Pivot - Meta’s Threads, and A Major First Amendment Ruling

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Kara and Scott discuss Apple hitting a $3 trillion valuation, China announcing export restrictions on minerals used in the production of semiconductors, and GQ pulling an article critiquing David Zaslav. Also: Meta’s Twitter competitor, Threads is officially here and racking in the downloads. A certain someone isn’t so happy about that. Plus, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to prohibit certain communications between the Biden administration and social media sites. And a listener question on going from academia to the corporate world. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 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 hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher in Vermont.

And I'm Cara Swisher. Who the fuck am I? Jesus, too many edibles, Cara. I'm Scott Galloway. I got that right. And I'm in Mykonos. Yeah. And I am looking forward to seeing both the Oppenheimer movie and the Barbie movie, which I believe certifies me as non-binary.

I'm non-binary, Cara. Oh, my God. Really? non-binary. I'm non-binary, Kara. Oh my God, really? Non-binary. I will not be shoehorned into your patriarchal segmentation in boxes. I like both a Volkswagen Rabbit convertible and a Hummer. I am going to see Mission Impossible,

Dead Reckoning 1. The Barbie movie I'm excited about, Oppenheimer less so, but I am very excited about Mission Impossible because it looks fantastic. Super excited. It does look fantastic. It's next week. I'm going the first day, like the first hour. I'm the first hour. Oh, really? Let me guess. You've been invited by Tom Cruise. How was your fourth? No, no, no. But I have been invited to. It was very Vermont. It was very Vermont. There's a lot of tractors. There was parades. There was flags. A lot of kids

running around. They throw cheese and candy from the tractors. It's very delightful and quaint. Cheese and candy from the tractors. You say that like it's a good thing. Well, it's very adorable. It's a very adorable place called Peachum, and it's been around since 1776. So it was nice. How was yours? You were in Mykonos. Of course, you're in Mykonos. It's wonderful. It's a beautiful island were in Mykonos. Of course, you're in Mykonos. It's wonderful. It's a beautiful island. Greek people are very friendly and nice, and the food is good. Yeah.

Everything's wonderful. Yeah, it's an international scene. You went from Ibiza to Mykonos. Where's your next stop? Yeah, I'm on the international douchebag tour. The Arrested Adolescent Tour. You were on the French Riviera. Where's the next place? Aspen.

Koh Samui? I went to Aspen. Aspen, of course, yes. I went to Aspen, I reckon I have. Obviously, yeah, Aspen. I'm surprised you're not on a yacht in like Portofino or something like that. Taking pictures of my girlfriend. Yeah, something like that.

In any case. Something like that. A lot has happened since we're on vacation. We have so much to talk about. This is, it's a crazy amount of news when we go away. I feel like we have way too much to discuss. We'll try to get through it. Today, we'll talk about the launch of Threads, Meta's Twitter competitors.

It's been a wild 24 hours in this saga, and we'll get to the ruling from a federal judge blocking the Biden administration from communicating to social media companies. Another big deal, a lot around the First Amendment going on. But first, let's get to a couple of things. Apple is the most valuable company ever, hitting a $3 trillion valuation. I remember us talking about the $2 trillion and the $1 trillion.

The record has come after a strong quarterly earnings report in May, with the stock currently up 52% for the year. The company had briefly hit $3 trillion for January of last year, but didn't close that price. Wow. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, not to take anything away from the company, I think it's a remarkable company, but I see Apple as another signal of what is the largest demographic trend in the world. And that is, one, we have had tremendous prosperity globally. We've had strong GDP growth. The

world keeps getting more productive. If you have population growth and productivity growth, it adds to GDP growth. Unfortunately, a lot of that wealth in mature markets has been concentrated amongst a small group of people. Now, globally, you would argue this is a great era of income equalization, actually. But if you look at the Western countries, there's huge income inequality. And I think the ultimate luxury brand is not Louis Vuitton, it's not Hermes, it's Apple. And what Apple says to people is that you're one of the one billion wealthiest, you're part of your storyteller, you're part of an information

age generation, you're Western. I mean, I even, it struck me how many people, I have a UK number, and for some reason having a UK number on my iPhone means my texts show up as either blue or green. I forget which one is the Android. Green. And no less than a dozen people have asked me, like, what happened? Well, you're off of iOS. Like, something is really wrong. Like, I didn't even recognize it.

And Apple has such a credible self-expressive benefit. And when you're the primary operating system for the billion wealthiest people in terms of their purchases, their media, I mean, it's just good to be the portal to the digital world for the billion wealthiest people in the world. All right. But where's the but in there? Somewhere but is covered. Well, OK. So this is confirmation bias. But did you see the most recent report of rumors around the mixed reality headset? No, no.

I want to acknowledge a lot of these rumors sometimes are just that, the rumors. But supposedly they've taken their estimates or their production volumes down by two thirds. And they're claiming it's because of supply chain issues. And I would argue that Apple has to do one thing with every product they launch. And that is they have to have demand much greater than supply to create the illusion of scarcity, which is the ultimate go-to for any luxury brand. You have to produce less in demand. And Apple is a very sophisticated company, and you can bet they have economists doing their econometric models and demand forecasting. And I think here what has effectively happened here is they've looked at the pricing,

they've looked at the focus groups, and they said, right out of the gates, and I'm not saying over the long term, I defer to you and think there's potential here around spatial computing. But on launch, I think they have surmised there's not a lot of demand for this product, and they have taken their demand forecast way down, and they are blaming it on supply chain. And I would posit that when Apple can make one of anything, they can make a million of them because they have the strongest supply chain in the world. Yeah, still not what is about this trillion dollar valuation. Apple Vision Pro is hardly any of it, any part of it. No, it's not. It has nothing to do with it.

Yeah. I would agree with that. How do you feel about this valuation? Microsoft is sort of two and a half trillion. No one's even close after that, pretty much. I'm trying to think. Well, Apple, I mean, if you just look at it from a valuation standpoint, it trades at a 30 times forward earnings. And what was crazy is at some point it was in the high single digits.

It traded at 35 last year, but its profits have gone up. So it doesn't look ridiculously expensive, but its 10-year average is around 18. So it looks as if it's a little bit frothy, but it doesn't look crazy expensive. But what you have with Microsoft and Apple is iOS is essentially the operating system for the wealthiest billion people in the world, and Microsoft is the operating system for the wealthiest 1 million corporations in the world. for the wealthiest 1 million corporations in the world. And it's just good to be the operating systems for corporations, which is Microsoft,

and the operating system for the wealthiest people in the world, which is Apple. Yeah. And Apple, I think, probably has to make a more loud showing in AI. I'm sure they have working on an AI does integrate into a lot of Apple products easily. So I think they'll probably

have to be doing something around that. But we'll see about the Apple Vision Pro. I know you're fixated upon it, but I still think big things for it. I do. I have a feeling about this particular, not this particular product, but this spatial computing. I think it's very important, but I could be wrong. In any case, a lot of money, a lot of money. China, by the way, speaking of people who could slow things down, China's announced export restrictions on two minerals used in the production of semiconductors, solar cells, and missile systems. The restrictions will begin on August 1st and will only allow exports of the metals

with a license from the ministry in order to, quote, protect national security interests. Of course, it's retaliation from the Biden administration's restrictions on the actual chip exports to China and an ongoing fight for technological dominance. He applauded Biden's chip export limits. Now China's titting for tat, so to speak. Is that a word? Titting for tat. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah, I mean, the gallium, which is this key mineral, I think they control about 80% of the world's supply. Everything, batteries, they control. Yeah. These rare earth materials are sort of the new oil. And that is, you could argue that the geopolitics and the flows of power around the world are no longer going to be dictated by the flow of oil, but by the flow of semiconductors and these rare earth minerals. The only thing is, I have heard that sometimes with these rare earth minerals are substitutes. So, but this is geopolitically, this is now a full blown, this is a non-shooting war. This is a trade war. And Jeffrey Sachs would argue that it's just stupid that the two largest economies should kiss and make up. They need to cooperate. Yeah, and it would be an incredible unlock for global prosperity because the U.S. and China will be-

Well, Yellen's headed over there, right? Janet Yellen and Tony Blinken just went over. And then Biden said the stupid thing about dictatorship. True. Yeah, so it'll be interesting to see if there's substitutes or if America innovates its way around it. But when you control 80% of anything, you can levy a lot of damage when it's a key component to a lot of these products. So we'll see where it goes, but they should definitely, you're absolutely right, they should settle and figure out a way to cooperate. It's just, it doesn't make any sense. One can't be

without the other unless China innovates around ships the way the US does. And that last thing, GQ posted, then pulled an article critiquing Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zasloff. Jason Bailey, a freelancer, wrote the piece after being asked for, oh, hello kids, asked for an analysis on why Zasloff was, quote, the most hated man in Hollywood. Soon after the publication, Warner Brothers Discovery reached out to complain that it had not been reached out to comment, which is bad, requested that several inaccuracies be corrected. The writer asked to revise the article, but declined, saying editors had assured him

there were no inaccuracies. He gave the editor permission to make changes, but was not comfortable seeing his name attached after seeing the new version, which was a little nicer to Zasloff. I mean, it's kind of old school, roughhousing in the Hollywood department. It doesn't seem fresh and new.

It's kind of stupid. And David Zasloff does look bad. I agree. I think it makes Time Warner and Mr. Zasloff look worse for trying to kill it than what would have come out. But I do think the media has really got their greed glands going around. Basically, I forget who wrote the profile on Chris Licht. Yeah, Tim Albert. That was sort of a career-making article.

He was already a pretty big career. Yes, I agree. Yes. Well, okay. But I mean, granted, I'm the unwashed masses, but I'd never heard his name before. I recognized it, but I didn't really know it. And then that article was everywhere. And that basically took down an executive. And I got to think a lot of people, I mean, it's just the hit pieces, momentum is a terrible thing when it's not going your way. And Warner Brothers Discovery is just going to have a never-ending slew of profiles that make people look really, really bad. Because the thing about this merger is it made no fucking sense. That's exactly at the heart of it.

So it's going to be very easy to make these guys look bad. And David Zaslav, if you wanted to take the glass half empty view, he's been very disciplined and taken some real bullets such that he could reduce debt. And then the other side of it is he paid himself a quarter of a billion dollars for what's looking like a terrible acquisition. Or he didn't pay himself, but his board did. And now we're going to go through another probably divestiture or breakup. And then all the branding around, I mean, HBO is just sort of, I mean, it's verging on comical, but at the end of the day, the thing that is writing these articles is not David Zasloff. It's not HBO. It's not CNN. The thing that's writing these articles is that broadcast

supported media or ad-supported broadcast media and cable is in massive structural decline, and everyone looks like a fucking idiot. Yeah. That said, let me say, these articles are not fresh news. Premier Magazine was famous for it, and they'd always get pushback, if you remember back in the day. New York Magazine has a really big reputation for takedowns, but also good stories, you know, fair. I think Libby and Ozzie and her stories on Trump are fantastic. I think they're fair. I do think David Zasloff is way out over his skis here and then shocked that people are

not thinking he's the best thing since buttered toast. You know, he lives in his own world at this point. He's got to expect after the CNN thing with so much attention. To blame the media is kind of, come on. The thing that shows he's surrounded himself with too many sycophants and he's a bit tone deaf was agreeing to do the commencement address. I think it was at BU. I mean, it's like, boss, you're in a writer's strike. You just paid yourself a quarter of a billion dollars. You don't think that you're going to subject yourself to ridicule? And he showed up, and you know how snarky students are.

They start screaming, pay your writers and everything. Someone, you don't have the right people advising you. You shouldn't get near a podium. You should, any thoughts you have right now, you should keep to yourself, and you should get the company through this difficult time and come out the other end. And if he manages to reduce-

Stop having fancy parties. Yeah, and don't move into Jack Warner's home and all that bullshit, right? He loves a fancy party, that David says. Did anyone know who Jeff Bukas was? He just did his job. He didn't go on Johnny Carson. You don't see Iger places.

You don't see Iger places. You see him do the corporate thing and then he leaves. Like he says, whatever it is for Disney, but you don't see Iger places. You see him do the corporate thing, and then he leaves. Like, he says whatever it is for Disney, but you don't see him swanning around. He likes to swan, David Sasslop. He's a swanner. Especially when a company like this has got just so much hard work ahead of it. It's got to right sides. It's got to lay off people. Look what Iger's doing. Iger just made some very, very difficult and drastic decisions at ESPN and laid off a ton of beloved sports anchors. But you know what? No one went after him because he's not out there, like you said, peacocking. Yeah, he's not. It's interesting because I just interviewed Jake Tapper about his

new book and a bunch of stuff. And, you know, I think one of the things we agreed on is Chris talked too much. He needs to stop talking or stop being seen. In any case, we have a lot to get to. Actually, Scott, we haven't even gotten to the big stories, and they are big. Let's get to our first big story. Metal launched his Twitter competitor, Threads. Mark Zuckerberg posted, threaded, stitched, I don't know, that 30 million people have signed up as of Thursday. I think it was midday at some point.

In any case, lots. 30 million? Lots of people. 30 million? 30 manillion. A manillion people. Canada signed up? Canada signed up.

So basically, Canada signed up. Okay. I've been on all night. I was using it. It's quite easy to use. It integrates with Instagram perfectly. You signed up in four seconds and instantly you had a populated group of people that you followed on Instagram. Now, I didn't follow as many people on Instagram as I obviously do on

Twitter, but a lot of people were there. It looks just like Twitter. Nobody has any innovation in this area. Everything looks like Twitter, essentially, whether it's Blue Sky or Post or whatever. Low barrier to entry. You do feel like they had some good celebrities there. Obviously, the media people are there, which is always enjoyable for some reason that shouldn't be enjoyable. They're different than Instagram. You can't quite post to Instagram to it yet, which is weird. I thought I'd be able to just post to Instagram over there like you can to Facebook. You can post links, which is great, which you can't do on Instagram easily. I thought it was a pretty good launch

for Mr. Mark Zuckerberg. And then he was over on Twitter dunking on Elon, which I thought was very funny. I'm surprised he has a sense of humor, Mark Zuckerberg, but he does. He's very funny, very puckish. He seems to have recovered from his metaverse debacle. What do you think?

I think this is going to be probably the best product launch of 2023. Wow. I had never heard the term threads until last week. After being on it for a full hour, I've decided this thing is incredible. I mean, and I am not a meta fan. I have a bias against meta. But you like Instagram. You and I both like Instagram.

Instagram's incredible. Instagram is executing as well or better than anyone with maybe the exception of TikTok right now. And it's innovative. But again, success is not only a function of your own achievements. It's a function of your competitions and competence. of your competitions and competence. And whether it was department stores and grocery stores and record and bookstores not being great or not innovating, and in comes Amazon, or whether it was broadcast cable, out-supported cable being just really tired and incredibly expensive,

and in comes Netflix. You have this carcass that on its own incompetence has shrunk to $2 billion, but still has a massive amount of influence, is still an incredible product, and kind of owns this short form blogging, whatever you want to call it. So you have the ultimate disruptee out there. And all the potential disruptors lacked one thing. They lacked the interoperability to port enough people over such that you didn't have to invest another decade building your following. And with threads, you pull it up and you say, do you want to follow all your followers? And boom, right away, you're following a ton of people. And I've been on the thing about four hours. I have about 4,000 followers. My first post has gotten 400 likes. And here's the thing,

I'm going to get to letter L with a minimum amount of effort as opposed to like, I made a big investment in post news financially and in terms of my own time, and it was worth it because it is news focused and it's got good technology and a better vibe. But I'm already at like letter D after four hours with threads. I think this is going to work here. What do you think? Yeah, it's lacking features. I think they rushed out because of the opportunity, which we'll talk about in a second, that Elon is presenting them. And they had tried to do this at various times earlier. And I think they sort of thought about doing it within Instagram. And what's interesting is they've made it decentralized because Adam

Asour, who's the head of it, has talked about that decentralization is the future of social networks. So you can take your users with you when you go, which is interesting. And that's kind of interesting for Facebook to do that. They're usually walled gardens that keep your stuff, but it's using the activity pub protocol. I'm not going to explain it all. It's kind of stupid to explain. But so you can, things from Mastodon can come over. And I think one thing that Masseri said to Casey Newton in his newsletter is the post and comment model is great, but it really doesn't support public discord nearly as well as the tweet and reply model.

Elevating the reply to the same level as the original post allows for much more robust, diverse discourse, which is part of the reason we didn't just try to shove this thing into the feed of Instagram or a separate tab. I have gone back and forth with Adam Mossari over the years. I thought that was a very smart observation. He's 100% right about that. I think it's really clean. I think it feels fun. It feels interesting. I tried Blue Sky. I didn't use it that much. I'm not using posts that much as I should. I like it. I like them both. But you're right, getting the people in there makes a big deal. The other thing, there are privacy concerns, as always, with Facebook and Meta. The app asked a lot of data permissions, although it wasn't more than Instagram that I could tell. It was delayed

launch in the EU because of these new laws they have there. But it's certainly getting a lot of good press right out of the gate. I don't think anyone thinks it's badly done. I'll be fascinated to see. It's such a, to take the Instagram audience and do this is exactly what I would do. It's really a good, he's got an asset there. Well, it speaks to the need for antitrust, quite frankly, and that is, how do you create an atmosphere of innovation when the founder of Twitter, the founder of Waze, you have Macedon, you have Blue Sky, you have Post, you have all these great companies, they have financing, they're innovative.

And do they stand a chance when the biggest players can just bundle in a new feature? And this is what Microsoft started doing. That's right. Except it was MSN they were bundling, which sucked. So in this case, this doesn't suck.

And it's built on Instagram. But they bundled, you know, Internet Explorer. I mean, they're about to put a bunch of AI companies out of business because they're going to bundle them into Microsoft Office,

even with an inferior product. And the question is, you know, in the short term, it's very easy for a consumer. I liked it. I mean, I'm not exaggerating. I'm getting a thousand followers an hour on threads right now. But the question is, over the long term for an economy, does it just make it harder and harder? Does anyone ever start a company or can anyone get funding for a company that's even in social, that's even in e-commerce, that's even in the cloud at some point? Because the fear is that someone else just bundles the competitor and then takes their three billion strong fire hose and aims it at this new product called Threads. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I agree.

Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over the creation of threats, saying that Meta poached former employees to create a, quote, copycat app. A lawyer for Twitter sent Mark Zuckerberg a letter saying that Twitter plans to, quote, strictly enforce its intellectual property rights. That is Alex Spiro, who does all the heavy lifting for Elon Musk. The letter also demanded that Meta, quote, take immediate steps to stop using Twitter trade secrets. Metasource has said no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee. Excellent legal work from Alex Spiro, as usual. Any merit? Anything? Anything? Good luck with that. Yeah, I mean, you're claiming that they're stealing trade secrets. There's been about five

new competitors to Twitter. There's a new Twitter trying to compete with itself. And Meta starts a similar service with not a single employee from your company, and you're suing them. I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg just won't sleep tonight. What do you think, Kara? I think it's ridiculous. I mean, he's trying to act like it was— remember in the Uber lawsuit with Anthony Lewandowski and Google and this and that? That had some merit, right? What was happening when Uber was stealing Tracy?

This is ridiculous. Look, Mark Zuckerberg has gone around and, as you and I know, shoplifted so many ideas, including the Snap stories, including Instagram borrowed a whole bunch of stuff. He's famous for this. He's famous for this. But there's nothing new and fresh about Twitter, and all the others sort of look like Twitter, right?

So you can't protect the look and feel in this way, one. And, by the way, he's going to have to sue all of them, I guess. And secondly, as usual, it's an emotional reaction. So I don't see any merit to this. It's laughable. He's of course getting himself in the news again. So I don't see any, I guess this is just what they have to do, I guess. I don't know. Or they don't have to do it, but they did. Yeah, that feels right. I don't, I don't, I mean, the meta-legal team and lobbying team is bigger than Twitter. I mean, there's probably 2,000 people defending various lawsuits and lobbying various senators and congresspeople in Washington. So, see in court. I mean, I think he's more prone to be the problematic issues is using one platform to leverage the other, which Congress might be interested in. That's the way I'd go if I was Elon Musk. I'd start to like rattle the cages and get the right wing all mad at Mark Zuckerberg, which they would be. That's the way I would play this. But as usual, he's playing it. Maybe he'll move on to that one. I don't want to give him any good ideas. playing it. Maybe he'll move on to that one. I don't want to give him any good ideas.

Yeah. If he wants to be the guy from Yelp legitimately claiming that there's antitrust behavior here, that it's a large company pointing its 3 billion user-strong cannon at a competitor, but that's an argument for the DOJ and the FTC when they call him as a witness. That's not an affirmative action from him. But that's an argument for the DOJ and the FTC when they call him as a witness. That's not an affirmative action from him. So I don't think this is going anywhere. Of course he's going to do it. But he laid off all these people in a questionable manner, and none of them have any loyalty to him. And that's the other part is even if they did hire Twitter employees, they made them sign these shitty severance packages. If they did, a lot of them didn't, by the way. They

took the stuff that was owed to them, but refused to sign the NDAs, and they refused to sign the non-competes. And they're not even enforceable. It's just, I just don't know what to say. You bring up a point, just you saying that. It makes me think, it's never going to go to court. Similar to his suing Twitter to go to the Chancery Court and say he's not obligated or compelled to close. Yeah. He won't actually go to court because what the defense will probably do is bring up 700 witnesses at Twitter who he has not paid. The last thing he wants to do is in a court of law have to tell the truth about what is going on actually at Twitter and how he has acquitted himself there. So this is an attempt to say, I think, I think he's even smarter to know

this is going to have no effect, but it's to communicate to the larger world that this is unfair. They're stealing from me this great idea. Right. This thread's launch comes after a chaotic week at Twitter. Last Friday, Twitter completely locked out people without accounts, preventing them from viewing public tweets. Then on Saturday, Twitter abruptly placed limits on how many tweets its users could view. Confused users got error messages saying, rate limit exceeded and cannot retrieve tweets. Those are messages you love to get when you're using a service. Elon Musk posted that unverified users were now restricted to viewing 600 posts a day. He soon increased that limit to 800 and then 1,000, with a limit for verified users set

10 times higher. It hardly mattered. Everybody was bollocked up. A few days later, in a blog post, the company said the move was an intentional effort to weed out bots and to stop generative AI models from scraping public data. Outside observers, though, including former Twitter employees who do know, and they named themselves, they were not being shy, have expressed skepticism. If you didn't see my tweet, it was a gif of Pinocchio.

Most people think they just messed with the wrong button. Scott? I got to be honest, I have no idea what's going on here. None of this makes any sense. I thought that my quick interpretation here was that they were trying to force more and more people into the blue check paid funnel by saying, if you don't have a blue check, you get this thing. I just don't get this. comes from advertising and you do something that overnight dramatically reduces time on the platform or content scene, it's totally diametrically opposed to your current revenue strategy. And then to your point, the thing that, again, buttresses my prediction that Linda Iaccarino is around 18 months or less, he shouldn't be commenting on business strategy. It should be the CEO. Rate limit exceeded. It's like Zaslav for all the shit we're giving him on this podcast would never interrupt CNN and say, sorry, we're stopping AC360 because your rate limit has been exceeded.

I mean, it's just I literally saw this and I'm like, is this is he trying to wallpaper over a technical glitch? Is he trying to force people to pay eight bucks a month? I just couldn't figure this out. Well, several of the former people were like, he pushed the wrong button again, once again, and he doesn't have enough people there. I mean, interesting, Mark Bodnick, who I always like, he was one of the early core people and longtime Silicon Valley person said, I thought this was his motives. I think he can sink another 10 billion into Twitter without blinking. It's a weirdly flexible position to be in. He really hates advertising and feeling personally constrained by the incentive to placate advertisers. He likely believes that Twitter's

network's advantages are insanely strong and the product can withstand a lot of his thrash. As he tries to figure out how to change the company, he gains a huge political advantage by owning the company through the 2024 election cycle. I imagine he loves owning Twitter and loves being the world's main character unless the world falls apart. I think he keeps it. So I thought that was pretty smart. He also noted that he loves beating up on reporters, but all the reporters are over at Blue Sky, which reported record high traffic during all this. It's backed by Twitter's co-founder, Jack Dorsey. And obviously, Threads is benefiting from it. And I think Mark tweaking him is perfect. I think Twitter is a cockroach though, right? And so people have a hard time

coming off of it because it's a really great place to trade news, whether it's political news, whatever lunacy Donald Trump has been tweeting, which he had a very lunatic-filled July 4th weekend. So that's the issue. It's a cockroach. And to get that cockroach-like behavior is going to be hard for even Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, I don't think Twitter's not going out of business. People say it could go bankrupt. The reality is- Well, that was Bill Cohen, yeah.

Right. But Bill thinks there's something Machiavellian going on here, that he's purposely trying to talk the company down such that he can buy the debt on the cheap. Yeah. going on here that he's purposely trying to talk the company down such that he can buy the debt on the cheap. And his interest payments on that $13 billion, I think, are around a billion or a billion and a half dollars. But here's the thing, he's worth $200. So the writer you just quoted is absolutely right. If he decides he wants Twitter to stay in business for the next decade, he can just personally finance the debt in the interest. And he's, I don't want to call it right-sized the company, but laid off 80% of it. The business strategy here, though, I got to be, I just don't, I'm totally perplexed. Make a guess. Make a guess.

This is what I think. I think he's having about as much success with media as Mark Zuckerberg would have trying to launch a multi-stage rocket. I just don't think he has any fucking idea what he's doing. And everyone wants to find genius or secondary motives. I just think he's flailing and making a series of unforced errors and self-inflicted injuries. You did tweet something about it going bankrupt. You did this weekend, I noticed. I pay very close attention to your tweets, Scott. Well, someone wrote, I think it was in The Verge, that it could very easily go bankrupt. And the problem is looking at it as an isolated company is the wrong way to look at it. If it was a standard company with this kind of debt, it could vary. It's on a road to bankruptcy. But here's the thing. It has an owner who controls the company who's worth $200 billion. Yeah, and who the stock is up.

Tesla's up. And so if Tesla, which has been on a tear, continues this tear, Tesla every day loses or gains the value of two years of interest payments. So the only reason this thing goes bankrupt, it's not because of the business performance. It's because of the blood sugar of Elon Musk. If he just gets sick of it, if he thinks, I'm losing a billion or two billion dollars a year to just get pummeled every day, then he might say, I'm done.

I'm done. But I don't think he wants to take that L. I don't think he would do that. I think he would continue to fund it out of his personal wealth, of which he has more than anyone in the world right now. Yeah. And so far, he hasn't. Mark has been really slapadooing him, which I think is very funny. And Elon has not really responded post cage match.

I don't know, either they've stashed him away somewhere or whatever, but the rate limit thing was so stupid. It didn't make Linda look very good. It made people angry again. And it keeps reminding people what an asshole he is. That's what really what, you know what I mean? Like, oh, this asshole. Yeah. And worse it keeps reminding people what an asshole he is. That's what really what it is. You know what I mean? Like, ugh, this asshole. Yeah.

And worse than that, I'm an asshole. I make dumb decisions. Oh, and by the way, just in case anyone wondered, I'm still the CEO. Yeah. I'm the one announcing this, explaining it. I mean, it's just general poor corporate governance. It's clear that, oh, I brought this individual in to sell some ads and take my arrows, but I'm still in charge. Well, Mark is here to take care of that. Mark can take care, honestly. Like I said, in a cage match, I always pick Mark Zuckerberg, I got to say, on this area. I'm going to go see the

Barbie movie, and I'm rooting for Mark Zuckerberg. Literally, it's going to start raining frogs. I do not recognize my world. I do not recognize my world. I know, I tweeted, like, when did he become funny? He's got to be like, I think someone, I think it was Naim, has showed me. He's aware that I'm back on Instagram, and he thinks it's hysterical. But Mark, it is not a compliment to you, let me just say. It's because I can't stand what's happened to Elon Musk. So you just happen to be standing there. Let me just say, at 5'7", he seems very tall in this world right now.

We're going to keep using threads and see how we like it. But again, it's Facebook. So remember, privacy is an issue. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the First Amendment ruling that curtails communication between the Biden administration and social media companies, which Scott is dying to talk about. And we'll take a listener mail question about how to make a career pivot from nonprofits

to the corporate world. 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. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Procrastination, putting it off, kicking the can down the road. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Carpet in the bathroom. Like, why? In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire.

Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Scott, we're back with our next big story, the first amendment ruling this week. A Trump-appointed federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to, he's an idiot, he's a nincompoop, to prohibit certain communications between the Biden administration and social media sites. The Justice Department already appealed it, of course. The ruling bars agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI, from working with social media companies on content moderation, where the content is considered protected speech. Some of the protected speech cited by the judge in the case relates to COVID-19 vaccines,

masking, lockdowns, and validity of 2020 election. In the Hunter Biden laptop story, this is part of an ongoing battle between those who argue on the right that social media moderation is a violation of the First Amendment and those who insist moderation is crucial to public health and preserving democratic institutions. It's also, it's a very organized effort on the right, let me just say, because they're also attacking people like Alex Stamos at the Stanford Internet Observatory with lawsuits if they, and trying to chill the situation of studying this stuff. Even studying it, they don't want it to happen. There's all kinds of lawsuits. It's very similar to what's happened

around affirmative action. There's people with a very organized way to do it. Philip Bump from the Washington Post criticized it as deeply ironic reinforcement of right-wing misinformation, pointing out the ruling itself was based on inaccurate and dishonest claims of government interference, which it was. It's very broad. And Rich Stengel, who served in the Obama administration, said the government has a right to free speech like everybody else. The social media companies don't have to listen. They were not ordering them to do it. They just pointed out misinformation or pointed out on the behalf of others because these companies listen to the government more than they do, say, Alex Stamos or anybody else. So, what thinks you,

Scott? You seem to have some thoughts. I think this is just awful. And I trust and hope that this will be slapped back and overturned as quickly as this ridiculous decision was made. When you think about, I mean, if you don't want to actually count votes, if you don't want your democracy to be based on voting and protocols that have existed for a couple hundred years, if you don't want people's view of vaccines to be based on the dissenter's voice, and the dissenter's voice has been heard here. It's called the control group. And it's been heard about a billion times around the world in terms of a massive number of use case studies around vaccines. When you can't go to data, when you can't go to the closest thing that is the pursuit of truth in our society,

and that is science, and that is actual facts, and that is rule of law, your go-to has to be misinformation. And I don't think people really, they immediately connote, well, a certain amount of misinformation is good, it should be free speech. No one is denying, no one is trying to get in the way of their rights to say these things. What we're saying, or what people people are arguing is that when an organization is spreading so much misinformation around vaccines, that the damage it does creates an obligation for good people and government to weigh in and at least highlight and fact check and discourage them or ask them to put in place? How do you protect their rights of free speech, but silence the Stanford Internet Observatory? Hillary Clinton talked about a vast right-wing conspiracy. This is what this is, again. And she

was right, by the way. There was one against her. This is an organized campaign to shut down. If you watch what they're doing to academics, if you watch the lawsuits, it's Republican-led. They just don't believe in misinformation, or they like it. I think that's more to the point. And they're wrapping themselves in the cloak of free speech and limiting speech of others to do so. The government can point these things out to these companies. They did not compel them to do it. They know laws controlling these companies. So I don't know what the fuck this judge is, this judge is such an income poop, is talking about. And it just creates a situation. Once again, they're putting it in a,

like, is the election stolen? Is it? Is information bad? Is it the free speech? They're making it so confusing on something that was so basic is, please take down the thing that said you should inject bleach into yourself. This is not healthy. This is what the government does. Please don't eat Tide Pods. Can you tell people to not eat Tide Pods? Tide Pods. Yeah, exactly. You know, I was watching Dope Sick the other day because I hadn't finished it and I hadn't seen the last episodes. And last night I kind of binge watched it. And I got to tell you, the government moves so slowly as it is against corporations.

You know what I mean? They really don't. And they push back on government pushing on them. And there is government overreach all the time. In this case, there is no proof that they made them do anything. And by the way, I don't think they do what these companies do, whatever they want. They're more powerful than the government in many cases. Apple, $3 trillion. Microsoft, almost $3 trillion. Facebook, control of all of our information, you know, sucking up everything. Google, everywhere. And you're worried about their free speech. Like, I and I think they should have it, by the way. This is a right-wing effort to shut down study of misinformation and the ability to point

out misinformation. And they're using one of our greatest amendments to do so. They're trying to use it, but they're wrong. What do you think Nick Clegg thinks this morning, the head of global comms for META, when he wakes up in the morning and goes... I think he's tired, probably, but they also have been cutting back on... Look, Facebook hasn't totally cut back, but Twitter's completely cut back on checking anything, right? They fired everybody. I think they're relieved not to have to do anything. Like, let's not do anything. I don't think it's good for their business.

I don't think they're even relieved. I think they're emboldened. no checks whatsoever, sends images of razors, nooses, and pills to a 14-year-old who our algorithms have picked up is in the midst of severe suicidal ideation. And the way to keep her for a few extra minutes on Facebook and Instagram is to start sending her images that will help her commit suicide. Me, Nick Clegg, you know what? Doesn't matter. I can do whatever the fuck I want. I can pretend to be concerned. I can talk about we're proud of our progress, but now the government can't even speak to me, can't even talk to me about it. Yeah, I think they must be relieved. I agree.

They don't have to hire. They don't have to do as much. They don't have to. They've been cutting back as it is. They don't love this. They want to just do whatever they want. They do. They do. They do. But let's talk about this in real terms. What do you think this decision does? The problem is a lack of attribution. These people don't meet the people this affects. What happens to teen

depression when the CDC and the Surgeon General and our government agencies can't even have a dialogue with social media firms. Do you think teen depression gets better or worse? Do you think more people end up on a ventilator because of a pandemic when the government can't even speak? And some people will say, well, no, ivermectin would have kept people off a ventilator. And it's like, well, you know what? This crazy thing called science would like to have a word with you. What do you think happens? Everybody has the same voice. What happens is that this is precisely what they want, everybody to have the same noise, even if it's incorrect, right? So then real stuff gets drowned out, real science. And believe me, science makes mistakes all the

time. They cannot tolerate mistakes from science, which is amazing. Let me go back to this dope sick thing. There was a line where the husband of the DEA agent who's been very much pressing on the societal impact of OxyContin. And she, of course, someone has died that she interviewed. She's beside herself that she didn't do enough to stop it, right? And she goes, what I'd like to do is I do enough to stop it, right? And she goes, what I'd like to do is I'd like to put the Sackler, Richard Sackler in a chair, handcuff him and make

him look at all the people he's killed, like and see what happened to them and the families affected, etc, etc. I'd like him to see them all just sit there and look at them and look at them and look at them. And the husband says, he doesn't care. It doesn't matter. He never cared. So do you think he'll keep, because she can't imagine, you know, like why you wouldn't feel sick to your stomach every day of your life. And the husband's like, he doesn't care. And that you have to ultimately conclude they don't care, ultimately. Nor do these right-wing people care who are doing this. The capitalism and Marx, you know, one of the things Marx talked about is that capitalism ultimately collapses on its own weight because it's amazing. It levers up people's self-interest

for prosperity and innovation. But if it loses control of itself, you find ways through money to disassociate and sequest yourself from the damage of just the free market. That at some point, people will make excuses to lower their taxes. At some point, they'll not want to pay for things that benefit the masses because they're able to have their own schools, their own doctors, their own transportation, their own police force. That ultimately over time, it leads to a lack of empathy and money creates so much distance between you and the people that unfettered market forces, the externalities it creates, that it becomes, ultimately it ends up in revolution because the bottom 90% just end up with such terrible lives relative to the top 10% that ultimately they pick up arms.

And this is a form of that. This is saying we want to create more and more disassociation. We want to give wealthy companies and people with $800 an hour PR consultants to just sequester so they never really see the pain, not their immorality, but their amorality is causing. I agree. I don't know what to say. I think this case will go, it will have a terrible effect. If it's a free-for-all and this goes on, we are fucked in ways that we don't know. Coming into the election season where Vladimir Putin, the only thing that gets in the way between him and his own 11-story window is a win in Ukraine. And the only win in Ukraine happens if Trump is reelected. We are

about to see the mother of all election misinformation on platforms where Nick Clegg can just say, oh, I haven't heard from them. Oh, we're really concerned about that and just cash everyone's check regardless of the source. We hope it's overturned and we'll see where it goes. But they are not backing off. They didn't back off on abortion. They didn't back off on sliming Hillary Clinton, who helped them along, but nonetheless, they were right there. They didn't back off on affirmative action. They're absolutely planning this and have been planning it, including stacking judges. And this particular judge, again, is a nincompoop. Okay, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question. You've got, you've got, I can't believe I'm gonna be a mailman.

You've got mail. This question comes via email. I'll read it. Hi, Karen and Scott. I've been in higher education for over a decade and I'm one of the many professionals trying to make a change. However, I'm being given feedback by company's reps

that I can't transition into their jobs as I don't understand what it's like working in the corporate environment. I believe that working at several large flagship public universities, which despite their not-for-profit status, is more corporate than many companies. How do you recommend pivoting from education into the for-profit sector? Love the show and thanks for your perspective. Scott, you're the person who pivoted in a sort of a corporate setting. I've never worked in academia. I try

to leave schools as soon as I can. So why don't you take this one? Yeah, I don't know enough about the situation, but I pivoted into academia after being in the private sector and then kind of I'm a hybrid, right? I have one foot in the academic sector, but I make the majority of my money in the private sector. I would argue that the quality of your research and the quality of your management skill if you're involved in administration or the quality of your teaching, actually carries a lot of weight in the private sector. And I've always said, and this is going to sound arrogant, but if you're at a world-class business school and you're in the top quartile, if you're not making a million dollars a year in other ways, whether it's media, whether it's books, whether

it's advising corporations, then you're not in the top quartile of your early university. There's tremendous opportunity. I mean, all these companies hire a ton of academics. So I would be more focused on, I'd want to know what domain you're in, how relevant is your research. But I don't think there's a, I don't have a silver bullet. Well, what's the answer to that? What's the answer? You've been working in like nonprofit. You've been working in academia.

You're not corporate. You're in the room and someone says that to you. What's the answer? I don't think that's true. I think that if you're a tenured professor, you're probably, you might run the risk of being so removed from market forces that quite frankly, you just aren't that productive. And you're just so out of shape from the demands of the private sector that it's just, quite frankly, you're just, at every university, a third of the people, specifically the tenured professors,

half of those tenured professors are overpaid. They're not productive. But the problem is, the reason you have tenure, is that some of them do such outstanding work and say such controversial things that they do need some level of protection. It's based on Galileo. But if you're a strong leader, a strong teacher, do great well in research, the academic institution is an unbelievable platform for entry or relevance or monetization in the private sector. So, to be blunt, I think this is more a software problem. I don't mean to be harsh, but I think this is more about the individual than an inability to transition from nonprofit to the private sector.

You have to sell yourself. There's a lot of layabouts in the for-profit sector, by the way. Lots of underperforming people. So I think you just address it full on. That's what I would say. You say, this is just not true. This is what I've done. And then launch right into the things you've done that have been proactive and innovative. You know, you can be innovative anywhere. And as long as you sell it, you have a solution. But they're using an excuse. They're grin-fucking you. They're using an excuse for a reason not to hire you when that's not the real reason. A lot of private sector companies love academics.

Google hires a ton of academics. Yeah. Corporations. Yeah, that's true. I mean, in the last—I'm sounding arrogant. In the last week, I've been with three big multinationals because, you know, I like to think my work is relevant. And every professor worth his or her salt at Stern has all sorts of private companies crawling all over them. So, I would say that, look, this person needs a kitchen cabinet. You need to find some people

at your school and outside of the school and say, these are my objectives. I want to make more money or I want to transition in the corporate world and get open and honest dialogue around your personal attributes, your domain, your research, your teaching that's required to do it. Because sometimes in certain sectors and with certain performance, you're just sort of relegated to that job. If you're doing something very esoteric, if you're studying French 17th century literature at, you know, Michigan State University, it's going to be probably, there aren't that many

jobs in the private sector for you. You need a kitchen cabinet to advise you here. Yes, I agree. Okay, good answer. Good answer, Scott. Okay, listen up. We have some listener mailbag episodes coming your way in the next couple of months. We love our mail that we get from fans. So now is the time to get your questions in. If you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions. Yeah, I hope you have a good one from there in Mykonos, Greece. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money.

Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. I think Threads is going to get to 100 million users in five weeks. It took Twitter five years. I think this is... Yeah. When we're talking about round one, my prediction is round one of the cage match between Musk and Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg is kicking the shit out of Musk. Specifically via threads.

This is his thing. He has focus. In the cage match. In the cage match. The actual cage match. He had youth. And quite frankly he's in much better shape. And he also had some skills in Jiu Jitsu.

As it relates to the threads versus Twitter. Twitter is bigger. Twitter has more body mass, similar to Musk. But Zuckerberg has focus and intensity. This is what he does. He's in the business of social. He has an unbelievable ad stack in relationships. He's going to find really great advertisers and the ads will be good. Yeah, the ads on Twitter are so bad now. While Musk is firing engineers, he's, you know, Zuckerberg can take 100 and say, hey, you want to work on threads? It's a small group. I think it's 10 people. He can just add to it.

If this shows hope, he can take it up to 200 in a week. He can. Yep. This is his thing. He's got focus. Can I point out, I'd love your thought on it. He also had a little failure with Metaverse. He wants to show that he can punch. That's a motivator for him. It's like,

I'm not irrelevant. I'm not irrelevant. You know what I mean? We don't need to go. Let's just summarize that 2023 was the year of three truths. One, crypto is a levered Ponzi scheme. Two, the metaverse and headsets don't work. And three, Harry and Megan are awful people. So look above, number two, number two, the metaverse just makes no fucking sense. But when you sit on a cash volcano and you have two-thirds of all social media globally runs through one group of executives, guess what? They're really good at it. And if Zuckerberg tried to build a rocket or tried to build an EV, it might not go that well. And that is what, you know, Musk is. He is in a totally alien environment right now, and he is about to get the shit kicked out. My prediction, again, in five weeks, there's more users on threads than there was in the first five years of Twitter. And round one

of this cage match goes to the Zuck. Let me just add one thing, even though you don't like the social. I do think he was wanting a win, and he really wants one badly, and it motivates this man. This man is motivated by loss, so he wants to win. Secondly, he's got executives around him that have been with him forever. He's not a rude fire of people. Madame Masseri's been there forever, is intensely loyal. All Musk does is look at people as fungible products. You know what I mean? That he moves in and out. There's no loyalty to that man, or very little, maybe at the other companies, but not this one.

Mark has executives around him who know what they're doing, who really want to help Mark. And it's not a small thing. It's not a small thing to have a motivated group of loyal people who want to win. Although, let me make only one observation on your thing. When my brother asked me about, I was on a thread with him and Louie last night, and my brother was like, what is this? Asking all kinds of questions. And he was, my brother was like, I have almost 10,000 followers on Twitter. Do I want to go over there? I'm like, well, do you have a lot on Instagram and this and that, you know? And then my son goes, what the hell is

threads? And my brother goes, what the hell is threads? And my brother goes, apparently it's the new Twitter killer from Instagram. And I was telling Jeff to get on, not my son. And Louie goes, yeah, nah, you boomers can enjoy it. So there's that. There's that. You boomers can enjoy it. The younger generation wasn't on Twitter. The vibe will be different. If I were to speculate how the vibe will be different, and that is, and this is very reductive, but I'm holding to it. Instagram users are prettier than they are smart, and Twitter users are smarter than they are pretty. I think Instagram is more

about wealth porn and more about visuals and influencers. Twitter has some really deep thinkers that bubbled up that are just incredibly incisive and interesting. This won't have the depth, but it'll be a little bit more Bravo Kim Kardashian, which has a big market, but it'll have a different vibe. Anyway, that was a really good prediction, Scott. I can't believe I'm rooting for Mussolini. It's like, who do you hate the least? Yeah, it's true. That's what I said.

I'm like, here we are. Here we are. We're rooting for Mussolini. By the way, he's going to violate your privacy. And this is an antitrust issue. Thank you. Okay. Unfortunately, we can say something because we're not in the government.

We can actually reach out and say. And Mark, get the fucking misinformation on your platform, you cheap bastard. How about that? Is that good? And by the way, Elon's not going to help situation. Anyway, just so you know, in my latest interview, speaking of conspiracy theories and misinformation, on my other show on with Kara Swisher,

I talked to Oliver Stone about his new documentary dealing with nuclear energy. Stone also talks to me about Vladimir Putin, whom he calls the world statesman. So there's that. It's actually a great documentary, but he's a little bit, Stone's a piece of work, let's just say. And the reason I think it's important is because Record for the Hottest

Day on Earth was just broken three times in a row. The record was broken on July 3rd, then on July 4th, and July 5th, tied with the 4th in Science of War in the 2023 will be one of the hottest years ever. Citing climate change and El Nino climate patterns, we have to do something. Give a listen to Oliver Stone and others who are advocating nuclear energy. So that's all I would say. That's my prediction. We're going to have to do something about it. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Read us out and enjoy the rest of your vacation, by the way. Thanks for signing out. Today's show is produced by Taylor Griffin, Travis Larchuk, and Nishat Kerouac.

Ernie Intertott engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mille Severio, and Gaddy McBain. Make sure you're following the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

There's another follower on threads. Fuck you, Elon. That was a little over the top. No, I liked it. I loved it.