Pivot - Supreme Court and Social Media, Cybertruck Troubles, and Guest Matt Mullenweg

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

Kara and Scott discuss the investigation into what Jim Jordan knew about sexual abuse at Ohio State, Jon Stewart and Apple parting ways and a tough road ahead for Tesla's Cybertruck. Then, how the Supreme Court's latest ruling impacts the White House and social media companies. Plus, companies and CEOs continue to struggle with how to address the Israel-Hamas War, as some employees push back. Our Friend of Pivot is Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg who reveals his company's latest acquisition. Follow Matt at @photomatt Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway. So you headed west, Scott? Are you headed west to meet me? I'm heading west. So I'll start off. I'm going to talk about my weekend. Okay. I am interested in what you did. Not really, but go ahead. I had oysters, but go ahead. I am. I'm actually feeling very fond of you lately. You've been very supportive. So anyways, I have my boys. And if my 16-year-old and I were just left at home, they would find us freezing and starving.

Like, we do nothing. We're happy to do nothing. My 13-year-old goes on YouTube and says, 10 best things to do in London. And he'll plan out the entire weekend. And it's wonderful. And I just say, you're in charge. And he said Friday, he said, we're going to go to the world's fourth highest ranked food court in the world. I'm like, okay.

So we go to Harrods Food Court. That's great. And it was amazing. It's amazing. You've never been there? I've never been there. So it was me, my 13-year-old son, and what felt like every first date in London. Oh, wow.

And we had just an amazing meal. And then, of course, we went up to the technology section because he likes to browse around. And then Saturday, me and both boys went to go see Chelsea play Arsenal at Stamford Bridge. And Chelsea, you don't care, but I'm going to voice this on you anyways. All right. Chelsea has literally spent a billion dollars on new players under this new owner, Todd Boley, who strikes me as a really nice man. Anyways, he also owns the Dodgers. And it's been a terrible season. And I'll tell you, the thing that makes for other fans, Premier League football is the other fans. The thing that makes owning a team really difficult is the fans. They are very

harsh on the ownership. Chelsea goes up 2-0 against what is arguably the best team in the prem right now, Arsenal. And then in the last 20 minutes, Arsenal scores two goals and ties it up. And I was physically worried that if Arsenal scored a third, there would be a riot. But it was a big game, did that. And then yesterday, got on a plane, came here, hanging out with my sister and her kids. And then in about an hour and a half, I get on a plane and I'm going to come see you. Oh my God, what a family time. What a family time. Yeah, it's a great weekend. What did you do this weekend? Gosh, I had doctor's appointments, which I'm not going to bore you with. I have all my doctors

still in San Francisco because I love them. I've had them for decades. Should I be looking for a new co-host? I have a list. No, I'm good. That's why you're not going to be looking for a new co-host? I have a list. No, I'm good. That's because that's why you're not going to be looking for a new co-host. I go to the doctors. I'm one of those people who is very assiduous in going to my doctors every year about everything. Not too much, not too little, just right. Just the right amount of doctors. I still have this terrible cold on there, like it'll pass.

That's really pretty much what they say. I'm in very good shape. Don't worry about it. Well, speaking of doctors, my urologist, no joke, is starting a short-form video platform. It's called Dick Talk. Oh, no, you're kidding me. Okay. He doubles as a locksmith.

It's called Cocksmith. Oh, my God. Stop. Do you want more? They're going to complain. Do you know four out of five urologists smell their own urine before they drink it? Oh, my God. All right.

Stop. You must stop. I'm stopping. Because I get complaints and I have to deal with them every time. You don't care about my- I love how you get the complaints. It starts off, how can you affiliate with him? That's really where it starts.

And I'm beginning to come around to their way of thinking. Daddy rings the register. No. Two words. First word, ka, second, ch way of thinking. Daddy rings the register. Two words. First word, ka, second, ching. Ka-ching. And by the way, it's all the people pretending to be woke that like the dirty stuff. Next show, you're no dick-dudes.

Anyway, we're going to talk about important things, like the Supreme Court's latest ruling on the White House and big tech. Companies continue to struggle on how to address the Israel-Hamas war. And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Matt Mullenweg, another person who is a wonderful early person I've known for a long time. He's the CEO of Automatic, who has some news to share with his company. And he's actually an interesting person to talk about the power of big tech and others. He's a really interesting entrepreneur. But first, The Washington Post published its in-depth story on Congressman Jim Jordan over the weekend.

The article looks back on his time as the assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State and what he did and didn't know about the team doctor's sexual abuse scandal. In the interview for the piece, Jordan apparently tensed up during the questioning about the doctor, but continued to deny having any knowledge of abuse at the time. of abuse at the time. The Post interviewed 11 former Ohio State wrestlers from the Jordanian who said it was inconceivable that he didn't know about the doctor's behavior. I don't know what to say. He's going to stick with his story. He's obviously out of running for the speakership. I'm not sure it'll have any impact. He's just going to keep doubling down on that he didn't know, even though he should have known or he's in willful denial. I'm not sure what to say. I'm conflicted here because this type of crime is so heinous that you'd like to think any whiff of this, any complaint, any evidence, any, not even a red flag, but a yellow flag that you'd like to think that good people immediately run this thing down and make sure it's not true. Having said that,

if you go back, I go back to the 80s and I imagine being a coach. I played sports in college and I imagine being a coach. I was so naive to the fact that these crimes even existed. And they seem so alien that if you'd heard discussions of this and you were a junior coach, I can quite frankly empathize with either not knowing what to do or ignoring it or not believing it. And the reality is the vast majority of people that heard these rumors did nothing. Yeah, that's true. But the lesson here, I mean, it's just easy to judge, to go back to, you got to put yourself in the shoes of someone who's in their early 20s and a

coach. But it's like my friend Dov Seidman says, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. And I think if Representative Jordan had said there were rumors, I heard about them, and I am ashamed that I didn't do anything. I want to apologize to all the victims. I feel horrified. I wish I'd been more of a leader here. But quite frankly, it just didn't seem believable at the time, or I didn't know what to do. None of us knew if what was true, what was. I think if he'd said that, I think people would forgive and say, okay, put yourself in those shoes. Would you have been a real leader and figured this shit out? Or would you have made it the easier decision to kind of think that it was locker room talk or whatever?

I remember calling one of the high school teachers in our high school, the gym teachers, his name was Chester. So we naturally called him Chester the Molester. Does that mean other teachers should have run it down because he had a nickname? So I think this stuff is really hard. But I'm gonna take the opposite.

But let me just finish. Let me just finish. His guilt here is by lying about it. He's lied about it. He has said where he screwed up here is he has consistently said, heard nothing of the kind of about it. And that is not true. There are a ton of people have come forward and said he was in the room when people are talking about this. talking about this. So I'm a bit conflicted here. And I do think there are a lot of people,

because quite frankly, Representative Jordan sounds like a great asshole, who want to see this guy be taken down. What are your thoughts? All right. Here's the deal. He's an intense... One of the things that was interesting in this article was how intense he was as a wrestler, how intense he was as a person, how directed... He was a real competitor, one of those real competitors, and you've met those types in sports, and I'm sure you have. I think nothing got in the way of his ambition. And so that's what made him deaf, was his own ambition. He wasn't going to hear it, and he wasn't going to say anything about it. And to this day, I think he believes it. He believes he didn't hear it, but he heard it. That was the evidence here is that he heard it. He knew it. And I know there's rumors. There was rumors in high school

about various and sundry people and nothing was done. You know what I mean? Every school has that story of something like the rumor of the teacher that sleeps with the student, et cetera, et cetera. with a student, et cetera, et cetera. I, as a 22-year-old, quit a job over something like this. And I'm sorry. It wasn't that hard. It really wasn't that hard. It was hard at the time. I was young. I wasn't sexually harassed. I witnessed it. I heard about it. I tried to do something about it. A friend of mine was sexually harassed. and the guy settled with someone else we were testifying for. And to say we didn't know was impossible. It just, everybody knew. The other people in the office who were all Republicans, this was John McLaughlin, who ran the McLaughlin group, they knew, and they did nothing.

And to this day, and I quit. I testified against him. The thing was settled, and I quit the job. I changed my life. And I'm not putting myself out as a hero at all. And I think I was unusual to act. So I get people who didn't act, but someone who came up to me later, met recently, relatively recently, who knew about it and told me I must be lying. They said that to me when I said we have to do something about this. Came up to me, tried to apologize and said, I'm really sorry I did that. I'm really sorry. I did know. I didn't do anything. I was concerned. I was young. Same thing. Wasn't

that young. I was older actually than me by a lot. I was young. I didn't want to lose a job, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they said, can you forgive me? This was years later after denying it, being part of me having to quit. And I looked at this person and I said, no, I don't forgive you. I don't forgive you at all. And I never want to see you again. I'm sorry. This was just heinous to have done this. And this guy, what happened here was you again. I'm sorry. This was just heinous to have done this. And this guy, what happened here was much worse, I would say. Yeah, but I think you just, you demonstrated a certain moral code, courage and leadership at 22 that most of us don't have at 22.

Most of us are in our first job and don't, we don't even understand. I mean, you'd like to think you have a moral sense of self and a code and that type of leadership that you express and demonstrate. But the reality is the majority of us don't. The majority of us don't have that kind of confidence and code and perspective at the age of 20, whatever. I guess. But let me just say the person who knew, they all knew. They all knew. They've. But let me just say the person who knew, they all knew. They all knew. They've said it to me years later.

And all of them are still failing by not saying something. You know what I mean? Like, so, you know, when this person came up to me, I was like, say it publicly. Call, write everybody. They didn't want to do that, right? It's water under the bridge. That was one of the phrases. And that's when I knew, I was like, you will not be forgiven.

There's no water under the bridge for this, for this woman. It changed this woman's life who got sexually harassed. I know that. It comes back to the same thing. And that is, and I don't care if it's the people who work at Altria or Philip Moore, so the people who work at Facebook, when it's raining money, your vision gets blurred. And you decide to, when you're paid not to see something, it's amazing how your vision can get blurred. And the reality is the reason why John McLaughlin got away with this was everyone around

was making money from him. And I mean, this happened at News Corp. There were abuses there that just shouldn't have gone on so long. And when there's clear signs, let me take it a big time. When there's clear signs that you're radicalizing young men, when there's clear signs that young girls are having greater degrees of suicidal ideation because of your algorithms, but you're making so much money, it's just easy to come up with reasons for why to ignore it. I guess. And it takes, it takes, so I guess what I'm saying is, I don't find- I know why he did it. I was around people who did things like that.

I saw it with other people. That's not what I'm saying. Now, today, he should say something. And he can't because he's doubled down. Oh, there's no reason not to. There's no reason not to acknowledge it now. And this is what's good about, I think there's a lot of, you could argue there's a lot of negatives around cancel culture, whatever you want to say. But there were too many people in vulnerable groups getting abused for too long.

Yeah. resonated with me. And that is when you're a white heterosexual male, you have to take a minute and take a breath and realize that you will never have the same level of empathy or understanding of this because, and you said this once and it's always stuck with me, people who have never been victims have a difficult time understanding what it's like to be a victim. Because I don't, quite frankly, I'm not worried about crime because I've never been a victim of crime because no one fucks with me. And then if I'm out with my sister walking around the street, I can see she's very cognizant of what's going on around her because she is much smaller than me. Yeah. And I do think that men in the workplace and outside of the workplace

who are just, quite frankly, physically bigger need to take a breath and go, your world is different. You have a different threat assessment. Yeah, it's true. I think in this case, this guy's ambition was just so high he didn't see anything else.

And that was- Are we talking about Representative Jordan? Yeah, I think you could see his intensity. But what do you think his ambition was? He high, he didn't see anything else. And that was- Are we talking about Representative Jordan? Yeah, I think you could see his intensity. But what do you think his ambition was? He was a junior wrestling coach. No, no, no, no, no. But he was a very competitive athlete. He was always on the focus on the next thing.

And I think he was always planning and plotting and stuff. Anyway, speaking of someone who did take a stand, Jon Stewart and Apple are parting ways with the cancellation of Apple TV Plus show, The with Jon Stewart just days before the third season was due to start taping. It's really not clear what happened, but no one said anything publicly. I've asked Jon for an interview. upcoming guests and potential show topics tied to China and AI. Not surprised. Any talks I've had with Hollywood that have to do with anything I'm making and Apple, buying, selling to Apple is always, they're like wary about me and topics. What topics would you discuss? Again, it's Apple's network. They can do whatever they want. But I talked to Stuart on Sway in 2022 and asked him about his decision to do the show with Apple

specifically. Let's listen to what he said. We wanted to try and create kind of a universe of information where we were boosting some of these voices and figuring things out. It's entrepreneurial to some extent, but also within that, what Apple gets out of it versus, like, I'm not sure what they want out of a content company. I really don't. I don't know, you know, and in some ways we might be antithetical to their business model. Honestly, I think Apple wants to sell iPhones. I think Amazon wants to sell toilet paper. Right.

But that's what I mean, that it may not be in their interest to have a provocateur. But I do know they've been incredibly supportive and have given us the resources to do it. Well, until they didn't, right? So I don't know exactly what's happened here. So I'd be wary to say I'd like to talk to the principals, but that was the word in Hollywood for sure. I was sort of waiting for him to get to China or things that they're uncomfortable with. percent of their products are produced in China. And China makes no bones about saying, your content and your views, we don't give a shit about the First Amendment. We have one party here.

And if this party, this party can't be, it can't swing back to the second party. If we're voted out of office, that's called revolution. And we end up hanging from telephone poles. So we take this stuff very seriously. We will oppress and put intimidation, economic intimidation on people who say things that are not in our interests. And Apple is in the business of producing devices, 95% of which or 90% of which are produced and manufactured in China. So they look at this and they go, we get it. We understand. I imagine they hated making this decision, but said, we got to be honest, boss, it sucks to be a grown up. Have you noticed everyone always says, everyone tries to excuse Elon Musk's behavior to say he's got terrible impulse control. Have I noticed?

Yeah, I've noticed. He's got terrible impulse control. But when it comes to China, he's very measured and thoughtful. He's like, this is a difficult situation. And he stopped talking because his second biggest market is China. Yes, he's capable of control. So he's measured and has discretion when it involves his pocketbook. But when he knows

he'll be protected by the First Amendment and red check trolls on his platform, he's very strident and has problems with impulse control. But the interesting thing about Jon Stewart, first off, Jon Stewart is a gift to America and the West. He really is. I really like him. He's just so insightful and courageous. And he softens the beach to change your mind with humor, which is the ultimate shelling of the beach to soften it such that you're open to changing your view. He can say things that are offensive to some people or that you might not agree with, but he gets away with it because of his art.

And the reality is he could continue to do this show and have as much impact by just putting it on YouTube. I think he got a lot of money here and not a lot of, you know, I think effort is what it will take. And I think he's kind of got a sweet life. I don't know. Apple, I can't, I bet Apple said, you're a flagship's kind of got a sweet life. I don't know. Apple, I can't imagine. I bet Apple said, you're a flagship.

We have more money than God. Here's $10 million to host a roundtable once a week. Yeah, I think more than that. I think he got a lot of money. Yeah, I'm sure. And there's nothing wrong with that. He deserves to have a good life and have a lot of money. But if he's looking to continue to be a strong voice.

He should. His interviews have gotten really good, if you know, on this show. I thought it was, I called him possibly irrelevant at the time because it was sort of not hitting all cylinders. And then it suddenly did. Some of those interviews he did were really powerful on big controversial topics. I was surprised Apple hadn't sort of been nervous before, but he couldn't get near China. You know, he was doing stuff around book ban, whatever, a whole bunch of stuff. Well, just some numbers. His first shows were viewed by 40,000 households. John Oliver's

viewed by 850,000 households. The difference, though, is that John got traction. I bet quite a few of his clips got millions of views. That view he did of that representative or that elected official on gun control, that clip, everybody saw that. I mean, almost everybody. Yeah, he did that several times on several topics. YouTube really is his distribution channel. So quite frankly, other than probably the 10 million bucks that Apple was paying him a year or more, in terms of his impact and his ability to reach people and influence them if he wants. I mean, that's not an expensive show to produce. No, I know. It'd be interesting. I do want him to come back and talk. I think he's, you know,

he's super active around 9-11. He's about veterans and burn pits. First responders. He's done so much good work. I just. I want to find out what happened here. And I suspect it's a little more complex. Apple is much happier with shows like Ted Lasso. The Morning Show. Yeah. Well, Ted, how can you not be happy with Ted Lasso? The Morning Show does hit some controversial topics. They're right about to go into abortion right now in the current season. And it's a little more edgy than you think, actually. I was surprised. There's an Elon Musk character on the show. It's played by

Jon Hamm, of all people. Really? I couldn't figure out if that was Bezos or... No, it's Musk. It's the same Musk. It's the same Musk. I can't even focus on what he's saying. Jon Hamm is so dreamy. He's so handsome. He's so dreamy. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, he's good. I think he's reallyy. He's so handsome. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, he's good. I think he's really good. We'll see where it goes.

Anyway, Jon, come and talk. I'd love to talk to you some more. Also, it's tough times for Tesla and the third quarter earnings, down 37% from last year. Some troubling news, speaking of Elon, for the upcoming Cybertruck. On an earnings call with investors last week, Elon Musk seemed to be tempering expectations for the new vehicle. We dug our own grave with Cybertruck. Elon reportedly said on the earnings call, it was a very erratic earnings call, highlighting production challenges and getting to cash flow positivity. Although we noted the demand was off the charts. Tesla has announced a Cybertruck delivery event for November 30th. Maybe he's downplaying expectations.

Who knows with this guy? The stock is down pretty significantly. And he spent the weekend speaking of dick jokes. He's like you, Dickipedia, and wondering why Wikipedia costs so much. Just being an idiot. Could Cybertruck... I think it's inappropriate when he says it.

When I say it, it's funny. I know. I have such a double standard. I don't know. Where is this? There's, you know, the Rivian is out. I see lots of them. The Ford 150 Lightning is getting its problems in order. There's lots of choices here. And that thing is a choice. It's a choice to pick that car, for sure. Look, I just, and I, you know, and people remind me of this on Twitter, and I'm not on, but I'm sure they still remind me 10,000 times a day. I think valuation and

bottoms of valuation on companies ultimately rears its head in terms of stock price. And Ford trades at seven times, in terms of enterprise value to EBITDA, and that is the stock price minus the debt, that valuation relative as a multiple of your profits, EBITDA is sort of a form of profits. At Ford, it's seven times. At GM, it's five times. At BMW, get this, it's four times. Tesla's multiple of enterprise value to EBITDA

is 43 times. Yeah. And whenever I've had discussions with people, they want to immediately pivot to, oh no no, it's not a car company. It's a software company. Oh, no, it's an energy company. Because stockholders don't want to get into a discussion around the fact that this is metal being wrapped around four tires and a more innovative engine, the electric engine. This company deserves to be profitable.

What they've done is inspiring. And I just think you're going to see the valuation come way down. And they are hitting the same issues of scale that any manufacturing or automobile company faces, in that their margins are contracting. There's more competition. And it's hard to scale. You still have – it's not like a digital product where the marginal cost of production is near zero. You know, you have to make these things.

These are difficult, complex products. Anyways, but it's just in the Cybertruck, I think it'll be interesting. I have a bias. Yeah, did you put your name on the list or not? What do you think of as a car? It looks really creepy looking, but whatever. I think it looks like Battlestar Galacta meets Homer Simpson.

I think it looks strange. I got on the list for a Rivian because I thought it looked pretty cool. But the Cybertruck to me just looks something out of a 1980s sci-fi movie. I don't get it. Yeah, I don't know.

I think there's probably a limited audience, but who knows? I just don't see a million people driving these things. It's a choice. Like, you know what I mean? It's like, okay, I'm going to take that looking car.

And I'll tell you something weird. I think we've seen it too much. You think it's overexposed. I just have seen it. It's been around forever. Where's the freaking truck? Like, I've seen it, him throw things at it. I've seen him show it off.

I've seen him drive it around town. But I'm like, everyone else has got their truck out. Let's go, dude. There's still, though, this unique, and it's fairly new, peanut butter and chocolate to drive valuation of someone who's an iconic figure, who's a great storyteller slash visionary, and then using social media to massively increase your stock price, then getting access to cheaper capital, investing that cheaper capital, and then pulling away from the competition. One in three companies 20 years ago that went public were not profitable. Now two in three are not profitable. So the narrative is now important than the numbers. And to his credit, his narrative and his leveraging of social media, it's just unparalleled as evidenced by the fact that just, I think, 30 or 60 days ago, they put out this big press release.

We're announcing the Dojo supercomputer, leveraging AI, which helps, gives us an advantage around modeling and creating scenarios around autonomous driving. The market goes, oh, wow, Elon Musk, AI, plus his ability to promote this on his social media channels. The core competence of CEOs now in the growth economy, it's storytelling. It's the ability to leverage these on his social media channels. The core competence of CEOs now in

the growth economy, it's storytelling. It's the ability to leverage these new mediums. It's so not there there. We'll see if people buy this truck. I just think- I'm not saying it's warranted. I'm not saying it'll last, but- There's got to be actual sales here. No one gives a shit what Mary Barra says. Right, but they've got to be- Have her announce a supercomputer. I get it, but-

No one cares. He's got to sell the cars and he's got to make them profitable. You know what I mean? That's it. I don't think his narrative is as flexible as it was, but we'll see. Yeah, I'll tell you what he should do. He should buy Jon Hamm and have Jon Hamm play him. That's what he should do. And then he'll be fine. I'm watching Mad Men with my 16 year old and all I keep doing is pausing it and going, just so you know, at work, that is not appropriate behavior. You're not supposed to do that. This is a show about what you're not supposed to do as a boss. Anyway, let's get to our first big story.

The Supreme Court is temporarily allowing the Biden administration to continue efforts to get social media companies to remove misleading posts. Late last week, the Supreme Court announced it was pausing an appeals court ruling that limited the government's ability to communicate with these companies. The court has agreed to hear the case this term, in addition to several other social media First Amendment cases already on the docket. It's a win for the Biden administration, but I don't know in combating misinformation, at least for now. The original lawsuit claims that government officials censored protected speech by urging tech companies to modify posts

involving COVID and the election. The case has already seen lots of back and forths with various appeals and injunction. Missouri's Attorney General, one of the parties who brought the suit called the government's actions the worst First Amendment violation in our nation's history. I don't know. It's interesting. What's the best argument for the government to make? Well, the best argument is that we have First Amendment rights. And if we pass a law that says that social media firms, I mean, this is so ironic because Congress passed a law that said that they're not subject to the same scrutiny of the content they put out as every other media company called T30. But I would imagine the defense for the White House or the legal claim of the White House is if we pass a law saying you can't say

this stuff, then yeah, that's a violation of the First Amendment, which is governmental passing a law that limits free speech. But I think that they have some rights to free speech and can say to these companies, when you are saying these things and they get algorithmically elevated and both of us, including the executives of your firm, acknowledge that there's no evidence that mRNA vaccines alter your DNA, can we work together to stop the spread of this obviously false information that is creating greater levels of death, disease, and disability. When there is a deep fake of Nancy Speaker Pelosi that makes her appear inebriated, can we all agree that this is fake, this is bad for voters, this is bad for America, and we'd appreciate, we'd like to know what you're doing to stop this. Isn't that their First Amendment right? It is not, Scott. You are a terrible lawyer. No, it's the government. They're

speaking as the government, not as themselves. The government's not supposed to do. It looks like it's quashing free speech. I think that's their argument. I think where the argument is- So even if it's not a law, you're violating First Amendment when you're the White House. I think the Supreme Court is exactly who has to weigh in here. But, you know, the conservatives are also attacking, besides trying to silence academics, as we've talked about before, the agency CISA, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. They're after, I interviewed Jen Easterly, who's running it. This is the group that's, you know, trying to protect elections. The guy that Trump

fired for saying the election wasn't stolen. If you remember that, they're trying to attack it, and it's funding the hard right Republicans. They think they're gone too far and are looking for ways to rein it in. This is very typical Rand Paul. But this is what he says. CISA has blatantly violated the First Amendment and colluded with big tech to censor the speech of ordinary Americans. You know, they're going to do some damage here. Can I just ask you a question? And I'm generally asking for illumination not to make a statement. Everybody talks about the power of the presidency.

The most powerful thing about the presidency is the bully pulpit. And that is his, and it's always been him, it has been always his to date, their ability to say something that endorses, conjoles, shames, sets a vision, you know, tries to influence people and organizations' behavior. So is the basic argument here that the bully pulpit is fine, but if you're not doing it in public, you're doing it directly to a company, it's no longer the bully pulpit. It's a violation of First Amendment? Yeah. Yes, it could be. If it's the government speaking, I don't know. I think that's why it's got to go to the Supreme Court. Other cases on the court dockets involve social media and First Amendment. They may call for sweeping changes. Other cases involve whether public officials can block people on social media and whether state laws can regulate how social media companies moderate content. We do have an inkling of how some of the justices might approach the White House case based on this latest ruling. But Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch publicly dissented on the court's decision with Alito calling out government censorship of private

speech. They are on this case. They're not giving up. It has the same vibe as when they went after abortion and everything else. But I think it's- But aren't you the same group of people constantly bitching and moaning that their speech is being censored? Yes, but I think it's a coordinated effort by a lot of these groups to hit academics, to hit government, to hit anybody who questions anything, because they do not want a government agency declaring an election free and clear, even though that's the job of the government and things like that.

We have electoral boards. Isn't that what they're supposed to do? I know, but CISA has done invaluable work, and Trump fired him anyway, and they still do invaluable work. But all these Republicans are bowing out of their help around election security to their discredit. And now they're sort of crawling back a little bit. But, you know, they have to make these things about free speech. We'll see. It's an important case at the moment. It is. All of these are. And our Supreme Court should be the one to weigh in. And I'm scared that they're going to

weigh in in the wrong way, but we'll see. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, CEOs and companies feel the pressure to weigh in on the Israel-Hamas war. We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Automatic CEO Matt Mullenweg, who has some news to share about his company. 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. Indecision, overthinking, second-guessing every choice you make. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Beige on beige on beige. 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 a continuing debate over whether companies should speak out about the Israel-Hamas war. We're seeing the consequences of doing so with a number of companies, CEOs, and entertainers this week. Let's start with an update to Web Summit story we discussed last week. CEO Paddy Cosgrave announced over the weekend he's stepping down. This is after the backlash of his comments accusing Israel of committing war crimes. Scott, did the news of his resignation change your decision to pull out of Web Summit? Are you going now or what? I was called by a couple of media outlets and I said, I'm not, I have no comment. My actions speak for themselves. And they said,

well, off the record, are you going? I'm like, absolutely not. And they said, why? And I'm like, because this is meaningless. And it's, I think it's an interesting lesson in corporate governments that the media has gone for this head fake of, oh, he's stepping down. Let me be clear. When you own 82% of a small company, stepping down a CEO is absolutely meaningless. All it means is he can go next week, he can get 82% of the profits, he's still in charge, he's still in control of the company. His card will say founder or chairman and not CEO. An analog would be, remember all the shit that Chamath Palapatthai and the owner of CrossFit, the CEO, got a lot of grief for making what people perceived as insensitive comments.

Yeah, yeah. They didn't ask Chamath to change his title from owner to shareholder. They said, you need to sell your stake. I think the NBA said, you gotta sell your stake. They didn't tell the CEO of CrossFit, change your title to chairman and all is forgiven. They made him sell his stake.

And I just find it when you're, so I've managed small companies about the same size. I would immediately, as soon as someone was great and I was worried about them leaving, who was a senior person, I'd say, you be CEO because titles matter to people. Yeah. all decisions. And be clear, Patty Cosgrave, and you may decide that's enough, the public embarrassment, you might decide to forgive him, fine. But be clear, nothing has changed here. Yeah, he's still in charge. He's still in charge. He will still get 82% of the profits. He will still make all the decisions. My bet is that whoever was actually doing all the work, they just give him or her the CEO title now. But I just find it hilarious that the media

is acting as if this is some sort of change in anything. It's not. It's laughable. I agree. It's laughable. It's just when you own 82% of the company, if Bob Iger stepped down as CEO, he loses his compensation. He loses his authority. He's out. That's a big deal. When you're the 82% owner of a private company, the only title that matters is largest shareholder. You can call yourself general consulate of Australia. It doesn't mean a damn thing. No one doubts who's in charge at News Corp. The guy who controls all the voting shares.

Yeah, it's the Rupert Murdoch test. Is he gone? No, he's not gone after all the shit. The Dominion, the sexual harassment lawsuits. Oh my God, you're right. You're 100% right. It's risible. It's risible. Look up that word. It's a good word. Laughable is what it means. McDonald's is finding itself also in a difficult situation with franchises taking sides in the war. Earliest month, McDonald's franchise in Israel said it would provide free meals to Israeli soldiers. Some McDonald's franchises in the Middle East have made statements distancing themselves

from the Israeli franchise. Others made donations to Gaza in solidarity with Palestinians. McDonald's Corporation has said the company's top priority is ensuring the safety of its people and teams on the ground. Employees at Google, Meta, and Amazon are pushing management to speak out against the war, according to a report in The Washington Post. Thereees at Google, Meta, and Amazon are pushing management to speak out against the

war, according to a report in The Washington Post. There was just today, there was a story about a woman at CAA who had a post criticizing Israel. She has big clients. Her name's Mahat Dahil. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that right. Whose clients include Tom Cruise, Natalie Portman, Reese Witherspoon, Anne Hathaway. She came under scrutiny, this according to The Hollywood Reporter, for an Instagram post that had been highly critical of Israel and referenced genocide. The post was later deleted and the agent apologized for the remarks, but she's resigning from her leadership role in a division. Around 20% of the largest companies in the S&P have issued formal statements on the Israel-Hamas war as of last week, according to Bloomberg. Nearly all of those 100 companies released public statements on Russia-Ukraine.

So they're very wary here. We'll get to Dave Chappelle in a second, but first talk about companies very briefly. Like, it's situational. And the reason why you have a kitchen cabinet and you have a board of directors and you have thoughtful people hopefully you surround yourself with is one situation is not like the other. I don't think a small company hosting a web event in Lisbon has any obligation or, quite frankly, any rationale to weigh in here, especially when your comments are going to be seen in terms of the timing as being an apologist for terrorism. And on a shareholder basis, my advice to companies on political issues from when I'm on the board is, unless we have operations directly impacted by this, unless we have people on the ground being impacted by this, unless it's a no-brainer, I think when Russia invades Ukraine and starts bombing maternity wards, I think that's a no-brainer. I think when Russia invades Ukraine and starts bombing maternity wards, I think that's a no-brainer. But the problem is when you take a political stand as the CEO,

you're implicitly or explicitly putting pressure on your employees to agree with you. And if they don't agree with you, to be silenced. So my advice as someone on the board who's thinking on a risk-adjusted basis about shareholders, if you're McDonald's, I'm not sure you can avoid not making a statement about this because you have a big business in Israel. I feel for them. I don't want to pretend that I understand exactly what they should do. My advice to them would be, to the extent you can, stay out of this shit. You know who did a great job, I have to say? Who's that?

Ziggy Marley said, free Gaza from Hamas. I was like, that's a very clear statement. And he condemned anti-Semitism and the attacks. You know, Biden's coming under increasing pressure from Arab Americans, too, as Israel prepares to invade. So this has lots of chapters, you know, for these companies. And then you have another person who's, of course, when I saw it, I was like, of course, he had to say something. Comedian Dave Chappelle had a show in Boston where he condemned Hamas, but also reportedly criticized what he called the war

crimes in Gaza. This led to both tears and walkouts. You know, I just, I don't think there's a particularly good answer in this situation, unfortunately. Especially as things unfold. If all of a sudden Israel starts to get really aggressive in this, what is a information war. And they have been aggressive, starts to get aggressive. I see I'm correcting myself because I'm like, I'm not thinking it through. Yeah. I want to channel my Jeffrey Sonnenfeld here or my Sam Harris. And that is when a comedian or anyone else says this, but also this, I just don't think the moral equivalence exists here.

They accuse Israel of war crimes. And here's the thing. That is a damaging accusation because in Israel, there are war crimes. And here's the thing, that is a damaging accusation because in Israel, there are war crimes. If you take hostages, that is a war crime. If you kill non-combatants, that is a war crime. If you take video of you killing a son and then you send the video to all of the son's contacts on his phone, including his parents, that is a war crime. If you murder and mutilate children in front of their parents, in front of their parents, and then kill the parents, they force them to witness this

before you murder them, that is a war crime. Hamas, there is no such thing as a war crime. Hamas, there is no such thing as a war crime. That is their approach to combat. And so when people say Israel is guilty of war crimes, they are acknowledging that Israel, and assuming that damages them and that's an insult, they're acknowledging that Israel lives in a superior society than jihadist fundamentalists who don't understand their approach to combat is war crime. And so to pretend that these two have any sort of moral equivalence is quite frankly is outrageous and ignorant. Well, we'll see where it goes. We've been talking a lot about misinformation on social media with the war. I assembled a panel this week to talk about it. And I want to play a clip from this BBC verified journalist, because you have to remember, there are people out there trying very hard to get it right, to get people good information, even if good information makes it really hard to decide what to say. Let's listen. What we want to know, first of all,

you know, when was this piece of video filmed? Where does it come from? Who's's the original source can we actually source the video to the person who filmed it the platform that where it was first shared because obviously you put something on telegram or on whatsapp then it travels across platforms so just because you see it on tiktok or on instagram doesn't doesn't mean that's where it came from you have to source it you have to find out who filmed this video this piece of footage who first posted it online and then you have to contact them and talk to them because they probably have more context then the the second thing is, is this actually the entire footage? Is there a longer version? Have other people been at the scene where this video was filmed? Meaning trying to manipulate it to look... Well, exactly. Has it been edited?

I appreciate journalists trying to do that. I still think even correcting the misinformation I appreciate journalists trying to do that. I still think even correcting the misinformation is still, you then get, what do you think, right? Even if you know exactly what's right. As you were noting, there's lots of reports about what happened on the attack on the Israeli citizens. A majority of viral misinformation is about the Hamas war on X is being pushed by verified users, by the way, according to a recent study. When you say verified, you mean people with a troll check, a blue check?

Yeah, troll check. Researchers have analyzed 250 most engaged posts in the first week of the war and found that verified accounts were responsible for 75% of that. But let's just be clear. Verified account means you've paid $9 in some cases to spread misinformation or elevate your content to have some veracity, which you have not earned on your own. Yeah, I agree. I agree. So it's a big information mess, which I think that's the whole point. Let me just ask you lastly, to bring in our guests in a minute. You pause, don't you, before you say things, or maybe you don't, because you have to be, it's not for fear. You don't want to upset. I's, you don't want to upset. I pause because I don't want to upset people.

I'm like, I got to be thoughtful here rather than knee jerk, right? Like say something off that you say so much off the top of your head in life. I think that's the problem I have more than anything. I don't know. You don't want to, look, I'm, again, I'm conflicted here. I think if you have economic security and people who love you unconditionally, you have a moral obligation to speak your mind

and speak the truth. Because I do find that over the last 10 or 20 years in academia and in media, there's a certain narrative that has emerged. It's like, this is the narrative you're supposed to adopt. And if you veer outside of that narrative, you risk your economic livelihood or being shamed. And as a result, when we all start barking up the same tree, we get stupid. So I do think you have an obligation to speak your mind. I think on issues like this, to take a breath and try and understand both sides. Fareed Zakaria, similar to what you said about Ziggy Marley. When I interviewed Fareed Zakaria, he kind of summed it up perfectly in one very simple statement. He said, I have a lot of empathy and sympathy for the people of Gaza. I have no empathy or less empathy and sympathy for Hamas.

That, to me, sort of summarized it. You know, it's like, you know, I get it. That makes sense. And to just be able to articulate and to be able to, you know, see, if you will, the nuance of the situation here. But I don't buy this. The fact that NYU students, the fact that young people have conflated the struggles of people in Gaza with civil rights, I think they are incorrect. but I think this is a situation here where there is a wrong and a right. And let me be clear, there are different forms of evil. There are different forms of wrong. I have said that far-right policies in Israel have done them no favor. You could argue that they're inhuman.

I think that Netanyahu is a criminal, but you have to call out, you have to, there are shades of moral ambiguity, but there is a right and a wrong here. And I try to be, you don't want to diminish people. You don't want to make people feel bad. But what I see here is just a disturbing virus that is airborne that you can't see that is rooted in anti-Semitism. And I'm not trying to sound holier than thou here. On a risk-adjusted basis, it's not a smart idea. If I had a big company and I was the CEO, I don't think I would say these things publicly

because I would be assuming that everybody feels the same way as I do, and I would be taking unnecessary risks with other people's economic livelihood. But I'm a 58-year-old that has a small company who has been blessed by America, who has been blessed by people who have risked life and limb to push back on anti-Semitism. So we have an obligation to like, in my view, we have an obligation to speak up. Yeah, I think that's well said. Well said. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Matt Mullenweg is the CEO of Automatic and co-founder of WordPress.

In addition to WordPress, the Automatic portfolio includes Tumblr, Longreads, Pocket Casts, and more. Matt, it's good to see you. How are you doing? Likewise. This is a little earlier than I'm used to getting up, but for you all, happy to. Yeah, I'm in San Francisco, so it's early for me too. For people that don't know, we started All Things Need Recode on WordPress. And I know Matt very well. He was a tremendous partner. And it was early. We were an early partner of yours. There were a lot of different platforms. And we just thought you had the highest quality platform, and you were always an excellent partner trying to figure out how to expand our little blog experiment we did. And Scott, I think you use WordPress as well, No Mercy, No Malice.

Oh, dude, you owe me lunch and drinks. We have been using WordPress across everything. You are, I mean, you've done what few people have done, and that is you've taken on the big guys, and you're winning. Well, that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about. So this is our first Pivot exclusive. Talk about this acquisition of what you're buying and why, because it's in that vein of what Scott absolutely just said. Yeah, and it's a new area for us. So Automatic, typically, which is the holding company behind WordPress.com, WordPress Enterprise, VIP, etc., has worked in publishing for a while.

We moved into commerce in 2016 with WooCommerce, which is like open source Shopify. And now we're going into messaging, which is a much more competitive area in a lot of ways. So we're doing this with an acquisition. It's a company called Texts.com. And it is a desktop app, which has sort of reverse engineered all the protocols for all the different messaging apps. So it brings in iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, LinkedIn DM, Instagram DM, Messenger, all these different things into one interface, one program as a power user tool, kind of like a superhuman for messaging. And yeah, we are

announcing it on this pod. So thank you so much. So why did you buy this? From your perspective, why does that help you? You've talked in the past about making automatic, the quote, Berkshire Hathaway of the internet. What do you mean by that? And what's the importance of doing this and sort of providing a smaller company rather than the bigs, I assume? Some of it was born out of personal frustration. So I don't know if you have like these multiple messenger gaps. It's hard to track who you messaged on which one and everything like that. I found myself sort of getting very behind.

And so I went out in the market and actually automatically ended up making some investments in this space over the last few years, including Element, which is a maestros company, Beeper, which is another app which has some similar things but differently. And came across text and was really just taken with the product. I also, I'd say finally that I really enjoy working in areas that I feel like we can spend the rest of our lives on. And that are important to kind of human rights for freedom. Because as you know, everything we do is very user-centric and open source. So publishing, commerce, messaging, between those three,

you cover a lot of the human condition and they're complimentary. Because of course, when you publish, you want a distribution for it. And so being able to work with all the different networks seems great. So the final reason is the regulatory framework. So products like this, I think, have a big risk of being shut down or blocked by the different networks. The bigger ones, meaning the bigger ones have outsized control over people, correct?

Yeah, they could do subtle things. I just sort of like block your clients or make it so your messages don't send. And I think right now with the regulatory frameworks, the antitrust frameworks, particularly the UK CMA, what's going on with the EU regulation, it would be a bad look for the Apple, Google meta to block this because it's completely user-centric and it maintains 100% encryption. So it runs 100% client-side. So it's just as secure as their desktop apps. Right. But you're fighting against bigger players, right? That can do what they want. I would say we're fighting per se in that they might not love this, but it's supporting all the networks. So it's not like an alternative network.

So if anything, it'll make it maybe easier for people to stay connected or keep up with their WhatsApps or their LinkedIn DMs. Particularly, I think channels you might not check as much or they don't have a great interface, like a LinkedIn DM, which kind of gets a bad rep, but actually it can be really, really interesting. And sometimes I'll have like a gem in there and I just miss it because I don't log into LinkedIn very much. Whenever I'm in a VC meeting and someone's pitching the company, if it looks like it's directly competing against anyone in big tech, the VC is like, we're out. You can't compete against these guys. And you are. You're competing against players of much deeper pockets of capital who can bundle this with software that's everywhere. Like, when you're in a strategy meeting thinking, okay, every day we compete against Microsoft, every day we compete against Adobe, what is it that you think entrepreneurs and companies like yours can bring to compete against the big players and actually not only survive but thrive? First is speed, and that's probably the most important.

So big companies with rare exceptions typically have trouble moving as fast. Second is focus. So focus, I would say, you know, messaging is very, very important, but look how much trouble like Google's had getting it right with like infinite money, infinite resources. I think some of related to focus is also the incentives of the managers or the people kind of running different divisions in these companies. And then finally, like how can you use their weights or their size or their business model against them? So for example, with Tumblr, which is one of our products, all the other social networks are really dependent on advertising.

So what we tried to do in the beginning after we bought it was create like a non-advertising upgrade. So with messaging, all the big networks are really incentivized to get you to use their thing and they don't want you using anyone else. So they do various things to try to lock you in. Most notoriously, I would say iMessage, which of course is kind of Mac and iOS only, and they don't allow interop. In fact, in the US, there's a whole thing where teenagers get excluded from

chat groups because they don't want to be the green bubble in the group. But we can say, hey, let's support all of this, which I would say is actually the far more user and customer-centric version because as users, we use all these things. And so the companies want to pretend you don't, but we all do. So that's also something we've taken a big approach for. So we just try to integrate with everything. Open source also makes that easy because people can write plugins for anything. So I think if you keep those three things in mind, you can compete with the big guys and in fact thrive. Because they're all trying to keep people in there. They used to call it a walled garden, essentially, trying to keep people using their products

over. They're not trying to advantage the consumer. They're trying to advantage themselves. I'm curious, how are people using Tumblr? Why do you think they're still using it? And what are they using it for? For better or worse, it has a little bit of a niche thing going for it, which is it's primarily kids under 25, which I actually wouldn't have expected before we bought it. And they like a few things there.

One, it can be anonymous by default. So especially as you're growing up, you can kind of try on different identities. It's not attached to your name forever and ever. you can kind of try on different identities. It's not attached to your name forever and ever. People love that they can follow like fandoms or fan fiction is really big on there, art and artists. This is a much more creative network. And then finally, the other thing about it being mostly young people is their parents aren't on it and their teachers aren't on it. So that's, obviously that doesn't work forever. If we like 10X Tumblr, you'd have a lot more parents and teachers on it.

But today where it is in sort of like the 15, 20 million MAU range, it tends to be like- What did you pay for it? What did you pay for it? I love that question. What did you pay for it? Like $3 million?

Yeah, we paid a de minimis amount. I think it's been reported $3 million, but it was free like a puppy. So- Oh, but the more interesting thing was a few years before that, Marissa Mayer and Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for it. So you bought it for 0.3% of the purchase price. I would argue that is arguably the best and the worst acquisition in history across one company. And you're on the right side of that trade. Yeah. Yeah. Although he said it's like having a puppy, like they chew the shoes, right? It was kind of, usually in acquisitions, you have something where there's like

indemnifications or guarantees. We took on all the liabilities, all the lawsuits, all the everything that we're pending with Tumblr, and we've invested a lot in it over the years. So internally, we actually budgeted a pretty big amount for what we need to invest or turn it around. Right, right. So one of the things that's involved in this one and others, you're a big proponent of open source, whether it's on your platforms or AI. Explain why you think it's so important. Automatic launched an AI writing assistant for WordPress in June that can generate and edit text, for example. Explain where you are right now on open sourcing, because it does feel like the bigger players continue to grab all the good bits, essentially. Although it's interesting, in AI, that meta has

taken a more open source approach. So I believe it's not hard to see how more and more of our lives are influenced or actually kind of run by the software that we use, you know, from everything, what defaults are in the operating systems, what websites work or not on the web. Software, open source, particularly the GPL, which is the license we use for pretty much everything, comes with like a bill of rights. So where most software you click through, and when you click on it, it's like, here's all the things you can't do, and here's how the company is protected, not you.

The GPL gives four freedoms that sort of are user-centric, that protect you. It's the freedom to use it for any purpose, the freedom to see how it works, freedom to modify it, and the freedom to redistribute those modifications. So this kind of bill of rights for software, I think gives us agency, autonomy,

allows us to be sovereign in our digital choices. And so as more and more of our lives become dictated by that, we're going to become less and less free if we're using proprietary for the majority of our software. So now most people don't care about what I just said. So that's why, like with WordPress, we're like, well, I was radicalized to this young open sources nightmare religion. And I was like, but no one cares. So we just need to make the best software. So that's what we, so the try to approach we create is we just try to use these principles to create software that is again, super user centric. And if we create a better user experience, people choose it. And so they might not know they're getting this thing that makes the world more free of the web, more open, but they will.

And if enough people do it, it actually even influences the competition will make the proprietary folks open up a bit more. So, for example, WordPress has a really open import and export format. We've tried to make it easy to leave. As Sting says, if you love someone, set them free, right? So this format is actually supported by all of our proprietary competitors like Wix and Squarespace and et cetera, because it became the industry standard. And that I think that's a very powerful way that even if you're not a majority market player, you can influence the proprietary competitors to be more open. Who do you see in terms of the big players who kind of keeps you up at night? If there was a big player, you thought, is it Adobe? Is it Microsoft? Who do you look up to and admire and thinks has just the kind of power to come for

you, if you will? That's a good question. One thing I do think about is we try to not to go head to head with a place where we don't have some competitive advantage. A good example of this is actually advertising. We do very little advertising. We try to allow like word of mouth and community to spread our products. And partially because like when we did do a lot of advertising, all of our competitors had so much more money than us. And that kind of head-to-head fight, they could just outspend us typically by like hundreds of millions of dollars.

That's tough. They could just outspend us, typically by like hundreds of millions of dollars. That's tough. You know, with the big tech, you know, the Microsoft, the Googles, Metas, we both compete in some areas, but we also partner in so many others. So I do think that particularly with messaging, although they might not be able to do this themselves, this kind of like multi-client thing, I think they're actually going to be happy that someone is doing it and someone independent. Because again, like I said, it's something that they probably will need to do anyway. They're going to need to open up with like coming regulation over the next year or two. And this will actually be something they can point to and say, hey, we're glad this exists. I guess the final, you know, one person who's intimated, they might be working on the same thing.

Although it's just a tweet and you never know what to do with these, is Elon Musk. Yeah. Oh, yay. Someone, you know, he's a complicated Shakespearean character. But yeah, a head-to-head competition. But yeah, a head-to-head competition. It's not like a, you know, I don't think I would ever go into like the solar or the space rocket space because he is, you know, fiercely competitive and executed well in those areas over many years.

So he would have a, this is this everything app or that everything gets joined at Twitter? It's hard to tell. And I will say that in the software side of things, I don't think he's been as impressive so far as the hardware side. So, you know. You're so kind. He's so nice.

He hasn't been as successful in the software side. Yeah, that's an understatement. But you did buy, you became a Blue Check subscriber. Not one of the trolls because you're not like that, but you wanted to see how the subscriptions work

is what you tweeted, actually, which was interesting. And to be honest, you know, a lot of what he's been doing with Twitter are things we had already tried with Tumblr. So I was very curious to see

what the user flow was like. And honestly, I'm still a Twitter user. So I think I do want to normalize, we should be paying more for the services we use versus just expecting to get for free and then our data or our usage being sold to advertisers or something else. So I think I want to normalize that we pay for more of these things because I think it's a better business model to launch. Most people do. Most people don't disagree with that. It's a question of who you want to give your data to or who you want to have affiliated with. You didn't ever think of doing a social network when this sort of the Twitter started to go off the rails a little bit here.

Did you think about doing that rather than a texting platform? Well, we bought Tumblr in 2019. So we were already- It's not the same. It's sort of the same. It's not used the same. The user base is very different. But if you look at the fundamental primitives of the capabilities, you could use Tumblr just like Twitter. And it was in kind of a rough spot. So since the acquisition, when it was bought for a billion dollars, it was kind of on a similar trajectory as Instagram. And it was in kind of a rough spot. So since the acquisition, you know, when it was bought for a billion dollars, it was kind of on a similar trajectory as Instagram and was actually purchased for a similar amount. It just, you know, I think when Yahoo got distracted with activist investors and Alibaba

and all this other stuff, they didn't focus on it. So that's when it kind of withered on the vine. And then they got sold twice, you know, the merger with AOL, the sale to Verizon. So it just ended up without the focus. And so it was definitely a turnaround when we brought it in. But I wanted to see, could we do upgrades? Could we fix the algorithm, give people choice in the algorithm? So a lot of the same ideas, and also very humbly.

So most of that stuff we did did not work. People say they want to pay. Almost no one does. Yeah, that's true. So, Matt, you're 39, really a young man. You're financially secure. You've built a great company. What, for you personally, do you have, what box do you still want to check here other than the success of Automatic? What would you like to accomplish over the next 10 or 20 years? Well, first and foremost is I want to work on open source the rest of the rest of my life

I do this said to have like a creative window when I have like energy and the ability to work really hard on things. I Want all the energy to go into things that are open source. I understand your passion about open source But what does success look like for Matt as a citizen? Oh, I do think about, I mean, when you use the word citizen, it does sort of remind me of like how I could contribute, particularly to where I live, which is America. And so when I think there, I think philanthropy.

Starting to do more in Houston, my hometown. I've done a lot in San Francisco, but actually not as much in Houston. And actually just someplace I've been personally trying to learn more is about cybersecurity, which was kind of when I was young, I was kind of in the hacker world and stuff like that. I just joined a board of a company called Field Effect, actually, in Canada, to learn more about both the defensive and offensive side of cybersecurity. Because I do feel like if you think over the next 10 or 15 years, that's going to be one of the major areas

of sort of great power conflict. It's actually already happening today, just kind of behind the scenes. There's a digital Hiroshima once a week, you know, across major governments and companies. And so, yeah, if there ever were like a call to serve the country, I'm not good at most things. They don't need me on most things, but perhaps I could contribute on a cyber side. How do you look at the current moment? Because here you're

working with a young entrepreneur. I find young entrepreneurs a little more global, a little more tolerant, et cetera. How do you look at where everything has ended up? Hmm. You know, I think why, I think Scott, you might've said this, like we should be slow the judge, quick to forgive. I've totally messed up, but there's actually examples like, I think when I had coronavirus or a fever and I got spicy on Twitter. I've only deleted a few tweets in my life, but like, I've definitely made those mistakes where I said something I regretted later. Or so, yeah, just remembering that that happens. And what do I try to do?

I try to blog more. I find that the process of like writing to my site, ma.ttu, which is my WordPress blog, like sort of slows you down a little bit and it doesn't have the feedback loops of like a Twitter or a mailing list. Leading by example, you know, we try to, we've been a big advocate of distributed work. We've been fully remote since 2005.

You have. Both pre and post COVID leading for that. And that leading by example, it opened up the market for a lot of other companies to be distributed as well. Now it's kind of like a standard thing. Most startups are actually, but prior, when we were early, like it was almost a possible get funding. VCs didn't believe you could build a big company like it. And so just having something where people could point to and say, Hey, like, you know, Audimax, not 2,000 people. GitLab, which I was on the board of for a little while, like, it's a public company, $7 billion. Like, those examples

makes it a lot easier for future generations, future companies to follow that. And then, I know it's overstated, but I think first principles thinking, particularly with moral sides of things, leads you to interesting areas. So one example where we were totally wrong is we used to pay people in different countries or different cities in America, different pay scales. And kind of like 2011, 2012, my colleagues, the employees of automatics are coming to me and saying, hey, I'm doing the same work as this other person. Why am I getting paid less by currency or cost of living or whatever? And at the beginning, I just had all the standard explanations, cost of living, the best prices, whatever.

But it really haunted me. And I started thinking, well, wait, past 50 years of America, we've been saying same pay for same work. I'm not going to pay a man and woman differently or people of a different skin color. Why am I paying someone waking up or going to sleep in Pakistan or India differently than someone doing the exact same work in California? So yeah, we shifted that. And it took like a year or two because you can't do it all at once just with finances and everything. But then we got to a place where we're same pay for same work globally. Some variation in the short term with like currency swings, But then we got to a place where we're same pay for same work globally, some variation in the short term with like currency swings. But then we always bring that, we catch that up. And that helped our hiring so much, right? Because all of a sudden, if you're making way more in Brazil, what are you going to do? You're going to tell the smartest

people you know, the best engineers in Brazil, hey, go work for this company. They'll pay you way more than local competitors or even what like Google or Facebook will in that same country. You're a baller, Matt. I never would use that word for Matt. Anyway, Matt, thank you so much. And again, it's text.com. And it'll be rolling out a mobile thing.

I'm excited to try it. It'll be interesting. You make great products. And thank you for all the stuff you did for us. I never thanked you, I guess, but thank you. Keep being you, my brother. You're doing great work. Thank you both. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month.

At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first? You go first, Kara. I have to say, the morning show is really good. That's funny. I've been watching that, too. Oh, the together. We should watch it together and talk on the phone.

I really think it's very spicy this season and really fun to watch with a really high level group of people. Jennifer Aniston's great. Reese Witherspoon's great. The whole cast is great, some of which are not well-known actors like Jon Hamm, etc. Who plays the chairwoman? I ask that because she's a lesbian and I assume that all lesbians know each other. She's outstanding. I do. It's Holland Taylor. Holland Taylor?

Yeah. When she comes on that screen, I mean, she's a tiny woman in her 70s and she just owns the screen. She is very good. Yeah, she's been with Sarah Paulson for a long, long time. And she's on a bunch of stuff. She's been in The Morning Show. She's on The Chair on Netflix. She's amazing.

I love Dallin Taylor. That's another win. You know what I think of when I watch that show? I am fascinated that Apple did it. It literally drips money. It does. The production values there are just like, they clearly said to them, we want an amazing show. This is going to be a tentpole for Apple.

And by the way, money's no problem. And not only that, it all shows up on the screen. It does. It all shows up on the screen. They do a really great job. It really does. I'll go to my fail in a minute. What is your win besides my win?

Oh, I just wanted to bring some attention to some young podcasters. A guy named Stephen Bartlett, Diary of a CEO, this 31-year-old kid out of the UK. Just such an impressive young man. He interviews CEOs. And the thing I love about his podcast

is he's putting on a masterclass on innovation around podcasts. I've done his podcast and he has these cameras rotating. And he'll travel to LA to interview people in person. And then he does an amazing job with editing and post-production. He's just, this kid is such an innovator, really young, doing an amazing job. And from a standing start is now like one of the biggest podcasts in the world. And it's kind of a celebrity in London. Anyway, Stephen Bartlett, Diary of a CEO, a guy named Chris Williamson, another young man. He hosts something called Modern Wisdom. And he's really courageous. He's been talking, before it was kind of cool,

he was talking about some of the challenges struggling young men face. And he's also this kid who was sort of a party boy, and he'll acknowledge that. And then he went very kind of deep inside himself, a lot of meditation, a lot of work on himself as he describes it. And he kind of came out as someone who was really interested in ideas and thought leadership. And he started this podcast called Modern Wisdom, and it's doing really well. And he focuses on the struggles that young men are facing in what I think is a very courageous and sometimes controversial way. And finally, this podcast, Young and Profiting, another young woman named Hala Taha. Hala's made some comments about the conflict in the Middle East, which I vehemently disagree with, but she does it in a

way that I think she has personal connection to, and I think she's very raw and authentic about it. And her podcast talks about young people in business and she's doing really well. And it's a very, it's a very well done podcast. Anyways, my wins are these young podcasters doing interesting things, being very innovative, very courageous. And then my, my fail is just the media's head fake around that there's been any change that they, they think that someone gives up a title when they own and control the whole, that they think that someone gives up a title when they own and control the whole company, that they think that that has any sort of... It just struck me as just so hilarious that the business media and the media is taking Patty's quote-unquote resignation as CEO

as anything kind of meaningful. It just struck me as, do these people not understand power and shareholder rights and governance? So I don't know. I think the media just like totally missed this one. Anyways, those are my wins and my fails. I have a lot of fails actually this week, but I think probably, you know, I was thinking of these deals they made with Sidney Powell and Ken, is it Cheeseborough? I call him Cheeseborough. I don't care, Chesborough. They better testify to something pretty significant. I think every one of these January 6th people should go into jail. You think they're getting off too easy? They deserve the jail sentences, but it should be equal on some level.

And these two are the ringleaders, as far as I can tell, are crazy. One's particularly crazy, Sidney Powell. So I just feel like, okay, you better start talking and not be a waste of our, you know, the largesse of the government on this thing. I worry it could create even more cynicism about this whole thing. And obviously, the big cheese is Trump. I assume that's why they're doing what they're doing. It's definitely worrisome to me, as is all politics right now with the rest, you know, Congress continues not to be able to meet. I was heartened by Mitch McConnell boosting the Biden administration's attempts to pass these bills, these foreign aid bills. That showed some bipartisanship, which I was surprised and happy that he did that. He did the right thing in that regard. But we'll see if the House can get

together. So I just, I want people not to hate on government. And sometimes I'm like, oh, can you, people not to hate on government. And sometimes I'm like, oh, let's hope that it matters what the deal they've done, the deals that are being done right now. I have faith that they wouldn't. I mean, to your point, it feels to me that they're getting off easy. They're pleading to crimes that I don't believe will involve the prospect of jail time. But I would imagine the prosecutors there are smart and don't hand these things out cheaply. So I'm hopeful, actually. I would have liked to see Sidney Powell in jail, given how she behaved, and also Ken, who is the quieter one, but the brains of the operation. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech,

or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. Please read us out. Today's show was produced by Larry Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Travis Larchuk. Ernie Andretat engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mille Severo, and Gaddy McFain. Make sure you subscribe to the show 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.

Kara, have a great rest of the week. All right.