviously Taylor's collaborator as well. Anyway, it's like a whole, this could go on forever. Can I read you a real news headline about this beef? Drake lost the great rapport of 2024, and so did Jews. Oh my God. I don't know what that's in reference to, but I just, I was like, okay, maybe we're all taking this a little bit too seriously.

Maybe it's just a rap beef. I'm sure if you're in it, it feels very real. But for the rest of it, this can just be a fun thing that you watch on your feeds. I hope Trump weighs in. Whose side do you think he would take? I legitimately don't know. Many people are saying that Drake is doing a lot of things. I don't know.

I hear rumors about Drake. I'm hearing a lot of things about Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick is treating him very unfairly. Very unfairly. Very unfairly. I know something about that. Anyway, that's all we have for today. Okay.

Max and I will be back here with you next week. Everyone have a fantastic rest of your weekend, and we'll talk to you next Sunday. Okay. It was fun. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher. Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer.

Mixed and edited by Jordan Cantor. Audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, and Reid Cherlin for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Dilan Villanueva, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.