Pivot - Amazon warehouse workers issue lawsuit, Alexis Ohanian steps down from Reddit board and a deeper debate on Section 230

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

Kara and Scott talk about a new lawsuit waged by Amazon warehouse workers alleging the company did not follow CDC protocol well enough to stop the spread of COVID-19. They discuss Alexis Ohanian's decision to step down from Reddit's board of the directors in order to leave space to elevate a black person to his empty seat. In Friend of Pivot we hear from Mike Masnick of tech dirt to talk about Section 230, as Trump battles with Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Pivot comes from Virgin Atlantic. Too many of us are so focused on getting to our destination that we forgot to embrace the journey. Well, when you fly Virgin Atlantic, that memorable trip begins right from the moment you check in. On board, you'll find everything you need to relax, recharge, or carry on working. Buy flat, private suites, fast Wi-Fi, hours of entertainment, delicious dining, and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. delicious dining and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. Check out virginatlantic.com for your next trip to London and beyond, and see for yourself how traveling for business can always be a pleasure. to get your customers to notice you, Constant Contact has what you need to grab their attention. Constant Contact's award-winning marketing platform offers all the automation, integration,

and reporting tools that get your marketing running seamlessly, all backed by their expert live customer support. It's time to get going and growing with Constant Contact today. Ready, set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. So happy reopening New York City, Cara. Yes, happy. I've decided for me, does that mean I have to let my kids back in the house? No, you have to let your kids back. They better not be camping in your Florida compound.

In the backyard. Nice tent, nice sleeping bags. You have a compound. I've been watching Filthy Rich on Netflix about James Patterson, of all people, did a documentary called Filthy Rich. It's actually very good. James Patterson's in it a lot, but he apparently was his neighbor and didn't like his neighbor so much. But it's quite good. And he had a compound in Florida. Do you have one? Define what compound means.

Well, it's just a compound. It's just weird to see it from above because it looks like they're all jammed together, all these people on the intercoastal waterways and all these rich people in these incredibly expensive houses all jammed together. But they have these big pools. Everyone has a big pool. And in Epstein's case, the creepy, rapey Hamlet, which has seen home prices substantially decline. Well, in any case, it was really fascinating. Creepy, rapey Hamlet. Okay, well, watch it. I've got to tell you, I never thought James Patterson would make a good documentary, but James Patterson has made a great documentary. Did you see the Epstein documentary?

This is the one on Netflix that just came out. Yeah, I watched the first couple of episodes and it was just too uncomfortable. Oh, this one's just, the interviews they got were just really devastating, but so effective in terms of really making the case. I really, I liked seeing the people you read about that kind of sort of got maligned

by people like Alan Dershowitz and others actually speak for themselves. And it was like, fuck you, Alan Dershowitz, after you read it, you know what I mean? After you heard them. So anyway, but I say that quite a bit anyway about him. So what's going on? What else is going on? My son graduated from high school this weekend. That's very exciting. Congratulations to him. Although it is a little bit sad. No, it wasn't. It wasn't sad. Here's why. What it is a little bit sad. No, it wasn't. It wasn't sad. Here's why.

What they did is, okay, they had their graduation outfits. His was in green. And we met all his friends before. You know, we all got in the cars because it was a drive-through graduation. And so we could only fit the four. I couldn't bring Amanda, but we have, as you know, a mixed, blended family. But we put in my ex, my other son, and my son, Louie, and he popped his head out of the top of the car. There's a sunroof. And he sat on the top of the car, and we drove around the circle of the school, okay?

And it was lined with teachers, all socially distant, and masks and everything else, just cheering the kids. And they drove through, and it was slow going, which was great. It was like a parade. And then they stopped and they got a senior gift and they got woo and they screamed and yelled. And then they got their diploma. And it was really, you know, for a shitty situation, it was pretty good. And it was very moving. The teachers were incredible. They were yelling and screaming for these kids for three hours. The only thing is the kids couldn't really be together with each other, screaming for each other.

But it was nice. I have to say my son was very moved. And he actually, he thought it was pretty good. They might have another graduation with all the kids together later in the year. But it was really, it turned out okay. Turned out okay. We made the best of it. They made the best of a bad situation and did a nice job.

I've been to a bunch of those. We're doing them, you know, for third grade and sixth grade graduation. And I find those things, as you said, just incredibly inspiring. Yeah. And then I have trouble not getting emotional at them because I think about, I wonder if we are of my generation as a function of our selfishness our our globalization of the economy our defunding government our you know just ignoring the externalities of every arbitrage so we could get you know more and more wealthy if at the end of the day we just kind of shortchanged our kids future that our kids just live kind of this non-prom, non-childhood that we had because we're just so fucking greedy.

And I'm very upset. Well, I don't know if we could have anticipated. I get very down. I know. That is. I don't know if we could have anticipated COVID. But, you know, plagues are hard to predict. But in this case.

No, I don't know. Pandemics are much more predictable than a bull economy. Let me explain to you. You and I do not matter, Scott. It's the kids. You and I don't matter. It's more predictable than a bull economy. Let me explain to you. You and I do not matter, Scott. It's the kids. You and I don't matter. It's the kids. And I got to tell you, my son had such a great attitude about a really shitty situation for him.

And I am so proud of him. I can't even tell you. He's just, he handled it better than I did. And if he doesn't mind, then I don't mind. And he's headed to college. Well, they don't mind because they don't know what they're missing. Well, I don't know. I don't know.

Don't be a downer. He was great. And let me tell you, he's headed to NYU where I will have a security detail surrounding him at all times so that you don't get near him. I'll be there. No, you do not get near him. They're going to have your little picture on a card. And if you get near my son, they're going to take some action. I'm great with young men.

They're going to take some Bill Barr action on you if you get near my son. William Barr? I don't even know what that means. What does Bill Barr action mean? I had nothing to do with it, even though protesters got gassed. The argument he was making about gassing was insane. It was tear gas lighting. That's what it was.

Tear gas lighting. So, anyway. Whatever. You're not getting near my son. That's really pretty much the message I want to leave with you. So, anyhow. See, I know you're joking. That hurts my feelings.

I'm teasing you. You can hang with him. You you. You can hang with him. You know. You can hang with him. I'm a delicate little flower. He's on to you. My son is already on to you. I think you need to be more in touch with my emotions today. We got to get to the big stories. What are the

big stories? There's lots of them. Well, Amazon is having issues and legal backlash from employees over sick leave during COVID-19. I don't know if you saw, there's some workers on Staten Island filed a lawsuit saying the company failed to use proper CDC guidelines in contact tracing COVID-19 among workers, essentially didn't tell them. They also argue, or when they told Amazon, they didn't tell everybody else. They also argue Amazon moved too slowly in providing protective equipment, temperature checks, and other tools to keep employees safe. Employees

aren't seeking financial settlement. They're asking the court for an injunction that would require Amazon to follow public health standards. Meanwhile, Bloomberg is reporting because Amazon's HR program is so heavily automated, which it is. I've had many people tell me this. Employees say it hadn't been able to keep up with sick leave requests since it left some workers' face with termination for not showing up to work. Obviously, this stuff gets sorted out, but it's still upsetting for people who have COVID. And, you know, it's very hard to reach a customer service representative at Amazon HR. So this dynamic between this powerful company's workforce continues to be an interesting focus, even as Jeff Bezos has promised to spend all this money to proactively help its workers and reinvest profits back in the supply chain.

So what do you think? I mean, obviously, this is everyone was caught unawares, and that's the fairness we'll give them. But what do you think? What do you make of this? This is pulling back COVID-19. In addition to being an accelerant, it's sort of the mother of all curtain pulling backs. Curtain pulling, that's a verb. I like that. Go ahead. It's revealing that essential workers are this bullshit around all this sandburging.

Sandberging. I think of sandberging as a verb for when you pretend to care about something and you're just doing it as a means of putting more money in your own pocket. Couldn't that be Zuckerberging? But anyway, go ahead. Oh, no. That's when you're a sociopath who will. So Zuckerberg has become a new verb for an oligarch. If you think about what an oligarch means, it means you use corruption and proximity to power to become a billionaire. And that's what Zuckerberg is now. He's the global oligarch. His proximity to the president, he's entered into an unholy relationship. He's no longer competing. He is using his proximity and his total lack of any sense of morality or concern for the commonwealth and his proximity to the president to of morality or concern for the Commonwealth and his proximity to the president to enter into what is the mother of all unholy alliances. Sandburging is when you pretend to give a flying fuck about something

as a means of delaying and obfuscating that you're doing exactly what you care about such that you can get richer. So I think there's a lot of sandburging going on when CEOs— Isn't it Bezosian? Why CEOs— Isn't it Bezosian? Why don't you call it Bezosian? I think that has something more to do with the midlife crisis. I haven't come up with that yet. All right.

Okay. So this is a company's promise to fix this situation. Right. But what we're saying is that I hate the term essential workers because when they say essential, what they really mean is people that through a mix of income inequality and a lack of minimum wage, a lack of standards, and the fact that we don't hold these companies to the same standards we've held other companies, that we're essentially going to call them heroes such that we can continue to pay them shitty wages and put them in harm's way. And to Amazon's credit, they raised the minimum wage across their entire employee set to 15 bucks an hour, which I think is something. I think they deserve credit for that. But it's hard to know to the extent to which they have implemented distancing and the investments

they've made and employee compensation, because I do think there is something to voluntarily putting yourself in harm's way as our men and women in uniform do, oil rig, whatever it might be. Fireman is actually a fairly dangerous job. As long as you're cognizant of the risks and you're being compensated for it and you're being protected from, you're being protected should something really bad happen. You know, deep sea divers have like a life expectancy. They don't live past 50 or 55, but they make two or 300 grand a year. And they have massive life insurance policies paid for by their petroleum, you know, parents. Oh, by the way, I have errors and omissions I need to get to. When do we do that in the show? Can we do that now? I have some, I made some errors.

All right, quickly. In the last show. Okay, sorry. Quickly, this isn't linear talk on television. We can do whatever we want. It's just you talking and me listening, but go ahead. It's called Scott's Therapy Sessions. It's supposed to be the other way. It's supposed to be the other way around, right? I'm supposed to be the one listening right now. Yes, yeah. Anyways. But no, no, no. I had said that the firebombing of Dresden killed more people than the nuclear detonations in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, And several people weighed in and corrected me. The 200,000 number that was put on the death toll in the Dresden firebombing was something that was propaganda from the Communist Party who controlled, obviously, the eastern part of Germany.

It was actually closer to 20,000 and somewhere between 50 and 100,000 people died in each of the nuclear detonations. So that was not an accurate statement. That's a math mess. Right. And then although there was one evening where the Allies had a bombing raid against Tokyo that supposedly took 100,000 lives. So arguably the greatest disaster or toll on human life during the World War II was this midnight bombing raid of Tokyo.

But anyways, I just wanted to correct that I got that wrong. Anyways, I'm sorry. Back to our regular schedule program. All right. So let me interject, if you don't mind, for a second. Between you admitting you make math errors all the time. I do think that there's an opportunity here for Amazon to do that. I was thinking, if I was him, I would have all the executives at Amazon work on the lines until it was fixed.

Speaking of putting themselves in harm's way, order all your executives down there and say, a vice president and above, I guess. There's hundreds of vice presidents. And say, you're going to go down there until it's fixed. But when you say fixed, what is fixed? Well, I think just at least being under CDC guidelines. And I know they're pushing back. Amazon's pushing back that they are, and they're following these guidelines.

But if you're going to brag about spending $4 billion to vaccinate the supply chain, then vaccinate the – don't brag about it before you've done it. And so I think I would put my executives down there and say, oh, it's like sort of eating the dog food. It's like – I saw a movie called Deepwater or something like that. It was with Mark Ruffalo where he gained weight and he played a lawyer. And they were like, would you drink this? It was from this stream in this area that DuPont had sullied.

And the guy said, it's like drinking a tire. Of course I wouldn't. There's been so many scenes like that. Yeah. So I think they have, I would like them to be much more, I would, it would be really something for Jeff Bezos who does tend to speak out. He just spoke out. He read a letter from someone who wrote him sort of a rant about Black Lives Matter saying, I don't want you as a customer anyway. He does this kind of stunty kind of stuff all the time, although I appreciated that stunt.

And he should do something like that. Like if he says he's going to do this, he should put some arrow behind that wood. And show that, being very transparent about it, how many people died, how many people got sick, radical transparency on this. And it could be really fascinating if we believe them, that's the thing. there's not a lot of belief in these tech companies as much and more trust. But in this case, if he like put out the numbers, I think that would be, you know, he did it around his, you know, his sex photos. So why not? And I think that would be

really something to talk about the difficulty of it, talk about what, what the challenges are. And it's not PR to say, here's what we're facing. Here's the six things that are hard. Here's what we didn't do right. Here's what we did do right. Here's what we need to do better. And I just think there's a real opportunity for any company, not Amazon, but since they were committing all these billions, to do that, to do that in a way that everybody could see and then copy those practices or don't copy them if they're bad practices. All right, I'm done with my rant. So you said a lot there, but generally speaking, most great retail companies have a formal process. And I remember Howard Lesser, the founder and CEO of Williams-Sonoma, that's just lying a business. He implemented a process where every executive, I don't know if it was once a year, went and spent time in the call center.

And I think they may even spent time in the fulfillment center such that, and it wasn't quite frankly, probably an effort to such that you would develop empathy for people in other income earning classes, but such that you would just understand the consumer better. But I think that's a generally just a good practice for executives to spend time across their entire supply chain. I am more sympathetic, I think,

to Walmart and amazon factory workers because i was asked to um i was asked by this uh hedge fund to identify what i thought were the biggest kind of meta or big systemic risks down there and the big i think the biggest risk facing the world right now is that somewhere between 16 to 8 weeks before the election, the polls come back for Trump that he's going to lose and we have a wag the dogs in our eye. I think he's fucking crazy enough to like get into a shooting match with the Chinese in the South China Sea or something just to try and beef up his popularity. We now have two or three things. We have a pandemic. I don't feel like people want, oh, now war? I don't think that'll help him in any way.

Well, yeah, you're speaking rationally. Anyways, and then I think that the other big risk that I was nervous about, and I think that risk is mostly passed now that we're starting to open up again, but it could come back, is I don't think people realize how vulnerable we were. We thought, we think of ourselves as having this unbelievably robust supply chain, but when you recognize that our nation can no longer produce cotton swabs and get them to hospitals, you recognize how vulnerable our supply chain was. I don't think people realize how vulnerable and at risk our food supply chain was for a while there. And if Amazon and Walmart had something really bad happen where they needed to interrupt their supply chain and start closing their distribution centers or their warehouses. I think you could have seen chaos. I think people would have started picking up

their Glocks and heading to the Publix to get food. And so I think the supply chain, and this is the problem, and it's a discussion we should have coming out of this pandemic, and that is have Walmart and Amazon become too big to fail? And so I I think it's important and I think it's worth some risk. And that's not to say that people shouldn't be compensated. They shouldn't, no one should have to show up to work because they're so poor. They feel they put themselves in harm's way. But I do think Walmart and Amazon's food supply chain right now plays in almost sort of like a national defense kind of critical like role.

So, but transparency, absolutely. The data, how many people are contracting it? I'm sorry, go ahead. They just, they needn't have, they're going to have lawsuits. Every company in the world is going to have lawsuits. But here's a company that could actually- Very hard to establish attribution liability around these types of lawsuits. Yeah, I know.

I know. But I think it's really important that they maybe be a leader here in this area. And they certainly could take advantage of it. They just made a big deal about doing it. I'd like to actually think it's really important that they maybe be a leader here in this area, and they certainly could take advantage of it. They just made a big deal about doing it. I'd like to actually see it in action. That's what I would do. But anyway, we have to take a quick break. We'll be back to talk about Reddit's co-founders stepping down from the company and a friend of Pivot.

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And makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Welcome back, Scott. On Friday, Reddit's one of its founders, Alex Ohanian, stepped down from the company's board of directors and asked the company to fill the space with a black leader. In response, Reddit's current CEO, Steve Huffman, wrote that the company would honor Ohanian's request. Reddit has long allowed threads that fuel and amplify white supremacist rhetoric, and the company has not taken down. I have interviewed Steve and Alex a lot about this issue.

They've had some good answers and some not so good answers. But Reddit's former interim CEO, Alan Powell, wrote on Twitter, I am obligated to call you out. You should have shut down the Donald, a pro-Trump message board, which that is, instead of amplifying it and its hate, racism and violence. So much of what is happening now lies at your feet. You don't get to say BLM when Reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all day long. That was quite a strong thing from Ellen, who has a lot of strong opinions. And I think I tend to agree with her. I've had these arguments with them. They had placed the Donald on a ban.

They have all these different rules at Reddit. I don't remember the last thing they did. But they gave him some sort of warning. I know Alexis well. He's obviously married famously to Serena Williams. I think him just saying this is a great thing to say this, but he's right. The way they created Reddit has, even though I think Reddit more than many places has tried to at least admit and start to clean up, has tried to at least admit and start to clean up, you know, the way they structured Reddit has led to a lot of these sort of dank areas of that service. Yeah, it's, so first off, the board of directors, I think is where a lot of, it kind of all starts there. And because people are tribal

and people are more comfortable establishing relationships with people who look, smell, and feel like them, it's just instinctive. And we're more evolved and we can self-correct and modulate for that, but that will be oftentimes your go-to. And so if you think about corporate America, where it all starts, where hiring decisions start and capital allocation starts in terms of people's economic opportunities is at the board because the board picks the CEO. And when your board is all white dudes, you have a tendency to just come up with reasons for why the next CEO should be, you guessed it, a white dude. And then he has a tendency to find and establish relationships with other white dudes.

seat to find and establish relationships with other white dudes. So it kind of, and then it trickles down to this waterfall, which leads to continued, you know, for lack of a better term, systemic racism. So board, if you wanted to have a really long lasting impact, and we've talked about this a lot on this show, boards get a fraction of the scrutiny relative to the power they have for change. The board decides if and when a company gets sold and who the CEO is, who sets the tone for the company for the next five to seven years on a lot of levels. So there's just no guarantee. If you wanted long-term real structural change in corporate America, you really have to start at a board level.

I think you get at the idea these boards are not powerful in Silicon Valley. I can tell you that. They just aren't. It doesn't matter who. They could put anybody on the board of Facebook. It doesn't matter. That's why people like Ken Chenault and others left. I think it's somewhere between 10% and 20% of companies are dual-class shareholders. I think what would have been interesting is to take for someone, and I would do this if I had more discipline, but to take all of those kind of performative black square serif statements around how we stand with George Floyd and we're appalled

by this on behalf of the company, and then just have a picture of all of their board of directors. Yeah. Well, how funny you should say that, Scott, because I did that story 10, seven, eight years ago. I was asked by the guy who was the head of, years ago, I wrote the men and no women of Facebook. And all I did was put up the pictures of the management team. It was all men. And this was, I think, pre-Cheryl. And then I was focused on women's issues in these stories. And the other one was the men and women of internet boards. And I, because the head of Groupon at the time, who's a lovely guy, had asked me if

I knew any qualified women. And I nearly, like, choked him from through the phone line. And so I wrote a story about it. And I said, here's all the pictures. This is, here's all, like, there are binders and binders of women. It shouldn't be so hard to find women or people of color. And then I had another argument with the, uh, with the head of Twitter at the time, who was, uh, Dick Costolo about that issue. Um, where I think I wrote the single best lead of my lifetime, um, about, um, you know what? That's an incredibly high bar.

No, it is. Let me tell it to you. All right. It was about that they had 10 white men on the board, and I said, on the board of Twitter, which has three Peters and a Dick, there is no diversity, something like that. But it was three Peters and a Dick because they actually had three people named Peter and one guy named Dick.

And so I think that was one of my best things. But they don't have any sense. This is where things can actually change if these boards do have power. And they certainly don't have power. And so this is very lovely for Alexis to say this, but they should have done it a long time ago. They should have made the board larger. They should give these.

And it shouldn't just be one person because they run around, you know, saying we have standards, we have standards when they didn't have standards in the first place, by the way, when it was all white men, they run around and try to sort of like find people of color, find women, find different voices without like having it just like as a matter of course. I'm not sure how to correct that. But isn't that where you start? I mean, we'd all like to think it happens. Oh, come on. It's been 20 years. Well, okay, it's got to start somewhere, Kara.

It's got to start 20 years ago. You're hoping we're just better people and we'll figure it out organically? A decent place to start is to say, okay, we're going to put a black person on our board. Yeah, but you know what? I can't even believe someone has to say that in this day. I don't believe they didn't do it before.

Why it takes these, I just, I find it just, I like Alexis. You're outraged. I'm outraged. I'm just like, stop it, stop it. these these i just i find it just i i like you're outraged i'm outraged i'm just like stop it stop it and i really like alexis i do and i i agree with ellen that they've allowed this site to become uh accessible now again they have tried really read it that bad i never thought i read it oh my god oh no don't stop scott scott sorry oh scott they had so they had you're not giving me a credit. I cry a drive by graduations, Kara. No, let me just tell you, I can't even repeat the name of one of them that took them forever

to get off. It was, it was offensive. Oh, I can't even believe it. They're just, and they have, let me just say, compared to Facebook, they're incredibly responsive, but that doesn't mean- Reddit is incredibly responsive. Compared to Facebook, and that is the lowest bar. I mean, I don't know how low you can get for a bar, but in any case, they've always been open to discussing it and have tried to do bans and

everything else and have gone out of their way and said, we are going to edit it. And of course, they're not as big as a Facebook or anything else. Anyway, I'm not going to rant about it. I think, great, they should have done it five years ago. I'm not going to give the claps for this. And I tend to agree with Alan. I'm not giving them claps for something they should have done a long time ago. That's what I'm speaking. But anyway, we got to go because we've got to talk to our friend of Pivot who's on the line. We have Mike Masnick, who I've had many an argument with. We have Mike Masnick, who I've had many an argument with. He's the founder. There he is.

He's the founder and editor of TechDirt and one of the many experts on Section 230, which I think we need to talk about because this is about what these sites can do to do anything about it. Section 230 has been back in the news in large part because Twitter's move to flag the president's tweets for inciting violence and spreading misinformation that bothered him. In turn, the president began to promote the idea of revoking Section 230, which has been around from a lot of the candidates. Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden talked about it. And he signed this kooky executive order to clarify the scope of Section 230. I'm not going to go into detail. This is not going anywhere. But Mike can explain it for us. Mike, can you explain what the president did and then actually briefly explain Section 230 and whether you think it should be revoked or reformed or what? Which order do you want that in? Let's start with what it is. Explain it. Sure. Because people get this wrong. Yeah.

A lot. A lot. Yes. Constantly. Section 230 really tries to do two different things that work together to sort of help promote good content on the internet. In some sense, it is designed to try and promote the most good content and the least bad content. And people seem to get those two efforts that balance each other confused all the time. So it does two things. One of which is it says that if you are a platform that hosts content from third parties, you do not get blamed or you're not liable for anything that a third party does. It says that you put the liability on the actual content creator. So if someone violates the law, if someone posts something that is defamatory, it is the person who wrote the defamatory thing that gets the blame and the liability for it and not the platform that is hosting it. That's part one, and that's the part that a lot of people pay attention to. And then the second part of it basically says that to encourage sites to moderate the content on their platform and to create things like family-friendly areas of the internet that is, you know, without spam and hate

and porn and all of that kind of stuff. If you do moderate the content on your platform, you are not liable for those moderation choices, and that includes for content that you leave up. Right. So it seems pretty clear that what Twitter did was fine then, under the law. Yes, yes. What Twitter did was clearly fine under the law. Yes, yes. What Twitter did was clearly fine under the law and also not just under 230. There's this concept some people have said of like violating 230. There's nothing you can violate. There's nothing in 230. No, it's a helper. It's protection. It's not prophylactic, isn't it? It's saying whether or not you're liable. And the thing that is important,

and I think a lot of people miss in the debate, is that the First Amendment backs up all of this, right? So, you know, the content that Twitter put in terms of like the fact check on the president, which created all of this, you know, recent mess and concern in the executive order, you know, the content that they wrote themselves has nothing to do with 230 because it's content that Twitter itself wrote. So that's not third-party content and it's not moderation. So what they wrote, that one little line like, get the facts about, that has nothing to do with 230. It's not protected by 230, but it is protected by the First Amendment because it's Twitter speech and it's perfectly clear and protected speech. There's nothing illegal about what they said. speech and it's perfectly, you know, clear and protected speech. There's nothing illegal about what they said. Um, and so I think that gets confused all of the time. Um, and which brings into the, the, the follow-up question of like, well, what should be done about 230 and what does

the executive order do or purport to do or what should it do? Um, and you know, the executive order does nothing. It, it basically just creates a lot of, uh, heat, uh, and asks, uh, for different, you know, basically studies to be done on 230. It asked the attorney general to create a reference law to sort of try and mess up 230, though it's not clear what, what can actually be done there. Um, and it asked the FCC to come up with an interpretation of 230, which it's not clear what can actually be done there. And it asked the FCC to come up with an interpretation of 230, which it doesn't directly ask them because the president can't ask the FCC to do anything. It asks the Commerce Department to ask the FCC, and it sort of suggests an interpretation of 230 that is completely at odds with what the law actually says and also what case law for 20 plus years has said.

So it's kind of a joke, but it could create a lot of distraction for a long time. Isn't that the point? Or it seems to me that the president and 230 is just an enormous distraction and an unproductive conversation. an unproductive conversation. Isn't it really about a law 23 years ago that was supposed to protect nascent technologies? Isn't that the term they use, nascent technologies or platforms, which by virtue of that means it's incredibly outdated? So I'm going to disagree with that. I think that that is some of the sense. And certainly at the time, I mean, it was 1996 when the discussion was happening. And so certainly the internet was nascent and the platforms were nascent. But whether or not that means that the law is outdated is a separate question. And I would argue that it's not outdated and that the law to this day is incredibly important. And without it, we would have actually more of the problems that, you know, that the two of you are often concerned about and that you're

often talking about. Which is that they'll censor it more. But get into the idea that what, so what Scott's asking about is, should it just be reformed versus gotten rid of? Scott, you think it should be gotten rid of? I would ask the question a different way, and that is, why are these platforms subject to less scrutiny than any other media platform? Viability, especially. And I think that's wrong, right? I mean, so Section 230 protects all Internet websites, and it also protects users. So if you retweet something, you are not liable for that. It is designed to encourage widespread speech

and also the creation of better moderation tools. And it allows for different kinds of experimentation, different kinds of approaches, and whether or not you agree with all of the approaches, that's one thing. But it allows for that experimentation. Without it, you have a few different problems that come about. And most of the reform proposals that are out there

lead to these same problems. One of which is, you know, if you do become liable for the content on your site, you have what's called the moderator's dilemma, which is, you know, either you're encouraged not to look at anything because you don't want to get that liability of how... The way it works, if you don't have 230, is you would have some sort of distributor liability, which is the concept. And that

depends on knowledge and how much knowledge you have. So one way to avoid that is not to look at anything, right? So then you get more of the... So let all hell break loose. Right. You're sort of encouraging more 4chans rather than the opposite. Then the other is to think that, well, okay, if I'm going to be liable, I have to now check over everything very, very carefully. And then you get a very, very different world in which everything has to be limited. You don't get the sort of open platforms that allow people to speak. You don't get the sort of emergent innovation around the conversations that happen on Twitter or things like podcasting. It becomes a risk. Whoever's hosting the podcast,

if they're liable for everything that is said on it, becomes a problem. Do they need to do that? You sort of back into a world that is very much the traditional broadcast media, and you shut out all of these other voices. And as we've seen, what's happening in the world today, a lot of this is coming about because people are able to speak out. And people who in the past were not able to be heard, and voices that were silenced or not listened to are suddenly being heard, and people are able to speak out and speak their mind is because the internet allows that. And without 230 or with most of the reform proposals that we've seen, that would be greatly, greatly limited. So would you argue, hold on, would you argue the

state of play is acceptable? The vibe I'm getting from you is that, yeah, there's some issues with this, but it's the least bad thing we could have. Are you comfortable with the state of where we are in terms of Facebook and Twitter and social media in terms of this rage machine? Do you think that's something we have to live with? Well, I think the idea that the state of things today is a constant is not quite correct, right? I mean, I think these things are constantly changing. And there is all sorts of pressure from all sorts of different places, including you guys and Kara. You know, Kara has a long history of actually creating change through

speaking out. So let me just add to that value that we're going to fix this. And is the trend headed in the right way, this notion that it'll eventually self-police and self-correct? Do you see that happening? Yeah, I do think it will. And I think that this is just sort of the nature of these kinds of technological revolutions. And you've seen it in the past. When you allow more people to speak out, then at the beginning there is kind of chaos and people are trying to figure it out. And some of it is that society itself has to adapt and change and catch up to it. And I think that over time.

We have a couple hundred years of chaos and then people figure it out. That's sort of it. Well, also, but Mike, one of the things you and I talk about is it's different than other chaos because it's so massive in the amount of data, the amount of noise, the amount of badness, that it does become amplified in ways that are a little different than previous technologies. So should there be any liability at all? Because this is an industry that has nearly zero liability. And I would push back on that, too. The idea that there's zero liability is not true either.

You have a few different things. One is that there is liability for the content that the platforms themselves create. And we've seen that in cases like the Roommates case, where they were effectively creating content that was violating fair housing laws. And so when the platforms themselves do it, there are a couple of cases, I'm not sure I agree with them, but we've seen certain cases like the Internet Brands case, where if a platform is seen as negligent and it reaches a standard of negligence, then they can get blame also. We've seen other cases. And again, I'm not necessarily comfortable with these cases, but we've seen them play out with things like Airbnb and Amazon, where they can also be held

liable and responsible. The idea that it's a complete freedom. Also, 230 has nothing to do with intellectual property. So any intellectual property things, there's still liability there. And criminal law, federal criminal law, is exempt from 232. So there are all these things. The idea that 230 is this big, like giant get out of jail free card is not true. And then the last part is like the whole setup of it is designed to that, you know, if people are liable and responsible, like the liability goes

to them, it doesn't wipe out liability. And if the issue is that I think you're raising is that you want these platforms to do more, taking away 230 doesn't fix that. 230 allows them to experiment and allows them to make these changes. What do you imagine is going to happen? And then, Scott, you can ask the last question. You have Joe Biden saying, get rid of it. You have heard Nancy Pelosi sort of dance around it. You've heard Josh Hawley with his stuff. And Elizabeth Warren.

This is a group of people that literally couldn't have dinner in a restaurant together. Maybe Elizabeth Nancy Pelosi. But not Josh Hawley. What is going to happen? What is going to actually happen from your perspective? I have no idea. I mean, part of the problem is that everybody misunderstands 230. So you have all those people that you just named who are very, very diametrically opposed on lots of other things who all hate 230.

But they hate 230 for different reasons. Some of them hate 230 because it's allowing for moderation. Some of them hate 230 because it's not leading to enough moderation. And so I don't think they actually agree on why they hate 230. They hate 230 just because everybody right now hates 230. So based on that, there's a good chance that something is going to happen with 230. Whether or not it gets revoked entirely, I find to be very unlikely. But I think that there will be reforms that will be pushed through. And I don't think that they will solve the problems that they're designed to solve. And I don't think they're going to help the situations that you guys are talking about.

I don't think it's going to encourage Facebook to do any better. And in fact, we just went through this, where there was a reform for 230, which is now referred to as FOSTA. It was also in the past referred to as SESTA. And it was supposedly targeting sex trafficking. And what happened there was you had a lot of people protesting how it would create problems. The one big tech company that went to the other side was Facebook.

And Facebook said, hey, this is great. We support it. We think this is good. And then what happened was it didn't do any of the things it said it was going to do. It hasn't been used to shut down any sex trafficking platforms. What it has done is it led to a bunch of smaller dating sites shut down because they were afraid they were going to be liable for it. And what happens a few months after that? Facebook launches its own dating platform.

Didn't Backpage go away? Didn't the adult services on Craigslist go away? Craigslist shut down its dating pages. Craigslist shut down its dating pages. Craigslist shut down its erotic section, whatever it was called. I think it was called that. Years ago, almost a decade ago, that had nothing to do with it. Backpage, the entire point of SESTA and FOSTA,

we were told over and over again, directly, was to go after Backpage. Backpage, first of all, the founders of Backpage were arrested many months before all of that debate. And then the DOJ went in and shut down Backpage, first of all, the founders of Backpage were arrested many months before all of that debate. Then the DOJ went in and shut down Backpage the week before FOSTA passed. The idea that it was necessary to shut down Backpage is wrong. It was blatantly wrong. They shut it down.

It was that the DOJ didn't do anything for many, many years. Using existing laws. Using existing laws. They knew that FOSTA was passing. If they really wanted FOSTA, they could have waited a week, one more week. And then they knew that foster was passing. If they really wanted foster, they could have waited a week, one more week. They didn't do anything for a decade. They could have waited one more week. So the idea that foster was necessary or that it's helped.

And instead, what we've seen is all sorts of evidence that it's done tremendous harm for sex workers and places where sex workers communicate with each other that help keep them safe. So it's actually put women in danger when all of this was passed with the idea that it would help protect women. All right. So last question, what is your prediction? Is it just going to be a lot of yelling by Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren, and then Trump is going to weigh in every time? I think there's absolutely nothing Trump can do about this unless they put something false, if they wrote something false and libelous about him, other than read here about mail-in bailouts. Bailouts doesn't seem to be that libelous. Or this is possibly misleading, or this could promote, the language is very careful. We're just going to have to like rely on them to make these decisions, correct? Is that real? And Mark doesn't want to make any and whether kind of does and Google kind of does and they end up doing it anyway because they also edit all the time all over the service.

So where do you imagine it going a year from now? I mean, I think there will be attempts to eat away at 230 and there are a few other attempts right now. And people have talked about other ways to sort of use the FOSTA playbook on 230. So I think it's very, very likely that we'll see attempts to eat away at 230. Whether or not they'll be successful, that's completely, you know, outside of my crystal ball. And what do you want? What do you think should happen? I think 230 should be left alone. I think that all of the complaints that people are making about 230 are misdirected at 230 and that there are other better ways to approach those issues. There are other better ways to encourage better moderation. There are other better ways to encourage a better setup of the internet that is encouraging more experimentation on these platforms, encouraging more competition between the different platforms, and allowing much better behavior to come about through that. The law is not going to do it, especially not 230. It's just shame.

You want just me to keep yelling at them. Yeah, you're the best at it. You're very effective. That's scary. That is true. Obviously, not just you. And you're very effective. That's scary.

But obviously not just you. I mean, I honestly think, and if you look at how these platforms have changed in their moderation, you can complain about them today, but if you look at how much they've changed in the last five years because of public pressure, and 230 allows them to change, right?

It doesn't lock them into a set of, this is the exact guidelines. It allows them to change and experiment when they doesn't lock them into a set of, this is the exact guidelines. It allows them to change and experiment when they realize every time that they mess up. And you tell them that they mess up, or I tell them that they mess up. And so that's effective. You're confident that we're safer, that there's a lower probability of the weaponization of elections at the hand of bad actors on Facebook this election? You think things are headed in the right direction?

I mean, there's a long pause. You're bringing up a whole other area around election manipulation. Well, I guess where I'm going is I would like to believe that the market and shaming and Kara Swisher are going to save us here, and I just don't see any evidence of that. Yeah, me neither. Well, I disagree. I mean, it's broader than that. And I'm a little bit snarky in just saying it's Kara,

obviously. But the fact is, people speak out about these things. Captain Marvel right here. And again, you're very effective. But I think that if you have not paid attention to how much these companies have changed, and if you have not spoken to the people at the companies about how seriously they do take this, and if you talk to the people who are on the trust and safety teams about how they think about these things and how deeply concerned they are about all of this stuff, they are not taking it flippantly. There is this assumption out there that they don't care, and that may be true of certain top executives at some of these firms. But if you talk to the people who are actually responsible for making these decisions, they care, and they put a lot of thought into it,

and they recognize that every one of the decisions that they're making has tremendous trade-offs. It is not as easy as it seems. Like, for all of us sitting in our homes, you know, talking over Zoom or whatever, thinking that the answers are easy, they're not. Every single one of these has a trade-off. And the people who are thinking through them are taking it seriously. 100%. But that's why they get paid the big bucks, Mike, and not us. Anyway, I really appreciate it. I always think you're such a smart thing. You always change my mind on things, and I do appreciate all your tips over time.

He whacked me one, and I think he was right to do so. Anyway, Mike Masnick, you can keep trying, but not on everything. The founder and editor of Tector and an excellent thinker on Section 230. Please read him. He's terrific. Mike, thank you so much. Thank you, Mike. Nice meeting you.

Thanks for having me. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees, and it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built

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That guy's smart, isn't he? Oh, yeah. It's an effort. What does he do again? Tech Dirt. He writes. It's a site that's really good. I've been following him for many years on lots of stuff. We've gone a lot of rounds, but I have a huge respect for him and he's always so reasonable. I had a podcast with him and two others, one of whom I disagreed with him, one of whom was an academic in the middle and was just And it was just great. It was a really, it was, you got to really think hard.

That's my whole point about this. Donald Trump doing an executive order is the most slapdash, ridiculous, reductive thing to do here. We have to really think hard. And that's, even if you disagree with me, we have to come together in some way that works for everybody rather than have knee-jerk reactions. Anyway, so Scott, wins and fails.

Let me hear. What do you got? I have two wins. They're both brand-based. Wins. You don't have a fail? Okay. No, and I have a fail. It's more of a question for you is my fail. So I thought great brand moves are bold and timely, and they involve a certain amount of risk, and occasionally on the wrong side of that risk, and occasionally on the right side of the risk. But I thought Mayor Bowser, am I pronouncing her name right? Bowser. Yeah, I thought the emblem or the mural of Black Lives Matter across the avenue leading

up to the White House is going to go down as one of the great kind of brand moves in terms of capturing the moment. And we're a visual species. I just thought it was just so incredibly creative and innovative. It was interesting. Interestingly, my son, who has been getting very politicized recently, my 14, 15-year-old, he was like, fine, it's just PR. Why did she keep funding the police even more? Like, he was already past that. So it was interesting that he wasn't buying it.

I thought it was great. And then we had this discussion about allies that we may not like one thing He was already past that. So it was interesting that he wasn't buying it. I thought, I said it was great. And then we had this discussion about allies that we like, we may not like one thing and we can like another. And he goes, I don't care if she paints anything. I care about if she's doing, not doing police reform. And it was really, it was interesting. It was, I was like, oh, interesting. So you didn't like this.

And no, I don't care. It doesn't matter. So, so interesting. So, uh, and the other one, uh, because I thought it was a lot, I said it was a loss that Nike's kind of along the lines of everyone else. I thought that they sort of overproduced messaging, uh, brand building things on TV were, uh, that, that, that era had come to an end. It was more about actions. And just as I put out a blog saying that Nikeike you know just stop but it's

time to have you you know the music match the words or actions are are really an indicator of your character not your words later that afternoon they announced that they were gonna they pledged 100 million dollars in concert with michael jordan to uh fight systemic you know it it strikes me that nike continues to sort of capture the moment I think, and they'll fall under a lot of criticism for this, but I do think they take risks and they're not afraid to take action. I think $100 million is real cabbage, even for a company like Nike. So I think it's a win. And I don't know, I just have a lot of respect for their, you know, there's so many companies in that space. And they always seem to sort of take

i don't know take the action if you have the ceo on how about that we bring him along we talk about he's the old ebay guy right yeah yeah john yeah very yeah and then so who are your wins and then i'll do my last question for you i i i think the wins are for the protesters i thought they the peaceable the peace across the country what it seems like it's gotten more, I don't know what the term is, more productive, more peaceful. Of course it has to be. And it's, it's, it's, that murder was so appalling and so. Well, I know the protests could have gone one or the other way. Yeah, but it just, you know, I just was like the kid, they were just all weekend long here in DC. I had some dummy like tweet me like, oh, it's anarchy there. And I took pictures. I'm like, this is an anarchy.

If this is anarchy, get the hell out of this country. This is beautiful. You know what I mean? Like I was just really moved by the protesters of all ages. And, and I just was, and I actually, I liked that my kids got political too. It was really a win. I was just like, they just picked their frigging heads up out of there and started looking around. My kids are good that way, but they got better. And I really, you know, that's just my life and my very privileged, tall white children. But it was really, it was really something to see. I just think, and I think there's going to be a lot of leadership from this. And there you've seen a lot of leadership from all over the place. I think my fail is Roger Goodell. Once again, every time he opens his mouth, I want to just- What we really meant to say was- What we really meant to say is Colin Kaepernick is fine.

Did you notice he didn't use his name? He didn't even use his name. Whatever. It's too little too late, Roger. You were on the wrong side of history before, and now you look like a panderer to the right side of history. And I know we're supposed to bring in allies, like I just said, but no, no. That one, no no that one no no

no colin kaepernick was always a hero for doing what he did and uh for you to late acknowledges after ruining his career you can i i'm not going to curse right now but you know what i want to say right exactly so my last is a question to you and obviously the question is pregnant with a comment because otherwise i wouldn't be asking you the question. But do you think the firing of James Bennett and the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, do you think it was good or bad? Or I don't mean to bifurcate it. What are your thoughts on it? Look, I don't know the ins and outs of the firing.

I think he had to go. I think he had to go. I think the other guy also had to go. I don't know all the details of what happened. I have some, because I'm not an actual employee of the New York Times. So I wasn't in any of those meetings. I just read about them on Twitter. I'm not allowed.

Can you imagine letting me into a New York Times meeting? Trust me, it's overrated. It's overrated. Okay. I don't go. I didn't go. I've heard they were very heartfelt. They heard they were great discussions.

I heard they were very emotional. This is just people there have reported to me. I think that one, I looked at A.G. Sulzberger's remarks and I think it wasn't, I think they made, first of all, I would never have put Tom Cotton in. I just don't know why they have feel they have to like entertain, you know, I know they're trying to do diverse, whatever, but honestly you can make choices. The Wall Street Journal or Fox News doesn't worry about having diverse voices. I get that The New York Times is better and this and that, but they've gone too. I thought James' thing, and I like James Bennett very much, is he hired me there, so I know him very well. I think there was a number of things that had happened over time that I think this was the, and the choice of Tom Cotton, I thought was a bad one. I think that he didn't read it was not great and he had to take responsibility himself in the pages of the New York Times, I think, was just astonishing. Because he had done such a famous tweet about shooting people, like no quarter.

Trying to hide it by using the word no quarter, which everyone understands what it means. And that wasn't in the piece. And so it allowed him to have a Twitter, a really malignant Twitter personality, and then a more measured personality in the Times. I thought that was a mistake. And you have to, like, look, James did what he needed to do. He couldn't lead going on, and he stepped down. And I think that was, he did the right thing. And the New York Times did the right thing.

And I know people are all mad. They're making it about just this mob thing. It's ridiculous. There were other things over the past year that also, you know, like it's not just one thing. And I don't think, I think to, to allow Tom Cotton and President Trump to turn it into this woke thing is ridiculous. It's just, it's not what's not the truth. And I think James, uh, like the way he is, he knew he made a mistake

and he took responsibility for it. And that's what happened. And that's that, that, that, and especially around the editing and the editing, the editing oversight of this thing and allowing such a badly edited piece to go in The Times. You can't, you know, The Times has standards and they just shouldn't have let it in. So I don't think that's a very particularly controversial thing. Again, I don't have any knowledge. I will be writing about it. So maybe you can tell me what you think of it once I do. Maybe you can tell me what you think of it once I do.

But I just think in this day and age, it's so easy to get into reductive conversations about not letting people speak out. And I think it's such a canard. That's such a canard. Everybody gets to speak out. You don't get to speak out everywhere, and you don't necessarily get to speak out in the major air times. I'm not sure that when, and maybe there's a reason for this, that we're in such an emotional raw time that everyone feels comfortable speaking out. I think there's a danger that if you don't, or a feeling that if you don't sign up to a certain orthodoxy, that anything you say, even if it's meant to be a productive part of a dialogue, puts you at huge risk in this cancel culture.

And I worry that without embracing something outside of your own orthodoxy, that we don't end up in a dialogue that results in enduring change. All right, but why Tom Cotton? We know what he like, but why not? Why not show the full Tom Cotton? Not the, not the, not the, he's in a nice white shirt. The question is, I think that was a mistake. And I think that the byline on the Philadelphia story, the, you know, buildings lives matters too, which is ridiculous. The question is that timing too what a terrible what a terrible like use of a phrase at this moment and they're and they're big boys and they make a lot of money and they're paid to make those kind of editors about judgment you make a bad judgment you lose your job but at the same

i get that but do we do we end up sending a signal to editors that they just have to be so milquetoast and not make not take any risks and not... We're just talking about that with Mike, right? Yeah. You know? No, it doesn't make milquetoast. I just feel like, look, if I was running that section, which I never will in a million years, like, what's wrong with having your point of view and, like, deciding that's the thing? This idea that everybody must be listened to?

Mm-mm. Yeah. I don't think. Why? And, by the way, there's lots of other voices that didn must be listened to? Yeah. I don't think. Why? And by the way, there's lots of other voices that didn't get listened to. Like, why Tom Cotton? Why not blank? You know, I just, it's.

I'm not arguing whether the Tom, I don't think that Tom Cotton, they shouldn't have given any oxygen to that. Or if they had a format, they should have had somebody push back like an interviewer going, yeah, but aren't you being really hypocritical here, Senator Cotton? So I agree with you, it was a bad decision. I guess my question is, if you look at the movie that was these person's careers, to me, it plays out that it's a movie that strikes, and I don't know them that well, but the guy at the Philadelphia Inquirer in four years had doubled the percentage of reporters who were people people of color he won pulitzers and then you kind of step in it during a raw time and you're out well you know what it's it's tough up there i don't that one i don't know the whole history and i i think that headline was a paul i was like yeah it was terrible like literally i think margaret sullivan said it best who writes

for the way she's been an ombudsman and stuff like that there's something called hey boss look at this this looks problematic like where all of these things like where is that one that headline who writes for the, she's been an ombudsman and stuff like that. There's something called, hey boss, look at this. This looks problematic. Like where, all of these things, like where is that one, that headline? I'm like, who did that? I want to like be in the room to go, what the fuck? And I have been in those rooms where they just like, oh, whatever. And then you're like, what?

Like what? Like I've been the person who said what? And I have had that said to me. And I say, thank God for those people you know and if you don't I'm sorry if you do if you have a room of the same kind of people whether it's income or education literally you never get someone saying what what the hell is that and every time every person who has said what the hell is that to me, I thank them. And every time I've said, what the hell is that to people, I think I've done a nice job. So I don't know.

It's the way it goes. And again, I like James. And I like writing for The New York Times. I write about tech. I don't write about these much more important issues. But I will be writing about it this week because I think they let his internet persona. They never let his internet persona. They never let his internet persona and his New York times for Sona meet.

And that was, you know, that was a mistake. There's lots of mistakes here. So, but you know, I like work memorization. I,

I, I like work memorization. I think they have all, uh, I think they try, think about these things really hard. And when they think that they've been sloppy to their own standards they do something about it so

but it's certainly not mob honestly what a ridiculous ridiculous configuration of what happened there anyway what do you got on tap for the week Kara what's on tap so much I have so many good people interviewing I'm interviewing John Stewart stuff like that

interviewing like lots of people yes I have Amina good people interviewing. I'm interviewing Jon Stewart. Stuff like that. I'm interviewing, like, lots of people. Yes, I have Amina Tosso. I've got Simone Sanders, who worked for the Sanders campaign and has now worked for the Biden campaign. Let me look. Honestly, I've got such a good lineup this week. So a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. I got my kid.

I'm going up to vermont eventually um and uh i'm interviewing spike lee which i'm gonna i'm excited about i just interviewed jill lapore yeah uh and uh i got a lot of stuff coming up i'm trying to think who else i got i got lots of people um and i'm excited for that um and then, of course, Recode Decode is ending July 1st. Recode Decode is ending. Wow, that's an end of an era. End of an era, Cara. I will be at the New York Times where I'll be not interviewing Senator Cotton unless I can really give a good one right.

Well, this week on Prop G, I'm interviewing the largest owner of the seventh largest Chevrolet dealership in Delray Beach. What? Why? I was mocking you. Oh, kidding. Who do you have on Prof G and all your various things? I go wonky. I go other academics.

I'm trying to be more about education. I can't play the famous names. No, I like your academics. What are you talking about? Who did you? Give me the academic that you would love to talk about. I think you had him on show right oh well i had dean henry who's fantastic that was great that looked fantastic i'm gonna have uh anastasia crosswhite who uh thinks a lot about education we're talking about education reform and i forget who else uh andy slavitt who i know you've had on so yeah small ball, junior varsity

I like your thinking people no, no, no, no, no I like your thinkiness when you turn into Professor Galloway, I think that's great my thinkiness that said, stay away from my Labrador watching PBS if you go see Louisa Shirt

there's got to be a third person in the room, that's all I've got to say so you don't mess with his brain. He's so smart. If you manipulate his brain, I don't know what I'll do. Anyway, Scott, we're going to have a lot. We're going to talk about Thursday. There's so much news happening. We will have lots to do.

A lot going on. A lot going on. Don't forget, if you have a story in the news and you're curious about it and want to hear our opinion on it, even really unusual ones, because we like to talk about unusual things too, not just the major stories of the day. Email us at pivot at voxmedia.com to be featured on the show. Scott, please read us out. Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Our sound engineer is Fernando Fanete. Our executive producer is Erica Anderson. And special thanks to Drew Burrows. If you like what you heard, please download or subscribe. Have a great rest of the week, and we'll see you on Friday. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. It's not always easy to harness the power and potential of AI.

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