Pivot - Facebook’s latest scandal and the "tyranny of technology"

Episode Date: December 21, 2018

Kara and Scott breakdown yet another Facebook scandal. This time, it turns out Facebook was passing on private user message data to partners like Netflix and Spotify.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of Pivot is brought to you by Microsoft Azure. To amplify your ideas and achieve more with artificial intelligence and advanced analytics, on Azure, your trusted cloud. Start your free account today at azure.com slash trial. That's A-Z-U-R-E dot com slash trial. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway, staring at Cara Swisher, which is an enormous treat in the same room, so you can probably feel the banter and the electricity and the buzz in the same room, Cara. Yes, here we are. Here we are in New York City. So there's a lot to talk about,

so let's get into it because we've only got a few more shows before the new year. But obviously, again, we're talking about Facebook. Another story from the New York Times, again, about Facebook's violation of privacy, which is something they've been doing since the beginning. But a really bad one, again. Selective

handing out of information to different groups depending on partnerships and things like that. And what is your sense of how was this determined? Was this pure oversight or was it a pay-to-play thing? Who got special access? Different things. Different people got different things for different partnerships. I think that's the thing is that they were sort of,

they were giving special, you know, they weren't selling the data. They were giving it away as part of partnerships. And then it depended on whether it was the Royal Bank of Canada or Netflix or Spotify or Bing or things like that. And so various, they gave away various bits of privacy. And sometimes the partners didn't even use it or didn't intend to use it. Didn't ask for it. Yeah, they were just, it was, you know, they had this partnerships thing, I think it was under Dan Rose, who has since left Facebook. And I think they just were making partnership after partnership

to advantage Facebook and part of the deal, as they did with the Cambridge Analytica information to give to third parties to track people to platform. They give away different bennies, essentially. So I read this as consumers love frictionless content and things for free. And this is part of the downside. But have you heard, have you reached out to Facebook? What's their official

response? Well, they did. They gave responses that we have been trying to be transparent. I think the issue is that it piles onto other things and Facebook misusing data and whether, you know, it's interesting because I put up something like this more than anything, it shows kind of sloppy management of partnerships. Really? People were like, no, it's criminal. No, it's this, it's not criminal necessarily. And the question is, who's going to decide whether people gave consent, whether they should have gave consent. I think the – it will get all people on the Hill all mad because they're already angry about the Russia stuff. And we'll get to that because something else came out earlier this week about Facebook and Twitter and Google.

But I think it's a question of their sort of sloppy management of data and their voracious sucking in of data at the same time. So, but my question is, this feels a little bit Trumpian in the sense that when there's so many dumpster fires, you just see a fire and one dumpster fire doesn't look any brighter than the other. Are we just becoming inoculated or numb to this? No, I think people, I think this kind of stuff

does get Congress going and get regulators going. And you just saw today the District of Columbia is suing Facebook based on the Cambridge Analytica stuff. So I think just what happens is a pile on, which has happened to them before

when they had Beacon, if you remember, it just was a much smaller environment. And now everybody is piling on and it's not just, what's interesting is there's one sort of attack from the privacy angle

and what people gave consent to and the misuse of data or the use of data properly but not in ways people thought it was being used and whether that was illegal or not illegal and then there's the question of malevolent actors using the platform as it was built and then there's an issue of addiction and then there's it just it all sort of mish mishes up together and gets away from the fact, are people using this product and do they like using this product even at the cost of privacy? But at this point, I would argue there doesn't seem to be any evidence that consumers care. Yet. I don't agree with that.

I think young people don't want to use Facebook. I don't know if it's because of privacy issues. I think it's uncool, I think, pretty much. Right. cool, I think, pretty much. But the issue is, can they, facing all these various things, can they continue to innovate and run their company when they're facing so many inquiries? Which is, you know,

what happened to Microsoft. It happens to all of them. Yeah, it's just, you know the mood there, and you hear so little about it. I used to get, I used to hear from Facebook, people would call me, the people I know there, and say, Scott, you need to stop piling on. It sounds personal. You look ridiculous. And I don't hear from those people anymore. I

don't hear anything. They're gone. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people I've been talking to at Facebook are want to leave. They want out. They want out. Yeah. And. No fun.

And where do they go? I mean, what, they just want. They're worried about their personal reputations. A lot of people I've had coffee with, they're like, oh, how do I look? They want to go to Instagram. Yeah, right. I know Instagram is owned by Facebook. What's up? No, the Instagram guy left because he was sick go to Instagram? Yeah, right. No, Instagram's owned by Facebook. What's up? No, the Instagram guy left because he was sick of this stuff.

Yeah, Kevin Systrom. He was sick of the meddling of Facebook and the misuse of his platform, I think, in a lot of ways. And so what do you think, I mean, you know, I always have my talk track over breaking these guys up,

but what do you think actually happens? So death by a thousand cuts, but what does death look like? What's going to happen here? I don't know. I don't know. It's a good question. I think possibly, you know, they could does death look like? What's going to happen here? I don't know. I don't know. It's a good question. I think possibly, you know, they could be spurred into management change.

I think that's probably what happens a lot of time. There's pressure from the board. We got to do something. Like you can imagine there's a meeting right now going on at Facebook's board going, Jesus, either it's let's just sit still, which is what they've done before in the past when these things happen, and be very quiet and just promise things, which is their way, which has been their history. That's how they handle a lot of this stuff.

Or do they actually say, okay, we're going to get a new CEO in here to run things? Are we going to replace Sheryl Sandberg? Are we going to replace blank? You could see departures by certain people, maybe Joel Kaplan, maybe, you know, who knows? That just feels, when you say management change, there's only really two people that would constitute a management change. There's more people, but you don't know them. But yes, okay.

But from a public perception standpoint. Cheryl and Mark. It's Cheryl and Mark. Yeah. And so you didn't agree with this, but I think Cheryl, I think the first time there's 90 seconds of calm or 90 days of calm, I think she announces she's going to run a foundation. She declares victory and she leaves. I've heard she has said to people she has not.

No one says they're leaving until the day they leave. No, I think she means it. I think she wants to clean it up. But what the board should be doing is kicking Mark up to chairman and bringing in a new CEO. That would, in my opinion, restore the stock price. Send a signal. And also, everyone says, look, they can't do it because he controls the board. But if you actually play it out, what happens?

If the board all holds hands around the fire and gets in the boat together and puts out a press release saying we're removing him as CEO, he's going to be chairman. The next day, he's not going to replace all of them. Trust me when I tell you that. There's no way Mark Andreessen and Peter Thiel will do that to Mark Zuckerberg ever. And why is that? Because they are – They will not. Because they're such a fan of them? Because I know their personal relationships.

They just won't. They won't do it. They won't. It's not their mentality. They're very victim-y like we're being attacked. Yeah. Well, they aren't. The board has been – the board actually hasn't come under fire in my view.

No, but they – we are in this together as a group. And he hasn't done anything that bad and he's built the greatest company in history and blah, blah, blah, blah. That probably means you need new board members or you need to start calling out the board as responsible. I think I will do that.

Well, just listing their names and tweeting at them and saying, what's your view on this? Hey, Reed Hastings, does this mean your platform is next to be weaponized? Right, and also Netflix was involved in this, that they got some sort of private messages. I wasn't really clear what the data they were getting. They were getting unusual. I mean,

everyone had a deal with Facebook. Why wouldn't you? Because, you know, that's where the information is. Yeah. And what it goes down, it kind of comes down to is the reason Netflix won't be weaponized is that social media is nicotine. It's addictive. It's not good for you. I would argue it's not that bad for you. But the tobacco here, the stuff that gives you cancer is advertising. Yeah. Because it's a pursuit of more engagement, which leads to rage, which leads to a lack of concern around screening content and advertisers. That's the stuff that gives you lung cancer. So Netflix, Spotify, much less likely to be weaponized. It's the ad-supported. I mean, the bottom line is advertising, despite all the fun we have watching Mad Men,

advertising really is the source of evil here. It's the business model. What would be interesting is, I don't know if this could ever work, but if you tried to model out charging for Facebook or Instagram. Yeah, someone was putting that up on Twitter just now. $12 for a social network that is just private. Yeah, because what's shocking about advertising is that the lack of respect that the ecosystem and brands have for your time. So Modern Family, fantastic show. ABC and Disney are able to get 49 cents per viewer by pelting you with nine minutes of crap.

To convince you you have restless leg syndrome and you need a car from South Korea and interrupt that gorgeous content, you know, three times nine minutes, they get a grand total of 49 cents. So if you think your time is worth more than $2 and whatever it is, I'm sorry, more than nine, so it's more than $2 and 40 cents an hour, you'll pay iTunes. But I wonder if we are slowly but surely moving to a more subscription model. And maybe that's wishful thinking. But if you look at the media that's increased tens of millions of dollars in the last few years, it's got one of two things. It's either got massive scale. We're talking billions of people, right? YouTube or Facebook.

Or it's subscription-based. It's Spotify. It's Netflix. And it doesn't have the carcinogen or the precancerous cells of ad-supported media, which when you look at it is really the source of all problems here. Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think lots of people have talked about Tim Cook. Is it time for a commercial break, by the way? No, no, no, not at all.

No, yeah, talk about it. Speaking of that, but there's different kind of advertising. We're not sitting around really highly targeting people in the way that this is. This is a different kind of advertising that has changed things. I mean one is some spray and pray ad is very different from what's going on here. And that brings to mind the detailed report given to the Senate Intelligence Committee, two of them, about how social media was used for the Russian election interference. It wasn't just Facebook.

It was Twitter and Google's YouTube and others. The report also showed specific – one of the reports showed specific targeting of African-Americans on Facebook and Instagram. It caused all kinds of things. There were lots of details in this. But it sent – and then I think the shoe that really dropped is like that the government said these companies are not helping us. They're giving us information in dribs and drabs. They're not giving us all the information we need to figure out what happened.

And so we're really angry at them for that. That was also an accusation that they're not helping us figure out how their platforms were misused over the past couple of years. Well, it was sort of the – if you look at what the judge has – all these judges have been saying to Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn, they want it both ways. They want to look like they're helping for purposes of getting leniency from the court. But they're not really coming clean, so to speak. And the judges aren't having it. No. They're saying you either turn states – you either cooperate or you don't. There's no middle ground. And they

all sort of want to be able to say to the president kind of inadvertently, I held the line, please pardon me. And I think these judges or people are saying the same thing about these social media platforms is that when Congress has asked for data, it turns up that they weren't as forthright as they could have been. And I just wonder, do we have, and this is the danger, right, is that when for-profit companies become so powerful that they effectively become the government, that we're just outgunned. And if you have people who don't understand the technologies, people who don't have the will, people who are working on a reelection campaign and need donors, and this stuff's complicated and hard and you're up against huge adversaries.

Do Google and Facebook and Amazon effectively become our government? And we continue this march towards tyranny. Tyranny. The tyranny of job basis. The tyranny of – well, the tyranny of technology. But when you look at really bad areas – The tyranny of technology. In our history, there has been – oftentimes there has been a common theme and that is private enterprise has become too powerful and become the government.

Well, I think that's the question. I mean I think is that what's going to happen here? Or will there be – I mean government has stepped in before with big oil, big this, big that, Microsoft, AT&T. This has happened. They're not that dumb. Like to say – to abrogate the responsibility of regulating these companies, I think that's what happened is these people have no rules and there's been no rules.

I was talking to someone today, they're like, well, we need more legislation. I'm like, any legislation. Anything. Anything. There's no legislation legislating these companies or a very de minimis amount. I can't even think. Well, even strip away kind of content decency acts. You can even tend media bills, media laws. What are any? Well, even strip away kind of content decency acts. You can do 10 media bills, media laws.

What are any – Well, even just taking away regulations. So there was regulation in 1997, I think it was the Content Decency Act, that exempted these nascent platforms. Right. Immunity. Immunity. And just take that. Is that Section 230?

Thanks very much, guys. So it's – yeah, it's just taking that away. But the keyword there, and if we're going to be hopeful about 19, because I'm with Debbie Diamond on that stuff, you would like to think that 19 would be the year of immunities kicking in? Immunities. What do you mean? Well, have we had enough? Are we going to start proposing regulation? Are we going to start holding these companies responsible?

Are we finally getting our arms around this? Bezos actually said that every new media form creates problems. So when books were first printed, some books started wars. But then we figured out how to deal with this medium and immunities kicked in. So the optimistic viewpoint is that the immunities, Senator Warner, California's privacy legislation, people getting fed up, that the immunities ideally are starting to kick in. Well, we'll see. I don't know.

But until then, we're going to take a quick break. Coming up next, we'll hear an advertiser segment. It's not targeted to anybody. You can listen to it or you don't have to. And we are not tracking you from Microsoft Azure about digital mapping. The building blocks for industry in the 21st century aren't cement blocks and steel beams, but digital tools and platforms. The way we look at a new building is that it's a smart building.

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and I are talking about Facebook as we always do. We've got to get on to other things. Yeah, seriously. I wish we could talk about just, about just – you saw Walt Mossberg came off of things. So we're going to do wins and fails. I'm going to start. I'm going to do a win. Walt Mossberg, like getting off of Facebook and having a Walt Mossberg tantrum, which I always love. He's done?

Tell us about the tantrum. He's off of Facebook and he's continuing to tweet. He just sent me another one about – he's always been – he's had it. He's mad as hell. He just sent me another one. He's had it. He's mad as hell. He's not going to take it anymore. So he goes, the perfidious behavior of Facebook starts with and goes well beyond its betrayal of you, of its privacy. And then, of course, he wrote another one, until he got media trained. Growth at any cost at Facebook's driving principle forever.

Until he got media trained, Mark Zuckerberg could barely put a sentence together about privacy, which we did at Famous Interview where he sweat. And before that, Walt had said he was getting off of Facebook. How did you meet Walt? You guys were sort of the peanut butter and chocolate of this whole— Yes, we met at a lunch where we argued about where the Internet was going. And he was at the Wall Street Journal? He was at the Wall Street Journal. I was at the Washington Post, and I was writing a book.

I want that guy as my rabbi. Can you ask him if he'll be my rabbi? No, he cannot be that. He's busy being mine. He seems smart and thoughtful. He is. I think what's interesting is he sort of did what Walt does really well, which is sort of this indignant anger at these things

and sort of tried to crystallize it from a consumer point of view, which is you're being rolled and this is why I'm getting off. And then what was interesting, he says, you don't have to. And by the way, I'll be back if they change things. So it was kind of an interesting way to do it. So I think he was the win. Here's the issue. So Walt, they hate to lose Walt because he's an influencer.

But he's not the demo. But they don't mind him because he's old. And advertisers hate old people because they're smart. Young people are stupid and spend money on high-margin products like tennis shoes with swooshes on them or a $40 lip liner. But old people are smart and start investing in relationships and just aren't stupid. No, I think young people, my kids do not like the invasion of privacy. Except for your kids.

No, but I think a lot of kids. The old soul's in your household. No, no, no, no, but I think kids do care about privacy. I do. I don't think that's true. I don't think they're- That's bullshit.

Young people don't care. I don't think it's true. Here, take a selfie. Win or fail of the week, please. So mine are sort of strange. So the Journal of Psychogeriatrics has done this great study. All right, speaking of old people.

Yeah, there you go. Talking about loneliness. I think loneliness is going to be a big, I think kind of loneliness is the new cancer, if you will. And they found that you have three areas of real loneliness in terms of your life. In your 20s, when you realize you're not going to be a senator, have a fragrance named after you, when you start anchoring up the most successful people and you're not one of them. In your 50s, when you start to find that you might have prediabetes or you know someone who dies, and then you're in the late 80s where actually my dad is, where quite frankly,

you just don't have a whole hell of a lot to look forward to. And what's interesting is three quarters of people surveyed reported some sort of moderate to severe loneliness and that loneliness, suffering from loneliness is kind of the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, that it's really bad for your health. Not a surprise. So I think my win is this journal raising the issue of loneliness. I think it's going to be a big issue in the next couple of years. And the thing that counteracts it is, in addition to socializing, is wisdom.

And that is empathy, the ability to make decisions and be comfortable with your decisions, perspective around relationships and disappointment. But I think loneliness – I think this study is really powerful. You sound lonely. I'm lonely all the time, Cara. But you know what? I wish I was lonely right now. I hate my life less and less every day though.

Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's interesting because I think one of the things is how much does the use of screens and everything contribute to that? How much does it isolate people? Isolation I think is the link to it. And the question is, how do we get...

There's one school of thought that you have these screens and people that were isolated before get to be part of the community, that they get to be, even if it's a digital community, so that that helps from isolation. Then there's others that say it isolates people from each other. I would say the latter is obviously when you walk down the street, when you see people on the buses entering. Like I'm riding the subway here a lot and everybody's on their phones.

Then again, they were always reading a newspaper. So I'm trying to think if it's a different kind of isolation than when you're pulled into your phone versus reading a newspaper or a book or something else. So seriously, I find the only thing that really cures it for me is time with my kids for some reason. But also I've decided that my cure for 19 is I'm getting a comfort monkey. What?

I'm going to get a comfort monkey. I'm going to get a monkey and I'm going to bring it on planes with me. I'm sick of those fucking comfort animals. I can't sit down. Last week it was yoga and now comfort animals. Oh, my. It's out of control. Is it?

Labradoodles. Is it really out of control? It's so out of control. Is it? Everyone's bringing their dogs on and saying, I need this because I'm anxious. I'm like, well, you know what? There's a cure for anxiety on planes. It's called vodka.

So I have comfort vodka. You have a comfort fucking poodle. Get off the plane. What bothers you about a pet? What do you care? No, no, no. I just think, have you been on planes lately? There's animals everywhere.

I understand that. That's fine. Yeah. Animals and kids should be banned from all forms of transportation. Okay. But what is the problem with them there? Do they bother you? Is there anything that they do? Yeah, I have a Labradoodle on my feet. And I like dogs. I just think it's forms of transportation. Okay, but what is the problem with them there? Do they bother you? Is there anything that they do?

Yeah, I have a Labradoodle on my feet. And I like dogs. I just think it's out of control. So what's wrong with a Labradoodle on your feet? What is the big deal, Scott? Put them over, over drug them and put them in the hole. It combats loneliness, by the way. Really?

Yeah. No, because they freeze down there. I like, I love animals in the main cabin. Occasionally they die. You like that? I do. Do you have a comfort animal? I don't have a comfort animal.

I pay the money to put my cat in the main cabin, for example, when I travel with my cat. You have a cat? I have cats. I have dogs. I did not see you as a cat person. I have cats and dogs. Got it. I have all pets.

Now I'm getting a comfort monkey, and we're going to travel together, and I'm going to have a gobo next to me, and I'm going to see how much you like that. You know, there's a true story. Can I collect monkeys on planes? Someone tried to bring a peacock on Delta. Really? A comfort peacock. What happened?

They said, the pilot came out and said, sorry, no peacocks. No peacocks. Because they get big, right? They can cause problems in the aisle. They are large feathered animals. Yeah. Like, yeah. I think what I'm interested in, someone was telling me the other day, was allergies and stuff like that.

I wonder if you're allergic to cats and stuff, what you do when a cat is on a plane. Like, what do you do? You're kind of stuck there in a tube of death. I know a guy who recently got married. A fairly powerful private equity guy. And his wife is into cats. And part of the agreement was in their prenuptials is that he would get allergy shots. I don't know what got me on that. Okay.

All right then. Loneliness. Loneliness. I'm getting a comfort monkey. Okay, Scott. All right. Now, I would like your predictions, please. Any predictions for this week?

I don't have predictions for this week. On our next episode, we're reviewing all of our predictions from 18 and 19. But I have another loser. Can I do another loser? All right. Yeah, do another loser. So everyone's totally obsessed with the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Yes, including Donald Trump, who's also Mr. Tariff Man, right?

He's either Mr. Dow Jones Man or Mr. Tariff Man. And it's probably the most— They can't live together, those two. It's probably the most famous metric in the world. And metrics are really important because what gets measured gets done. All right. It's probably the most famous metric in the world. And metrics are really important because what gets measured gets done.

And unfortunately, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is essentially 80 or 88 percent of the stocks, depending on the survey you look at, are controlled by the top decile of income earners in America. Right. So the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a relevant metric to measure the economic health of the upper decile. And that's about it. Meanwhile, life expectancy has declined three years in a row for the first time in the history of our country during a non-war period. Wow. Because there's all these unmarked graves of not politically connected, not wealthy, mostly kids who are addicted, overdosed on opioids. Wages haven't grown in a long time. So I think the Dow Jones Industrial Average is just a terrible metric and has led to a lot of damage because it creates this false illusion of security and prosperity.

Interesting. Meaning that people aren't prosperous. I'm talking about depression and opioids. Scott, what is going on with you this week? You're lonely? You're worried about the stock? Would you lose some money on the stock market? Did I lose some money?

Oh, my God. I've gotten the shit kicked out of me over the last three or four months. Don't pay attention to it. Don't? Don't. Are you planning on retiring next week? I'd like to. Are you?

I'm ready. No, I've been retired for a while. It's called academia. Okay, all right. But so what are you worried about? Do you need that money right now? Well, here's the thing. I don't know about you,

but the problem is I always anchor off the high and I think that's the natural state of beings. So I don't see myself as being ahead of where I was a year ago, which is where I am. I see myself as being 20% down from four months ago. And that's a lack of wisdom, which creates loneliness in my need for a comfort monkey. Oh, this is getting better and better. Last year you were hating. When do we start drinking? We don't start drinking. There's a kid with a beard. What do you think this is an Elon Musk podcast with Joe Rogan? No, we don't do drugs on this podcast. It's a drug-free zone.

Bring the vape. No, not at all. In any case podcast. It's a drug-free zone. Bring the vape. No, not at all. In any case, Scott, that was a lovely whatever, diatribe. Somehow you link comfort mummies to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. What are your wins and fails? I told you, Walt Mossberg. He's a superhero. Oh, Walt, he's the winner.

He's the winner. I don't know. I think the interesting part of Amazon getting into healthcare is it marches into everything else is interesting. But that's a topic for another day. That's a good one. I'm telling you, that's the big – They're going to get into everything else is interesting, but that's a topic for another day. That's a good one. I'm telling you, that's the big – They're going to get into everything. They do everything really well.

Yeah, but that healthcare though, if you want to look at an industry that is – there is – other than my industry, academia, which has the benefit of century-old brands that are difficult to disrupt in my view. I mean it's just hard to build MIT overnight. Healthcare, what great brands are there in healthcare? Seriously, it's a bunch of really mediocre brands. No, we don't like. And it's gone from 12% of GDP to 18%. I'll tell you, if I were coming out of college right now, I would want to be the guy or gal

that understands the intersection of technology and healthcare. Well, yeah, but that's been tried. Everyone's tried it. Google's tried it. Microsoft's tried it. Honestly, I want, yeah, Oscar. There's Oscar. That was a Kushner.

That was Josh Kushner, not – is that right? Josh Kushner. The Kushner that is someone you can talk to. So he's actually very – He's dreamy. I've met him. Yeah, he's dreamy. He's one of those guys.

I got introduced to him a couple of years ago. I went downtown and I felt so deficient. I'm like literally like, okay. He's married to a supermodel. Yeah, that's a shocker. That's a shocker. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, this guy is so much younger than me, so much more successful, has such

better hair than me. I'm like, how did that happen and how did I happen? It's a low bar, Scott. Yeah, seriously, right? Right. But I don't remember a thing he said. I just remember feeling totally insecure when I walked out of there. Anyway, in any case, Amazon getting into healthcare is interesting.

And, you know, you kind of welcome someone to do something that would create. We're ready. And the link you forwarded me on testing, I mean, think about what they could do, right? They know your body mass index because they're closed. They know what food you order. They know what pharmaceuticals you're in. When Amazon is great at sitting on top of a data set and figuring out what companies or what industries or sectors of healthcare are good to be in and which one are bad to be in. So batteries, great business. We're going into it. Swiss vacuum cleaner, shitty business. We'll just let them on our platform

and charge them 8% to 12%. I think they could literally start. And the scary part is they could start skimming off the healthiest families in America, which would be terrible for the rest of them because the key to insurance is convincing healthy families to go into these pools and unhealthy families. But I think that's the big kind of optimistic or interesting business story of 19 is big tech going into healthcare. I think it's going to be, and maybe a couple of retail providers. Well, they've been there. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. It'd be interesting to see what happens. I mean, that is an area certainly ripe for disruption. 100%. Absolutely.

All right, Scott. Let's go get a drink and wash this all down. I like it. I'm in. I'm ready. Comfort vodka. Comfort. What vodka do you order?

I don't, Scott. I don't drink. You know what? Occasionally, I start moving. When I get a little bit of drunk, I feel like I need to spread some Scott moves around. I start thinking I have rhythm. But you know who thinks I'm a great dancer? Who?

Bourbon. Bourbon thinks I'm an awesome dancer. I went and watched a tango class last week. It was fun. You watched a tango class? Someone I'm seeing takes tango. Anyone who goes to a dance class and is not learning dance is trying to impress somebody. No, I was fascinated by it.

It was interesting. Yeah, I bet. Yeah, fascinated by the prospect of having sex with this person after the tango class. No, you know what, Scott? Once again, bring it back. Where's the comfort monkey? It was a lovely, beautiful expression of art that tango is. It was really

nice. Anyway. Good stuff, Cara. We'll talk to you next week. Alright, have a good week. Alright, Rebecca Sinanis produces this show. Nishad Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Thanks also to Eric Johnson. Thanks for listening to Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Thanks also to Eric Johnson. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. Join us next week for more breakdown on all things tech and business.

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