Pivot - The Future of Antitrust, Bitcoin, DWAC, and more

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

Kara and Scott look back on a year of predictions. What did they get right? What did Elon ruin? We’ll tally up the wins and losses around super-acquisitions, metaverse real estate, Trump’s SPAC, and, or course, Twitter. Also, friends of Pivot weigh in with their own predictions about augmented reality, privacy, and more. Send in your questions! Call 855-51-PIVOT or go to nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

And I'm Scott Galloway. So, Scott, 2022 can't end without a little accountability. On every episode or so, we make predictions about business, mostly you, tech politics, you name it. Today, we're going to look back and see what we got right and what we could have gotten right if it hadn't been for Elon Musk. We'll also hear from some friends of Pivot with their own predictions for the new year, and we'll make some of our own. So, let's look into the crystal ball once again. Another year together, Scott Gallery, you and I. All right, to start things off, here's a prediction you made in November of last year. 2022 is going to be the year of staggering M&A all in the pursuit of a super app.

I think that these companies, social media platforms, can kind of manipulate their earnings by either not cleaning up fake accounts or cleaning them up. I think Jack Dorsey is going to see God over the next two months clean up a ton of accounts, show shitty earnings and growth, puke on himself. The stock will go down to 40, and then Square is going to acquire Twitter and try and become a 10 cent. All right. Lots going on here, Scott. Someone did acquire Twitter. It was not

who you said. And Square was what you thought it was going to happen with Jack being involved in, obviously, because he's the creator of Square. Someone, Elon did acquire, tried to make it into a super app. So that's kind of right. Bots were a big part of the drama. How close would you say you were on this? Well, I like to think I just predicted that Twitter would be acquired. Okay. But come on, it was an independent, hold on, it was an independent company. It was in 2006.

We predicted the year it got acquired. Yeah, yep, yep. I think we got sort of a semi-win there. Kissing your cousin? I don't know. Yes. My God, why would you say kissing your cousin? I don't know. Yes. My God. Why would you say kissing your cousin?

Why would you bring that into this? Anyway, the stock will go down to 40. The stock did not go down. It sold for $54.20. And that's largely because someone made a non-economic decision to buy it. But this idea of super app, do you think Elon will be able to pull that off? It's only, it's his only way out. I mean, he's, he's already, he's literally like shit the bed and I'm talking like Falcon model X shitting here. I mean, it's just, the revenues are gone. They're not coming back from advertising. And so he's got to, he's got to do serious jazz hands

here and it's going to be payments. Payments, okay. And he has a background in payments. He knows how to do it. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, all right. Some of the biggest acquisitions in 2020 weren't in social media. They were in gaming, actually. In January, Zynga announced that it would acquire Take-Two for more than $12 billion

and one of the biggest deals in video game history. But the record stood for less than two weeks when Microsoft came with a deal of its own for post-acquisition of Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion. Sony got in early on the action, snatching up the developer of Destiny for nearly $4 billion. There's a question of whether the Microsoft Activision deal will go through. I know they're in D.C. recently. They're worried about that. So where is the M&A action, very briefly, your prediction? Where is it going to be? For 2023? Yeah. You talked about Pinterest before.

I think there's got to be a lot because everything's gotten cheaper. I think Disney will make some acquisitions. And I think that Snap and Pinterest are hard to tell because they're dual-class shareholder companies. So they don't. Right. I think the place you're going to see a lot of acquisitions or consolidation is in any ad-supported media. They're subscale. They've run out of time. They don't make any sense economically in one way. You either cut costs

or you consolidate. And we're going to see both of them. Okay. So that's the area you're looking at. That's the area you're looking at. Any ad-supported media from Viacom, from CBS, pairing with Paramount. I mean, all of these guys, they're all like Comcast has got to do something big here. Disney's got to do something. All of them are looking at each other and saying, hey, I know I told you I didn't like you, but now maybe we should go to the prom together. This is a dramatic cut in valuations, a recessionary ad environment, and new apex predators called Apple, Amazon Prime, and Netflix all calling on Unilever and P&G and the other biggest advertisers is going to create a lot of strange bedfellows. Yeah, it's interesting.

If the Microsoft Activision deal doesn't go through, I wonder what Microsoft will be looking upon. It's interesting. We'll see. They'll do something. They're in a strong position. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction from friend of Pivot. This one comes from The Verge's Alex Heath,

who's done a great job this year, by the way. Alex, good job. Let's listen. Hey, Karen, Scott, Alex Heath, Deputy Editor at The Verge here. My prediction is that in 2023, the Apple versus Meta narrative will ramp up significantly with the launch of Apple's long-rumored pricey mixed reality headset, followed by the next version of Meta's consumer quest headset later in the year. These two companies have been duking it out on mobile for years, where Apple is dominant. Now Apple is coming for the headset market, which Meta currently dominates and Mark Zuckerberg is staking the company's future on. I expect Apple to lean heavily on its pro-privacy marketing and leverage its expertise in hardware to really make a splash here.

These headsets are precursors to the real holy grail device that both Tim Cook and Zuckerberg are obsessed with, AR glasses. I think this is going to be one of the most fascinating big tech rivalries to watch over the next several years. Thanks. That's a very smart discussion from Alex. Meta has invested $100 billion in R&D for the metaverse, including $15 billion in the last year. A lot of money. Apple is very good at devices. The rumored AR VR headset is expected to release in 2023 after production issue delays.

It's going to cost, I don't know, it was $3,000. I forget. It's some high figure. I'm still not into these mixed reality headsets yet, but maybe I'm not being visionary enough. What do you think, Scott? I think it'll be the AirMaz Apple Watch. I think it'll get a ton of media coverage.

They'll, you know, point to things that are successful at this price point. And I think it'll just fade into oblivion. I'm with you. I think people won't put anything on their face that doesn't make them more attractive to strangers. But they put AirPods in. Remember, they thought you looked ugly with those?

They make you more attractive. But at first, you remember, you looked weird. You remember how they talked about these little weird little white things hanging out of you? Anyway, I don't know. They make them attractive. AirPods are the most successful piece of jewelry in history. And they're just such an elegant, simple product. I've never thought wearables outside of AirPods, and I think your iPhone is the ultimate wearable.

I don't think – I think the fever dreams that all of these folks have, including Tim Cook, around – Yeah. I think it's very instinctual. And that is the majority of animals that you could eat or could eat you don't come straight at you. They come at you from your side. And your peripheral vision, when it's blocked, is very uncomfortable. And so I've just never bought that people want to put anything that creates a sense of a loss of peripheral vision or makes you less attractive. It's very hard to put a computer on your face without it looking weird. And at this price point,

it'll be a niche product. It'll get a massive amount of PR. And then slowly but surely, it will fade into oblivion. And we'll see. Yeah, I'm with you on this. For some reason, I just don't. Now, the thing is, if you've never considered, if you've ever seen The One That Works, right? That's the thing. The One That Works is going to be.

That's the thing. And I do say, literally, I just found my Google Glass device. But I put it on, and I kind of still like it. I'm like, this is kind of the right idea if it was glasses that talk to me. And again, I love my AirPod Maxes. And if they were smaller and spoke to me and gave me a little more information than an AirPod could, I could see it like AR glasses. If they were to my specifications or my eyesight, I might like them. If it was saying, turn left here, it was talking to me. I could see it. It's just so far, everything I've seen, very heavy on the sides because they have the batteries, very small amount of features,

and still not quite what I want in them. I want them to be AirPods. I want them to be maybe a little heavier than AirPods with a little more feature set and maybe a camera. This is a long time thing. I'm not so sure about this one, Alex. We're not so sure about this one, Alex. Anyway, Scott, were you surprised that we didn't talk about the metaverse a lot in 2022? We really, we kind of shit all over it, really. I think, I mean, if I had tried to figure out a way to kneecap meta, which is a net negative for society, I couldn't come up with a strategy as brilliant as this. Okay.

All right. Well, here's a prediction you made early in the year in February. We're about to see a tripling in real estate in a specific region. Any guess? In 2022, we're going to see a 3 to 5x increase in the value of real estate in this neighborhood. All right. Any ideas? No. What? Tell me.

Well, guess. You want to guess? No, I don't want to guess. I don't guess. I'm not a guesser. In the metaverse, specifically like sandbox. Oh, yeah. Okay. That one was wrong. Although they spent money, but the real estate value did not go up. It did not catch on with the people. Very similar to how I feel about glasses. You had a chance being right in 2022. VCs and private equity more than doubled their investments in the metaverse compared to 2021.

That's according to McKinsey. But in the metaverse's four most popular worlds, real estate values fell by as much as 80%. Thoughts? Spending on it. Oh, I got this hugely wrong. I also, one of my other predictions that I made in my predictions deck last year that I got wrong was that OpenSea's valuation would double.

I bought into the notion, I see my kids spending money on digital assets, whether it's skins or new weapons on Fortnite or the games they play. And I thought that given the speculative nature that young people had embraced of assets and Web3, that the next thing would be online real estate. And I also thought NFTs were going to take off. So I not only got it wrong on real estate, I got it wrong on NFTs. NFT volume is down

97%. So this was wrong all in caps. All right. Okay. Any guesses? Want to make another stab at it? It's not. I mean, it feels like anything Web3. It doesn't feel like this is coming back. I think the video game folks are going to figure out ways to continue to extract more revenue from people with assets that kind of integrate into their game playing. But it looks as if digital real estate and I don't want, I still think NFTs are going to have value. I still think people are going to want to have the Chanel logo or something.

Stick to them, Scott. Don't brag. There is some assets here that will work, others that won't. I just don't think people are rushing to think about them. I just, they're busy sorting out what they have right now. All right, Scott, let's hear from another friend of Pivot. Here's Congressman Ro Khanna. Hi, Karen, Scott. This is Ro Khanna. Thanks for having me on the show. In terms of tech legislation, we've got to get the privacy bill passed. It's passed committee. It's time we get this done. I'm really hopeful because I don't want to come on the show again and have CARE ask me, why have we done nothing about this for year after year after year? I also think we've got to do antitrust. I'm not sure I'll vote for it, the antitrust legislation.

Candidly, I'm not sure if that's going to come up in the lame duck. That's probably a project for the next Congress. And finally, we've got to make sure that the Internet stays free of censorship, wide open, robust debate. And let's see if we can find bipartisan consensus to do that. Again, I think that's a project for the next Congress. Thanks a lot. and all of you, every one of you. I just can't understand this. I don't understand why. This seems to be the lowest stakes thing that Congress can do is protect consumer privacy. And I just, I never understand

why they can't do a good bill. There's been so many across the world and across this country. There's lots of people have trod here that could come up with the best practices of all of them and come up with something that'll work for the industry and also consumers, mostly consumers, in my opinion. Antitrust, I don't think they're ever going to reform antitrust. I don't know where they have to. And censorship, they're never going

to agree on this. As long as you have Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton around and others, it's just not going to happen. Anyway, what do you think? I think it speaks to a bigger issue, and that is when the world and technology move as fast as they move and externalities can prop up as quickly as they can prop up, we weren't expecting our new heroes, Meta and Google, to be a huge cause of teen depression. These things pop up so fast that our government

can't respond quickly enough. And specifically our government, our government's kind of feature was checks and balances, power to the people, the people have spoken, three houses of government, president, Congress, Senate,

and versus a parliamentary system in Canada, Australia, and the UK, where they elect a government and the government, you know, the head of that, the government then picks a head and the government, you know, the head of that, the government then picks a head and that person can get shit done because they kind of control government. Or it's as if if the president won, it meant overnight that Congress and Senate had more

Republicans or Democrats based on the party of the president. And I think it's turned into a bug for us. And that is, I'll use my senator, Senator Gillibrand, take some money from Sam Bankman-Fried. And the tough thing is that they don't have to do anything. All they have to do is nothing and legislate. They just have to show up to meetings and say, I have some concerns and just keep asking questions and slow ball the shit out of Senator Klobuchar's legislation and just kill it because they have taken money from big tech, whose fastest growing expense line is not AI, it's not SG&A, it's lobbying. So, our system has become, the intransigence or slowballing used to be a feature, it's become a bug.

Yep. I think you're right. Ro, you better pass privacy legislation. Honestly, really, this is ridiculous. Ridiculous, ridiculous. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll hear from some more friends of Pivot, evaluate our predictions about Twitter. 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.

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investigating this back deal between Trump and Digital World Acquisition Corp to see if the two negotiated before DWAC went public. Oh, God. I don't think anything's going to happen. I don't think. It's like the Musk thing. Slap on the wrist. Slap on the wrist kind of thing. I made a prediction in June of this year. In August, a whistleblower told the SEC of potential violations at DWAC. So far, the SEC hasn't told the SEC of potential violations at D-WAC. So far, the SEC hasn't taken any action against the SPAC, but has requested more information from the company. D-WAC shareholders accused the SEC of delaying the merger. I think it hardly matters anymore.

But the SPAC certainly has other problems. It spent much of the fall trying to convince shareholders to approve an extension so the SPAC could close its deal. But Trump's media company finally received shareholder approval in November, closed the deadline when it would have had to dissolve. And of course, Trump himself is still under investigation after the Mar-a-Lago raid. He's been allowed, he's also been allowed back on Twitter. I just don't think this deal gets done. I don't, it's financially,

it's really a mess there apparently. But Trump is using it quite actively and not going back to Twitter. So, I mean, maybe, I don't know. I don't know. I just don't think anything terrible is going to happen to this group of people who seem a little bit sketchy. I think the regularity as it relates to Trump, a bigger fish to fry. The SPAC is kind of taking care of itself.

And that is who would have thought a tech media company run by Devin Nunes is not working out. It's gone. I mean, it's still got about a billion dollar market cap. It hit a high. I think it touched almost 100. I think it's now at about 21. I think this is a company, a stock going to zero. So I think the attitude is, let's just let it play out. They're going to, you know, they're getting what they should get. Nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. Nothing's happening both as a business and as an investigation. But we'll see.

It's, you know, just put it on the top of the firing pile of crap that Trump has to deal with. By the way, Rumble, Getter, and Parler are out of business. They just don't know it yet until they find the next, like, mentally ill person who says they're going to buy it. We'll see where these go. They're very hard to do. Scott, social media sites are hard to do. They are. Okay, Scott, here's one I know you'll like. It's another friend of Pivot. Let's listen. Hey, Karen, Scott, it's me, Molly Wood, climate tech investor and tech commentator and reluctant crypto expert here to talk about what's going to happen in crypto in 2023. First of all, I think we'll start to see a lot more

differentiation between Bitcoin, a still fairly decentralized investment vehicle and store of value, and crypto, the highly financialized Web3 industry that got co-opted by venture capital and startups and exchanges and NFTs and ways to make a quick buck that has obviously blown up spectacularly. It'll take a long time before that industry recovers and has goodwill and trust, but I predict that Bitcoin will be just fine. It has way too much value to go anywhere. Now, what I'm hearing in the crypto space is that it is rudderless and leaderless, and most people expect that its very near future will actually be defined by Elon Musk and whatever he does in terms of creating payments on Twitter

using Dogecoin. Because if that happens and succeeds, it will demonstrate real utility using a coin that's closely related to Bitcoin. So I'm not saying I like this prediction, but Elon is like gravity in the tech world right now. Everything gets sucked into his orbit. So I have to assume my sources are most likely correct. Oh, good God. Well, it's actually makes sense. You know, if they manage to create payments on Twitter, like you just, you know, we've talked about, sure. And using Dogecoin, sure. If they manage to sell something that has utility on it, or you use it for payments, sure. I don't know if I would trust Twitter. I would have trust the old Twitter, and I certainly don't trust the new Twitter. So

I'm not sure I would use it. I use Apple Pay. I use all kinds of different things. I might trust it if Apple used it. I might trust it if Amazon used it. I think she's right overall about Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin will be differentiated. So my most liked tweet of 2022 was I said, I am doubling down on the most innovative payment technology in history, USD. And, you know, the crypto Taliban came for me. I don't think Bitcoin's ring fenced here. I think Bitcoin has more, the wrong term is utility. It's established itself as a viable store of value because people believe that they will stop mining it at 21 million coins. There's real issues around for citizens of countries that have unstable currencies that want to get their assets or their

net worth into something more sustainable and they have currency control so they can't transit or can't transfer it to dollars, remittance payments. There's utility and store of value there. But to think that, I think Bitcoin's going below $10,000, maybe even south of that. And the kind of what I'll call the crypto bulls have Molly's narrative, and that is, oh, you know, this is like 2000 and the bad stuff's going away,

but the good stuff's going to come back even stronger. Did you see Kathy Wood has re- Yeah, the million dollar one. Articulated her million dollar price call for Bitcoin in 2030 because the hash rate has gotten better. I mean, it's just, you listen to her and I'm like, you're allowed to say whatever predictions you want to make.

But when you're taking in billions of dollars of retail investor money, I just find that near reckless to say something's going to go up 60x. I think Bill Cohen was like that nutcase. I think he's calling her a nutcase. I would agree. It's just like, okay, pass the ayahuasca around. okay, pass the ayahuasca around. Yeah, all the people who already have investments in crypto and Web3 are now retreating to, oh, but these are the good things.

But, well, they're going to do that. That's normal. I think that's normal. I do think that if some, one of the bigger ones that you trust, the Amazons, the Apples, do things around that, I literally would not do any transactions

on Twitter ever. Not the, believe me, it's not Elon in this case. I would have entrusted them before. I thought they were very porous as a company security-wise. And I wouldn't want any of my financials on that particular thing before. And definitely not now. Well, Bitcoin has already differentiated itself because it hasn't gotten to zero like almost everything else.

But, I mean, I've never understood. I'm a no-coiner. I don't own a single coin. I've never understood the notion of a store of value. No-coiner. I find this bullshit argument that it's supporting the incremental energy use. I think anything that takes up the energy consumption of Argentina is a problem for a kind of invented mechanism that we should be able to do something different. And I don't trust something where they can't even, it's a mystery who the founder is.

I just, the whole thing, Bitcoin goes, and again, it was at a couple hundred dollars not that long ago. If it goes below a thousand dollars, we're all going to say, well, of course it did. And so I don't, I will see. My prediction is that Bitcoin falls under this. Everyone's getting their turn at the woodshed here in the Web3 levered Ponzi scheme that is Web3. All right. Okay, good. All right.

Let's get the next one. It's finally time. We talked about Twitter a lot this year. There were times when you thought the deal was done and times we thought Elon was done. Let's rewind back to December of 2021. Here's what you said. But Elon was done. Let's rewind back to December of 2021.

Here's what you said. Within 90 days, there's going to be an offer for Twitter. Okay. Scott, you said three months. It's actually four. Musk made his offer in April, and that's pretty close. So good for you. Here's another Twitter prediction. This one's from June after Musk paused the deal before they sued each other.

Twitter right now is at about $40 a share, which is way off the supposed closing price of 5420. It's going to be in the 20s in the next, I don't know, 30 to 60 days as it becomes two things become increasingly clear. The person who agreed to buy it is not going to buy it. And it's very difficult to get someone to show up with $45 billion. not going to buy it. And it's very difficult to get someone to show up with $45 billion. That one was off. Twitter stock never dropped below 32. And of course, he bought it. And here's a prediction from both of us. This came in October after Musk finally said he'd buy the company and his team worked to hammer out the deal. You and I weighed in on what his opening moves could be. Let's listen. The Twitter transaction is going to close,

and it's almost immediately. it will probably not be the worst acquisition in history. AOL's acquisition of Time Warner is probably the worst. Within 60 seconds of closing, the world is going to realize that this is the second worst acquisition in history. Which means Elon will do something loud. I don't know, something. He'll marry Kim Kardashian. I don't know. Something like that. Oh, yeah, because then Kanye would be mad. Oh, God. He'll try to do a lot of hand-waving. He's going to have to wave those hands. Oh, there's going to be a lot of jazz hands coming out of this closing.

Well, he didn't marry a Kardashian, but a lot of jazz hands. And he did let Kanye West on and then kicked him off. I think I was pretty good on this one so far. I did think the deal was going to close. I think he was going to be forced to. I think he got himself, he overpaid. I thought, I didn't think he'd lose his mind quite the way he did. I'm surprised. I thought he was an opportunity to be quiet and do something significant to a company that needed it. He chose another path from the get-go. Where is it going? How do we think we did? Well, initially, I thought that this makes no sense and he's going to worm out of it. He's doing it for attention. And then I read the lawsuit and saw what their counsel was claiming and that this deal he signed was hermetically sealed.

And when, you know, the data changes, I change my mind. And I'm like, when we said this, he's fucked. He's got to close. Yeah, we did say that. We were very consistent on that. But if he'd been able to get out of this deal and he'd just say, had done, you know, subject to due diligence and all that sort of stuff, which you often see in these types of agreements, a non-binding letter of intent, he would have backed out and the thing wouldn't be a 22 bucks, it'd be a 10 right now. Yeah. It probably is a 10 right now. It's just a private company.

If that. Yeah. But to give ourselves some credit here, as soon as we saw the agreements, when you had all these carnival barkers saying on his sycophant saying, oh, Twitter's toast, and he didn't know about the bots. As soon as I read the legal complaint from Twitter, I'm like, it closes. He has to close. complaint from Twitter. I'm like, it closes. He has to close. And when you looked at the semantics or how it was going to play out in the Delaware Chancery Court and how the Delaware Chancery Court affects or cures decisions, it's like we said when everyone else, the loudest people were saying, no, it's not going to close. He doesn't have to close. It's termites in the house and he didn't

disclose it. We're like, no, he's locked and loaded. Yeah. So do you expect him to be this, the way he's behaving? I did not, obviously. But I certainly, the minute he did, I said something rather strong about it. But I did not think he would, he's this much of a troll. As much as this has been just like I've said, this isn't the unwinding of a company or the undoing of a company. company or the undoing of a

company. It's the undoing of a person. I think he's become Charles Lindbergh. I think he's gone from Edison to Lindbergh in about six months. What was interesting for me through this process is I genuinely feel like you've lost a friend. I feel like it took a toll on you. You know, you try to have hopes for some people, I guess that's what it is. He's not a friend. I've been very aware of his negative qualities for a long, long time. But I wouldn't say someone said he's your friend. I was like, he was never my friend. Yeah, but you gave him a lot of the benefit of the doubt. I did, because I thought he could do this. Let me put it this way. I think you were deeply disappointed in some of the things, some of the ways he has acquitted himself in terms of his behavior. I don't... Yeah, it's very strange. I find it very strange and cruel.

Needlessly cruel, I think is what I said. And I understand why, because of the people around him and et cetera. But he's his own man and he doesn't have to behave this way. I thought the way to talk... I know every administration says the previous administration sucks. He didn't need to trample all over these people, these employees. There's a way of classily removing people. I think he should have gone quiet, actually, and then surprised us. You know, the hand-waving, which I think we were right,

is really untoward, and it remains that way. And it only brings him negative things, like, you know, Neuralink is being looked at for the animal abuse, which probably wouldn't have happened had he not made such a spectacle himself. You know, Tesla is going looked at for the animal abuse, which probably wouldn't have happened had he not made such a spectacle himself. You know, Tesla is going to suffer for it. His various and sundry foreign statements about foreign affairs are just unwelcome, I think. He can say them, but he doesn't know what he's talking about most of the time.

And so I hope that, you know, he's just replatforming white supremacists seems like just to stick it in people's eye. I don't understand what this does to make a better business of this thing. And I recently come around to saying, let's just focus on the business because it's not a good business right now. He's losing advertisers. He's got to come up with a new business. So far, the subscription stuff, maybe he can have a payment thing. That said, I don't think I would in any case give him any of my financial information ever. I wouldn't like it. Can you imagine attaching your bank to Twitter, for example? I know my bank's attached to Apple Pay. Maybe it's not.

Maybe I don't even do that. But he's got to come up with a business. Is this going to be a good business or not? And then see what he can squirrel out of with the bankers. I think we'll see what happens there, if he can buy the debt himself and what he can do. But it's going to cost him a lot of money. This is a real heavy lift. Well, in the very competitive race to the bottom that is Elon Musk's behavior over the last six months, whether it's trying to fire people for cause with no legal basis for that, whether it's embarrassing and doxing low-level employees that then get serially harassed, whether it's claiming, basically just lying back and forth, coming up with lies and people thinking that they're going to believe this bullshit. The real low point, I mean, the real low point was when he tried to spread conspiracy theory about the assault on Paul Pelosi. Yep.

I can't forgive. It's unforgiving. That was just such a vile thing for someone with this kind of power to do. And then, you know, putting a yawn, taking him off. I think he's literally, I think the analogy here, I think you're the one that first said it, is Charles Lindbergh. And the way it's going to impact him is the net favorability of Tesla. I spent the majority of my life in brand strategy. The net favorability of the Tesla brand has literally crashed.

And to believe that is not going to impact Tesla sales, margins, and ultimately its stock price. This guy hasn't lost $40 billion on a $45 billion transaction. He's lost $300 or $400 billion on this transaction. And it doesn't have to be like this. It doesn't have to be like this. Again, let me just say, totally capable of making this better. Why do you need to do the rest of this? I don't even slightly understand.

I don't think there's any method to this madness at all. And the Paul Pelosi thing was repulsive. It was repulsive. And then maybe it affects me as a person, as a gay person, but so cruel. So just like, what? When I saw that, I was like, what? And by the way, these Twitter files, read them all you want. Just do them in a way that protects people's privacy. Secondly, you don't think like one of them was like, nobody wants this to come out. It's like, yeah, I love internal memos. I'd love to see what happened. But don't make fetch happen when it just didn't in the first one. And if you have it in the second one, great. That'd be great. But why don't you give it to lots of reporters who can really track down and do reporting and not just do a series of ridiculous tweets and do actual reporting and get it right.

That would be great. And if something bad, we're open to something bad. But don't say there's something bad if there's not something bad. Just wait and let the proof speak for itself. So we'll see. But honestly, just focus on the business. I can't anymore with this guy this year, I think. Just make the business great.

We all love Twitter. We would love these kind of things to survive. We'd love it to be better. So just make the business better and stop with the rest of it. Anyway, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for our own predictions. Okay, Scott, I know you've come up with a whole list of predictions at the end of the year. I won't ask for them all. But what do you think the biggest story of 2023 will be? What will be the Elon Musk Twitter of next year? Will it be a switch flip on EV tech?

Could Meta spin off Instagram if its stock goes any lower? Do you like that one? Or could Warner Brothers Discovery sell CNN to cover its debt? Doubtful. What do you think? Let me have some predictions. 2023, I think the Patagonia Vest recession is just getting started. I think it would be impossible not to believe that every tech company in the world isn't watching what Elon Musk has done at Twitter and said, well, let's do this. Let's hold on to 80% of our revenue, which we could do. And maybe we don't fire 70% of the people. But if he can maintain a minimal acceptable standard for the product with 70% or 80% fewer people, maybe we could do it with 20% fewer.

You're going to see layoffs are just getting accelerated. The ad-supported ecosystem is just going to be chaos. It's just going to be chaos with these new apex predators in the ecosystem of Netflix and Apple and Prime all calling on the same advertisers with a recessionary environment where people are looking for excuses to pull advertising dollars. Anyone who's in the business, including us, quite frankly, of ad-supported media, we're going to see chaos and consolidation. We're going to see consolidation of the subscale. Everyone from AMC networks to Lyft are going to be acquired. The 2023's tech of the year, Cara, is going to be AI. And I have something I was really, or something I think is sort of interesting. I looked at peer-reviewed research, the volume of peer-reviewed research done in academic institutions.

research, the volume of peer-reviewed research done in academic institutions. And it absolutely skyrocketed over 24 months for research on the metaverse and crypto. And then it came down almost as fast as it went up. It wasn't sustainable. Whereas it was a slow build around things like the web or the cloud. And it makes sense that the slow build around academic peer-reviewed research are more sustainable technologies because in peer-reviewed research, basically what you're saying is, hey, colleagues at MIT and Carnegie Mellon and at the Haas School, this is what I think about the future of cloud. What are your thoughts? And they learn from each other and it

informs their research. So a slow build is a more enduring technology. And the peer-reviewed research around AI versus crypto or metaverse is much more of a slow, sustained build. And I think that 2023 is going to be the year that the promise or the performance catches up to the promise, especially in the medical field. Did you use GPT-chat? That's the new hot thing for the five seconds. Well, there's the popular stuff where you get to say, all right, a Great Dane drinking Zacapa in the form of an old master, and it creates an image. You know, they had Kara Swisher and a white supremacist live together, a reality show. It was kind of stupid. That's good. That's good.

It ends up in being a crime procedural, and someone dies, and it's not me. But go ahead. I was going to say, throw in a colonoscopy. Anyways, but you're going to see, especially in the medical field, I think that's where AI is really going to. But 2023 is going to be just as whatever the metaverse or crypto, 2023 is going to be the year of AI. I think we've hit peak personal genius. I think we're going to see a lot of orange jumpsuits next year. I think Sam Baikman-Fried was kind of, I said this around Adam Neumann and I was wrong. But I think there's going to be real pushback on this notion that individuals are more important than institutions. I think people have just finally hit their breaking point. Streaming consolidates. We're just going to see fewer streaming players. They're going to need to be required. You know, it just doesn't make any sense. Like, Peacock isn't working.

I mean, the little guys just – They're not getting up on Peacock. They can't survive. By the way, I mean, the little guys just— They're not getting up on Peacock. They can't survive. By the way, I had my fourth TV show canceled yesterday. BBC Tech Explorer with Scott Galloway was canceled yesterday because the streaming platform of the BBC is no more. I am literally the COVID-19 of television networks, Kara. When are you going to realize you have to do a TV show with me? You always say that.

Well, I'm just watching you. I don't think it's you. I don't think you are the missing ingredient here. Yes, I am. I'm actually the missing ingredient. But go ahead. Anyways, I'll be watching you. I don't think it's you. I don't think you are the missing ingredient here. Yes, I am. I'm actually the missing ingredient. But go ahead. Anyways, I'll be home soon. Yeah.

Streaming consolidates. Four TV show. I literally kill networks. Anyways. You too. Tesla posts record revenues, profits, and deliveries, and the stock is cut in half. This thing just makes absolutely no sense. It's been cut in half.

The perfect analogy for Tesla is Netflix. Had the market to themselves for 10 years. There were 18 competitors on the market last year. Now there's 32. He is off. He is just off doing ridiculously stupid things at some point. And then my last prediction was the U.S. reasserts its dominance and hegemony. If you look at everything geopolitically, food independence, energy independence, our economy appears to be growing again and we're reducing inflation. Our vaccines are working. The smartest people in the world want to come here. We're kicking the shit out of Putin in a proxy war without putting any boots on the ground. I just think the U.S. right now, if you look at it honestly, as much as we dislike each other, as much as we want the situation room

and to shitpost America or feel bad about ourselves, America has pulled away from the rest of the world on almost every important dimension. Yeah, well, we'll see. The only issue is, look, people are getting weary of funding Ukraine all the time. I think there's statistics showing that. I do think China coming online is going to raise inflation. They're, you know, they have a lot of… That should decrease inflation. Well, maybe.

If they get the gunk out of the supply chain, that should- But also they have energy demands. Energy prices could go up, stuff like that. And they love, they're a demand economy now in lots. They're a food demander, by the way. So food prices could go up. They're an importer of food now. I agree with you. I think things are going well for the Biden administration. What did I get wrong there? What do you very much agree with food now. I agree with you. I think things are going well for the Biden administration. What did I get wrong there? What do you very much agree with or very much not agree with? A lot of them I do.

I think the Tesla thing, I think it has a gravity that doesn't live on regular people's planets. I think. Yeah, that's a fair point. But I do see more and more people wanting other alternatives to Tesla, and that makes sense. The question is, is it Apple? Is Tesla Apple or is it Apple? Is Tesla Apple? Or is it not? Like, you know what I mean? Is it like an Android? I suppose I don't know what the is an Android or Apple, I guess, where people want alternatives to it, because

everyone still buys the Apple, right? I don't think everyone's going to still buy the Tesla, I think you're correct. But I'm not a luxury car buyer. so I don't know. And I think their service problems are going to become worse. And so, you got to have alternatives. And I just don't think the car is attractive enough, given how many more attractive cars are coming out. And people buy on romance. I think something Johnny Ive told me, I agree with him. It's not a beautiful product. have told me. I agree with him. It's not a beautiful product. It's a well-done car, but people want some choices, colors and everything else. So, yeah, I think about that. Oh, wait, I forgot. My best performing stocks. I do stock picks, even though it's a stupid thing to do. Airbnb. I'm a shareholder in Airbnb. It's been cut in half. I think it's dominant,

and I think it'll rock it up again. All right. Chinese internet sector. I think Chinese internet stocks are a great bargain right now, a basket of Chinese e-commerce stocks. They're traded a fraction of what their American peers trade at. And then you're going to love this one. Best performing stock of big tech. Meta. It's been overpunished.

It's trading at a PE of an old economy firm right now. And if you look at the way they account for their expenditures around the metaverse, they take them as expenses, not as R&D. They don't capitalize them. So the day they exit this fever, dream, or hallucination of the metaverse, the company becomes massively more profitable. If they do that, he seems committed, but we'll see. The company becomes massively more profitable. If they do that, he seems committed, but we'll see. But even so, it's not the nightmare that's going to keep haunting them because they're taking the expenses real time.

They're being very conservative in terms of their – Yeah, that's the way Mark is. They're an accounting professor's dream. Yeah, that's the way Mark is. He does things in that regard correctly. He's a very strong manager. He's a very strong manager. Okay, those are fascinating, Scott, and so many. I do think – if I this is

one that I've thought about a lot, and I've talked about a lot, I do think Apple's going to act on the App Store dominance. I think there's a lot of pressure here. Most recently from Elon Musk, who backed off immediately, but you know, the stuff that's going on with Epic, and a lot of them, I think Apple's going to act here, they're going to try to cut it off by cutting the fees or something. It just seems like there'll only be a more growing effort with Republicans in Congress to pressure on this. I think it's the right pressure to bring to Apple. And I suspect, clever as they are, they'll do something first to assuage all their critics. It won't be perfect, but they certainly, they may do something that's more transparent. I think they know when it's time to do something. And I think

it's probably time to do something. What do you think of that? Yeah, well, they tried that last year, right, with the small business relief, where if you were doing under a million dollars, they reduced it to 15% instead of 30. Yeah, 15, yeah. I think what you're saying makes sense. Tim is kind of thinking two steps ahead usually on this. I just don't know if they're under that much serious threat, though, because I can't imagine the first piece of regulation is going to be against Apple. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.

I don't know. I think they'll act before Congress acts. That's my feeling. We'll see. If it gets any pressure, they'll move. They're like that. They're very good at that. They're very jujitsu-y.

Okay. We have actually one more prediction from a friend of Pivot, one of our best friends of Pivot. We probably should have played this earlier. Let's listen. Hey there, Pivot. It's your old pal, Steph Rule. My 2023 prediction is that Kara is finally going to end this lesbian charade and deliver Elon Musk's 11th child, at which point she, Scott, and Elon will officially become a thruple. They will then be departing Vox to distribute Pivot exclusively on OnlyFans. It's going to be a wild 2023. All right.

What can we say, Stephanie? First of all, I don't have a uterus anymore, so I cannot deliver his 11th child. But I appreciate the effort, Scott. Would you like to be in a thruple together? So there are so few things I am not up for. Me too. I mean, at this point, like, I'm pretty much open to anything. Yeah.

And yeah, but this is one of those things. Yeah. Yeah. There is no sexual this is one of those things. Yeah. Yeah. There is no sexual tension between any of us. Literally, that's your go-to. You remind our listeners every other week. Well, I don't want them to think we're like T.J. Holmes and Amy Kobach, whoever they are. They're people.

Be good for ratings. Commit to the show, Kara. No. Oh, my God. Stephanie. Very funny. It's not a charade, my charade. No. I'd be. Oh, my God. Stephanie. Very funny. It's not a charade, my charade.

No. I'd be in a throuple with Stephanie and her husband. He's good looking. Okay. All right. We can joke about you and me and Milan,

but I'm not allowed to joke about her and Andy. All right. Okay. You do that. That'll be nice. You know, she's very good

with the Halloween and other decorations. You'd have a lovely life. By the way, I've been in several threesomes. They're a lot of work. They're a lot. You got to take, like, juice breaks and nutrition breaks. They're a lot of work. You got to take like juice breaks and nutrition break.

They're a lot of work. Yeah. Okay. All right. TMI on that one. Yeah. I wanted a sandwich one time. Whatever.

Now they go to sleep and watch a movie. Anyway. All right, Stephanie, thank you so much for that suggestion. We're going to pass. But I'm sure there's other cool things that are going to be happening in 2023. Again, I'd say that I'm thrilled to be with Scott Galloway still after all this time. And it's still been fun and interesting. You keep me honest, and I think I do the same for you. And it's actually really...

No, I think you keep me honest. Well, it's enjoyable. I think I keep you dirty. We'll be also in Europe. We'll be doing a live pivot from London and one in Germany, and we're very excited. So we're going to hit another continent. And by the way, if you've never had a producer gather clips of your predictions for the past year and play them back to you, I highly recommend it. It's a deeply humbling experience.

But you know what? We hold ourselves accountable. We get things wrong. We say so. We get things right. We tout them endlessly because we're egomaniacs. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday with a special look back at the biggest stories of 2022. And now, Scott,

I predict that you will read us out. All right, everyone. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Indertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mia Silverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to the podcast. Thanks 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. Thank you, Drew, Mia, Ernie, Lara, Evan, and Taylor for a great year and making us look better than we deserve. Thanks very much. Yes, indeed.