Pivot - Deepfake Regulation, Media Layoffs, and Guest Chris Dixon

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Kara and Scott discuss Amazon bringing ads to Prime Video, the jury's $83 million verdict against Donald Trump in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, and the FTC's investigation of Big Tech's involvement in AI. Then, will the uproar over Taylor Swift and George Carlin deepfakes finally lead to regulation? Plus, what do the ongoing media layoffs mean for the future of journalism? Our Friend of Pivot is Chris Dixon, founder and managing partner of A16Z Crypto, and the author of "Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet." Chris explains why he (still) thinks crypto and blockchain are the future. Follow Chris at @cdixon Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, I'm in your apartment again. I like that. Yeah, I'm here. Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, I'm in your apartment again. I like that. Yeah, I'm here. I like that. I'm here. I'm here to go see the Vision Pro, as you know, going to a dinner with Sienna.

I'm taking the very well-rounded Chris Wallace to try it, to try the Apple Vision Pro. Yeah, in your place. Did you talk to my son this weekend? I didn't. He told me he was going to call me, and he didn't call me. Oh, he didn't. Oh, God, he's probably at a frat house. All right. How was this weekend? I didn't. He told me he was going to call me, and he didn't call me. Oh, he didn't. Oh, God, he's probably at a frat house.

All right. How was your weekend? It was okay. I had a dinner party, which was cool. But then everyone in my family but me is sick. Again? Again, yeah. The cold season with toddlers, everyone has strep or whatever, and Amanda's had a cough that's lasted forever.

Since I had my RSV vaccine, I am not suffering from it like I did last year. How long are you at my place? Just the night, just the evening. And then I'm going down to visit my mom. I have lost track. Word is out that I'm promiscuous because of this podcast with the use of my place.

And so people just text me, hey, I'm going to be in town. I'm like, no problem. At some point, you're going to run into somebody. It'll be fun. That'll be fun. I told you, a cuddle puddle. I'm sorry I'm going to miss you.

That's the thing. If someone shows up looking for a little extra for the rim job, just pay them what he needs and get them out of there. I will. I will. Well, you better be here for my book party since you're one of the hosts. I'm not going to be there, but I will be there. That's right.

You're having a book party. Yeah. That's right. You have a book coming out. It's funny. You don't talk about that a lot. Oh, we could have it at your house then if you're not here. You're welcome to use it.

Interesting. After party. Oh, maybe we will. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for hosting it, even though you're not showing up. That was a nice flex.

That's a total baller move. Yeah. That's a baller move. I'm going to Tulum. Are you? Oh, Stephanie Ruhl will be here, Ben Smith, others. Oh, my favorite. But that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. They're all co-hosts with you. And I'm really excited about it, just so you know. Maggie Haberman. Maggie Haberman. Oh, I'm scared of her. She's a baller. She's a gangster. Well, I'm going to have her come after you. Yeah, no, I'm scared of her. Oh, hey, you know what I saw?

First off, I know you're curious what I did this weekend, but all these private membership clubs in London now have these sister properties out on the Cotswolds. And there's still a farmhouse where they pretend to be a farm, but it's super cool and avocado toast. It is, I want to go there, yeah. It's really well done.

And then my favorite club, Maison Estelle, has Estelle Manor, I think it's called. And I just have the boys this weekend. So I'm like, that's it. I got to get you off your screens. I had one of those moments where I freaked out. So I got in a car with the dogs. I mean, everything. Arriving on the wrong side of the road. Okay, go. Go for it. I don't drive. I use this thing called Wheelie, which is amazing. And by the way, they should be- Oh, they took you there to the Cotswolds. So I got on my Mercedes V-Class with all the dog beds and everything. Oh my God. Head out there, ping them.

I'm coming out. Get me whatever it is you have out there. And we had, and it was lovely. It was lovely. It was lovely? I like those places. Oh, they're wonderful. Was it like Saltburn?

I hope not. I don't know what Saltburn is're wonderful. Was it like Saltburn? I hope not. I don't know what Saltburn is. What's Saltburn? Saltburn's a movie. It's about an English manor, and they're up to sexual hijinks and stuff like that. It's like crazy. It's a new movie. Well, if you can give me the name of that place I'm in, but no, this had none of that.

I'm surprised you haven't seen that. I played Padel, did rifle shooting, archery, all that kind of- Padel. That's what the rich people do. Padel. Padel. I had never played that before. Yeah, they don't have. Padel. That's what the rich people do. Padel. I had never played that before. Yeah, they don't have vowels. It was fine.

Yeah, it's like pickleball. They're all sort of. My boys liked it. Let the dogs run crazy. This is one of these places where there's all these poofy dogs that rich people like. Yeah, my great Dane would come in and scare the shit out of everybody, which I like. Oh, okay. Wow.

What a weekend. Padel and shooting in an English manner. Yeah. I did not do that. It was really nice. I cleaned the house and that's it. Anyway.

Hold on. I'm trying to bring this back to you. I watched, for the first time, I watched a clip of you on your new CNN show. And I thought it was good. It was only a clip

where you're saying Nikki Haley is sort of, you know, standing, waiting. You know, standing, waiting. You know, she's like a backup quarterback in case Joe Montana, you know, blows a knee or something. She's waiting to come in. I thought your logic was pretty sound there.

And I saw that Cliff Asness and a bunch of other hedge fund titans are like, we're giving her more money. Yeah, they are. Why not? She's actually leaning in. She's really going at him real hard on the policy stuff. Anyway, we'll see. And also he's created all kinds of mess and debt deficit and stuff like that. It's interesting. Now she's sort of winding up, which is kind of a little too little too late, but we'll see. I agree. It could happen. She has a non-zero chance of pushing it through and she's right in position. pushing it through, and she's right in position. Anyway, we have a lot to talk about. The celebrity defects, renewing calls for regulation, the ongoing media layoffs, raising questions about journalism's future, continuing questions about its future. Plus, we'll chat with a friend of Pivot, Chris Dixon, the founder and managing partner of Andreessen Horowitz's Crypto VC Fund. We have a lot of questions for him. He's got a new book, Read, Write, Own, Building the Next Era of the Internet. We'll have to ask him about where crypto is going and what's happening. He's actually a very smart

investor. But first, who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl, Scott Taylor Swift or San Francisco? The MAGA people are losing their ever-loving minds because it's not a particularly good choice for them. Oh, you know what, Cara? I really don't care. I have almost no interest in American football. I was really, quite frankly, I was really hoping for the Lions. I just think it would have meant more to them, but yeah, I just don't care. I gotta be honest, I think I'm a little bit sick of all those shots of New England and Tampa Bay of Tom Brady. I didn't mind that because I think he's the most beautiful person on the planet. I didn't mind that because I think he's the most beautiful person on the planet. All the shots of Taylor Swift, I think she was very attractive. But I'm just sort of sick of the whole Taylor thing. Yeah, I know.

But it's an interesting thing because they were down and they blamed her for they were almost out of it. It was her fault? No, they did in the mid-season. Yeah, because it was her fault because he was distracted from being her boyfriend. And then now, you know, I personally like Jason Kelsey. I just love him. He seems like a nice guy. I kind of like his whole vibe. I like their whole vibe. I like their... I'm glad they're happy. I'm glad they're in love. Can't they just keep it to themselves? No. No? No. They're national. He's the national boyfriend, just so you know. He's the national boyfriend. But my favorite is all the right-wing people losing their minds. That's a pleasure. And also one of them,

because it's, you either have to vote, you have to root for Taylor Swift's team or San Francisco's team. All where the libs are owning them on this regard. They just are mad about her, that the comeback, they were hoping for non-comeback to blame her. But in fact,

it's not, they're so good, the chiefs. And so is Patrick Mahomes. Even I know this. And then San Francisco, which really pulled out a win, which is great. They're mad about that. They're mad about the whole thing. One guy, Nick Adams, who's such an imbecile, was like, she's in it for the money because he gets $70,000 if they win. She's in it for the money. What's wrong with that? No, she's not in it for the money. She's a billionaire. She's not in it for the money.

And the reason she's a billionaire, she's in it for the money. What's wrong with that? No, she's not in it for the money. She's a billionaire. She's in it for the money. She's a savvy businesswoman like most men. What's wrong with that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So anyway, here's the one thing I do want to say. The Super Bowl has held its own. You know, we talked about declining Oscars last week, declining all these national shows. The Super Bowl has held its own, and I suspect this year is going to be a huge, and it's going to be due to her, and the people think it's going to be a really good game. So it's still stayed at hundreds of,

you know, 115, 130 million people. They think it's going to blow past. That's the one thing that's done rather well as a thing from a television and entertainment and financial perspective. But it's not just the Super Bowl. The NFL, the Premier League is the second

best-run league in the world. The NFL is number one. And it's a variety of things, including it's one of the few mediums or one of the few things that people want to do our commercials for because they want to watch it live. But what is really unique about it, and it's, I think, a great lesson for our economy. And for me, it all leads to more antitrust and breaking up companies. But the reason the NFL is so successful is because the way they work the draft is the worst team in the league gets better drafts. And they constantly, every team is sort of, in two to three years, could be back in the playoffs. And it keeps the fans really engaged. You can't create, it can't be too dynastic. And churn is really a good thing and it creates a more healthy ecosystem.

Now, granted, having said that, it's a monopoly and you have to go through the owners group, you know, to get approved and all that. But it's an incredibly well-run league. Other than it's giving these incredible young men, Parkinson's by the time they're 45. I'm a big fan. Yes, indeed. Yeah. Other than that. There's that. There's that.

Yeah, there's that. Nonetheless, it continues to be a sort of national pastime here in this country. Obviously, soccer, football, the European football is big there. And it's huge. And so is, you know, Formula One. A lot of these sports things and basketball have done incredibly well. Yeah, but nothing, NFL trumps them all. If you look at dollars and you look at growth, they've done just an amazing job. Sports is a good place to be, though. Sports is a good place to be. And speaking of paying for it all, Amazon Prime Video now has ads. If you want to watch Amazon Prime content without ads, it'll cost you an extra $2.99 a month on top of the current $14.99 a month Prime subscription. Amazon first announced the plan to incorporate ads in September, joining all the other streamers. Huh, we're going back to the ad business, except for Apple TV+.

The company promised to have meaningfully fewer ads than others. They think the revenue is going to be $5 billion. Actually, Netflix is doing rather well with it, and it hasn't seen a drop-off. I think people who don't want ads will pay for it and people who do will. What do you think? Yeah, I was initially against the idea of these companies doing ads because I think it kind of goes after their core brand. But as everyone has migrated to these companies, advertisers still need to reach people.

And I think that, I mean, there's so much competition amongst them that the kind of easiest path in incremental 100, 300, 500 million billion in incremental high margin revenue is to hire the ad sales team from CBS that is looking for jobs right now. And I imagine a lot of advertisers are saying, yeah, we'd love to advertise on, you know, Reacher or whatever. I don't know what the big programs are. I don't, anyway, I'll be curious to see how it pans out over the long term. But basically these companies, they're just swallowing media whole. That is correct.

That's what they're doing. Yeah. And I think it's a good thing. I've never had a problem if you want to pay for it. You know, I like the idea of deciding whether you want to pay for it or not. You never had that with broadcast, right? You had to sit there and endure it no matter what.

And it was free. And in this case, it's not, you know, well, it'll be interesting to see who will pay for it and who will not pay for it. Obviously, it limits the amount of people that can watch it. That said, so much stuff is online now. It's really, I mean, I don't ever watch Saturday Night Live. I watch it all by clips, which that's how I watch the show, you know. So it'll be interesting to see where it goes. But it's a good business, as it turns out, and has not had any perceptible effect on people signing up or people using it, which is because it's the way things are going. It's over. Another big story in the news, I don't know if it's getting on a

play over there, but former President Donald Trump owes E.G. and Carol more money for defaming her in 2019. The jury awarded Carol $18 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages for a whopping total of $83 million. That's on top of the $5 million he already has lost to her. to her. He left the courtroom before the verdict was read, which was idiotic on his part. But of course, let us know his thoughts on true social, calling the verdicts absolutely ridiculous. And Biden directed witch hunt. I don't know what he's talking about. Carol, on the other hand, said in a statement, this is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she's been knocked down. A lot of kudos are going to Robbie Kaplan, who argued the case. She's been in a lot of high profile cases, actually, very strong New York lawyer. This is, the jury was like, fuck this guy. You know, I don't, I mean, that's what it seemed like. It may go down in appeals, but a lot of people think it will not actually, because he keeps doing it. What do you think? Interesting thing, and I didn't know this, but if he decides to appeal it, the appeal, they don't argue the facts. They argue the amount and the decision or the legal component of it,

right? Did they miss something? They don't argue the facts. But in order for him to appeal, he has to put a bond such that if he loses appeal, she gets her money, you know, too sweet. And I love this. I think it's a huge victory for her and for women who, for a long time, had to just endure bullshit from powerful men. And I also think it's a victory for the justice system. They're like, look, you want to fuck with a jury? It's going to cost you. You want to try and intimidate people and act like the asshole you are. And I mean, he, he cost himself 30 or 50 million bucks here. If he hadn't shown up. He just did. Or if he. Well, he thinks he's going to raise it, you know, the other way that he'll get it back on the other side, I guess. I don't, I mean, I haven't looked at the data. I mean, what's so interesting about all of this, have you seen the data around what's happening in terms of political affiliation by gender?

No. Oh, women are more liberal and men are more conservative. It is crazy what's happening. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, but I mean, it is really widening, which for me goes back to mating. And the best advice I could give a man or a woman who are looking to mate in a heteronormative relationship is to be- If you insist, but go ahead. I know. Is if you're a dude, pretend to be progressive no matter what. And if you're a woman, pretend to be conservative because generally speaking, people are attracted to

people with similar political values. And if you're a progressive dude now, especially without a college education, to be a progressive, you're going to have a much larger pool of potential mates and fewer people pursuing. But the gulf is just, the gulf is dramatic. It is. I have a lot of mixed marriages, political marriages. I know a lot of people in those. That's DC and they're all sort of, I mean- Not DC, all over. I'm talking about my mixed marriages, political marriages. I know a lot of people in those. That's D.C. and they're all sort of, I mean. Not D.C., all over. I'm talking about my family all over the country. When you say mixed, you mean center left or center right?

No, very concerned. Actually, the Post, Washington Post had a great story about a couple like this in Iowa that was really well done. They've done a couple of those and it's interesting to read. You know, either they cancel each other out or they don't. Or I just was talking to a friend of mine whose parents live in Oklahoma, and it was just, it's interesting. It is interesting. You see it happening. I just think it becomes, the one the Post wrote was devastating.

This guy had jumped off the right-wing thing and is living there, and the woman is like, I don't know what to do about this. Like, she's, like, had it, and yet she's never going anywhere. It the woman is like, I don't know what to do about this. She's had it, and yet she's never going anywhere. It was a great piece, actually. Yeah, the Gulf was massive, actually, in this case. And she wasn't particularly liberal, just he's gone way down. But the downside of it is, I think it's going to lower our birth rate. No, it's already low. Well, but I think that's going to make it worse. I think that it's yet another reason why people are going to find reason not to fall in love. So it's up to the lesbians then.

You know, it all comes back. Let me just say on this last thing on Eugene Carroll, she just won. She won, he lost. He acted like an asshole in a costume. Good for her. She is 80 years old. She's 80? She is.

She looks fantastic. She's a good looking is. She looks fantastic. Yeah, she looks great for you. She's a good-looking lady. Good for her. When he goes on about that, I was like, she is a good-looking lady, my friend. She's so elegant and beautiful. Anyway, she's also, I read her for many years. I thought she was a wonderful writer.

Anyway, lastly, FTC has opened an investigation into big tech's investments into AI. No surprise. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, and Anthropic are the subjects of the inquiry, which could result in regulation and anti-monopoly measures. In a statement, Lena Kahn said she hopes to, quote, shed light on whether these investments risk distorting innovation, undermining fair competition. I don't know. It seems like, of course, they have to, right? Nothing else to see there. I think so. I think it's kind of scary because, I mean, OpenAI is basically Microsoft AI.

Yeah, yeah. And then who's the other one? Anthropic is Amazon, has a big investment from Amazon, similar. And so it's sort of the same players again. It's such an important field. And the thing about it is you need so much capital that the barriers of entry are, you know, it's kind of sequestered to a small number of players. So, look, I like that Lena has found her voice and is going kind of gangster on this stuff. And it's interesting. It's not actual court cases or decisions. It's the specter of the fear of them. It is appropriate for Lena Kahn to be doing this as well. She should. And you're right. We talk about this all the time. It's all the same big players. We'll see where it goes, but it's good that she's poking around and she should poke around because it's like, you know, the Washington Post famous thing, democracy dies in darkness. I think most of

these things are in the bright light of day. You know what I mean? You're seeing it happening with these and you want these innovative companies to come up in AI. You want a ton of them. You don't want the big companies to control everything. And they're certainly poised to do that. Anyway, let's get to our first big story. There are renewed calls for regulation on deepfakes after several recent high-profile incidents. Fake sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift generated by AI were all over X and other platforms last week, especially X getting millions of views before eventually being taken down. Actually, X turned off the search for Taylor Swift. Of course,

it's not a surprise, given that platform has abandoned all its trust and safety people and has gotten rid of them. And she gets a lot of attention from the far right now. For some reason, they're really obsessed with her. You know, it's called a lot of attention. You could not find her name on that platform. The White House weighed in saying the images were alarming, calling for social media companies to enforce rules and encourage legislation on AI images.

Listen, it's just her, but it's a lot of people in many ways for many years. Individual states like California, Texas, and Virginia have laws for deepfakes, but there's a lot of people in many ways for many years. Individual states like California, Texas, and Virginia have laws for deepfakes, but there's no federal law. As I said, searches on this is the only thing they could do was block her name, which is odd. X put out a statement saying it prohibits the sharing of non-consensual graphic imagery and has a, quote, zero tolerance policy for such content without mentioning Swift. But of course, they fired everyone who was in charge of fixing it. They're apparently opening a new center hiring 100

moderators to enforce platform rules on child exploitation, violence and hate speech. That's because it may have become a bigger problem. Another person, George Carlin's estate is also taking legal action after a special was released on YouTube using generative AI to mimic the late comedian's voice and humor, which was appalling, I thought. There's going to be a lot of these. The comedians behind this YouTube special have called it AI, the next paintbrush. They also said it was done by humans, which is kind of like, okay, so you stole his image. Sagoffer put out a statement saying they're working with lawmakers to pass legislation to protect likenesses. Big issue in politics. Last week in New Hampshire, voters were getting robocalls from AI-generated Joe Biden. It sounded like Joe Biden. So you've talked a lot about this, about the impact of AI on the election for a while. How are you feeling about these are three different things, all different, all the same in a lot of ways. First off, we've said in the short term that we thought the biggest risk was misinformation,

which you could argue this is, or disinformation is probably a better term, and then over the long-term, loneliness. I've never bought into the sentient, you know, Skynet moment, but we're seeing already what can happen with disinformation. And I had a personal experience with this weekend. I tried to bond with my boys over football,

and I said to my 13-year-old, I said, "'Did you see what Ronaldo said about Holland?'? And he said, what are you talking about? And I said, he was basically being critical of Haaland. And basically, Ronaldo was saying that Haaland needed this other amazing player on his team, that Ronaldo was able to make plays happen himself. And he's like, dad, that was so obviously AI. He's like, he never said that. And I thought, wow, my impression of Ronaldo went way down. And I would have never known had I not had a 13-year-old who's much more technically literate than me. And when you think about the AI lollapalooza of disinformation that's going to happen around just making Biden and or Trump look like idiots, it's really frightening. And I think Taylor Swift, not so much her, but what's happened here is a real service. And I see the solution is, again, these platforms will claim complexity. And this isn't an issue. This isn't about the realm of the possible. It's about the realm of the profitable. And if you were to do the following, this would all of a sudden, I don't

want to say go away, but be diminished dramatically. And that is any AI generated content that is elevated algorithmically by the platform no longer has 230 protection. And all of a sudden they'd get all over this shit. Now they're just throwing up their arms as they've always done and said, you know, this is a complicated problem and we can't stop it. Sure they can. They have AI that can detect AI. And if you are putting out something that misleads people, whether it's a pornographic image of them or them saying things they never said, or leveraging IP you don't have rights to, and your platform elevates it, which was the case in this instance, because everyone wanted to see pictures of Taylor Swift, boom, 230 no longer applies to you. And you're going to hear from

Taylor's, Ms. Swift's lawyer. And guess what? These geniuses are going to fucking figure it out. Yeah, she's the bad, wrong one. You need something to pull it into attention. There's been a bill, the bipartisan bill. It's called the Bipartisan AI Bill to Empower Parents to Hold Big Tech Accountable. It got blocked. They're trying to pass this bill where part of it is no Section 230 immunity for AI Act. There's a bunch of bills on this issue. And one is to block, Ted Cruz blocked Hawley's bill,

saying it would harm innovation. He's such an imbecile. But anyway, they're trying to, they are trying to pass this bill. And I think this could push it over the edge, right? Like, it failed on a unanimous consent in December. I think it's going to come back. And I think things like this will make that happen, right? It just takes a little shove. And she's exactly the right shove. But so is George Carlin thing. So is the Biden thing. They've got to all be disturbed, right? It's not just one part of it. But if you have more and more of these high profile things, it's very clear that one, they're going to have legal liability. And two, there's going to be a federal law. But I have been wrong before about these things. You know, I had hoped, you know, there'd be a privacy bill. Of course, there will be. And there's been one privacy disaster after the next, one hacking after the next, and it doesn't happen. But in this case, I think people understand it rather easily.

I mean, I don't know. They really do. Porn. Oh, okay. But this could get, talking about porn and defects, this could get so ugly so fast. I'm constantly, my boys are sick of me lecturing. I'm like, if an attractive, if someone reaches out to you

and accidentally via text message and starts a dialogue with you and pretends to be, and portrays themselves as an attractive woman and then starts sending you pictures in exchange for pictures from you, and they're like, yeah, we know dad, they've told us about it in school.

What happens when you start getting AI generated messages from a cute girl in the eighth grade asking you for those photos and sending her? I mean, this could just get so mendacious so fast. And the thing that really bothers me is, again, big tech is pretending they don't know how to stop this. Yeah. Yeah. Shutting it down tells me all I need to know of search on her name. Like that's their move. Like that's their actual move. Like, cause they, what they did is they got rid of their trust and safety. But they're going to

see more and more like this. And if it, and if there's a legal liability around copyright, I mean the Carlin thing, when I was listening to those guys, like it's not an homage to steal your things. You know what I mean? I'm going to do an homage to Scott by living in his apartment or something. You know what I mean? Like, I think I'll just take his things. Although I do do that. Where is this going?

No, I'm just saying, it's like this is the next paintbrush. You can't take other people's things and paint something from it. There's certain ways you can do that, right? In some, you know, people call it- Well, Carlin's IP theft. Yes, theft, it is. It's like music theft when they steal, you know, stems of music or things like that.

I don't know why this is that complicated, but it will require people to do many, many lawsuits because this is so easy to do at this point. It's not even, you know, it's so easy to do. And the robocalls were, did you listen to them? It was disturbing. Remarkable. Yeah.

Remarkable. Remarkable. You know, do you get, I don't get those, but still. Oh, no, I get. I made the mistake. I don't want to say the mistake. I met Crystal Ball, who was running for Congress like 10 or 12 years ago. And I made a political donation to her and I did it online to the DNC.

And now I get five times a day a message from my good friend, Charles Schumer or from Hakeem Jeffries or from some wonderful former Marine running for the third district in Kansas. And it's just, I get solicited so much. I just got one, Nikki Haley. I don't know how I got that.

I guess I give money to Chris Christie, I guess. And they pretend like they're texting you personally,. I just got one. Nikki Haley. I don't know how I got that. I guess I give money to Chris Christie, I guess. And they pretend like they're texting you personally, which I can't stand. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Well, we'll see. This is going to go in places and probably litigation rather quickly. But we'll see if Congress has the, they really should pass that law. Blumenthal and Cruz should get out of the way. Stop innovation. He's so bought and paid for by the tech companies. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. And we come back. Media layoffs are just keep coming and coming and billionaires who couldn't save the day. We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Chris Dixon, about why he's advocating for crypto now more than ever.

Fox Creative. That's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people.

These are organized criminal rings. And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better. One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple. We need to talk to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more

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Scott, we're back. We're a month into 2024, and there's already been major layoffs at media outlets across the country, continuing an ongoing trend from last year or so, and maybe the last decade. But this is a lot of them lately. A number of these publications were bought by billionaires over the last decade, who were seen as financial white knights, but they haven't been able to stop the losses from racking up, nor do they care to pay for them. The layoffs are also triggering conflicts between unions and management. What a shock, and many employees walking up the job. An ongoing bloodbath is decimating news outlets nationwide, is how Axios put it. The Los Angeles Times cut its newsroom by more than 20% last week. Time laid off dozens, and Business Insider

is letting go of 8% of its staff, to name a few examples. More importantly, an average of five local newspapers are closing every two weeks, and more than half of American counties now are so-called news deserts, according to Northwestern. This is an ongoing thing. You know, Jeff Bezos is losing money at the Washington Post. He just hired a new CEO who I met the other day. Quite impressive. L.A. Times owner, who I've also interviewed, Patrick Soon-Shiong, is at the helm of the L.A. Times. He got into a weird fight with the editor, Kevin Merida, well-regarded, who left. Private equity and hedge funds are not doing much better. Alden Capital is having trouble at the New York Daily News. Scott, you've been on board. You were on the board of the New York

Times. You and I have run media companies. I think it's the new normal, more of the same, and it's either big companies or little companies, right? Big, big companies or little ones like ourselves. What do you think? Yeah, you're right. There's going to be a small number of big players, but even the big players are struggling. Gannett is having a tough time. You really have to have incredible size and be incredibly well-run, and it's still not a great business. And then there's the niche guys. There's the pucks, the semaphores, or you could argue Vox kind of owns podcasting, if you will. But they're still not very good businesses. They're okay businesses. They're profitable small businesses. When you have a monopoly called search that is essentially a toll booth for all information online, you know, 40 cents on the venture capital dollar goes, for many companies trying to acquire customers, goes to Amazon, Meta, or Google.

And so when you have, and these companies are growing 20% a year, so when you have $100 to $200 billion a year coming out of the ecosystem, you never... The companies that have succeeded over the last 10 years that have provided extraordinary returns to their shareholders have been asset-light. Hi, we're NVIDIA. We just design chips. We don't build a billion-dollar chip facility. Hi, we're Uber. We don't want to actually be in the business of owning cars or maintaining them. We just create a thick layer of innovation on top of it. Hi, Airbnb, we don't ever want to own apartments. We'll create a thick layer of innovation on top that uses fallow assets. And to a certain extent, Google and Meta create a thick layer of innovation on top of other people's journalism reporting content creation because that shit is hard. And where I come back to in a nod, I really like the BBC. And I think they get it wrong like every

media company, but they mostly get it right and their heart's in the right place. And I think there's something about the public service of long form investigative journalism, where the reporter doesn't start with a viewpoint or think that, okay, I'm going to say, I'm going to talk about one side or have a viewpoint or I'm going to catastrophize because it'll get more clicks so we can sell more Nissan ads. Well, that's cable. I don't think the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times were doing that, and they're very excellent publications, but go ahead. Are they subject to the whims of populists and produce shit solely based on clicks? Are they outstanding journalists?

The answer is yes. There is no way you could argue these guys are immune from that. They're not. Yes, but listen, I don't mean to be rude, but I'm the person who's worked at all these places. And that is not the case at most big newspaper organizations I've worked with. It's not like, let's do this, let's do that. I think you definitely see that in television, for sure. But it's not the case.

I think one of the issues is what you said. And what's happened? But that clickbait thing is just bullshit. It just is. And what's happened to those organizations? Because people have shifted their tastes. You know, that people have, look, both the business model has been knocked out from under them for lots of reasons. And it went back even further when Walmart didn't advertise, say, at the Washington Post and all the major department stores died.

Then consumers got trained in a new way through search. And then people like new things. They're not making products people want. You know, that's at the very heart of it. And even the big ones, like let me get the New York Times, for example, which is considered the most successful under Merit Levy and who we had on the show. Look, their revenue for the quarter that ended September 2023, about $600 million. Really good. It was up 9, 10, almost 10%. Net income was 53.62, up 46%. Really well done. It might be for various reasons. 46%, really well done. It might be for various reasons. The net profit margin was 9%. It's still $50 million. It's not that much a quarter, right? It's a small business, and that's the most successful one, right? Because she's added on not just crosswords, but wordle and athletic and cooking and things like that. There's only a few people that can

do that, and it's still not very big. And so, I don't know. I think it's both tastes have changed, practices have changed, the business model has changed, and these companies have not changed for the most part. They're run the same way that when I worked there 20 years ago or just recently at the New York Times. So, that's my opinion. So, the New York Times has 10 million subscribers. It's the best. Yeah. It's the best in an important industry. And or should we say it's the best York Times. So the New York Times has 10 million subscribers. It's the best. Yeah. It's the best in an important industry. And, or should we say it's the best? Yeah. Okay. The premier, one of the premier, they operate, they operating profit of 90 million and they have 10 million subscribers. Meta, 3 billion people on the platform. These companies, we can always highlight the one that is

doing the least bad, but ad-supported journalism is really, really challenging to support a big newsroom and not be subject to the whims that you have been able to... You talked about the Washington Post. Okay, I defer to your experience here that they don't go after clickbait and they're going to go out of business. So unless they keep finding benign billionaires that are distracted taking pictures of their girlfriend in thongs, I mean-

That could work. Just, that could work. And that strategy might work. Because she wears a lot of thongs and she looks good in a thong. But here's the bottom line. Every billionaire that does this, I always say billionaire Democrats buy newspapers and

billionaire Republicans buy football teams. They're all going to start buying football teams because guess what? You get to enjoy the football team and 10 years later, it's tripled in value. You sort of enjoy a newspaper. You basically have unions and journalists berate you for not be willing to spend more and more of your money to support journalism, and then you get to sell it for nothing again, or go try and find someone to buy it from you for a dollar. I want to just circle back to where I started. I believe that we should have, similar to what the UK does, revenue or some sort of tax that says we're going to start an organization. I think we should have publicly funded news. Well, except, look it, look, I just interviewed today Judy Woodruff,

who has a great show about our problems as a nation, partisanship. And she, of course, was the head of the NewsHour for years. Excellent product. Talk about not clickbait, just solid. And this, by the way, her show was, I recommend it highly. It's fantastic. It's called America at a Crossroads. And it's great. It's actually really well done. And just what you expect out of something like a PBS and Judy Woodruff. And, you know, we talked about that issue of the politicization of PBS. Look, we got the right wing attacking it. What now for 20 years? Like, let's defund it. Let's not give them any money. Now they get most of their money money not from the government, right? It's for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It's pharmaceutical TV or whatever it is, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. But still, even the small amount they get, and I forget what the numbers are, and it's different from state to state. Like, some states fund it. They're under constant and relentless attack by the right wing, which is trying to knock the knees out of it, right? Trying to knock it down so that they have, they put them in a really bad position and then rely on the kindness of strangers, right? For to get a tote bag or whatever. So it's not like, this country does not revere that public, even though, you know, what's interesting is that stuff is really popular, whether it's Sesame Street or the Antiques Show or Ken Burns, that's what sort of carries it. And then you get this amazing news hour on top of it or frontline. Let I've told this story about Luby. He watches Frontline just

on YouTube, right? He loves Frontline. When I was with the Frontline people recently, I was like, oh, you watch PBS? I'm so happy and proud of my son. He's like, I don't watch PBS. So it's really an interesting... So he doesn't hear any of those ads or he doesn't want a tote bag or anything else. He just gets it on YouTube. So, even that's problematic. That's not going to happen in this country. It might happen in Britain. Yeah. I mean, it's a fair point. I don't know what the answer is, but... What would you do? Let me ask that. What's your advice for someone looking to pursue a career in journalism in 2024? Or the business part. You do the business, I'll do the journalist part. Well, I've told you my very reductive analysis. Focus on the screen size that you're creating content for. Go to a company that's outstanding at making content in the native form for a phone. And if it started somewhere else with a bigger screen, be careful. Native-only phone content

creation. Even as a business person, if you're going to go, you know, you want to be in publishing or whatever. The majority of NY Times employees are not in the newsroom. I mean, we always used to laugh at them when they used to come into the boardroom. They got no respect. It was like, oh, those whores that sell the ads, you know, like roll your eyes, right? I always liked them. You can like them. It's kind, it's kind of like a Google when anyone who has, doesn't have an engineering background comes into the room and they're like,

oh, these are the people we have to put up with. But I would say that media and content creation, and also I've always believed, try to move away from something that's not ad supported, that at least has at its core a subscription base. But I think media and storytelling and the ability to craft stories and tell them in a compelling way, and whether it's through subscriptions or sell ads against it, is an

industry that's always going to be strong. It's a rewarding industry. You just want to, one, be producing content for a small screen, and I would have a bias towards something that has a very strong subscription base. Subscription base. All right. For me, I would say, and I had a dinner, my dinner party, we discussed this because I think about it a lot. I think you have to be entrepreneurial as a reporter. You have to think about it. You have to think about doing something small because you can do very, very well. Whether it's me or Casey or Jessica Lesson, you can do very, very well financially and professionally if you have a small little outfit with costs that are in line with what you're making. Second thing is make stuff people want.

Like, stop, like, living in the same—don't assume they want what you're making at all the time. You are making a product. I hate to tell you it's not a religion. You're not a priest. But you have to think of the consumer and the things they want. Are you talking about clickbait here, Kara? No, I'm not. No, I'm not.

No, because let me get – Heather Cox Richardson writes the most, like, serious-minded stuff. She's making $5 million a year, you know, on her sub-stack or whatever she's making. It's huge because she's making something people want. And you would not call that clickbait if you've ever read it. making something people want. And you would not call that clickbait if you've ever read it. So there's lots of ways to get at stuff that doesn't have to be clickbait at 100%. Well, I would absolutely, though, I would encourage people to go into a career as journalism, because I think going to work for a newspaper or being an investigative or a long-form reporter, what I would argue is, I don't think the Marines is a good career. I think it's a great place to

go for a few years. And I think journalism, I think if you have the chops to figure out a way to be thoughtful about journalism, live up to those standards, fact check, be able to write something in a narrative form that's compelling, I think those skills, you might end up writing, you might end up being one of these whores that calls me every fucking 48 hours to have lunch with some fascinating big tech executive. But guess what? Those people, they make really good livings. Oh, I know. And so it's a great jumping off point. When I went to Morgan Stanley and I was in the analyst program in the fixed income department, I hated it. It was awful, but I sure am glad I did it

because I picked up a lot of skills. I think the ability to communicate and when you learn how to write well, you're not learning how to write well. You're learning how to process, reason, and think well. You are correct, sir. If I could give my kids anything, you know, my kids over the weekend, we had one nice conversation. They're like, they're 13, they're 16. They asked me a question that just cracked me up. They were both talking. I came in and I said, what's wrong?

And they said, we just have a question for you. And I'm like, yeah. I'm like, they go look at me and they're very serious. I go, what do you do? What do you do? I said to them, I said, what I really do at the end of the day... You tell stories. I'm a storyteller. I'm a communicator. You are. And I'm in the media business, but my skill is I know how to communicate. And I wish I'd

figured it out earlier. I really enjoy podcasting. I really enjoy writing. I like writing books. I love presenting. I love speaking. And I said, if you can figure out a way to tell stories, you're going to find a way to make a living. And they said, okay, what's the best training? I'm like, neither of you are going to like this. You need to start writing. That's where it starts. That's where it starts. It's great writing. I hate to use him as an example, but Bezos in key meetings would have people write out their recommendations. He didn't want PowerPoint. He said, you need to write it because you need to think about the words. You need to think of the economy, the logic. There is something about the way the brain processes information. And also I'll say, we talk about the medium is the message.

When people approach you, they approach you based on the medium through which they're introduced to you. There's nothing that moves people like the written word. That is true. Anyway, we got to get to our friend of Pivot. Let's bring him in. Chris Dixon is the founder and managing partner of A16Z Crypto, Andreessen Horowitz's VC fund for crypto and Web3 startups. He's also the author of a new book, Read, Write, Own, Building the Next Era of the Internet.

We're having a lot of Silicon Valley people on of late. We had Aileen Lee on last week. Welcome, Chris. Thanks, Karen. So it's been a rough couple of years for crypto and blockchain, but you're still making a case for it in this book. Actually, Scott has too in a lot of ways, but why don't you explain why you're still a believer? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, in the book, I try to explain what I would call the productive aspects of blockchains and why I think that blockchains can help us return the internet to its original ideals as being an open and

democratic network, which is why I got involved. I've been involved in the internet for 25 years. I got excited by the early ideals of the internet. And look, if you fast forward to today, the internet's become very consolidated. The top five tech companies account for half of the NASDAQ 100 market cap. Top 1% of social networks, 95% of traffic. Google and Apple have a duopoly on mobile operating systems. I'm sure you both have talked about this plenty. The internet, I worry the internet's at risk of becoming like 70s broadcast TV or something where you have three channels. And I think that's bad for the world. I also think it's bad for our business. You know, we're in the startup business. We want a dynamic internet. Yeah. Well, one of the things you did is, we just talked about that with AI and small companies,

but you write about blockchain technology, and this is a quote from you, this is a chance to create the internet you want, not the internet you inherited. It's something we talk about a lot, like that the same companies are in charge. What do you mean by that? When you say there's lots of opportunities for innovation here that starts from ground zero, problem, meaning having five companies control everything is not ideal. I think there's different ways one could think about solving that. And so, for example, a lot of people talk about regulation. And I believe there is a role for regulation. I think we'll see what happens with DOJ and Apple and things like that. My proposal is to also try to do it through innovation. And through that, we want to create a new wave of Internet services that return power to the edges of the network.

And so to give you an example, one of the reasons that social networks are so powerful is you're locked in, right? They have network effects. So, you know, I know I think you switched recently to threads. And when you did, you had to give up your audience, right? They have network effects. So, you know, I know, I think you switched recently to threads. And when you did, you had to give up your audience, right? You had to build a new audience. I'm still over there because I got there first, but go ahead. But okay, so you maybe, maybe you're the exception. Most people have to- I only use it for certain things. But generally you're locked in, right? To these networks. So like, and especially if you're like a creator, for example, and you build a business on TikTok or Instagram, and you don't like the fact that they changed the algorithm or did some other thing, you're locked in.

And so one of the key aspects, for example, in these new blockchain-based social networks, which is one category we're investing in, is a user owns his or her identity and they own their followers in the same way you do in the email world, right? So on email, if you have a newsletter on Substack and you don't like Substack, you can switch and you can take your followers with you. So that's just one example of how a different architecture by empowering users with ownership, this is the read-write-own, and that's what I mean by ownership, is a user controls their followers, not the service. That change in architecture, I believe, can have sort of profound downstream consequences on the ultimate control of these services and the economics. And, you know, look, these networks, I don't think we knew this 10 or 15 years ago, but today we know they control the flow of global money, business, culture, politics.

They're very, very important. And I don't think that having four or five people, whoever they might be, maybe at one point you like the management, at one point you don't, I just am fundamentally against the idea that five people can control those things. I think that they should be more like the early web. You're talking to people who like to own. Chris, good to see you. Do you remember we've met before? When was that? I'm not sure, but I think about 15, 18 years ago, you came and spoke to my class at NYU. At NYU? Yeah.

I was going to say maybe at NYU. Wow, okay. Yeah. Well, anyways, good to see you again. Sorry. Yeah, no, it's been a long time. Sorry. Yeah. And this may be the wrong bucketing, but I think of blockchain in terms of front-facing applications as bucketed into three areas. There's the tokens, crypto, there's NFTs, and there's DAOs. DAOs haven't really gotten any traction. NFTs, I think, have lost 90 plus percent of their value. I think I'm being generous there. And the token market's been kind of, loosely speaking, in terms of market cap, been cut in half, even with its resurgence from its peak.

Talk about those three categories and where do you see the opportunity? Yeah. So I think with DAOs, so a couple of things, like, I mean, there are active DAOs. A lot of them are around these DeFi protocols. So for example, Uniswap and Compound and Maker are, what's interesting about them is their networks in the same way that Facebook is a network, but the users control those networks. And those are networks that have active, Uniswap had trillions of dollars in trading volume, and the users decide how to upgrade the code. Admittedly, that is early. Those are experiments. In my book, I have a section on what I call network governance, where I talk about this. And my argument is essentially that it's a very powerful new way to design community governed systems. I don't claim that we've

fully figured it out. I think that it requires a lot more work to evolve. NFTs, like the NFT standard was finalized in 2020. Then we had this big rise in the market. Last year in 2023, there were $8.6 billion in NFT sales. So, I think the sort of decline has been exaggerated. But how much of that $8.6 billion do you think is false flags? Is people trying to pump up the volume? Well, we have a data science team, and I asked them to pull these numbers. And they believe that's removing washed trading, if that's what you're referring to. Got it. Thank you. That's a better term. So, they do believe that. But look, admittedly, it's hard to get the exact numbers. But I think that's a pretty accurate number.

And so, look, I think NFTs went through – the way I kind of look at these things is like the internet. We all, I think, live through the internet bubble, right? I kind of began my real career post-internet when everyone thought the internet was over. And the way I view it is a lot of these new technologies go through these cycles where people get overly optimistic. And I think that probably happened with NFTs. And now I believe they're overly pessimistic. And now I think it's the sort of the real building time sort of like- All right. Let me ask you about that because you talk about the casino culture of crypto, which has become the dominant narrative and obviously the Binance thing, Sam Bankman Freed, et cetera. Talk about the less nefarious side and what about the impact of those cases? The casino stuff, yeah.

Yeah. And also the SEC did approve Bitcoin ETFs a few weeks ago. The price of Bitcoin has been falling. So overall, it's sort of in that moment. And I would agree with you, there was a lot of real scammy stuff at the beginning of the internet for those who weren't there. And it went on for quite a while, for quite a while, actually. But talk about sort of that, how to shed it, because I think people think of it now with FTX, even though they made a great investment in Anthropic, it was mostly not a good story for crypto in general. It's been, I mean, in my book, I have a long section where I talk about this, what I call the casino, and I'm, again, very against it.

And I think it's destructive. I think it's destructive primarily to consumers who are victims of things like FTX. But I also think it's quite destructive to what I'm trying to work on, which is to build a productive side of these technologies. But look, the way I would describe it is a blockchain is a tool. Tokens are a tool. And just like any tool, a hammer can build or a hammer can destroy. And there's two sides to the tool. And I think there's been a lot of attention paid to the casino aspect.

There are, you know, like we have dozens of startups in our portfolio who are working on the productive side. And the reason I wrote the book partly was to tell that story because I do think it's a bigger story than people realize. I also think that we need more proactive policy. We've been calling this for this for years, since before FTX, to put guardrails around the casino stuff to eliminate the offshore activity. because I was involved with Coinbase for years. Coinbase, contrary to, I think, some popular perception, it was heavily regulated. Their Bank Secrecy Act regulated. They do full KYC on all their customers. There's a whole series of regulations.

They're audited. They're a public U.S. company. Binance, FTX, there's a whole series of companies that were offshore, not audited. All these other kinds of, you know, all these running exotic products. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that I think we need to clean up and have very clear rules. Well, what about the Bitcoin ETF? It does sort of introduce consumers to it in a safer feeling way. You know, if I'm getting it from Fidelity,

I certainly trust them more than even Coinbase. Yeah. And I think the Bitcoin ETF was a, I mean, my mind is a net positive in the sense of it's sort of more institutional acceptance. Oh, you say net positive. What's the negative? No, it's good. Sorry. I mean, it's good overall. I look, I'm very focused on the utility side of building applications.

And so it's a new financial instrument. So it's for me, it's less of a focus. That's what I mean. And it's just not, you know, like I would love for some more of the new cycles to be focused on, hey, this person just came up with a cool new way to fight deepfakes. This person just came up with a cool new business model for creative people. I think specifically with the rise of AI, I see a lot of blockchain applications as the countermeasure in many ways. So, like, just to go back to maybe if I could talk about the deepfakes for a second, you know, we're now going to have an Internet awash with fake video, awash with, you know, very advanced phishing.

Yeah, we have it, actually. Yeah, we probably have it. No, talk to Taylor Swift this week. Yeah, Taylor Swift. You can simulate people's voices perfectly now. They can take your voice from the podcast. Yeah, they can then call. I actually had a partner, Martine, who they called, someone called his parents using his

voice to try to get money. This is actually like a real thing happening. So in that world, we need to use, I believe, tools like cryptography to authenticate things. And I think, you know, for example, one way to do that is one thing a blockchain is very good at doing is storing an immutable audit trail. And so you can have an immutable audit trail that says this video is attested to by, you know, it came from Kara Swisher and it was attested to her by her as an example. And so it gives you this ground truth in a world in which you lose that.

I think also blockchains allow for new business models for creative people in a world where like generative AI will put significant downward pressure on the ability for, let's say, an illustrator to sell things, right? If you can just go to a mid-journey or something. And so, you know, I think it becomes more important in an AI world. Anyways. So when I think about kind of the consumer facing technologies that have built so much value in tech,

and I think about the leadership there, I think about the original gangsters, I think about Gates and Jobs, and then the new guys, and they were all guys, Brin, Page, Bezos, say what you will about them, they were all visionaries. And I would argue at their core, they were all, I'll go out on a I think they're good people. And the two kind of iconic figures in blockchain are either in jail or going to jail. And my question is, who's the next generation of

leadership that you would point to that will, quite frankly, just sort of clean this mess up? Because right now, from a public perception standpoint, it feels like a levered Ponzi scheme. I think there's just two very different worlds, Scott. So I think there's the SBF world, and then I think there's people like Vitalik Buterin and Vetherium. There's a very earnest, serious, thoughtful- You mentioned Brian Armstrong. I think Brian got flack for years for being slow. I mean, their market share got low single digits. They were getting crushed by Binance and FTX. If you talk to any Silicon Valley VC, it was like, why is Coinbase so slow? Stocks aren't crazy. They're doing really well.

And Brian kept... I mean, I think what he did was admirable. He really kept his head down. He never changed what he does. He invests very heavily in security and compliance. And he hasn't gotten all the market share yet, but I think that approach has proven correct. I think Brian has done a great job. I think there's folks like Vitalik and there's a lot more, like there's these conferences, like you go to DevCon, it's an Ethereum conference and there's like tens of thousands of very earnest kind of, you know, thoughtful technologists. And it feels to me kind of like, I don't know, 2005 Web2 movement when I was, you know, I was part of that. And you go to these things and yeah, and like they weren't, I mean, like you never know who the Larry Page is at the time. I mean,

obviously Larry Page is I'm sure brilliant and everything else. I didn't know him then, or, um, but you know, over time these folks will emerge. And I do, I do, I would say, I think there's a very strong, productive, positive movement that I think just gets kind of crowded out by all of the, you know, the coverage of the casino stuff. Um, but I think it very kind of crowded out by all of the, you know, the coverage of the casino stuff. But I think it very much exists. And that's what, look, that's why I wanted to write the book. I wanted to go through in detail and explain this and make the case and show that this exists. Let me ask that then, I was just looking at Coinbase stock, which is up recently, but it's certainly down from to 2022, like quite a bit, like, or 2021,

certainly down from to 2022, like quite a bit, like or 2021, especially when it was in the, you know, what is it? I was 332 and then it's now 131. It was down in the 80s and 70s and stuff like that. You know, Scott called Coinbase the AOL of crypto. Is that a good thing? No, I don't think so. It was a great thing for a while. It was great till it wasn't. Yeah. But it has been around for a while. And does it have to be mainstream? Because AI suddenly is everywhere mainstream. You know, it seems ubiquitous everywhere. Does it have to be mainstream or just where the electricity, where the, I don't know, the drywall or whatever?

I don't know. In my book, I analogize blockchains to steel in the sense of like it's a building material, right? Because people sometimes say, what problem does it solve? And I really see it as a building material for building better internet services. So I think ultimately, if the movement that I'm part of succeeds, it won't be – some parts of it will be visible. The fact that you can – hey, there's a social network where I can exit. You know, there's a – I can sell digital merchandise as a musician directly to my fans. Like, you'll see parts of it, but you won't see all the plumbing.

And I think most of the plumbing is behind the scenes. And by the way, it may happen with AI, too. Maybe AI is just sort of baked into everything. I think it's probably a likely outcome. AI feels more like the internet, right? It feels more like a web or something like that. But if people wanted to get into crypto right now, where would you tell them to start? Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot. So some

examples of things I'm excited by, we have a few things around music. So there's a project called Sound XYZ where musicians, so musicians today don't make money on the internet. They make very little money on streaming. A lot of them, if you ask them, will say they go offline and they tour and they sell merchandise to support themselves. And so there's various projects like SoundXYZ that let musicians sell backstage passes and digital merchandise to their consumers and add additional income stream. So that's one interesting area. There's a social network called Farcaster that's a lot like kind of something like Twitter or Facebook, except the user controls their name and their followers and can move around. And developers can hack on it. Kara, you remember early Twitter, how it became like a developer platform?

It did. I was very excited by Twitter at that point. I was at that conference. Do you remember when they had that? I think you and I probably intersected. I used to blog about that stuff. I went back when I read the book and looked at it. A lot of my blog posts were about that.

I was a developer. I was very excited by that. So Farcaster has when I read the book and looked at it. Like a lot of my blog posts were about that. I was a developer. I was very excited by that. So Farcaster has a sort of active developer. Then they killed you. Then they killed you off. But then they killed you. They killed everybody. So those are two examples.

Look, there's also stable coins are quite popular in the developing world. There were something like $600 billion in stable coin transactions last month. So there are also other, you know, as I mentioned, NF NFTs, I think are bigger than most people realize. Which is the original, right? That was the original. Yeah, there's a bunch of interesting games that are launching. We have one, it's sort of a Zynga style game called Pirate Nation, where you have NFTs as digital collectibles. EVE Online is a very popular video game. They're launching an NFT version soon, which lets kind of have more of a peer-to-peer economy where users can create spaceships and sell them to other users. So I think there's a really interesting wave of new companies that are much more accessible. Blackbird is one in New York

where it's a restaurant. It's actually the founder of Rezzy and Eater. Ben Leventhal, you may know him. Yeah, I know. Experienced entrepreneur. Yeah. So he's doing an NFT. It's like a restaurant thing where you can use NFTs as a way to kind of reward loyal patrons. So I feel like we're having this kind of out of the downturn. It feels to me like a lot of people are kind of saying, hey, we got to really level up our game and have really great product experiences. And we're seeing an exciting wave. And I'm excited about it. I actually have two questions. One, there was a fear that a lot of these crypto projects were essentially VCs financing a group of intelligent guys who had found something they thought claimed was new technology. The VC fund would lend its brand, its capital and create this project. They'd issue a coin and then leveraging the fact this FOMO of Main Street Americans who wanted to participate in what was hot, they'd then buy these coins. And because there's no SEC requirements on lockups or even disclosing when you'd sell

these coins, that then these VCs would basically dump their entire stake. And that these projects were not financing any sort of growth or underlying technology. They were essentially just an elegant transfer of wealth from mainstream investors to the limited partners of VCs. Do you think there's any truth to those claims? I think it's possible. I think that, look, I mean, I would just say that one of our core, probably the number one thing that we have asked for and pushed for in policy for years is longer lockups. Okay. So we have 10 year, we're a venture fund, all of our funds are venture funds, including the crypto funds. They have a 10 year life cycle. We push for long lockups in the deals

we do, but we don't have unlimited market power. If we go push too hard, they will do a deal with somebody else. Right. And so we have, I think the number one thing that the policymakers could do to improve the space would be long lockups on every project, because I believe that real technology takes years to build and you need to avoid that. Yes, I think all sorts of things have happened. But Andreessen hasn't been subject to these lockups or self-imposed them. Andreessen hasn't been subject to these lockups or self-imposed them. In all the deals we do, we have multi-year lockups. And moreover, we have- I'm sorry, I just want to clarify this. When you invest in a crypto project

and there's a coin issued, you have a self-imposed lockup of when you can sell those coins? The lockup's in the term sheet. It's a term in the term sheet, yeah. We do and the founders do. So the crypto projects you funded in the last few years, you have not sold coins? You still own those coins? We have 94% of the coins that we bought, we hold in all our crypto funds today. So wouldn't that indicate that Andreessen has taken an enormous drawdown or loss on these projects, given what's happened in the crypto market? I mean, we're RIA. I'm not allowed to talk about our returns, but I mean, we have 94% of our tokens. Yeah. I mean, venture capital is a highly volatile market.

Right. Yeah. And then my last case is just give us what you feel is the most compelling use case for consumers or enterprise. Say, it doesn't even have to be now, but in three years, what do you think the use cases are? Outside of speculation. So, sorry to keep pushing my book, but I have seven sections at the end of the book where I go through seven, like deep into seven areas of use cases. And I talk about social networking, I talk about finance, I talk about media businesses like NFT media businesses. I'll just give you one kind of maybe

a flavor of a cool idea that I like as that's one of the sections, which is an area called collaborative storytelling. And that the idea there is it's kind of Wikipedia style is internet fans get together and create narrative universes like the next Harry Potter and the next Marvel. And they get rewarded with tokens proportionate to their contribution. And then they go and the narrative universes they can create can then be licensed and made into movies and comic books and other kinds of things. That's a cool new idea that just sort of couldn't exist before you had crypto. But there's just like a bunch of, there's games. I have a section on games in the metaverse. Like I think that very clearly we're going to have, you know,

the so-called metaverse. I know it's jargony, but it is a thing that's going to happen. And whether, I'm not talking just strictly about VR headsets. I'm talking about people spending more time in 3D worlds through video games and things like this. That's just, we're going to have more and more people in 3D worlds. They're more persistent. It becomes a bigger part of our lives. And I think an important question is how is that metaverse structured? Is it structured with like one company owning it,

like does Fortnite own it? Or is it structured like the web, like where there's a bunch of different, you know, like it's an open system and you can add a component to it. Like that's another important, you know, area that I'm focused on. I think, as I mentioned before, like in a world of generative AI, let's talk about your business, the media business. The internet has operated on an implicit covenant between distribution, like search engines and social networks and websites. What happens in a world where you go to a chat GPT and you just get an answer? You don't have to click through anymore. and you just get an answer. You don't have to click through anymore, right? So we're very soon entering a world where you don't click through anymore and you don't go, and I was on the board of Stack Overflow for years.

Stack Overflow data was used to train a lot of these systems and now Stack Overflow's traffic is way down, right? So how do we train, how do we create content in the future? How do we reward content creators? So, you know, I have a section in the book on this about like different things people are working on

and ideas for like new ways to use blockchains to create business models in in a world of ai systems that give you that are protectable they're protected well lawsuits first and then we'll do that but one of the last things i'm sorry i just noticed larry fink who was a big detractor of bitcoin and stuff of course has done an about face and he's calling himself a big believer of course they have they filed paperwork for an etf too at blockwork so it's i think the finance and the speculation, it might be a little calmer with these new, you know, it's part of that. It'll be part of that, presumably. I know you're not in that area.

You're in the tools part. But as a speculative tool of ownership, I think this will change it quite a bit, a lot of people feel like. Yeah, I think the sort of institutional. And then they're limiting. Yeah, the institutional people are really piling in a lot more because it like, and then they're limiting. Yeah. The institutional people are really piling in a lot more because it feels safer. And that makes sense. That makes sense from a lot of perspectives. Anyway, a really fascinating book actually. And we love to, we love to own. We, Chris, we're owners. And you know, I am, you know, I'm like tired of selling

my stuff to other people. Anyway, again, Chris Dixon, he's one of my favorite venture capitalists and that's a very short list. And the book is Read, Write, Own, Building the Next Era of the Internet. It's really worth your while to read it.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Chris. Good to see you again. Thank you both for having me. Yeah, thanks, Scott. Thanks, Karen. All right, Scott, I like having smart VCs

on our program. We've had two in a row. I like them. Yeah, it's more important they have good hair. He had good hair, so well done. Yeah, you like his hair.

You're always liking their hair. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data

roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first or would you like me to? Go ahead.

Okay, I got to say E. Jean Carroll. Good for her. Keep going, you know, sister. Go ahead, sister. I got to say, E. Jean Carroll, good for her. Keep going, you know, sister. Go ahead, sister. You do it. It's like, you know, the fortitude to keep doing this amid all the attacks and his behavior was so heinous for the actual act. And then he continued. He's not changed his stripes.

And I thought for her to do this is something else. And Robbie Kaplan, too, the lawyer, did an astonishing job. And it was in such deep contrast to Trump's lawyers who possibly it was like she got him at lawyers or us was really amazing. The stick to it. And I think she's going to keep sticking to it. If you've read, there's a great story in the Cut this week about Cecile Richards, who used to run Planned Parenthood. She has brain cancer, but she's doing all kinds of things. I've interviewed her. She was at Code in 2017. Really a great leader on abortion rights. Also, she's still continuing.

She's actually doing a chat bot called Charlie about good abortion rights information. She's still fighting. Brain cancer is a very serious illness she has. She seems to be doing okay, but it's still tough. What a wonderful, she's the daughter of Ann Richards, who I also revere. And just a really great person, one of these people that make a difference. And I really, I hope for her, it's not a fail, but I hope it's a fail that she has to suffer this, but I hope for her continued health. Yeah, 100%. I like both of those. So my fail is five elite US universities, Brown, Columbia, Duke, Emory, and Yale, have agreed to pay $105

million to settle a lawsuit accusing them of weighing an applicant's ability to pay in their decision process. The plaintiffs described the schools as a price-fixing cartel. Yeah, you think? No, we all just accidentally raise our prices 4.5% or 6% a year and lockstep with each other. Highly selective U.S. universities have long benefited from exemption from federal antitrust laws when sharing formulas to measure prospective students' financial needs under the condition that their admissions processes need to be need-blind, meaning they could not factor in whether a prospective student was wealthy enough to pay, the schools did not admit any wrongdoing.

You know how you get your kid into school? There's a little box in most applications that says, if you check this box, you will never ask for nor accept financial aid. We have become such fucking whores instead of public servants. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. We are the administrative bloat, right? And who pays for all of that? Kids who have some nice, nice lady in a pantsuit with a big logo behind them telling it's your parents' dream, it's worth it, education is the best return, just sign here. And then they

get debt, unlike any other debt, is not dischargeable. And there's no competition to lower prices because we're all in the business of price fixing. And we've talked a lot about this rejectionist bullshit culture. We take so much pride in rejecting 90 plus percent of our applicants. But the other way we sequester access to Americans, good kids, is by making it just unaffordable with all this ridiculous bloat and also this price fixing. Because at the end of the day, don't kid yourself, we're not nonprofits. We are in the business of money. We are in the business of money. And we need more competition. We absolutely need to hit these guys hard. They should not be subject to nonprofit

status. They should not get government funding unless they grow their freshman class sizes faster than inflation. And there needs to absolutely be antitrust to go in and look at the price fixing here. And you want to talk about starting a kid off. We have the most anxious and depressed generation in history, kids, young adults under the age of 30. And one of the ways we put them on the path to this anxiety and depression-filled life is we say, okay, we're going to decide that you failed as a parent unless you send your kid to college. And the kid works his ass off, but maybe isn't really cut out for college. Two-thirds of kids don't end up with a traditional four-year degree. Some kids just

aren't cut out for college. But you failed as a parent, as a kid, if you don't go. So the kid tries to go to college, doesn't get into one of these rejectionist elite colleges, gets arbed down to a second-tier college. But oh, because of the cartel, you're paying a Mercedes price for a Hyundai product. After two years, it's obvious the kid wasn't cut out for college, leaves. But he or she doesn't get to leave the debt. And guess what? The school doesn't care. They got the cash to check.

They're not on the hook for that bad debt. Scott is on a roll. And you end up with a 20-year-old that has nothing, has no certification, no job prospects, but they got $100,000 in debt. I like this effort by you. I like it. All right. What's your win then? Sorry. I was being very indignant there. That's okay. I love your indignancy. Someone said that to me. Scott's mad about colleges, right? And I'm like, uh-huh. Well, go ahead. I don't want you to keep going. Yes. Yes. I'm inside of the bowels of this place.

If we gave the admissions directors and the chancellors of some of these universities an enema, we could bury them in a fucking shoebox. They're so full of shit. Okay. All right. Let's send out a positive. That was good. That was good.

Okay. So my win is Ted, the series. Have you seen it? Ted? Ted Lassler? Well, you know Ted. No, no. Ted, the movie.

Oh, they did. I haven't seen it. It's Seth MacFarlane. Yeah, he's so great. Who is a genius. Genius, genius. He's a family guy. That guy's a genius.

He has to be a billionaire. That guy deserves to be a billionaire. I think he does okay. Oh my gosh. Anyways, Ted, I've been watching with my 13 year old, hashtag inappropriate. It is so funny, so inappropriate, and in its own way, occasionally, accidentally dips into being

somewhat sentimental and kind of moving. It is. He can be. Yeah. This guy and this show and the actors are wonderful. The kid is wonderful. And what I will say is if you have a teenage boy and a teenage girl too, it's such a fun way. It's such a fun series. It's a dirty show, but funny. It really is dirty. I want to be clear. I'm not endorsing watching it with your 13-year-old. You know what happened to me is I let Louis watch it when he was, I don't know, 10 or 12 or whatever. Mistake. And then Alex would sit around the corner and watch it.

And he always goes, the reason I'm the way I am is because you let me watch Ted. But I didn't know he was sneaking it. It's not violent. There's no real sex in it. No, I know, but there's a lot of plushy penis stuff and anyway it's i get it it's delightful he's a delightful delightful man seth mcfarland and deserves every ounce of money he gets for his wonderful creations i mean i i get so i'd steal other people's humor um i just the lines just like if i go to this guy doesn't want

to go into an office. Like, if I go to an office, who will let the mailman in to pee? I had a vasectomy after my testicles looked like a frog holding its breath. The writers on this show are just, let's take Sharpies and circle the parts on each other's bodies that need improvement. These guys are so. It is such a show for Scott. Take Sharpies and circle the parts on each other's bodies that need improvement. Oh, God. It is such a show for Scott. All I want is whatever they're smoking. All right.

Good. Oh, nice. These guys are so good. Anyways, it relieves me from mendacious fucks posing as good people that our university leadership is Ted. Be Seth. Don't be university shith university leadership is Ted. Be Seth. Don't be university shitheads of universities. Be Seth. A profane series.

All right. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT and watch a dirty show with your teen. That's what we recommend here on our show. Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more.

Read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertide engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mia Silverio. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, I will see you later in the week.