Pivot - GE’s Three-Way Split, Facebook Scraps “Sensitive”Ad-Targeting Categories, and Friend of Pivot, Jonathan Haidt

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

Kara and Scott discuss GE’s plans to split into three companies, Facebook’s decision to disable ad targeting based on sensitive categories, and the Twitter Blue rollout. Also, a data breach at Robinhood, and Adam Neumann’s return. And Scott gives us a prediction on M&As in 2022. Plus, Friend of Pivot Jonathan Haidt on social media’s mental health effects. You can find Jonathan on Twitter at @JonHaidt and can find more of his research at thecoddling.com/better-social-media. Send us your Listener Mail questions, via Yappa, at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Pivot comes from Virgin Atlantic. Too many of us are so focused on getting to our destination that we forgot to embrace the journey. Well, when you fly Virgin Atlantic, that memorable trip begins right from the moment you check in. On board, you'll find everything you need to relax, recharge, or carry on working. Buy flat, private suites, fast Wi-Fi, hours of entertainment, delicious dining, and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. delicious dining and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. Check out virginatlantic.com for your next trip to London and beyond and see for yourself how traveling for takes forever to build a campaign. Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you,

tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. one that you think. But first, how you doing? How's it going? I actually, I feel pretty good. I just worked out. I feel some, when we were pre-mic, I feel some heaviness and some darkness in your voice. Are you distressed or is there something we need to discuss? No, we had a gas leak at our house, so that's why I'm just like irritated. Yes. Really?

Yeah. Well, it's just a long story. It's just home running sucks when you don't have lots of assistance to help you. It just, there was a when you don't have lots of assistance to help you. It's just there was a gas leak and I have children, and so we have to get it fixed. That's all. They improved something and made it worse, if that makes sense. We had a new water heater put in, and it's managed to make the house smell like gas. So that's nice. That was a nice good morning for you.

Everybody light a candle. No, it's just irritating when you have a house and you have to deal with it. But that's all right. I have a house. Here's an idea. Sell your house on Zillow. Oh, that's good. A little tech humor being brought in. Do you have parent-teacher conferences? I have those coming up. I have them on both ends. So I go in and do the parent-teacher's conferences for my kids. And then I have parent-teachers conferences with my kids who are MBAs who show up and pretend that they're both the victimized child and the mother protecting the child in one person. Oh, wow. It's one of the reasons I don't teach undergrads anymore. Yeah, why?

Undergrads, and you can empathize, because they're so grade-obsessed, they literally come to you and like, Yeah, they are. I got an A-, what can I do to get it to an A? If I do this on the next test, will I get an A? It's just like, Jesus Christ, dude, I don't care. Get out of my face. And the nice thing about MBAs is they really don't care about grades because everybody gets a B or an A. Because they're there to learn, right?

Because they're there to learn. Well, it just doesn't matter any longer. A lot of the kids undergrad at NYU are trying to get into graduate school, so they're totally grade-obsessed. They take courses because they're easy. And it's too bad. You can understand. But it just sucks as a professor. You're like, boss, aren't we here to learn?

And then I have to be held accountable, which I do not like. Anyways. Yeah. No, I get it. I get it. I get it. My son did really well in school. And he got one that he didn't like.

It was a B plus or something out of all A's. And he was obsessed in the B plus. I was like, okay. I was like, this is great. What are you talking about? Anyway, we have to do those this week too, which will be interesting. Our house came crumbling down because our oldest, who's a really good

student, is having trouble with Spanish. Spanish, that's where my son has the trouble. He just can't figure out the Espanol. And he comes home and the house, I mean, a German mother, an American kid with a B in Spanish is just recipe for fucking UN disaster. I mean, the whole household. There's cursing in German over his poor Spanish skills.

Why doesn't he speak German? Why doesn't he take German? Why doesn't he take German? Well, okay. The question is, why would he? So, when he was a kid, we thought, oh, we're so cosmopolitan and interesting. Yeah. And we were speaking Polish, German, and English.

And then someone looked up and said, okay, it's two and a half, and he hasn't said a fucking word. Oh, really? So we said, here's an idea. Let's go all English all the time. And, of course, his American parents were like— Let me just be clear. You weren't speaking Polish or German. You were just speaking English, right?

It's your wife you're talking about, correct? Kochania. You just speak— Baden-Nugent. I speak the German. Bad're just speaking English, right? It's your wife you're talking about, correct? Kohania. You just speak. Barth and Nugent. I speak the German. Barth and Munich. I took German for four years at Foreign Service School. I speak German badly.

Lewandowski. I know the key German words. What is? I know the key German words. But anyways, we had the nanny speaking Polish. Yeah. And the kid was speaking nothing. So, one of the few times I actually put my foot down, which happens about once every summer solstice, and I said, we're going all English all the time.

And as American parents, everyone says, oh, it's the Einstein syndrome. Like, only they could take speech delay and turn it into, oh, it must mean he's brilliant. I'm like, no, it just means he's not speaking yet and we're freaking out. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think about those things. The golden child speaks beautifully. I'll tell you that. Wait till you see her next. She's like blabbing away. They all speak earlier.

Yeah, they really do. It was really shocking. Anyway, we're going to talk enough with our family situation. WeWork's ex-CEO, Adam Newman, spoke to a reporter. This is Andrew Ross Sorkin, your pal, for the first time in two years. So yes, the valuation made us feel like we were right, which made me feel that whatever style I was leading at was the correct style at the time. So I do think it affected it. I also think the chase, and at some point I do think, I think that's what maybe is getting hinted that maybe it went to my head.

I do think at some point it did. He expressed regret over WeWork's complicated accounting. Regrets, he has a few, including the infamous community-adjusted EBITDA. The audience member suggests that he shares wealth with WeWork employees who lost jobs during the company's downturn. He did not respond. What do you think? What do you think?

He's back chatting away. I didn't see it. Did you see it? No, I didn't. I read about it. Andrew had a really good lineup of people at his event. It was a virtual event. Oh, incredible, yeah.

Yeah. No one fills a room like Andrew Ross Sorkin except for maybe Kara Swisher. But anyways, look, first off, he's going to go down in history. There'll be business classes written about him around negotiation because he read the situation perfectly and said, okay, here's a billionaire who's raised $100 billion who was dumb enough to make these types of crazy investments. And he also allowed dual-class shareholder stock, where basically I control the company and I can burn the village to save it, meaning I can let this thing go bankrupt and then have people come in that are non-soft bank and they'll be in a tremendous loss of face. So this is the first individual in history through what I'll call almost like borderline sociopathic negotiation skill, ability to remove

all sense of shame or humiliation or embarrassment and said, I'm going to get a 10% commission on a, you know, an 11 or 15% commission on an $11 billion destruction of capital. We've never seen that before. Yeah, and then he walked away with a fortune. He walked away with a fortune. Yeah, and where he screwed up, where he really screwed up, in my view, and if I were him, he's such, obviously, a narcissist. He talked about being president of the world. I spoke to the partnership of an investment bank yesterday in Miami, and it gave me deja vu of, I actually interviewed Adam Neumann on stage at a JP Morgan conference in Miami, like, two, three years ago.

He had Adam Neumann on stage at a J.P. Morgan conference in Miami like two, three years ago. And he's an incredibly, incredibly charismatic person. People just sort of fell in love with him. And where he really screwed up here, one, I just think he should have stayed out of the public eye. I think the only time you come back is with work. I think work gets past this stuff, not showing up and reminding everybody of what a narcissist you are. But where he really screwed up was he should have taken some of that $1.5 billion. So he had taken $100 million, which sounds like a lot of money, but it's only 6% of $1.5 billion.

And he should have set up a fund for the other people impacted by his loss, his decline. Well, that's what the audience member suggested, right? I don't think he did. He was silent. It's all about we until it comes down to the Benjamins, and it's all about I, right? Right, right. And to SoftBank's credit, SoftBank was actually quite generous in terms of severance with the people they laid off.

Yeah. I just think WeWork has a fighting chance right now. So he will go down in history as one of the great negotiators in terms of reading the situation and being totally fearless and un, having like totally shameless. But in terms of his own brand, for like 50 million, 100 million, or 6 or 10% of his, what I'll call unearned gains, he could have kind of starched his hat white and positioned himself across the other employees. Yeah, he was doing, the interview felt a little bit like he had been well briefed by PR, People wanted to say. Oh, he's over. He's over consulted right now. I find it irritating that after we work IPO, that's when he comes back.

Like, look at me now, I guess. I don't know. Because their IPO is. Yeah, I want some sunlight. Yeah, exactly. I was sort of like, huh, it's weird. He said it went to his head, the $47 billion valuation. No, it went to his head, the $47 billion valuation. No, it went into his pocket.

He started buying buildings and then leasing them back to WeWork. Yeah. It's like an incredible lesson in communications and corporate governance and ego, all that stuff, much less real estate. Yeah. Good luck to him. You know, you can walk away from things. This is the thing. You can walk away.

He said that Jamie Dimon told him to step down. But, of course, he told me, Adam, you've done a great job until now, but you have to put the company first. I trusted Jamie. I look up to Jamie. I still do. The way that this is sort of like soft-handed failure, like they get delivered onto the soft landing for a lot of these people is really quite something. I just, they get money, they get everything else, and they get to come back and say, regrets, I have a few.

And so, it's kind of, it's fascinating. I just find, like, are you kidding me? I think, I don't quite know why he showed up or anything else, although I wouldn't turn to, I mean, Sorkin should have taken him as an interview, but, you know, letting him say it went to his. Interesting character. Yeah, absolutely, but saying it went to his head, I don't know. I just – I'm tired.

I'd like him to just make something or go away, one at the other. Make something else. Or even like J.P. Moore. I mean, some investment banks were basically saying, you know, propping up their research analysts to say this thing was worth $50 to $70 billion. That's ridiculous. And then a week later it was worth $8 billion. Yep. Yep.

The ability for some people to make mistakes and others not to is really quite profound. Twitter rolled out its paid subscription product, Twitter Blue, in the U.S. this week. Users get ad-free access to over 300 news sites. Pretty helpful. Washington Post and Atlantic, which I got. Actually, I got subscriptions to most of these things because I couldn't get through to them on Twitter easily. Twitter will share part of the subscription revenue with publishers.

Twitter Blue does not get around paywall, so users just need to subscribe to publications like the post. But it's just a really interesting, it's a little more substantive from what they put out in, I think it was Canada and Australia last year. Excuse me, in June. They did it in June or July or something like that.

Now it's sort of slowly adding stuff to it. What do you think? What do you think? Are you getting on Twitter blue? Look, I think moving a subscription is the right thing to do. I would have gone, I would have scaled it based on, I would have charged everybody based on the number of users they had above like 100,000 followers.

I think that once you get above 100,000 followers. I think that once you get above 100,000 followers or millions, Twitter takes on an entirely different value proposition and they should monetize that. Quite frankly, if you look at subscription-based products, the ones that are successful are really clean and really compelling. And I think this is neither because even just what you said, it's a subscription product that offers you articles but doesn't get around all paywalls. Like, okay, what the fuck does that mean?

Does that mean some articles are for free but others aren't? So you're saying there's three tiers. There's three tiers. There's I click on something. I click on something and I don't get in. I click on other things and I do get in and I still click on other things

and I have to go around a paywall. I don't like the price. Maybe it's genius. Three bucks to me diminishes. I think pricing is a signaling and I think it says there isn't that much there. Five or ten. I don't know. It just feels like a subscription for three bucks.

Pricing is a really powerful quality cue. The reason why Grey Goose Vodka is the most successful drinks release in the last 30 years is the guy said vodka is all about signaling. You order vodka to express your worth as a mate in a dark, crowded place where you're looking to hook up with people. And he said instead of charging $30 a bottle like Absolute and Ketel One, I'm going to charge $50. And then everyone in the club will go, oh, you must be a player because you ordered Grey Goose. Pricing is an incredibly powerful signal. And when you say your subscription is $3, it's like, well, what is this? And then the ability to undo a tweet.

What's the difference between that and delete a tweet? Well, you don't undo it. You can edit it before. I'm not really – That's probably something I should do. That's probably a feature I should use. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was going to buy it to you for Christmas.

Are you being serious? Are you mocking me or being affectionate? I'm getting it to you for Christmas because some nights you should not be tweeting. Several people I'm going to get it for for Christmas. That's fair. I think, look, Prime started off with almost nothing, right? If you remember, it was like free two days. Almost nothing?

Well, free two days. 48-hour free delivery on everything? Yeah, yeah. Almost nothing? That's a whole lot of almost nothing free delivery on everything? Yeah, yeah. Almost nothing? That's a whole lot of almost nothing, me amiga. They've added, they've added, they've added. Here's my premise, my larger premise. I love the move to subscription products over this sort of poisonous advertising system that we have created in the internet space.

It is poisonous. And it only benefits one side, and it takes advantage of people's data. And I'm happy that they're trying to do these things. Now, I don't have as big a problem with Twitter as other things, but it still is any subscription product, whether it's Neva or this or YouTube Premium, I am all for changing the business models of these companies to a much more healthy business model. Thank you. As someone who thinks a lot and wrongly, incorrectly or correctly, gets invited into the, you know,

the hallowed corner offices of CEOs of big companies to talk about subscription, the only ones that work are the ones where you go all in. Netflix isn't a subscription. It's a fucking IQ test. If you have Amazon, if you don't have Amazon Prime, it means you don't have a credit card. Panera's like endless coffee. You can walk into Panera anytime. And for $9.99, you get any coffee drink any day of the week. These things have to be IQ tests. In other words, it's obvious you have an IQ over 80. You're going to do this. Restoration Hardware's RH card, you get 20% to 30% off everything. Yeah.

No, they've got to have meaning. 365 days a year. They've got to have meaning. You're 100% right. And this thing is like, okay, you're telling me Karen Scott can't figure this out, so I'm supposed to figure out if it's worth $3? Yeah. It's just, this is not how you do it. You've got to come to the gun show fully cocked and loaded or locked and loaded.

I don't know what the analogy is here, Cara. Please don't make gun ones. You've got to come to play. Look, the directionality is correct if the execution is wrong. Thank you. How about that? You've got to come to play. You've got to add more.

What can they offer you? I'm telling you, they have billions of dollars of shareholder value resting there. If they just said over time, we're creating a new tier. And quite frankly, you got 30 days where you get a blue check. They could do it elegantly that anybody, quite frankly, like the two of us, especially you with over 1.4 million followers we have, they start charging you. And you're going to complain and you'll write editorials angry. And then you know what? You'll pay.

Yeah. Because Twitter. But that's forced, like, happy thing. I want things that I'm happy to get, like special things I'm happy to get. That's the thing is what can they. Twitter is not tequila. And it's not Riverdale. It is not joyous.

Anyway, obviously you're not getting on Twitter blue. I like the directionality of this. We'll see where it goes. I'll do it. I'll wait because you're buying it for me. I'm buying it for you. But have you, if you wrote it up, what would you say about this thing? I don't get it.

I have written it up. I wrote a conference. I like the directionality of it. I want to see more subscription businesses buy these companies. What can they offer you that's away from the poisonous advertising system of which there's only one beneficiary which is the company

you know who's the gangster in all this was Adobe Adobe used to sell their software for $1300 and it went to $25 a month

and by the way their revenues declined 20 or 30% yeah I pay for Adobe I pay for Zoom I pay for Zoom I take a little I think about

what I pay for and why and I think I like anything subscription is... And I get the idea, which Mark always says, is everybody should have access and poor people can't, but you pay for everything in life like

this. You don't need Facebook, for example. But it's... You... There should be a free service that... But there should be an ability to buy a better version. You know what I would pay for? What?

Because it takes a toll on me. When I put out something, I read the comments. I'd like to say they roll right off me. And the really mean, biting ones where it's someone trying to diminish your credibility or really say something really antagonistic or just stupid or racist are bots. You click on it, and it's clearly a coward, a keyboard coward, which I think I know several who have fake accounts and go after you. And they could clean that shit up, and they don't. I would pay for that.

Yeah, I'd pay for that too. Anyway, that's actually their job without you paying for it. Anyway, speaking of their job without you paying for it, a data breach at Robinhood affected 7 million users, according to the company. They had an unauthorized third party, I don't know, thief, essentially, gained access to the customer support system, able to see email addresses, names of some users, may have been able to change user security settings. The company says social security numbers and financial information were not revealed. Ugh, these data breaches. Whatever.

A lot of them, yeah. A lot of them, yeah. A lot of them. I mean, with Robinhood, Robinhood has a, and sort of, I mean, this is something that kind of a gestalt coming out of all startups is you scale and you ask questions about security and what could happen next. Yes. But you just, you focus on growth. And the, you know, one of the criticisms of Robinhood was it had no customer service and it wasn't

scaling any sort of protections or guardrails. And look, you could say this is that. It reflects that lack of concern or a lack of investment in infrastructures you scale, which ultimately comes back to haunt them and their customers. Or you could say, look, a lot of companies have been hacked. This doesn't look like it was a, what I'll call a hugely damaging hack. Yeah. But, and not only that, Cara, no one's,

this won't impact the company. Everyone will move on. There's so many of these hacks we've become numb to them. Agreed. Speaking of another one, another crisis, a company, Peloton,

black employees, this is a story, an insider, says they're being paid less than their white colleagues when pressed by black employees on the issue. Appellate and vice president said that it's not a market-based system. Peloton's CEO told employees the company compensates in equity, but the stock price

is down from its all-time high. That's really one of the bigger problems there. You know, Peloton's really been gone. This is CEO. Perhaps we need a new one. I'm not sure. But they were sort of riding high, so to speak. And I still love my Peloton, I have to say.

What happens here? Well, I don't know. See, this is one of these things. This is one of these accusations that the company is just a little bit guilty regardless of the veracity of the accusation. And what you'd want to do is say, okay, is it in like-for-like jobs?

You'd want to look at the analysis here because it's- Yeah, they're doing that. That's what they said. Whenever you accuse an organization of sexism or racism, people tend to kind of shoot first and then ask questions. And I actually think the CEO's done an incredible job, and I like founder-led companies. Bottom line is, it's another, it seems like people always, I don't want to say always, but people have a tendency, I think, to pile on around social issues when the company is kind of weak because they feel like it's going to get more traction because the media loves to pile on. And unfortunately, I think the media plays a really important role in holding these firms accountable.

But these types of stories, there's good incentives for these type of stories. And then the bad incentives is they get clicked on because they feel scandalous. And so sometimes they get more oxygen, quite frankly, than they deserve. The statement I did not understand is that when I'm on boards and we're trying to defend why or the CEO is trying to defend why the people around the board are making millions of dollars and the people in the store are making $12 an hour, we say our compensation policy is based on supply and demand, which is kind of the capitalist go-to. But he said here that it's not a market-based system. And I didn't understand what the VP meant by that.

I think quite a lot of the people who actually do the assembly are people of color. It's a little more complex. I kept reading and I'm like, this seems a little more complex than just the accusations. Anyway, they're doing a whole kind of overhaul and stuff like that. But more to the point, this company's on the ropes.

They're going through their trough. Every company goes through its trough. I'm telling you, Karen. So where will it end up? Oh, it's easy. This ends up in the hands of Apple or Nike. This company now has, I think, a $15 billion market cap, which means that Apple could pay a 60% premium and take less than a 1% dilution. Nike could pay a 40% dilution and take about an 8%. At these price levels, Peloton is no longer a bet-the-ranch acquisition. It's an acquisition.

Yep, yep, yep. To me, it just feels so ripe. It's about to fall off the tree. And Nike needs to forward integrate either into content or connected fitness to pull away from everybody else. And Apple is trying to develop. Let me talk about a subscription program where daddy comes to play. All right. Apple has something called Apple One.

And how Apple gets to $300 a share is that it has something called Apple One. And it's, okay, all your ride hailing. I didn't buy it. All your ride hailing in an Apple car or an Apple car. Every device we make 60 days before anyone else gets it, all your media, all your music, all of it, all of it for $100, $200, $300 a month based on your economic weight class and whether you want the best phone, the best car, or maybe they're headed towards a card-hailing service. But Apple, just take me off the table, baby. And they could announce it,

and people would start signing up for it. But that's, Apple could really, Apple could launch a subscription product that could set the world on fire. What a subscription flavor we have here going on. Subscription flavor. You're right, they should pick up Peloton. It all comes back to the same thing, Kara, and that is the biggest mistake we've made as marketers is to believe that choice is a good thing. Consumers don't want more choice. They want to be more confident in the choices presented. And with an organization like- You've been tweeting a lot about that. You've been tweeting these many stories about things.

I'd agree with you. I think you want to go with people that you can count on, you know, for example. I think that throughout life, that's where you want people you can actually count on. You know you're going to get a quality product in an area you like. It's why people, why rich people stay at Four Seasons. I call them holiday inns for rich people. Yep. Or, you know, or St. Regis, whatever. They like, it looks the same everywhere they go, and they get exactly what they want, and everything's in their room. I would disagree.

I think the commonality across Four Seasons, why it's such an amazing brand, is they take a full-time approach to their employees. why it's such an amazing brand, is they take a full-time approach to their employees. So when you have a waiter at a Four Seasons restaurant, it's a woman or a man who makes a good living and has health insurance that can actually make a career at the Four Seasons as opposed to someone waiting for their casting agent to get... I'm talking about the forward-facing stuff to people. They like it because it's familiar wherever they are, whether they're in Switzerland or France or, you know, the U.S. Anyway, time for our first big story.

We're getting into advertising now, speaking of which, we've been touting subscriptions. Facebook or Meta, let's just not call it Meta, let's refuse, let's have a refusal to that, says it will disable targeted advertising for thousands of sensitive categories related to health, race, religion, political affiliation, and sexual orientation. They're, of course, trying to get ahead of the sheriff. The changes will affect ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Facebook ads aren't going away, though. Advertisers can still make use of tens of thousands of categories, including age, gender, and location. So they're doing that.

And obviously, there's also a new bipartisan bill in the House that could bring changes to social media news. I don't think it's going to pass. It's called the Filter Bubble Transparency Act. That's a strange name. That would force networks to provide chronological feed for users as an alternative to algorithmic feeds. The bill has carve-outs for smaller social networks. So this is pretty squarely aimed at Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. So what think you? I mean, does this help or hurt? It helps, right, that they're doing this, but what? So I wanted, you may know more about this than I do, but on the face of it, it feels like when Apple said, we're reducing the fees for small business. And that is, it makes for a good press release, but it actually impacts about one or 2% of revenues and activities. So I'd just be curious to know what percentage

of advertising does this actually impact? I think on the face of it, it just feels to me like they said, all right, we need to pretend we give a good goddamn about the Commonwealth or our users, so let's come up with some very sensitive you know, sensitive words, you know, race, religion, political affiliation, sexual orientation. But I'd be very curious to know of $100 in advertising that has served up algorithmically. Is this $0.10 on the $100? Is this $10? What do they mean by that? Anything related to health?

Does that include extreme dieting? Like what? I don't know. The devil's in the details here. And quite frankly, we have a devil in the details, and it's called the Facebook 1,800-person comms department spinning shit. So, it sounds to me like someone needs to do some reporting. What's your sense of this? I just think it's press release.

You know, whatever. Okay. Sure. I would have just done it and kept it to myself, you know, if she really mattered. You know, they can still, they never take anything that's not at the dead center of their business, right? They never go for anything. You know, there's some cleanup they've had to do around advertising practices. And, you know, it's easy to go after controversial things. And so, you know, whatever.

I just, I don't, I think it's way too... Hold on, I hear a siren and I heard that your garage is on fire. Is that gas leak? What's going on here? No. What's going on? Don't use the toaster. Do not turn on the toaster. I shall not. I think it's just this idea of,

these are all band-aids on what is a bigger problem, as we discussed, which is the business model, which really does rely on enormous amounts of data taken from customers. And I know I'm making – that's sort of a simplistic way of putting it. This chronological feed, algorithmic feed, I honestly don't know enough about it. Facebook said they tested it, and there was integrity problems. You can actually change it, I think, on these things. But it's just, again, these are all, the architecture is the problem of these things, not anything else. But maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm being cynical. Maybe I'm being cynical. What do you think? Yeah, but you've always said it. The problem's

all reverse engineered to the same place, and it's a guy named Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, it's just the entire feel of this company. You've always said it. I don't think anything changes until there's a change in leadership or something very dramatic happens to this company. Because what does any of this mean? What does disabled targeted advertising around health mean? Does that mean you can't shame and bully a 15-year-old girl? That's mental health.

Like, what does it mean? It's a separate thing, yeah. Yeah. So let's get some reporters on it so we can find out what it means. They're not going to give up a lot of stuff, but I felt like this was sort of a press release. That's what it felt like to me.

I agree with you. And giving the smaller networks a pass is, you know, there's some really icky smaller networks, but you know. That probably kills the legislation. It feels like what you do in China, not what you do in the U.S. And the word you use is the right one. Legislation has to be systemic. It has to be, why would you not apply this to TikTok and Snap? I mean, not to defend Facebook. It's got to be, it's got to be, why would you not apply this to TikTok and Snap? I mean, not to defend Facebook. It's got to be thoughtful legislation that impacts problems across small and big. Yeah, I'm not a fan of some of this legislation that's coming out. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll discuss the year's biggest IPO, and then we'll talk to a friend of Pivot about how Instagram harms young girls. about how Instagram harms young girls. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, 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 sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim and we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. starting your small business, while you're so focused on the day-to-day, the personnel, and the finances, marketing is the last thing on your mind. But if customers don't know about you, the rest of it doesn't really matter. Luckily, there's Constant Contact. Constant Contact's award-winning marketing platform can help your businesses stand out, stay top of mind, and see big results. Sell more, raise more and build more genuine

relationships with your audience through a suite of digital marketing tools made to fast track your growth. With Constant Contact, you can get email marketing that helps you create and send the perfect email to every customer and create, promote and manage manage your events with ease, all in one place. Get all the automation, integration, and reporting tools that get your marketing running seamlessly, all backed by Constant Contact's expert live customer support. Ready, set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca. Okay, Scott, it changes the foot in the world of business.

General Electric, which seems to be perpetually in a downward spiral for some reason, will break up into three publicly traded companies. Of course, they spent a lot of time getting together. We'll have one for healthcare, one for aviation, and one for renewable energy and power. GE has been in trouble for a long time under Jeff Immelt. I was just with some GE executives and all they did was trash Jeff Immelt the whole time.

In recent years, it sold off appliance and light bulb businesses, which is somewhat funny. They made a bad bet in fossil fuels years ago. This is the idea of the conglomerate, although tech giants are sort of being more and more conglomerate. But what do you think of this? This is interesting. This is an interesting change. Yeah, they're being heavy-handed with the wrong guy. The reality is the greatest CEO of the 20th century is slowly but surely turning into the worst CEO of the 20th century. And as people uncover the Byzantine, you know, hornet's nest that is this conglomerate that's impossible to understand called GE, they're finding that through the 90s, essentially, Jack Welch was manipulating the numbers with his

financial services group and constantly juicing the numbers and left, quite frankly, just a shitstorm for Jeffrey Immelt to unwind. This is, so I think Jeffrey Immelt actually was dealt a really, really bad hand. And as the numbers finally like caught up or the reality caught up to market and reporting requirements, and in addition, the company decided

it was core competence was tax avoidance. There was no synergy between the groups. up to market and reporting requirements. And in addition, the company decided it was core competence was tax avoidance. There was no synergy between the groups. This is a smart move. This will be a creative for shareholders because General Electric has some amazing assets. It's jet engines. It has some incredible people.

It has a great culture of training. And almost, it used to be in any Fortune 500 CEO search, you had to have someone from GE in the mix. They were known as sort of the training ground. They were the farm club for the best soccer team in the world. They were the junior league at Dortmund in Germany. A lot of Premier League, a lot of soccer references today, although I'm not sure that's Premier League. Someone on Twitter will correct me. But anyways, General Electric, this makes all the sense in the world. They have a great, I think, healthcare group. This will be accretive to shareholders because

this thing has become, there's so much headline risk and confusion around the conglomerate here has added negative value. It's given them the ability to play all sorts of shenanigans. It's created a lack of transparency. The stock has been just pummeled, just pummeled. But I think any real honest analysis goes that Jack Welch pumped a company with near fraudulent reporting and then handed Jeffrey Emholt a house of cards and said, all right, you're a mess boss. So- Oh, you just talked against Jack Welch. Now, every time I'm around people, they just go on and on and on. Jack Welch and this whole shareholder value. And also, I thought it was terrible what he did ranking employees internally,

created, I think, a culture of toxicity. I think he's absolutely not the CEO we want to model. And the more that comes to light around the numbers and the reporting, he used the complexity and all kinds of tricks and accounting standards and tax avoidance to pump the stock and then peace out. And like I said, Jeff Immelt got, I mean, poor Jeff Immelt, he probably made $100 or $200 million over the course of 10 years while watching the stock go down 70 or 80%. But he really was dealt a bad hand. Well, there we have it. Now it's split up. Okay. And Rivian went public at a valuation of $90 billion, one of the largest IPOs in history. I know, right? And you can have another electric car maker to yell about.

Can you believe this? I mean, okay, so it's got, I think— $90 billion for 1,200 cars. So they've sold 1,200 cars, and by the way, as of today, they're worth more than General Motors. I mean, the whole EV thing, I get it. It's exciting. I own an EV thing. That just feels—next to space tourism, I'm trying to think of a space.

They're buying the future, Scott. Well, they're paying a lot for the future. I don't know if the future is worth this much, Cara. I know. Are you going to die on this hill, now the Vivian Hill? It's overvalued. Bill Cohen wrote a very good piece in Puck News about these. Like, I don't even want to talk about Tesla anymore. I can't.

He said, I just can't. I can't do it. Any of these. Just stay away from these. Just drive your Tesla around Florida and stay away from these. I can't. Just stay away.

I know. We'll see where it goes. But people are buying into the future. Okay, fine. Software company Unity also bought Peter Jackson's company, part of it, Weeda. This blew my mind. To create the Weedaverse, I guess. This blew my mind.

Gollum. I know. I read this and I'm like, what? They're paying a billion dollars for what? Yeah. They're paying a billion dollars for Gollum? What does Gollum do? Is Gollum a thing? I was just like, this totally blew my mind. I was a couple of drinks in last night and I read that he, at first I thought it was an article from The Onion.

And I'm like, wait, no, someone is actually paying a billion. Can you, do you understand this? I don't understand this. You know, the guy who's the CEO of Unity, John Riccitello, used to run Electron. I know him pretty well. You know, they've got to all look like they're fattening up with the metaverse the weediverse or whatever they have to they got to make plays this is these these are uh i'm not gonna i have seen all the episodes of succession and it's already people who've watched already there's already like a lot of companies figuring out what they are next is really the theme of

this season um and this is what's happening i think yeah. Yeah, I'm just so excited. I can't wait for the Microsoft Metaverse. The idea of the Metaverse with Excel is just so exciting and intoxicating. Talk about the start of the year. They announced the Microsoft Metaverse, and it's like, okay, so we're going to have Google Docs. You will probably use the Microsoft Metaverse more. I have like, okay, so we're going to have Google Docs. You will probably use the Microsoft Metaverse more. Probably. I have to tell you. I bet. Probably.

Okay, Amazon owns 20% of Rivian. They also own another car. They have a lot of investments in the electric car. This is more sword fighting with their little dicks. Do you think Jeff Bezos would be in EVs if Elon Musk was not in EVs? Do you think they'd— Oh, yes, I do, because of his delivery, maybe. Amazon, yes, I can see them in that delivery, maybe, Amazon. Yes, I can see

them in that area. This is like my human growth hormone is better than your human growth hormone. No, no, no. I think they have to be looking at this. They can't not be looking. You got Rocket Man and Bosley for Mars in the world's worst... In any case, we can talk about another topic. I know this... You have to stay away from these electric cars. That's my rule of thumb. I gotta stay away. That's the third rail for me is electric. Yes, I love cars. And the thing is, you love them. You love electric cars is the thing, which makes me laugh.

No, no. I appreciate their engineering. I actually like the throaty feel of a V8 pouring carbon into the air. I drive a Range Rover because daddy's going through a midlife crisis that's going to end in about 40 years. You do have a big car. I roll down to Miami in my Range Rover. I'm like, honk, honk. Hello, ladies. Hello.

That's right. Anyway, we'll see what happens with both these companies, with Rivian, and I'm going to keep Scott away from it, and Unity. Amazon might make a play in this area, too. There's industrial light and magic. Everyone's going to be buying their metaverses up. So you're going to see some action in that area. In any case, let's bring on a friend of Pivot. Scott, please do the honors. So I believe our guest is the most influential scholar in the world right now and is courageous. Oh, go on. Go on. There you go. And a fan.

And a fan. Really one of the wonderful things about NYU is you get to hang out with incredibly impressive people. Anyways, Jonathan Haidt is, amongst many things, a psychologist. Is that right? Social psychologist. He's a social psychologist. There's a bio there you can read.

You know that. Well, we're friends, Kim. All right, go ahead. I don't need to read his bio. Okay. The Dog Rolls with Professor Haidt has written some fantastic books, a book that has almost really kind of inspired my view around social media, and that is A Coddling of the American Mind. But I'm very serious it's having a huge impact. And the thing I love about Jonathan, he's someone on the faculty that is fearless and in the midst of a certain narrative is just unafraid to stand up and go, no, that's not true, and just lay it out.

Anyways, a colleague from NYU Stern named one of the top global thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine. His current research looks at Instagram's harm to children and girls and builds off the revelation in the Facebook files. Professor Haidt, welcome to Pivot. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Tara. No problem. So, let's kick off. Explain to us how you made your way from psychology to studying social media and your thoughts around, try and break down what is good about social media's impact on young people

and what is bad about social media. Sure. So, I'm a social psychologist who studies morality. I used to look at it across cultures, like across countries. And in the early 2000s, I realized that left and right in America are becoming like different countries with different textbooks, different constitution, the culture was heating up. So, I've been studying that. And I looked at the way different moral matrices, different moral worlds were sort of coming apart. And then this weird thing happened to us on campus. We started seeing in 2014, we started seeing students who seemed to live in a different world in which books and speakers were dangerous and possibly violent, and we couldn't understand what was going on. And my friend Greg Lukianoff came to me and said, you know, it seems as though college students are doing these cognitive distortions just as I learned not to do when I was treated for depression.

And so we wrote an article called The Coddling of the American Mind. And we didn't know it then. This was 2015. We didn't know it then, but a gigantic tidal wave of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and even suicide had begun in 2013. And so we were just puzzling, why are students behaving so differently than they did two years ago? And so we wrote that article in 2015, and now we have the data. Now we can see that it is not just students, it's overwhelmingly the girls. The girls' rates of mental illness shot up in 2013. You almost never see an elbow in a graph this sharp.

And why is that? And so we were speculating, well, you know, it's like the overprotection of kids is a part of the story. But, you know, what else changed just before 2013? And while there are a number of things that changed, the only thing that fits the bill is that kids basically migrated their social lives from, you know, they were texting a lot before then, but that's really different from posting photographs of yourself and then waiting anxiously while the world judges them. So we think that's the major single factor to explain what happened to girls in 2013. And it's still happening. The rates are still rising. It's unbelievable when you see the graphs. So the current research you're doing on is the Instagram apartment. This, of course, came out in these Facebook files, of which, you know, Facebook pushed back on rather significantly on their own researchers. And, you know, a lot of people I talked to within Facebook who are in the research area say it was a little bit twisted by the media.

And I don't mean to say that in a negative way. It's just, it's a great, you know, and politicians, it's a great story. Instagram is killing girls, essentially, which is not really what's going on. Can you talk a little bit with a little more sophistication? Because there are obviously stressful issues going on here for young people, along with climate change, school shootings, etc. But this has been the change. So can you sort of sort that out? Because I think it's, of course, become reductive on both sides. Yeah, no, thank you, Cara, because that's what I'm most concerned about is that I think the research is being misrepresented and misunderstood. So let's forget about the research that Facebook itself did, because as the critics have pointed out, this is not exactly a very deep or powerful research. They had a couple of researchers interview a bunch of girls, especially in the UK and America. I forget, it was a few hundred or a couple thousand. But that's not, it's not a very powerful study. It's not very good data.

And if you think, oh, well, then let's ignore that. But wait a second. What is the good data? The only good data that exists is the data that Facebook and Instagram have themselves on who is doing what, when, and what happens to them afterwards. And they won't share that. So, let's put aside the recent revelations. We don't need them. What I've been doing since 2019 is cataloging all of the published research, because there

are hundreds and hundreds of articles. And so, we're only taking the research that began in 2014-2015, because the problem only became clear in 2013. And when you put them all together, and listeners can, if you go to thecoddling.com, and then you find our webpage on Better Social Media, you'll find these Google Docs. They're open. Anyone can add to them. What you see is that there are hundreds and hundreds of studies that look for correlations, and these correlations are very tiny between digital media use and mental health outcomes.

And that's what Facebook is always pointing to, these very low correlations. Correlation coefficients around like 0.04, 0.06. They're not very large. But here's the key thing everyone has to understand. These studies are of digital media use, which is mostly watching Netflix videos and texting and doing your homework and everything else. And when you look at these studies, and this is what you can see in our Google Doc, when you look at the few that zoom in on social media, boom, the correlations go up to around 0.1, which is still not huge. And if you zoom in on girls in social media, they go up to 0.15 or even 0.2 is what we find. So, you know, if there's some activity that correlates 0.2 with your kid's mental health, you would never let your child do that. And so that's what

I'm so concerned about, that the data is actually there to show an association. There are also experiments. It's not just correlations. So the data is there. It's been there for a long time, but I think it's being misrepresented. Facebook always points to these studies with low correlations. Where they get lumped in with everybody else, where they get lumped in with... Exactly. So do you believe they have this data within the company or they perhaps aren't measuring it? Because, you know, they always say you don't measure, you know, you can't know what you don't measure or whatever. Right.

So, look, I study business ethics and I've been trying to get companies to use experimental methods to improve their ethical cultures inside. And what I found is that companies are brilliant at doing experiments in the marketing department. They know A-B testing, but nobody wants to do it in personnel or in ethics. They don't want to find out if there are ethical problems in the company, so they don't do it. Now, Facebook and Instagram, they can tell everything about you. They can tell your menstrual cycle, apparently, from what you buy. I mean, they know everything about you. So, they could easily, I'm sure they do know, how your mental health as measured by your language fluctuates in response to what you're doing. So, yeah, I'm sure they have the data, but it's kind of, you know, as Tristan Harris says, it's like there's

a crime scene, you know, there's a dead body here, but the entire crime scene is owned by Facebook and they won't let the investigators in. You sent me an email, Jonathan, you said, we are now raising our children in an environment that starves them of the experiences they need most while waterboarding them with experiences that are useless or harmful. Whoa, that was an email? That was a pretty powerful statement. What are you two doing?

Don't send me that email, Jonathan. We have a very intimate intellectual relationship. Oh my God. He seems nice. He's actually a total gangster with a ton of IQ. But what I would, you know as much or more about this than almost anyone in the world right now. Can you talk specifically, trying to disarticulate the components of social media? Some are good, let's be honest. Some are very good for young people. Some are very bad. Can you attempt to

parse those negative and benign features? Yeah, yeah. I think the framework that lets you put everything in context is to look at normal, healthy mammal development. So mammals have these big brains, and they have this long attachment to develop those brains. And so all mammals play. This is a feature of being a mammal. And for kids, it's a lot of ruffle and tumble play, it's a lot of chasing games, and it's a lot of pretend play. That's what healthy child development is. Now, to some extent, technology can help. When I came home yesterday, my daughter was on my iPad doing, not Roblox, it was some other game. And she perhaps. And she was, thank you, it was Minecraft, and she was Zooming with a friend,

and they were laughing their heads off. Now that's great, that's play. They were playing, and it was synchronous, and it was building their relationship. So in play, kids learn how to take risks, they learn how to make mistakes, and the costs of a mistake are trivial. So this, and they need to make thousands and thousands of mistakes in order to become adults

who can handle risk. So that's normal play. And when all this stuff came in around 2011 and I was seeing like, okay, all these kids, they're like tweeting, you know, here's the hamburger I had for lunch and all these little things. I thought this is kind of stupid, but you know what?

Who am I to judge? Maybe they'll be like ultra social. Maybe like they check in with a hundred kids a day. Like maybe it'll be really good for them. And in theory it could have been, but now them. And in theory, it could have been. But now we can see, no, it doesn't substitute. And especially saying to kids, instead of spending three hours a day playing with your friends, how about you spend three hours a day thinking about Instagram, thinking about your next selfie, editing your next selfie, putting it up and waiting anxiously with high cortisol levels while strangers and strange men rate you. How about that for healthy development? No, no. So, that I think is what's happened. We've

destroyed childhood. Okay, childhood. That's the net. We've destroyed childhood. Yeah, and by we, I mean they. But when you think about this, how do you avoid being like, I don't like this Elvis, he's swiveling his pelvis kind of thing, like the idea of a lot of stuff that comes in, especially among young people. Now, look, China has just decided we're just going to cut it off for kids, you know? And there's some legislation around that in the United States, although it'll take a while

or if it gets past it, all these age-gating apps. Kids obviously find their way around them. But what actually can be done aside from acting like China, which is like, you just won't be doing it. We're just going to turn off the spigot, essentially. So I think there's a couple of big things that we can do and really need to do. So the first is we need to, so first, look, let me certainly grant, what's going on is a moral panic and all the critics, all the skeptics say, oh, this is just like what happened with comic books and, you know, video games. And they're right that it is like that. Now, that doesn't mean it's wrong. In the past, it has usually been wrong. But there never has been an elbow in the self-harm graphs. I mean, you know, you go to the

Google Doc, it's unbelievable what's happened in the US, Canada, and Britain. In all three countries, the 13 to 16-year-old girls double or triple their rate of self-harm between 2011 and 2015. In just a couple years, the rate triples. This is hospital admissions, of self-harm between 2011 and 2015. In just a couple years, the rate triples. This is hospital admissions, not self-report. So, when Elvis started swinging his hips, it's not as though we suddenly, that year or the next year, had a tripling of crime or rape or anything else. So, I think this is very different because we have what I'd say is the biggest mental health crisis of my lifetime. It came in 2013. There is no other explanation for it. Kara, you mentioned the generation disaster thesis, which is, oh, look at all the bad

things that have happened, you know, from 9-11 to the Newtown shooting, which was 2012. Oh, isn't it that? To which I would say, the reality has gotten better and safer for kids decade by decade. School shootings are not even up if you average decade by decade. They're not up very much from the 70s. It's not that kids are, it's not that, so look, the world is safer than ever. The death rate from all sources is safer. Life is better in almost every way

in the real world. But in the pseudo-metaverse, which is already here, just not evenly distributed, in the pseudo-metaverse that all these kids hook themselves up to around 2012, suddenly everything is threatening

terrible and going so should there be age gaining so because the thing is the problem here oh my god here is the adults are also similarly addicted and depressed by these things like right so i don't think that's necessarily the problem because we're very good at being hypocrites so the fact that we're all sitting there on our phones and doing our work on our computer all day long doesn't mean that we can't limit what our kids do. I mean, we drink and smoke and we don't let our kids drink and smoke. So, you know, the Internet was not designed for kids. These apps were not designed for kids originally.

And many of them are totally unsuitable for kids. It turns out especially girls. Girls are much more sensitive to what other girls are doing than boys are to what other boys are doing. 100%. So when we hooked them all up, bad things happened. So, yeah, I think age-gating is absolutely essential. And, you know, they say, oh, but, you know, it's hard. How can we do that?

Well, look, that's your problem. Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, you guys are smart. You figure it out. Yeah. Well, let me ask you there, John, and you and I are both fathers. You have girls, I have boys. both fathers, you have girls, I have boys. Would you rather your daughters drink alcohol and smoke marijuana at 16 or be over-indexed on Instagram and Snap? Which do you think is more damaging? Well, the first one I actually want, I mean, my son is now 15, and I offered to start drinking

with him because I want him to, you know, I started drinking when I was 12 or 13 with my friends. Kids are growing up very slowly these days, which is fine. But, you know, a little bit of alcohol and marijuana are not going to harm my son or my daughter. But if my son finally got an Instagram account, I didn't let him lie about his age when he was in sixth grade, like all his friends did. And he thanked me, you know, he was resentful at the time. But later on, he could see, you know what, this is stupid and it wastes everyone's time. My daughter is 11. And he thanked me, you know, he was resentful at the time, but later on he could see, you know what, this is stupid and it wastes everyone's time. My daughter is 11 and if she were to get on Instagram, she would get sucked in. So, there's no way I'm letting her on until high school. How do you avoid that? What could happen here with age gating? Who has to do it,

the companies or legislators? Yeah, companies. Companies. Well, so, what I believe needs to happen, and I just read Scott's piece on what we can do, and as he said, the best regulator is an plaintiff's attorney. So, I think it is, there are a couple things that are insane about our current arrangement. The most obviously insane thing is that these platforms are not held liable for underage users. Now, I've had two conversations with Mark Zuckerberg, and in both of them, I said, look, Mark, you know, 10-year-olds are on Instagram. He said, oh, but, you know, we don't allow that. I said,

look, come on, Mark. You know, when both of my kids entered sixth grade, they said, everyone has an Instagram account. They just lie about their age. They do. And he, you know, he didn't exactly deny it, but he said, you know, we're working on it. We're working on it. And what they're working on, it seems, was Instagram kids. So, you know, yes, it's their obligation and they should be held liable for harms to preteens. The second thing is we should also talk about raising the age in COPPA. You know, as you guys know, when COPPA was introduced, the Child Online Protection Act,

when it was introduced in 1998, I think it was, the age was 16. They said at 16, you're old enough to give away your data and make deals. And then the lobbyists pushed it down from 16 to 13. And all this was done with zero concern for mental health. This was just about legal privacy rights. So I think we need to revisit it. And I think the age should be raised to 16 for a certain purpose, not for everything. Obviously, kids can create accounts of all kinds, but there are certain platforms that are clearly dangerous for kids. And I think we need to figure out a way to keep them off until 60. Can I just say, when they introduced Facebook for kids, when they heard about it,

a Facebook executive said it to me, and I literally, all I said was, no, no. And they're like, what do you mean, no? I'm like, no. I was like, how dare you? There is, that's right. There is no form of it that would be safe. That was my first thing. I'm like, no, no. Where can I run in front of this to stop you from doing this awful thing? Exactly. Go ahead, Scott. That's right.

So, in addition to your work on this emerging mental health crisis among teens, you've done a big part of your work is around polarization and how our society is being kind of torn in two. Do you have any thoughts on, quote-unquote, this large idea around the metaverse and what that might do around polarization and the role it might play either in mental health or specifically around polarization? Yes. Yeah, and so this is going to be even darker and more twisted. Here we go. I assume a lot of us saw the video. It can always get worse. This is the worst day of my life. The worst day so far.

So far, that's right. You two are a laugh riot, the Parisians. There's kind of a dark camera here. Wait till we start drinking. I'm going to make the prediction that 2021 is going to be remembered as the calmest, sanest, most polite, most civil year of the 2020s. So, we'll see. We'll see. I could be wrong.

But let's talk again in 2030. Get me some ketamine immediately. So look, we are, you know, a lot of my work is on how we evolved to be deeply religious tribal creatures that organized themselves into fish infusion societies shaped by constant conflict

with nearby societies. But we're also good at making peace with them as well. That's the way we evolved. And the last few hundred years, after hundreds of years of war, we decided, you know what, let's find a different way to live. And we developed liberal democracies, we developed institutions. They took a long, long time to build. It's hard to get them quite right, but they do generally get better over time. And that's the Western liberal democracies, which then end up giving rights and civil rights and discovering all kinds of ways to make life better for everyone. So, that's the trajectory we're on until 2011.

And things began to get really weird in the 2010s. I think we all see it now. But this is what we first began to see on campus in 2014. Things are getting really weird. It's as though there's a glitch in the matrix. But what's really happening here is these virtual worlds are touching down. What happens in Fortnite, my son plays Fortnite, what happens there has zero effect on me or anyone else. It's closed. But Twitter and Facebook and Instagram are sort of, they're sort of like metaverse-y things that touch the real world sometimes, especially Twitter. Leaders live in fear of Twitter. So, imagine now that rather than this metaverse, this weird world in which

we have no idea what the average person thinks, but the activists, the extremists on the far right, the far left, they get, it's like they get little dark guns, they get to shoot people and cause pain to people anywhere at any time. So, imagine now that our entire world is like this. Imagine now that everywhere you go, there are anonymous people. Imagine a public square in which people are masked. You have no idea who is who, and there's no consequences for bad behavior. So, you know, if you saw that video that Mark Zuckerberg put out about how wonderful the metaverse is going to be, and you can play cards with people who are far away, it's going to be great. Like, no, that is your best case

version of what it could be. And we know from experience, a lot of these platforms start out kind of nice and fun, and they can get dark pretty quickly. So when you think about this, so if you think this is the happiest time, this is the light before the darkness coming, what is your biggest worry looking at sort of their visions that you saw? Now, let's leave Microsoft's aside. That was sort of hang out in a fake office where you're a cartoon character without legs. But when you looked at their visions, what did you think?

You know, I was always on the left. And when I began studying political psychology, I realized there's some very good ideas on the right. And I don't mean the MAGA right. I mean, like the intellectual conservatives or people like Hayek or Oakeshott. And I realized, you know what, you actually need the give and take of ideas of like, fast progress. No, slow it down. It's dangerous. That's the traditional left-right tension that actually makes a liberal democracy better. The online world that we live in was designed by engineers, some of whom are libertarians, some of whom are progressive, none of whom are social conservatives or intellectuals. There are no psychologists involved, no sociologists. So this world that we now live in was created by people whose only incentive was grow it fast, grow it big,

make it cool. And it's turned out very, very badly. So that's phase one or phase one and two. We're about to go into the next phase, which is going to be much bigger and also designed by clueless people who have a business incentive and no understanding of human psychology or sociology. So I just, you know, I don't see any reason to think this is going to be much bigger, and also designed by clueless people who have a business incentive and no understanding of human psychology or sociology. So I just, you know, I don't see any reason to think this is going to work out well. To the extent that it becomes all-encompassing, I think it's going to do far greater damage to our kids than what's already happening and far greater damage to our democracy. I could be wrong on either count, but if current trends continue, I don't think I am. So just in terms of, you know, I call it cancel culture. Kara calls it accountability culture.

Do you see what's happening? I was even, I was on CNN talking about Aaron Rodgers, and I thought, am I piling on? Is it just easy to kind of pile on to this guy and become one of those, not mass people, but, you know, score points or be a guardian of gotcha by piling on this guy. Do you think it's, where do you think we are in the cycle of the Twitter mob or, you know, you and I experience it or observe it, I think a little bit of campuses where some people say there's a bit of a surrender to the narrative or we're going to come after you and threaten your career, whatever it might be. At the same time, people should be called out. And there are some wonderful things about holding people accountable. Where do you think we are in the cycle, if you will?

Do you think it's peaked? Do you think it's going to get a lot worse? Where are we? So my next book is going to be called Life After Babel, Adapting to a World We May Never Again Share. Oh, wow. And a key idea in it is that there's the real world in which what the average person thinks matters to some extent. And that is still true on election day.

We actually do have a way of measuring what people think. And then there's the virtual world or the post-Babel parts of the virtual world in which you have no clue what the average person thinks and it doesn't matter. What matters is the dynamics. And that's what changed around 2014, 2015, the dynamics. And you can call it accountability if you like. It is a form of accountability, and accountability in the abstract is a very good thing. You have to have accountability. But imagine if a world becomes fully accountable, but the accountability, there's no due process, there's no friction, so anyone can hold anyone accountable with no friction, no due process, no context. Everyone's free to put their worst read on whatever you said or did, put it up, and have other people jump on.

This is not a world in which we get responsible behavior. This is a world in which suddenly everyone is now afraid. Everyone says they're walking on eggshells. And I would guess most of the cases of people being held accountable, when you dig into them, and I've dug into a lot of them, are incredibly unjust. So I think that Twitter is just not a good mechanism for improving accountability in a society. So what do you do, though? I know there's no silver bullet, but what do you do? If people agree with you that there's a lack of nuance and due process, how do you reintegrate that into the discourse?

you that there's a lack of nuance and due process. How do you reintegrate that into the discourse? So, yeah. So, I think that the biggest thing we need to do is move away from our focus on content moderation. I think one thing we learned from Francis Haugen is that, what, they get, you know, maybe 10% of what would count as hate speech and less than 1% of intimidation and violence. So, let's forget the focus on content moderation. It's all about the virality and the rate limiters. I would much rather have that. It's the architecture. Yeah, it's the architecture. I had an interview with several executives at all these companies, Twitter, Facebook, and they all said it's when they changed it from accuracy to virality, that's when everything went

askew. So that's it. I just got to ask you both a question. From an outsider's perspective, I look at Mark Zuckerberg and I'm like, most dangerous person in the world, total fucking sociopath. You have both sat down with him and looked him in the eyes and seen his body language, how he reacts, ideas. And I think there is a power and an honesty to having a relationship with someone. What are your thoughts on Mark Zuckerberg? I think he's the most powerful person on the planet. I think he's the most dangerous, but not a sociopath. Okay. Go ahead, John. Yeah. No, I agree with Kara. I think that he ends up being dangerous because he controls Facebook. But I think the way to understand him, I think he's definitely not a sociopath.

I don't think he's greedy. I don't think he's motivated by money. I think the way to understand him is that Facebook is his baby. He created it. He's very ambitious. And he is focused on growth over everything else. I think he'd like to do good if he could, but nothing, nothing will interfere with his desire to have it grow as fast as possible and win. Bingo. And there, I think, so I'll just close by just saying this.

You know, people say, is Facebook like a tobacco company? I say, no. Facebook, the best analogy is the British East India Company. It's like this giant company that was, you know, given a license by the crown and they, oh, go, you know, go start wars, go conquer people, start famines, who cares? We're not monitoring. So, that would be the way to think about it. All right, we'll figure out the metaphors, but there's several of them, all conflicting ones. Jonathan, thank you so much. You're a frigging bummer. But I'm looking forward to seeing your articles and research on this stuff. Thank you so much.

We really appreciate it. Thank you, Cara. Thank you, Scott. All right, Scott, one more quick break. He was amazing. We'll be back for predictions. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees? And it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze.

So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Support for this show comes from Indeed. If you need to hire, you may need Indeed. Indeed is a matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Listeners of this show can get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash podcast. 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 on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

Need to hire? You need Indeed. Okay, Scott, give us this week's prediction. It's got to be fast. I got to go to a parent-teacher conference. 2022 is going to be the year of staggering M&A all in the pursuit of a super app. If you look at the number of – everybody used to recruit or people used to want to recruit people from the big four.

Now the big four are all recruiting people from Alibaba and Tencent because the war to create the super app is going to be huge. And what's interesting is – and this goes to my prediction and it's – I don't get shit on Twitter, but it's about Twitter. I think that these companies, social media platforms, can kind of manipulate their earnings by either not cleaning up fake accounts or cleaning them up. I think Jack Dorsey is going to see God over the next two months clean up a ton of accounts, show shitty earnings and growth, puke on himself. The stock will go down to 40, and then Square is going to acquire Twitter and try and become a 10 cent. Yeah, I like that. It's funny. I'm writing about super apps.

It's a really interesting concept. It's suddenly the word of the day. So we'll see what happens. And I agree. They're all coalescing. And interestingly, I had an interesting discussion with Ken Buck about this. He thinks there should be super apps because then there's no individualized monopolies in like search or whatever.

He thinks it improves the situation. Interesting. Interesting idea, but that's a very good prediction. So big news, we're officially announcing Pivot MIA. Join us in Miami this coming February 14th to 16th. Follow us on Twitter at PivotPod to find out more information and tickets when they become available. We have to think what MIA should stand for besides Metaverse in Action. Not really,

there'll be no Metaverse. We are going to be in person with tequila. Scott, why should people come to PivotMIA? I think you and I are committed to having the world's most important and enjoyable gathering in the history of business. That's my goal. All right, but I need something sexier. I need something sexier. I need something sexier. I don't know.

Everybody gets to sleep at Scott's house. That's why. We're going to have a big pajama party at Scott's house. What do you say? That's like the worst Cinemax movie ever, literally. That's like, oh my God, who's he? Get him out of here. No, no. We're staying at the Faina or the One Hotel. It's going to be amazing. We have the best restaurants, the best speakers, people like Jonathan Haidt, Aswath Damodaran. We're going to sex it up. This is going to be fantastic. MIA, Miami. I'm really excited about it.

This is our first event together. I'm really excited. We're very excited. We'll have more information soon. Okay, Scott, that's the show. As always, you can send your questions to nymag.com slash pivot. We're digging into that mailbag soon. So send us something good.

We'll be back on Tuesday for more. Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Indertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mia Silverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. If you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or, frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Required reading for any parent, and I don't read a lot of books on parenting, but I absolutely love this one, is The Coddling of the American Mind by our guest today, Jonathan Haidt. Not only talks about social media, but also talks just about raising kids and what it means to have productive, civic-minded children. Thanks for listening. Thank you. provides essential support when decisive leadership is crucial. You can discover insights like these by reading Alex Partners' latest technology industry insights, available at www.alexpartners.com slash vox. That's www.alexpartners.com slash vox. In the face of disruption, businesses trust Alex Partners to get straight to the

point and deliver results making every moment count. Over 100,000 brands trust Klaviyo's unified data and marketing platform to build smarter digital relationships with their customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. Make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo.com slash BFCM.