Pivot - The surprises at Big Tech's antitrust hearing, Snap's first diversity report, and a scary prediction for parents of college students

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

Kara and Scott talk about the winners and losers from Wednesday's tech antitrust hearing in Congress and answer listener questions about what the US government might do next. They also discuss Snap's first diversity report, why MacKenzie Scott (née Bezos) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal won the week, and the most important news of late — Taylor Swift's new album, Folklore. Scott predicts that colleges are about to send a very important letter to parents — after cashing their tuition checks. Get tickets for our upcoming livestream event series: PivotSchooled.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, you were a fiend yesterday on the Twitter about the hearings. We're going to talk a lot about those. I mean, obviously, it's going to be our big thing. And you also appeared on Brian Williams' hip-checking me out of that slot, just so you know. Just so you know.

Brian, he is so good. Yeah. You know, there's a lesson here for young people. I would say that the easiest way to get someone to like you is to like them. Of course. You're so helpful for that crap. Go ahead. It's totally true.

I know. If you, and I'm being serious now, if you feel goodwill towards somebody, you appreciate them, you admire an attribute, to not communicate that to them is to give up an asset. You and your love fest with television anchors, cable television anchors. He's very handsome. He's very handsome. You're like two-timing on Anderson Cooper. I think next one's Chris Cuomo. Are you going to go off with Rachel Maddow at some point?

As Carly Simon once said, Anderson needs to understand that I'm beautiful to strangers. That I'm beautiful to strangers. Brian is so good. I mean, that guy is so charming. He goes on, he literally, and you know you're being manipulated. This is Brian or Anderson?

I can't tell with all your anger. Oh my, Brian Williams is like, and he's like, and we're hoping someone who becomes a friend of the show and that this is the first of many appearances. And I heard nothing he said after that. Oh, my God. He's funny.

He has all this weird, like, you know, that's as slow as a pig in a poke. He always does stuff. I like Brian Williams. He's very good. Amanda is like, are you turning on Brian Williams again? Yes, I am. I don't know why. And I know he had all that controversy before.

But he's quite good. That controversy looks like nothing now. I know, like nothing. Like he wasn't on a helicopter. Yeah, okay. He's supposed to be on. Get rid of him. Yeah, he does look like.

You know, his daughter is a well-known actress, and she's lovely too, I have to say. She's with the girls, right? Yeah, she's very sweet. She's a very sweet woman. I met her a long time ago. But he's something else. That show is something else. He's good.

He's an old-timey anchor kind of person. You know, he's an old-timey. He's just, he does a good job. I like it. It's better than a lot of the others. Yeah, but it's clear him, Tim Cook, and Tom Cruise have made a deal with the devil. Those guys haven't aged in like seven years. They look the same.

Don't they look the same? I can't wait to see the next anchorman you like, which might be Will Ferrell at some point. Oh, my gosh. Brian. I know. Brian. Brian. You know, Ann, I'm texting, I'm DMing Anderson and saying he's got to get back in there and get you on the show.

Would you do that for me? I would appreciate that. No, I would not. I would appreciate that. I think the whole thing is untoward. I think it's rather shabby is what you're doing to Anderson. But that's okay. It's no problem with me.

It's no problem. Whatever. The Herring. Did you watch The Herring? Yes, of course, I watched The Herring. But I was doing other things at the same's no problem with me. It's okay. Whatever. I live in San Francisco. Did you watch the hearing? I guess, of course, I watched the hearing. But I was doing other things at the same time. Listen to me. I want to know why.

We're going to talk about the big hearing. We're going to talk about the big hearing. But before we do that, we have a couple things. We're going to completely talk. Because you really went all in on the hearing. I was not tweeting as much. I did a big, long tweet. I was just drunk.

I did a big, long tweet later in the night. But we're going to get to the hearing. But we have to talk about the most important news of the week, which is Taylor Swift's new album. Is Taylor Swift a lesbian thing? Why are you so into Taylor Swift? No, no. I love, no, everybody loves Taylor Swift. They pretend they don't, and then they love her. No, I'm not pretending. It's weird. I'm not pretending. Okay. Well, I think the album's great. Yeah. And she actually has the lesbian-ish song in it, but apparently the song is not her. It's her occupying other people's thoughts, I guess. Usually it's about her and it's a boyfriend that she broke up with. But in this case, she's channeling other people.

People love her concerts. There's a whole lesbian one. They say she's fantastic live. Can I just, I'm going to give you a little story about Taylor Swift. I went to an iHeartRadio concert and Bob Pittman, who runs iHeartRadio, let me stand in the back, which I've never been in the back. And of course I was like, I'll stand in the back. And so I was pretty close to her.

Like she was on a stage that stuck out into the stadium. This is back when you were allowed in stadiums with people. And at the end of this song, it was a great song. It was one of her hits, right? She does it. She looks fantastic. She was performed. She's a great live performer. Like of those just loves performing live so at the end of the show she and of the song she she finished it and then the crowd is cheering

and then she put her hands up a second time went come on and she put her hands like give me more applause she was straight up and she's like i I'm fantastic. Like, come on. And I was sort of like, I love you for that. She was like, she wouldn't, it was not enough, you know, clappage that was happening. And there was a lot of clappage and she was like, that's right. That's me. And I've loved her. Yeah. She's a, she's a superstar. And what I've heard from friends is that it's a really wonderful family friendly experience. Oh, the thing. Yeah. It's actually really fun. I really like her. It's just pure entertainment. Youfriendly experience. Oh, the thing? Yeah, it's actually really fun. I really like it.

It's just pure entertainment. You know, in the old days, actually, I went to a Madonna concert many years ago. It was a similar feeling. It was really fun to, it was fun. It was fun. There's certain people that are really fun to go to a concert. I haven't been to a concert in 103 years. That was the last one I was at.

I took my nine-year-old to his first concert. Which one? I took him to see Shawn Mendes. his first concert. Which one? I took him to see Shawn Mendes. And I was just absolutely blown away

by how talented on how many dimensions he is. Whether it was... And he goes out with what's her name? Who is Shawn dating? Brian Williams.

No. Camila Cabello. Camila Cabello. They make adorable videos together. They may not still be going out, but she's terrific too.

She's very good. Yeah, they make adorable quarantine videos. Yeah, they're very handsome people. They may not still be going out, but she's terrific, too. They make adorable quarantine videos. They're very handsome people. They do a nice handsome. I wonder if you could be on their cable television show. Tinder has a new CEO, Jim Lanzone. What do you think about that? He's from CBS. He's been around the block. I met him 109 years ago, but he's had a lot of startups. He was running CBS Digital for a while, and now he's the CEO of Tinder. Another one. They've had a lot of startups. He was running CBS Digital for a while, and now he's the CEO of Tinder. Another one.

They've had a lot of Tinder CEOs. He's going to probably lean heavily into content, but they kind of missed the boat on that Tinder deal. My sense is it's a space that gets burnt out pretty fast, that you don't have technology or network effects, and people seem to cycle through them. I mean, it just seems like there's been a lot of dating sites, right? Well, they're going to add content if Jim's around. You know what I mean? He's a content guy. So it'll be interesting. I think they kind of missed the boat.

What happened to Facebook's dating service? It's interesting. It never really went anywhere. It went anywhere, like a lot of their products, which we're going to get into in a second. Before we do, speaking of copyage, first episode of Pivot Schooled is next week. Make sure to follow at Pivot Schooled, the Twitter account. We're going to be giving away some cool stuff and talking about it here. You get your tickets now for the live event at pivotschooled.com. Our first class is Tuesday, August 4th at 10 a.m. Pacific,

1 p.m. Eastern. Professor Galloway is in the classroom remotely, of course, because he's too scared to go in a regular costume, and justifiably so. And so please come. We have thousands of people coming. What's the theme of our first one? What are we doing? The theme of the first episode is media's overnight chaos, and we're going to be talking to Vanessa Pappas from TikTok, Emily Bell from Columbia, and lots more.

And we're giving away swag. We got a bingo card with our sayings on it. It's going to be really good. We just added it last night. Free square. Free square. Kara, interrupt Scott, and I just interrupted you, which is never wrong. No, that's not the Free Square.

Go ahead. Boom is the Free Square. Oh, you're right. That's right. Boom is the Free Square. All right, listen. Big story. Okay, big story's coming.

Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Mark Zuckerberg testified for nearly six hours on the most bizarre Zoom call of all time, whatever it was. I think they were using Cisco, Webex. Jim Jordan derailed the hearing as usual. I thought he wouldn't do it, but he did it. And I actually talked to his staff and they said he probably wouldn't do it, but then he did it to make anti-conservative bias an issue, which it wasn't about. It was about antitrust. Democratic Jamie Raskin, later in the day, if Facebook is out there trying to repress conservative speech, they're doing a terrible job, which was funny. Bezos sat quietly without a question for two hours. Pramila Jayapal, the breakout star, she was amazing. She really got it in with Bezos over third-party seller data and said Kevin Systrom was afraid that Zuckerberg was

going into the destroy mode if he didn't sell. I think that's probably true. David Cicilline says Google stole content from other sites. Jerry Nadler pushed Facebook on its acquisition of Instagram. It was a little spicier than I thought. What do you think? I know we think it's useless, but actually there were some good jabs in there, except for Jim Jordan off and down his alleyway of whatever he was doing.

Yeah, these things are typically more spectacle than historic, and that is they're meant to sort of create a sentiment and then give, I think, the representatives or the senators a feel for what public opinion is. And if they were to go one way or the other, what would happen in terms of their ability to cling to power? And this felt more historic than spectacle. It didn't feel as if there were any great TV moments, but it was clear that this subcommittee, I think over the last 13 months, has actually done their job. They've collected over a million pages of documents. And some of the questioning, I thought, some of it was way off. And unfortunately, it was definitely pretty easy to kind of predict whether the question was going to be on brand or not.

Right. Or substantive. And again, I've said this before, and I don't know, I get, you know, I keep getting optimistic and I keep getting my heart broken. I described this on Brian Williams last night at 1140. I described this. I haven't watched it yet. I can't wait. I described this as the beginning of the end of big tech as we know it.

It just seemed as if they weren't really there to get information. They were confident in the information they had collected, and they were just stating their viewpoint over and over. But it felt like, and also some of the kind of seminal moments were right before the hearing started, you had two tweets saying, I hope these guys get broken up. And the two tweets, different language, but basically the same thing. These guys need to be broken up. One was from Bernie Sanders. One was from Donald Trump. And so when you have people from both sides of the aisle wanting to break them up, even if it's for different reasons, even if some of those reasons aren't valid, it looks like we have our first bipartisan issue in a while. Yeah. Yeah. I wish the Republicans sort of wasted their time on the other stuff because it all is related to power.

What I tweeted was that if they are upset about conservative bias, make room for other people to come in and let you rat somewhere else so that they have a real chance to be a business. Who did you – how would you – each of them. You know who did a great job, the tremendous Robin Givhan from the Washington post. She, I thought she really wrote the best piece about it actually about sort of the, the way it looked and felt and then making some really, uh, really great, great points about a lot of things. Um, and I thought she was, one of the things that was interesting is that, um, you know, they were tough on Bezos in the piece, which was good because he owns the Washington Post. And one of the things she wrote is too many of the Republicans were focused on playing put upon and abuse.

They seem more interested in Trump Jr.'s Twitter habit and throwing out accusations of anti-Americanism at the only executive of color testifying. Stifled competition and bullied employees were side notes the event was virtual but the disgrace was real the titans were diminished but far too many of the subcommittee mentors were the ones who look small too i thought i i think some of them didn't actually and some of the quotes were were quite good were quite good and got to the real heart of this power differential that was happening and that it's all about power and that's what was my hope is that that was the focus of what they were doing. And one of the things she wrote is, but mostly the Democrats focused on big questions about the power of these companies

amassed, even if they really weren't all that interested in hearing the executives answers. The Republicans were far more concerned about Google and how it's unfair to conservatives. Google expresses conservative voices. Google sends Republicans fundraising emails to span. Google is anti-American. But, you know, in general, it was the right tone. I was pretty pleased about that. So I'm busy at work today putting together word clouds and trying to find patterns. But the first pattern I recognized, and I'm shocked Twitter didn't interrupt with it, was that any kind of notion of you're being anti-American was generally from a white guy to the one brown guy. And I thought, oh, that makes sense. And no one noticed it. And I thought,

how come they're not asking the white guy, Zuckerberg, about being anti-American or about not being American? Well, because he's on the Trump side for Jim Jordan. There was generally the questioning bifurcated into two sort of – and this is partisan. But it struck me that the Democrats actually read the label or the white piece of paper on the door that said antitrust hearing. And really I would say two-thirds of the Republican questions were for an audience of one. And it struck me that we forget how much power – 70 percent of Republicans still support the president. So he can basically get reelected or not. And so they're playing.

I thought all of these guys are playing to Fox. And I'm like, no, they're not. They're playing to one guy who watches Fox. Yeah, which is typical. When you start asking questions on conservative or liberal bias, in addition to it being ridiculous, seven of the 10 top trending stories yesterday on Facebook were from far-right crazies. It's just not true. I thought, well, why are they doing this? Because it has nothing to do with the hearing.

They're playing to an audience of one. Ranking member Sensenbrenner had kind of the comment that will come back, not come back to haunt him, but the Orrin Hatch comment when he asked, when he said, when he started questioning Zuckerberg on the removal of Donald Trump Jr.'s question on hydroxychloroquine. And he was actually referring, and then Mark Zuckerberg pointed out, it's like, sir, that was Twitter. You know, that was the kind of moment like, okay, you don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. No, they wasted, the Republicans wasted this opportunity, which is in their interest. You know, who did you think had the best? Oh, the rock star here was Representative Jayapal.

She was substantive, strong, forceful, not taking any shit. Stuck to the story. And just said, okay. And the two, from a legal perspective, the exhibit, you know, 38C in the case against Google and Facebook will be really two moments. The substantive moments, there were two of them. two of them. And that was one when Nadler was essentially able, and it might have been J.I. Paul, able to get Instagram, I'm sorry, Facebook to acknowledge that their market power was putting Instagram and all other photo sharing apps, neutralizing them and that they were acquiring Instagram in large part to put a competitor out of business, which you're not supposed to do.

And it's in an email. It's in an email. That's the email that Microsoft got hung on. That's the smoking gun for that. And then I spoke to, for my podcast, Prof G, I interviewed Tim Wu, who I think is probably the most thoughtful scholar on this issue. Yes, I saw. From Columbia University.

And he said it's probably the most thoughtful scholar on this issue. Yes, I saw. From Columbia University. And he said probably the most telling moment or one of the moments that will come back to haunt Amazon is he acknowledged that they purposely price Alexa products below cost. And you're not supposed to do that. That's the equivalent of dumping. And they don't need to. It's not like they got to clear the inventory. They're just going for market share

and doing it on a consistent basis by selling it at below cost. She also got him to say, what I can tell you is we have a policy against users seller-specific data to aid our private label business, but I can't guarantee you that policy hasn't been violated. Yeah, that's held. They have a box full of data. You think they're not going to use it. That's the whole thing. And now it now it puts them in a, we are, mistakes were made kind of mode. And I think those, that was a bad moment. I thought the neutralize and land grab thing, nobody who's an innovator uses the word neutralize and land grab. They just don't. And Facebook's never, Facebook's the Microsoft of this era, you know, the grabbing of, and actually Microsoft's quite innovative comparatively these days. And it was,

that was to me that those letters, and I'm sure there's more, there's got to be more, were damning, I thought. And also, they get Kevin Systrom up there. There's a few things that I think Zuckerberg said to him that are going to be damning, I'm suspecting. But I was fascinated by their backdrops. I thought Sundar Pichai's backdrop, I thought he looked like the Indian ambassador, or he was in the Indian embassy in Uganda in the 60s.

I kept waiting for Idi Amin to walk in. He looked so classy and like the right amount of texture and plants behind him. It was interesting. The way it looked, Robin wrote about it. Google Sundar Pichai was the sleekest of a lot in both appearance and setting. He wore an elegant charcoal suit and matching tie and was well-framed behind a desk that sat in an office that looked like it had been inspired

by a West Elm catalog. He sat with perfect posture, and when he spoke, his gestures were emotive but not frantic. He tended to steeple his fingers as he attempted to answer the House Judiciary Subcommittee's members' meandering questions that teetered between privacy issues and conspiracy theories. Amazon's Jeff Bezos sat in front of a wall of honey-colored shelf and a distinctly mid-century modern feel. Tim Cook of Apple was backed by a low row of greenhouse plants. And Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg had a plain white background that glowed so brightly that it

looked as though he were delivering his testimony from the interior of a nuclear reactor. Now, he looked like the alien from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He looked just so strange. Sundar looked like Omar Sharif's really intelligent nephew. He just looked handsome and debonair. Yeah. We'll be talking to him soon on Pivot School. Sundar. Yeah.

Sundar. He was good. There's a lot to talk to him about. But there were some, I don't know how closely you were watching, but there were some kind of interesting unscripted moments as happened often with zoom one someone clear we got asked cinder there someone clearly came into the room with cinder he was like trying to wave them off oh really i love that i do that a lot yeah he was going like get out of here go away and then and then my favorite point that kind of summarized the first two hours from the first 93 minutes there were more questions to

jack dorsey than jeff bezos and jack dorsey wasn't a witness. And at some point, Jeff Bezos started having a snack. He's like, look, I'm the wealthiest man in the world. When I get hungry and I'm bulking up, I'm working out three times a day. I'm doing five meals a day on my PS90. It's snack time. And I'm not letting this shit get in the midst of my 330 protein. Yeah, exactly. You're right. And he started snacking. He probably has the butler just for the 330 protein, don't you think?

Yeah, he started eating. And no, you saw a little hand come up from the desk and feed him into his mouth. No, but he probably has a separate butler for every feeding, don't you think? That's what I would have, a different butler. Oh, 100%. I'm pretty sure someone was rubbing it. I'm pretty sure he was getting a manicure. It was just off camera. Who do you think

had the best of each day? Let's go through them really quick before I get to our next story. So, I think Tim Cook probably had the best day. One, because antitrust is the dullest sword

as it relates to Apple. Yeah. It's just not entirely clear how you'd break them up. They're not as angry at them. Yeah, they're not. I thought he got off easy because if I were a Republican,

I thought that I knew the narrative around the anti-conservative bias was going to come out. The narrative I thought was going to come out that didn't was I thought they were going to go after Tim Cook for China. And just the threat to security, whether you believe it's true or not, just not having, you know, there's more Apple employees now in China than there are in the U.S. Yeah. And they didn't, they just didn't bring up China. Also, we forget about, I think one of the keys or the attributes to building a trillion dollar firm, quite frankly, is just likability. Yeah.

And when Tim Cook starts speaking, you want to like him. You just want to like him. Yeah, he was good. Some people thought he was arrogant. I got a lot of that, but I didn't think so. Someone who's pretty high up and involved in the government said, he has been quite smart in dealing with government, including the White House, even when he isn't personally comfortable. If I were Cook, I would clean up the app store rules, not be a pig, double down on his privacy PR, and run to the bank and let Google, Facebook, and Amazon take

all the heat over the next few years. So he did the best by virtue of kind of omission, and people just didn't really, I think, really go after him. Who did second best, quite frankly, was Zuckerberg. Oh, Zuckerberg, really? Not Cedar. Here's the thing. I thought Zuckerberg, I mean, Cedar was largely out of the way, but Zuckerberg, I felt you could register that this was Zuckerberg's third time at the circus. He felt, or he's gotten better and he's kind of. Yeah, he always gets better.

He knows what he's good at. He knows how to do this now. Stall, when appropriate, push back. He's not nearly as likable. But I thought he actually, I thought, wow, this guy's done this before and it's starting to show. And then Sunder, and I actually thought Bezos had a tougher time. I thought he made some kind of some unforced errors. Yeah. And some of the stuff that came out is going to come back. It's kind of him. But in general, there weren't any.

You could you could. I thought those emails. I'm sorry. I think those emails are damning. But no, my point is no one person kind of came off, in my opinion, as owning it or really screwing up. I thought they were all pretty. Yeah, I didn't think they could. I think they're i think you're right it's the time i thought i thought the star the standout of the whole thing was representative jayapal i think you know this is kind of a moment

of like you know this is i it represented a nadler who by the way in my next life is going to be my uncle take me to our first hockey game and give me my first beer. That guy. Wouldn't you like that guy as your uncle? He seems like he'd be an awesome uncle. And he'd like, you know, take you down to the union shop. Anyways, he's usually kind of the most thoughtful and intellectually buttoned up. And the guy. Raskin was good. Raskin's good.

But I thought Jaya Paul. Demings was good. I thought Jaya paul demings was good paul was was uh was really strong i thought buck would be better and then he moved down to like trump lane i was he had said some really important things earlier uh represented buck and then he just lost it he went down to trump land and i was like oh god you were talking intelligently in a bipartisan way about this and you know about power and then he moved into some areas that were just ridiculous. Um, it was, it was interesting. I do think, I, oh, I think, um, Cook was sort of out of the way and I think he's going to get out of it pretty, he's going to do exactly that. He's

going to, he's going to make some fixes that are going to satisfy people and he's going to do it because he's an adult. Like, you know, he's very pragmatic. Um, I think Pichai did best, even though he was called anti-American. I didn't think it stuck in any way. And I thought it was grotesque. Especially, I thought it was grotesque to do it to a person of color. Not just that, just it was, it's just like, come on, like, this is not what this is about. And Google is not anti-American. It's just a ridiculous accusation. I thought, I think Zuckerberg did okay, but the bar is so low. You know what I mean? I don't expect him to be good. I think that email is bad. I think that email is bad. Those emails, and there's more of them.

They're so careless, as is everybody in corporations with their emails, but Gates was careless with his emails. They're all careless in that regard. And he particularly, going way back to the beginning, remember he put all those, he memorializes everything in emails and blog posts. So back in the day in Facebook, he said exactly what shitty stuff he was up to and he typed it.

And so he's like that. He's like a diary keeper. And so I think that's a problem. And I think there's plenty of evidence to show this is exactly what they do. They buy and destroy, you know, buy and bury is their thing. And that's a very Microsoft-y thing. And Bezos is in trouble with the marketplace.

I think there's going to be plenty of proof that they, which a lot of, they've got more and more retailers and other sellers are going to, as much as they need the Amazon platform and they need the Amazon platform. I don't think they're as scared. They're like, enough is enough. Tell me if you agree with this. And I've heard a rumor that Bezos, while being very disciplined around email, is actually quite, can be at times quite careless with his iPhone camera. You're not going into that. But yes, I've heard that. There's a point here.

I thought they were. And that is, I believe that Bezos commands more soft power than any entity. And that is, I believe the Bezos commands more soft power than any entity. But China, I think if any other individual had sent out dick pics, I think that would have come up in a hearing. I think they would have made references to it. I think they would have said, can we trust? Yeah, I don't think Jim Jordan's going to bring that up. Can we trust an individual? Jim Jordan's got a history on that issue.

So I don't think. Well, he was a coach And go read about it He was a coach and people came and told him This other doctor was sexually abusing them And he didn't do anything about it There's been so many reports And he denies it

That's uglier but different I'm saying he can't bring up dick pics in any way He's got to stay away from dick Not like anyone else can get away with that I don't think anyone else can come in front of Congress and get away with that. Here's who I think won the week, and I thought it was an interestingly timed announcement, was Mackenzie Scott, who's the ex-Mrs. Bezos, who gave $1.7 billion of her fortune away. And that was announced the day before the hearing. Coincidence? Yes. Coincidence?

Coincidence? I think not. I'll tell you, the easiest way to rough over, to smooth over the rough edges of a divorce is to give your ex the GDP of Luxembourg. I think anyone I know that's getting divorced, if you want to maintain good relationships with your ex, just fork over the defense budget of Canada. Yeah. She gave a lot of money. By the way, not in a complex way. I thought she won the day. I was like, she didn't have some weird,

like, this is a trust that I'm going to control. It just was like, here's some money, all these fantastic organizations and substantive money. I thought she's sort of going down the Melinda Gates path. Seems like an impressive woman. She is. I haven't seen her in, I think, a decade. People say that she doesn't get enough credit

for the founding of Amazon. She does not. I'm going to say that in a column this week in the New York Times. She really was early. She was. I haven't seen her in, I think, a decade. People say that she doesn't get enough credit for the founding of Amazon. She does not. I'm going to say that in a column this week in the New York Times. She really was early. She was very involved early on and so smart. And she's a writer, you know. She sort of went her writing career. She's a novelist and really quite talented.

They should have gone all in on her writing career. They really screwed up. Yeah, it was a problem. I remember talking to her about it because the publishers and Jeff and- Wait, you mean the wife having to focus on subjugating her own ambitions to the man's career? That's never a problem in marriages, Kara.

I can tell you that's never a problem. All right, well, it's a problem in this marriage. That's never a problem. Anyway, Scott, we're going to take a quick break and come back. That was a very substantive discussion about the hearings. I liked it. Scott, we're going to take a quick break

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While the antitrust hearing was going on, Snap released its first ever diversity report. In the US, 84% of employees are white or Asian and 74% of senior leadership is, big surprise, white. The board is 60% white and 70% male. We are determined to do what it takes to improve these numbers because these numbers are real people. Yes, they're real white men people is what they are. Not great. Not a surprise, although they do have several women

who I know are in very important positions and influential positions at the company. So it's good. This is a diversity report that everybody has a very similar one at these companies I think metrics are important and what gets measured gets done the notion of diversity though it's an interesting topic because

what happens is I don't want to say the bar gets raised but they zero in on where you're not diverse so for example the number of executives that are LGBT you know does that count as diversity? And in tech, there's a decent, I would argue it's decent representation. What would you say?

I think it's terrible. What do you mean, decent representation? Well, typically they benchmark it off the percentage of the population doesn't match the percentage of senior management or people in executive roles, right? So the black community is underrepresented at board levels and in executive. And I wonder, I don't know the answer to that, but is the LGBTQ cohort represented over or under index in terms of population to percentage on board and senior management? That's typically how you sort of look at it, right? Yeah, probably under. And Asian Americans, I think, are overrepresented. White Americans are overrepresented, and then especially white males.

And then everybody else is kind of underrepresented, I think. Is that where it is? In any case, these numbers are not great after all this time. You know, it was interesting. Everyone's sort of in the tech industry kicking and screaming to do it. And then sort of in the tech industry kicking and screaming to do it. And then one of them, I think Google was the first. I can't remember. They started just doing it. And it was controversial at Uber. It was everywhere. And it's just because the numbers just are what they are and it doesn't change. And so the question is, how do you change them? What is the best way? I've been talking a lot about this with a particular person because

they're a very wealthy person because they're thinking of doing something about this with some substantive donations and stuff. And so I've been talking about it in lots of areas and I can't, it's not out yet. But it's, you know, if you don't have the, it just, it needs just to be addressed like head on. And I think it's, there's all kinds of ways. But besides the fact that it needs to be addressed and I'm going to get more people in the pool and thinking about it and recruiting, there's got to be a mentorship part of it inside the company. Cause that what happens is they do a good job getting people in the door and then they don't have a good job keeping them and making it comfortable. And I think that's where a lot of it falls apart in the, I've heard from so many people

of color and women that that's where it all like somehow you became the bitch or, you know, the difficult employee or you're not keeping up or this and that. And so I think that's one area so that you can't bring up other people, not that you have to necessarily bring up someone of your own color, but or a woman. But it really does fall apart once people get in the companies. And and there's it's just it's. And it's not a great thing. It wasn't good. My observation, having run companies and been on boards and whatever else I can say to try and make myself sound more important than I am, is where the real fall down, as you put it, takes place is at one big moment. And that's when a woman has kids. I think we were making a lot of strides across different areas of diversity. I think the ones in corporate

America, small, medium-sized business, just hasn't figured out is how to maintain a woman's professional trajectory when she decides, she and her husband decide to, you know, advance the species, which is pretty important. And if you look at wages, women under the age of 30 have closed the wage gap. But where the wages immediately plummet from 100 cents on the dollar relative to their male peers to 73 is when they have kids. Children, yeah. Interestingly, in a lesbian couple, because there are other kinds of marriages, Scott, in case you're interested. Really? How does that work? How does that work? You can ask me or Anderson

or any of us about it. I'm down with that as long as I can watch. It's much more, oh my God, really. There he goes again. There we go.

I have a lot of questions about lesbian marriages. I have a lot of questions. You better behave at pivot school. Let me just say, you need to not be quite as, you need to,

you need to, no, you need to dial down the offensive white male thing for our pivot school. This is our school. We have to have some decorum when we're conducting this. It's like watching NASCAR. You know there's going to be a fiery crash at any moment. To hear him say it.

When is he going to say an offensive thing that will get him fired? I think that we have a more equitable child care relationship in general, I would say. But right now, what I think is more important is during this coronavirus crisis that there's going to be real trouble in terms of there's some great stories about this, that these strides that women have made have been shot to hell with lack of child care. And especially as going into the fall, this is not just students are losing these years, women who have to take the child care duties. What you're calling, I think that is where, I don't want to call it chaos, but real. When K-12 schools shut down early in spring, it was meaningful, but it wasn't profoundly damaging. meaningful, but it wasn't profoundly damaging. When kids, K-12 kids can't go back in the fall, and we're, again, we're in this consensual hallucination with our optimism that the virus didn't get the memo on, that K-12 is opening. There are schools all over this country are not

prepared, and you are going to see chaos in households. It is, we're spending a lot of time talking about, or I'm spending a lot of time talking about whether or not universities are going to reopen. That is not even in the same universe of impact on a household. Your 19-year-old stuck at home is a nuisance. Your nine-year-old at home is an absolute punch to the gut of the emotional and financial stability of the house.

It's going to be huge. Agreed. Agreed. And it's interesting because Google is doing work at home until next summer. All right. Security nightmare at Twitter keeps getting worse. Bloomberg reported Monday that 1,500 employees and contractors can see email addresses, phone numbers, and IP addresses. They've struggled for years to keep them in check.

That's because they used too many contractors. According to two former employees, the controls are so porous that at one point in 2017 and 18, some contractors made a kind of game of creating bogus help desk inquiries that allowed them to peek into celebrity accounts, including Beyonce's to track the star's personal data. What a surprise. This was an issue with

Facebook in its early days. It was appalling and they look up ex-girlfriends and things like that, as I've noted. It's just, there's just, again, just like with Amazon looking at data of third-party sellers or somehow it's porous, it's just too porous, these companies, and they have too much information. And in this case, it's just gross that they're doing this. You brought it up, though, and it kind of dawned on me. Twitter just doesn't have the scale. And they just probably don't have, you know, Zuckerberg can throw, literally, he can throw 10,000 people at a problem. I mean, granted, they have to be somewhere else. They have to be in a low-wage country, but they're kind of institutional armor. And also, they have a CEO that's there full-time at Facebook. Twitter is going to be, there's a lot of what I call deferred maintenance around the infrastructure there that comes back to haunt you, right? But it's so critical. This is just people

understood if they're seeing DMs or things like that. I just stopped doing DMs. I've stopped doing DMs completely. Okay, we're going to go to this. This is not good for Twitter. Another not good thing. This is one thing they absolutely have to lock down. And they're not going to be able to lock it down. You know what, though? I still think, and I'm disclosing I'm a shareholder, I still think the shares go up on the backs of any pilot projects that have any success around subscription. Because if you look at the history of hacks and these things, the media loves them. They're spectacle. They don't seem to impact the stock price. Yeah. And then you can predict Jack Dorsey's ouster again. That's on the bingo card too.

Brian Williams likes me. All right. Whatever. I just, I know he's talking to people at Twitter. I'm like, are you bringing Scott? Whenever I ask him to do, I'm like, no, he's not. Oh, really? Yes. Scott coming. It's like that nice thing. Is your horrible husband coming? No, they're not. I would say not. I love Twitter. I'm just telling you. They always say, are you bringing Scott? It's like having the husband that nobody

likes. Okay, Scott, we got... They're very polite about it because Twitter is a super polite group of people. Okay, Scott, we got a lot of listener mail about the antitrust hearing. Here's the first one from Clinton in New York. I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. Hi, my name's Clinton. I was wondering if you two thought there was a benefit to having all four

testifying together, because while the Congress people weren't on the same page technically, they were tonally in that they all expressed this white hot anger. And maybe that's the impression that people will come away with that we need them to come away with, which is that this industry needs criticism, needs negativity, so that we can get to some positive, specific solutions. I do think he's right. I think Clinton's brilliant. I think he's right. Seeing them all together and everyone all mad at them was a good thing. I didn't think it would be, but it was. Yeah, it created. So initially, I thought it was a huge victory for big tech because when you have one person

and all of these people coming at, I don't want to say attacking, but trying to find the soft tissue around one person in one company, there generally can land more blows. And people come away with a sentiment around that specific company. Whereas right now, the American public comes away with a sentiment generally around big tech. So it's to any individual company's advantage to show up. There's safety in numbers. And I thought that that was a real mistake on behalf of the committee. What I do think people walked away from, though, was a generally uncomfortable feeling about big tech.

a generally uncomfortable feeling about big tech. And so what this did was, quite frankly, it probably hurt all of big tech, but probably lessened the extent of the specific damage on any one company because people didn't really walk away with a feeling like, oh, that Amazon. Whereas with the Zuckerberg hearings, it was like, okay, Facebook is a problem. So what did you think? I did not think it would work as well as it did. It actually worked really well. And also, putting them on, I think they did look small,

and they looked like a bunch of white guys. And it also was like, these are the guys running our world. I do not think big tech is a monolith in any way, and I think they're all different. And they also don't like each other. You know what I mean? Of course they don't. They're not united.

But they're not united like the other industries can be. You don't see each other you know what i mean like they're not united but they're not united like the other industries can be like you don't see when you see other industries they feel like a group of people that hangs out together this is a group of people that doesn't want to hang out together like that was one of the things that i uh i got okay and it's actually true and so i think you know they will throw each other under various buses uh over time i think that's what we want. Some are going to be very helpful and be the good, the good behaved person and the others, you know. And I think all fingers will point at Facebook and Amazon.

I think Google has done, especially under Sooner, has done a nice job of trying to. I still think they're very exposed on the marketplace stuff and also on the search. But I think the first antitrust filing or lawsuit will be against Google. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But that's been a long time coming. Since I've been starting covering tech, it was a problem. Olisa from Washington, D.C. asked, it was clear that the Republicans felt that Google was their company to go after,

and the Democrats split their time between Amazon and Facebook. What does this mean for these companies when the votes are counted in November? The answer is, if Biden wins, they're in big trouble. And the Republicans can yammer on about conservative buys, especially if the Democrats get the House, the Senate, and the presidency. They're in big trouble. They're in big trouble. Yeah, but here's the thing. I think we've got to look at this through a different construct, and we say they're in big trouble. So if you look at all the stakeholders in big tech, there's the shareholders, there's the employees, there's startups in the ecosystem, there's our tax base, there's entrepreneurship, there's our elections, there's our commonwealth, there's management. There's management. Every single stakeholder wins. You want to see Amazon stock go to 5,000?

Force Bezos to spin AWS, which will be the most valuable company in the world. You want to see Facebook stock go to 350? Have an independent WhatsApp that needs to figure out a way for monetization and Instagram. If you want to see Google go to $2 trillion in the next six months, spin YouTube, and all of a sudden overnight you have two great search engines. Yeah, I think that's in there. Every constituency wins. Entrepreneurship, the only constituency that doesn't win is the CEO who no longer oversees, who no longer sits on the Iron Throne of Westeros, just one of the seven realms. And unfortunately— Let me ask you something.

Why don't people—people kept asking, why aren't Scott and Kara here asking these questions? And let me just say, we are correct about this. Everyone will win if they spin themselves up. But this is the dangerous thing. We enter into this construct or this rubric or this gestalt of, should we punt— Gestalt! That's on the bingo card. Go ahead.

We ask ourselves, are they bad companies? Are they bad people? And do they deserve this punishment called antitrust? No. Let's assume they're good people. Let's assume they're good companies. do they deserve this punishment called antitrust? No, let's assume they're good people. Let's assume they're good companies. And you know what we're going to do? We're going to turn them into great companies and oxygenate the entire marketplace. PayPal and eBay weren't bad people. Now PayPal's worth 13 times more than eBay, and there's more jobs, and there's more entrepreneurship, and there's more fintech.

And an American financial services or fintech company is kicking the shit out of Ant Financial and any London. Think of it this way. Antitrust is a reward. It's good for America. Congratulations, Jeff Bezos. We are broke. You're amazing. We're good for America.

You're amazing. You're jacked. We're breaking you up. What are you going to make next, Jeff Bezos? Let's make something new. You know, it You're jacked. We're breaking you up. What are you going to make next, Jeff Bezos? Let's make something new. It also frees them. I think that just carrying around this giant burden of the bigness, I think it's never good. You don't become good. You lose your touch with people. I think these are entrepreneurial people. Each and every one of them is an entrepreneurial person. And so it drags them down and they're constantly facing Washington

and consumers eventually. And so I agree, oxygenate versus neutralize. Scott, that is our goal. Why don't people listen to us? We're brilliant. I think they may listen to us too much. Real quick before we go to another break, I also want to mention an email we got from Andrew in Menlo Park. One thing I have not heard Scott comment on is whether Whole Foods as an acquisition was

a smart move for Amazon pre and post COVID-19. No doubt he has a view. So at a minimum, they got about 500 well-lit, well-staffed warehouses. They've learned more about grocery. They've learned a lot more about private label. I think what's interesting. They haven't bought penny yet, like you predicted. We're going to get to predictions in one second. I think what's interesting about Whole Foods was they underestimated the supply chain challenges of replenishing stores. And they've hit more hiccups than you would have thought. But I think Whole Foods was a, I mean, I just still love Whole Foods. I think it's amazing. A lot of people want to go back to the old Whole Foods. Some people, including you, have said that some of

the quality is diminished. I went to the Whole Foods in Hudson Yards, and I thought, I'd like to live here. It's just so nice. They just do such an incredible job. It's a nice store. And when you think about it. It is. Although I have to tell you, the workers still look more unhappy than they used to be. They used to be jolly.

You should have known I was five years older. That's what happens to all of us. Don't we all start to look less happy? I'm looking fucking miserable lately. It's got nothing to do with my mood. It's gravity. And any time you mention Amazon or Jeff Bezos, they give you like they sort of blink at you like

get me out of here. That's like they're prisoners. It's like, you know, it's interesting. They just will not engage with you. They couldn't go, haha, yeah, I love Bezos. But for $12 billion, or what is that? At this point, you know, when they bought them, it're like, it's usually like that. But for $12 billion, I'm going to think about this. For $12 billion, or what is that? At this point, when they bought them, it was like a 2% dilution.

And not only that, I mean, what company, and this is, again, another data point on why they're too powerful. What company, whenever they announce an acquisition, the stock price goes up enough where they've paid for it. They basically can go shop on the other company's credit cards. The rest of the industry goes down. Their market cap goes up whenever they announce an acquisition. So they get to go shopping for free. It's like, okay, I get mom's credit card whenever I want. It's just these guys are just way – we are so overdue.

But again, it's their reward, Kara. We like them. We like them. Yes. Yes. Maybe we should maybe, you know, tongue-bath them a little more to get them to do what we want. Tongue bat them. Like you do with your anchorman.

I mean, honestly. Hello. Okay. That's enough. Okay. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Okay, Scott, predictions. As I said, Amazon is not boss JCPenney. There's several you have been waiting for to happen.

So give me a prediction. So somewhere between 8 and 11 million households are about to receive a letter in the next 7 to 14 days. receive a letter in the next seven to 14 days. No, from some of the most thoughtful people who have ever worn bow ties, some of the most overeducated people in America are going to be sending letters to say, are going to say out of an abundance of caution, we are asking that your child not return to campus and we are going all remote. Oh, no. that we're going to be able to open is going to end. And it's going to largely be based on when the university gets all the deposits and cashes them. Because the last thing that they've decided to do, unlike every other industry that's challenged, is they are constitutionally incapable of actually cutting costs. And so we're about to see what I call the great recognition or the great sobriety across universities.

There was an interesting article in the New York Times talking about- You know, Louie listens to this podcast. You're killing him. Well, Louie's a little bit different because New York is a different situation. And I want to say it's also situational. But the notion that we are going to take the downside risks of being the cruise ships and the nursing homes of this next phase of the coronavirus- There's some stories about it coming from colleges. They come from colleges. And that was summer. There were 6,000 outbreaks on colleges during the summer when no one's there. Anyways, these are thoughtful, responsible people. They're subject to the same financial worries and denial that we all enter into because we live in a capitalist society.

But we're about to send out, and I want to be clear, I don't speak on behalf of any university. I have no insider information at my university or anywhere else. But if you just do the math here, if you just do the calculus to be the institution that says, hey, come take our college town of 40,000 people and send 20,000 asymptomatic super spreaders here. And we're going to pretend to have some sort of normalcy. That is just, it's literally the opening scene of Contagion 2. All right, we'll see.

Millions of letters out of an abundance of caution. Your kid is staying at home. I don't care about the people that already had college. But we're going to charge you the same. The thing that will stay the same is the tuition. I paid that bill. Although I had one of those 529, so I don't even know I had the money. You know, and I put it away 100 years ago when I was a baby.

Ooh, 529. You're so responsible. Thank you. I was. Which person in a lesbian relationship handles the 529? Kara Swisher. By the way, my questions get much more interesting. That's the first one.

Kara Swisher handles. That's the first of my least interesting questions on lesbian relationships. Kara Swisher handles all. I control the money, Scott. That's what I do. You're the money. Control the money. You're exceptionally productive. I'm convinced you don't sleep. I am. I don't sleep. I control the money, Scott. That's what I do. You're the money? Control the money. You're exceptionally productive.

I'm convinced you don't sleep. I am. I don't sleep. I don't sleep at all. But I like the way I am. In any case, as you know. I like the way I am. I mean, I'm not friends with anchors.

That's a good prediction. I like that prediction. But I like the way I am. I like that prediction. I like that. I don't like it, but I like it. I like me. No, I really do like me.

I really do. No, we get that. We 100% believe you. We 100% believe you. You don't like you, but you like you, if I can say it that way. Yeah, but I hate myself less and less every day. Yes, but you really like yourself too. Anyways, let's save this for another day.

It's much more complex. Anyway, we'll delve into it in our three-hour long. Anyways, let's save this for another day. It's much more complex. Anyway, we'll delve into it in our three hour long. The level of me liking myself or not liking myself is dependent entirely on one thing. Tequila. Vodka.

Oh my God, you're stealing my humor. You're stealing my humor. I picked the wrong liquor choice. You get me. You get me. I get you. Now listen. Gin, I start to hate myself. Tequila.

I'm going to sort of miss you. Tequila, I think I can dance, which is bad for all of us. Let us tell our listeners what's happening. Vodka, I like me. Vodka, I like me. Let's tell them, tell me. In the next four weeks of regular Pivot, the twice a week, we have guest hosts. But we're going to have five Pivot School episodes.

So Scott's not really going away, even though he wanted to take the month of August off. Kara Swisher's going to be doing. I try to leave and they pull me back in. Oh, yeah, you wanted to do this. This was, you're thrilled that it sold so many tickets. Listen to me. There's regular pivots going to happen, which I'm going to have guest hosts, and I'm going to work, you know, as usual, as hard as ever.

And Scott's going to take the two off for the week, and then we're going to be doing pivot school once a week. Just so you know, we have a lot of guests, like guests for Friends of Pivot. Some of them, actually, that I'm asking are like, I want to wait for Scott to get back. There's several people that are well-known that are like, oh no, I want Scott. So just so you know, feel good about that. They were like, they don't want to be booked. The key to any luxury brand, not that I'm a luxury brand, is scarcity. Yeah. They were like, no, I want to tangle with Scott. Not the Twitter people, but they want to

tangle with Scott. And I'm like, sure, that's no problem. Okay. But make sure to tune in next week. I have breaking news because I'm looking at my phone because I'm a'm a little bit bored so right uh herman cain just died from covet 19 oh no that's sad that is sad i was on fox you should not have gone to that tulsa rally without a mask sorry it's just terrible to do that wear your masks that is really that is where that is actually that's a big deal it's not a joke it. It's not like Louie Gohmert, screw him. He should have, he got people to see. That was awful. Let me just say, wear your freaking mask.

This is where it leads, unfortunately, especially if you have other issues. Just wear your masks, please. Don't be a mask whore. 74 hospitalized earlier this month. Coronavirus. You know, and also the national security advisor has COVID. I mean, honestly, wear your freaking masks. You know what I'm really worried about, Cara?

What? I'm going off script here. I'm really worried that in the United States, we always turn to technology for some sort of silver bullet solution because we're lazy. And I really worry that our dependence and reliance and cold comfort from the notion of a vaccine is going to reduce our discipline around non-pharmaceutical intervention, specifically wearing a mask and distancing. And that America... New studies coming out showing it really is effective. Well, not like that.

But think about World War II. It was a race to splitting the atom. Whoever got the bomb was going to win. But we didn't stop building B-24 superfortresses. We didn't stop fighting on the beaches of Normandy. This is our enemy. We got to go after this thing. Got to go at it.

And we didn't say in World War II, oh, it's the least you can do, people in America. We didn't say in World War II, oh, wait, the enemy is a decline in the NASDAQ.

Let's spread money all around. We asked people for money and we went after this fucking thing. I mean, let's declare war on this thing. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry about Herman King. That's sad. But make sure to tune in Tuesday because Congressman David Cicilline will be our friend of Pivot. We're looking forward to having him on the show. Representative Cicilline. That's right. He's coming on. He's a badass, I have to say. But next week on the podcast, I'll be replacing Scott. He was very good. He was good. Next week on the podcast, he did the emperor thing.

That guy's from Long Island, though. That guy's not from Rhode Island. He needs to stop lying. He's from Rhode Island. He's from Rhode Island. That's such a Rhode Island name. That guy's from Ronkonkoma, not Rhode Island. No, he's from Rhode Island. No, that He's from Rhode Island. He's from Rhode Island. That guy's from Ronkonkoma, not Rhode Island. No, he's from Rhode Island. No, that guy's from Rhode Island. Anyway, in any case, Scott, I'm going to disappear him. And our friend Stephanie Ruhl from MSNBC will be the guest host for next week. We have a lot of great guest hosts coming.

You're not allowed to do anything with Stephanie without me. I am. It's a throuple for God's sake. I work twice a week. You know what? You have your anchors. I have my anchors. I love Stephanie Ruhl. We can't get rid of him.

On Tuesday, August 4th, our first Pivot School. Now is your last chance to get tickets. We have thousands of people coming. 2,000 people. We have 2,000. Let's get to 3,000. 5,000 would be better. Just go to pivotschool.com.

And don't forget, if there's a story in the news that you're curious about and want to hear our opinion on, email us at pivot at voxmedia.com. We might read your email on the show. We've read quite a few this week. Scott, please read us out. Today's episode was produced by Eric Johnson. Fernanda Finite engineered this episode. Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer. Thanks also to Drew Burrows. We have an enemy. We have turned back fascism. We have arrested the march of HIV. We have turned back some of the most formidable foes and enemies in the history of mankind. There is American ingenuity. There is American courage. There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed with what's right with us.

Let's show this thing our mettle. It's not too late. Distance. Mask. Concern for one another. Empathy. Masking. Distancing.

This is our enemy. Let's show this thing what we're made of. Kara, have a great rest of the weekend. Nice, Scott. Thank you. Nice. Don't be a mask hole. Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks.

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