Pivot - Twitter Boots Marjorie Taylor Greene, Russia’s Demands for Netflix, and Omicron Ruined the Holidays

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

Kara and Scott are back! On the agenda? Twitter's decision to ban Marjorie Taylor Greene's personal account, Russia forcing Netflix to stream state-owned channels, and Apple’s plan to keep their engineers from leaving. Plus, the many ways Omicron ruined the holidays. Send us your Listener Mail questions, via Yappa, at 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. Yeah. You're making fun of my snow situation. It is very snowy here in Washington, D.C. I was eating on my deck yesterday, and today it is covered with snow. And you are in what, 76-degree weather? Well, we had something strange here called a cloud, and everyone's freaking out. There's not a cloud. Of course, Clara's thrilled about the whole, the golden child is thrilled. And she woke up and said, you know, we've had COVID throughout the house, except for me and Clara and Louie. And so, I've been taking care of her pretty much all the time.

And she's a lot of fun. But she woke up, she fell off the bed last night, all kinds of things. So, it's a lot going on in our house. But she woke up this morning and went, oh, snow. Wow. And then you can't feel bad about anything after that. So everyone's fine though, right, Karen? Oh, yeah.

Nobody's gotten sick. But there's been a lot of, we were worried about the baby getting it, but the baby has apparently some immunity with Amanda. But Clara hasn't, Louie hasn't, and I haven't so far. And so, you know, it is what it is. It's not great because you have to keep, you know, you don't want to get other people to get it. And my mom got it. My brother got it.

My sister got it. Your mom got it. Lucky got it. How's Lucky doing? Yeah, but she's not particularly careful, I'll be honest with you. My nephew had it, and they were together at Christmas. She didn't come down to my house because Alex had it. It's just like, it's literally the gift that keeps on giving.

Yeah, I think, so we haven't got it yet. Not getting Omicron is my new squid games. So I wake up and I'm like, how can I survive today? I have a very social family. So I'm like, all right, where do I mask? What do I opt out of? Where do I decide to just sit outside? Well, you've got Lucky there.

You can sit outside and do a lot of things. You know, Lucky's headed to Florida, just so you know. She's going to be there all of a sudden. She is. Lucky's coming in. Yeah, she is. She's coming to your house. I didn't know if I told you. She's coming in. She's staying. She's going to Omicron your house. Omicon or whatever. She's bringing Omicron. She literally is. Oh, God. But she was fine. She had no problems.

Yes, yes. A little bit of cold. You know, I had gotten, I, God. But she was fine. She had no problems. Yes, yes. It was a little bit of cold. You know, I had gotten, I had really bugged her about, she sort of was annoyed by me, but I made her get boosted. Not too, way too long. Because you didn't want her to die just yet? Well, none of this, you know. Yeah. I didn't want to kill her myself. That's good. No, but I want her to take care of herself.

She doesn't take it seriously. She never has. So, but she got boosted. And, you know, it's just, she's fine right now. So that's good. That's, there it is. And it's going to snow in New York. So she'll be, she can't go anywhere and spread the disease to people. She's like, I'm thinking of going to FedEx Day.

I'm like, no, no, you need to not go anywhere, Lucky. By the way, what did you do for New Year's, Scott? We went to London. We had a fantastic holiday. We saw Chelsea play Everton. We saw Tottenham play Liverpool. We went to the Imperial War Museum. This was a trip for daddy.

Soccer and war museums. And I'm sitting in front of screens at the War Museum lecturing my 11-year-old about how Dunkirk was the turning point of the war. And I'm literally like, oh, my God, I'm 90. Yeah. I'm 90. And we watched Dunkirk every night. We did a different British movie. We watched Dunkirk.

There's so many. We watched 1917. We watched Downton Abbey, which I loved. Did you see Downton Abbey? There's a new movie coming. There's a new one. Of course I've seen Downton Abbey. A new one?

There's a movie. There's a new movie. I went to see Spider-Man in the theater last night with Alex. Well, Downton Abbey, that's what I'm talking about. I saw Downton Abbey, the movie. Oh, good, the new one. The new movie. It came out like six months ago.

Clearly, I didn't see it. Anyways, I love Downton Abbey. I buy into all of it. And it's amazing because in America, one in three relationships begin at work. I'm convinced in mid-century, mid-20th century England, two in three relationships begin at Downton Abbey. I mean, they are all in love with each other. They're all going at it. All the servants, the upper class.

My second valet is in love with the seamstress in town. I mean, it's just like they're all – the whole show is just about worrying over nothing in the relationships. And a lot of food serving. It's wonderful. A lot of food serving. I love the cook. She's my favorite character on that show.

Anyway, I slept through New Year's with the golden child. I slept. I fell asleep with the golden child. We fell asleep. That was it. We watched like the Grinch. Great. He's got COVID, but fine.

Just seemingly fine. You know, good. I haven't seen him. I don't know. I don't know what he looks like. I haven't seen Amanda. She's up in the attic. That was my New Year's.

We slept through it. I ate with the golden child, and we slept through it. You know what? That's not all bad. Mom and the newborn in the attic for a few weeks, that's not all bad. That's what I call being a husband. That's called being a husband. I don't know.

Whatever, at this point. But in any case, today we're going to talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene getting kicked off of Twitter. We'll talk about that. Tesla and some new challenges for Netflix abroad. But this Omicron variant, all joking aside, has pretty much ruined the holidays. And although it's not as, the death numbers are much lower

and the sickness numbers are lower with people, but there's record numbers at the same time. The US shattered its daily case count several times in the past week, reporting over half a million cases on Thursday. Over 4,000 flights were canceled Sunday because of Omicron-related disruptions. And that includes staffers who can't go into work. JetBlue preemptively canceled over 1,000 flights through mid-January. It's crazy.

The current wave could peak in the U.S. by the end of January, if not sooner, according to Dr. Fauci. I would imagine, given the size of our country and the diversity of vaccination versus not vaccination, that it likely will be more than a couple of weeks, probably by the end of January, I would think. I've been thinking a lot about Omicron, as I imagine everyone else has. And obviously, any death is a tragedy. And I'm not saying we should be lax. But isn't Omicron effectively the equivalent of the Fox vaccine? And that is, and hear me out here. Okay.

Privately, in terms of what they actually do, News Corp and all its employees have really embraced vaccines. They have. You can't get into the building without a vaccine. They're all double-vaxxed and boosted. vaccine. They're all double-vaxxed and boosted. The guy who runs the entire place and owns it got hit into the vaccine in December and makes people test if they want to come to his birthday party. And then they go on air and they realize there's a capitalist opportunity to feed people the conspiracies that they want to confirm their biases. So they undermine the credibility of Dr. Fauci and keep raising concerns around the vaccine.

And so I think there's some truth to the notion that all of America is going to be bucketed into the three cohorts. There's going to be the vaccinated, the recovered, and the dead. And isn't Omicron, and it's a terrible way to get there, but isn't Omicron basically saying, all right, let's figure out who's in bucket two and three with greater contagious factors, but what looks like to be hopefully lesser lethal. Are we going to look back on this era and go, this was a very expensive way to surge and burn and get through this? And isn't it sort of what Fox says about the vaccine? They claim that the vaccine gives you antibodies.

We're not against it, but it's more dangerous than it actually is. Isn't this effectively kind of the Fox vaccine? Okay, if you want to call it that. I do think it's an interesting thing. I think people, I think more importantly is the weariness factor of people that they're, you know, not being less careful, but they're sort of done.

I mean, I know they're done in Florida. They've been done since the beginning of the pandemic. Did you see what Governor Polis said in Colorado? He's amazing. I love Jared. Sorry, I should have called him Jared. I know him pretty well. But go ahead. He struck a tone that really captured a lot of people's imagination. I think he's actually, I think he could be a Veep candidate at some point. But he said, we need to live our lives and be smart, get vaccinated, distance, have respect for people who might be vulnerable. But, you know, Coloradans get out there, we need to live our lives. be smart, get vaccinated, distance, have respect for people who might

be vulnerable. But, you know, Coloradans get out there, we need to live our lives. And the entire world just nodded their head. He was able to strike a tone that didn't feel partisan. Colorado has the benefit of being, in my opinion. He's quite a centrist. He has a fascinating history. He's a centrist. He's a fascinating, you know, I met him when his parents started Blue Mountain Arts and he was actively involved. And if you remember, I wrote a big profile of them for the Wall Street Journal 100 years ago. It was the biggest site. It was that greeting card site. And then he started Pro Flowers.

That was part of it. And then he had a cake service and this and that off it. The same stuff. It was all around things with birthdays and things like that. And Blue Mountain Arts got sold for, I think it was $600 million to Excite at Home, if you remember. And one of the things was his parents were super hippie. You know, they were famous,

running around in their Volkswagen van. That was their story. Lovely people, by the way. And she called me when they had the offer. She shouldn't have done it. I was covering them. And she's like, what should we do? I'm like, take cash.

That's all I said, take cash. And then, of course, everything collapsed right after they sold it. Yeah, creating a card company. Yeah, yeah. So, he's a really interesting entrepreneur. And then he, you know, he's gay. He has a longtime partner. He's super centrist, I would say, but also sensible.

Like, not, like, sometimes centrist can seem wishy-washy. He's quite progressive in interesting ways. And so Colorado is a great state in that they have quite conservatives, and then they have people who are very sort of hippie, like his parents. Well, a governor, you're supposed to be an operator, not an ideologue. And a lot of governors, because they're all focused on Iowa, turn into ideologues as opposed to running the actual state. And he does what he's supposed to do. Do you know who famous business magazines in the 90s compared him to and consistently used the same breath?

Who? He was the founder of ProFlowers. And then there was a young man who was the founder of Red Envelope. And he goes on to be fucking governor. And I'm here with you. What happened? What happened? Well.

Where did I go wrong? He's a really interesting politician. I find him to be. He's just a candidate. I used to call Michael J. Fox's parents were sort of remember that show Family Ties or whatever. Like he always had the briefcase and the suit. And they had like they were like, Kara, would you like some like ginseng tea and stuff like it? Just a fascinating character.

And he's actually exactly right. I think Democrats, if there's a good story about about this if they lean the way he is doing it it would be a much better thing than allowing all these you know screamers and crazy conspiracy theory people to sort of dominate the conversation he just shuts it down essentially which i think is really effective um you know next up apple's pulling out its wallet to stem brain drain at the company another thing is people not working paid some engineers bonuses up to $180,000 in stock grants. The point to stop the flow of employees to Meta and other tech companies. Meta's alerted by about 100 engineers from Apple in recent months, which is interesting.

They have an ongoing war going on. The return to the office plans rattled some employees. They didn't want to go back to the office. So there's going to be a real talent. You know, you think there's a, you know, you see sort of Sizzler fighting against Wendy's, you know, pick, you can see it, you know, playing out with on their, on their placards out front. But here in Silicon Valley, it's the same thing, more talent, more. I mean, first off, at a very micro level, you can imagine that Mark Zuckerberg has told every recruiter working at

and for Facebook, which is probably an army of people, special bonus and uninterrupted eye contact for me if you recruit someone out of Apple. I mean, they hate each other, right? Yes, they do. So he said, oh, I would love to just get that place from the inside out. And so you can imagine there's a special bonus for everyone involved if you recruit someone out of Apple. And I'm seeing it everywhere, inflation and wage pressure. And tech, at every level, you're just seeing incredible upward momentum around wage pressure. It's everywhere.

Yeah, and they're hiring up for their metaverse stuff. They're putting the money behind it, putting a lot of wood behind that arrow. And so, I think it'll be an interesting situation to keep people there. You know, Apple's always had a very stable workforce, I think, of people working there. It hasn't ever sort of gotten drawn into this kind of fighting that used to go on between Facebook and Google, really, or, you know, Microsoft and Google, et cetera, et cetera. But it's going to be difficult to try to figure out for all these tech companies, not just Apple, how to keep people in the office,

how to keep them satisfied when there's, people have now gotten used to living elsewhere. They're going to really have to be very innovative in how they hold on to people. Everybody is, but particularly tech companies. But the thing that blows me away, and I think 2022, I think there's going to be so many unlocks and oftentimes, actually more often than not, a period post a crisis is an incredibly innovative, prosperous time because it forces you to rethink things and you come back and a lot of the dry brush gets burnt and it just creates tons of innovation, incredible eras of prosperity. And I think one of the fuels or one of the real unlocks, if you will, is we keep talking about what we've lost not going back into the office.

And if you think about if somebody is spending an hour each way to work them back, which is just not unthinkable between putting on a pantsuit, makeup, blow drying your hair, getting to the subway station, getting into work. I mean, I remember when I was working at Morgan Stanley, from the time you entered the building to the time you got to your desk, it was 12 minutes. So if you take an hour each way, five days a week, 10 hours, 500 weeks a year, that's 12 weeks. You're playing with 12 weeks and somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000 in savings to try and make up for that loss of productivity and electricity. And every time they push back back in the office, it gets harder and harder to go back. I think we've actually gone past the point of no return. I think there's going to be very few companies that demand everyone be back

five days a week. We've gotten so good at renting our human capital to the organization, and it's an incredible unlock. I think it's going to increase productivity. Unfortunately, it's going to create more pressures around inequality because two-thirds of people who make over $200,000 can work from home and less than about a third who make less than $60,000 can work from home. So again, we're going to hear more not only about income inequality, but we're going to hear about lifestyle inequality. And that is, if you're an information age worker, you're going to have the opportunity to be home

when your kids get home, take care of a sick parent. And again, people making under the $60,000 aren't going to have those luxuries. Yeah, yeah. And it'll be interesting what happens to downtowns

and real estate, as we've talked about many, many, many, many times. But you're absolutely right. You know how long it's been since I've been in the office? 30 years. Yeah.

You know, you were ahead of the curve there. I literally, they were mad at me. I used to say I'm at the movies whenever they asked where I was and in the office. I heard a different side of that. I heard they were just fine with that. They're like, no problem, Kara.

You be you. You stay there. You stay there. Took a dig at me already. The first dig of 2022. First of many, I suspect. Because you're hopelessly jealous about my life. All right, Scott, time for our first big story.

Twitter permanently banned Marjorie Taylor Greene's personal account for posting COVID-19 misinformation. What a shock. She's been saying vile things all the time, but this is what got her. Her final strike, which is her fifth, was a tweet featuring a misleading graph reporting to show deaths related to COVID-19 vaccines. She's been warned a number of times, and Twitter's got this policy of five strikes, essentially different strikes. Her account had been temporarily suspended before, most recently in July for tweeting incorrect information on vaccines and masks.

She still has access to her official congressional account, which she hasn't misbehaved on as Donald Trump tried to do with his, which caused him to suspend it. And so she's off. She's off. So she then posted, she's on Getter. She's always been on Getter and also on Telegram saying, Twitter is an enemy to America and can't handle the truth.

Mostly they can't handle her lies. And so they tossed her off. And speaking of getter, Joe Rogan joined the social network. Of course, he's still on Twitter talking about joining the social network over the weekend. He said rejoice and that in case things get dicey over Twitter. But I did notice he didn't quit Twitter. And he, of course, had famous virologist, controversial virologist, Robert Malone, who was suspended from Twitter for his postings about the vaccines.

This guy is, he calls himself the inventor of mRNA. He's, in fact, one of the many important people to its development. That is true. I'm not sure if he can claim the inventor status. But nonetheless, we have a situation again on the Twitter. Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather into a rage. Rinse toxic bile and repeat.

What do you think? Well, there's a lot there. But I think Parag has a huge opportunity here. And that is to bust out of this myth that somehow Twitter is the town square and has some sort of weird fidelity to the First Amendment. And Farag's opportunity is to take what is just sort of blatant misinformation and junk science that's being spread, or people who are just hateful, and all of that, clean up the bots. And he has an opportunity here. And by the way, he doesn't owe anyone anything. He doesn't owe Marjorie. He doesn't even owe us consistency. He can do whatever the fuck he wants. Yeah, that's true. Consistency would be good and transparency.

Let us just be clear. They have gotten caught, as you said, in this sort of First Amendment bullshit argument that they let these people do. There's almost no winning in a lot of ways, right? So if they police them, they're censoring them. If they kick them off, they're censoring them. But then if they leave them on, they get this massive megaphone to push lies. But it's been – okay. And as always, we always regress.

Wow, it's a big problem. It's a problem of their own making which benefits them. They can throw up their arms and always default to let's just let it be the Wild West so we can sell more Nissan ads. Because a lot of this content that is false and damaging creates tremendous engagement and more Nissan ads. So the problems just aren't that huge. They could figure this shit out. And then when we have people come on and talk about the edge case of when I say identity would be really important, I think two-thirds of the real bullshit is bots and people who have masks on claiming to be something they're not and just constantly – I mean, the comment section of the replies are really what damage people. Yeah.

Or damage ideas is because you see them and you don't say, oh, this is a bot. You go, oh, this is another viewpoint. But they don't need any – they don't need to explain. They could clean it all up. And then there's this edge case ridiculous argument that what about the human rights journalists and the Gulf? And it's like, okay, the 0.0001% of people who need anonymity, they could absolutely figure that out. And he's got a big opportunity to clean up his house and also get the numbers legitimate. So I hope he kicks a lot of people off on the right and the left. It was a strong call, I have to say.

She's an easy person. She's such a screaming Mimi. But he was the right call. I did an interview with Dick Koslow today on Sway. So he talks a little bit about PARG and also the difficult he ran it. Of course, when this started, this whole thing began. And it wasn't where it was. He was lucky to sort of escape.

The CEO of seven years ago at Twitter. That seems like a guest you'd get for us here on Pivot. Listen to me. Listen to me. It's a really good interview about how it works there. And I think you'll find it interesting as usual. That's the second insult of 2002. And I have only asked you about yourself. I like Dick. He's a nice guy. He does CrossFit. Yeah. And he does do CrossFit. He's very fit. And, you know, what's interesting is the whole conservative social network scene. I interviewed Jason Miller, who runs Getter, where Rogan went. And Parler is run by Candace Owens' husband, George Farmer, who we'll be talking to soon. It launched in 2018, obviously.

It got into a little trouble last year, post an interview I did with its former CEO. And they were shut down. They're back. They're back by the Mercers, et cetera. They signed a deal with Melania Trump to do her NFT project with them. Obviously, True Social might launch in 2022. That's Trump's thing. Who knows?

He could have gone with either of them. There's Rumble, the conservative YouTube, which I think is super popular. It has deals with Glenn Greenwald and Tulsi Gabbard. Do you think this is the year these break out? Or is it just going to be like a fight in the mud with these, with a knife, as Logan Roy says, speaking of Rupert Murdoch? You should go first, Sarah. You know more about this than I do. I have not been following these guys.

Well, you know. And let's be honest, they're guys. What's interesting is each of them, off the record, will call each other shifty grifters, which is incredible. And of course, they do throw people off, get her through off of white supremacists. They do have rules. I think Mark Parler did, whatever. They. But at the same time, they have to, they run afoul of the bigger vendors if they keep, you know, do what Parler did, which is let anything go, essentially. But at the same time, they want to attract people like Rogan, etc. And so, you know, I think the big outlier here is Trump. If he actually creates this social network and he gets traction, that's the thing. It's got to get traction. But for right now, they're sort of all fighting each other.

And it's still too small a group of people for that much firepower, I guess. I don't know. We'll see. There's interest in it, obviously. Obviously, Fox News does very well. I don't know. What do you own and whatever that other one is. I think they're relegated to never being more than real tiny niches because I think the thing about social or the genius of it is that the content,

which is really expensive to produce, what am I watching now? The sex lives of college girls or landscapers. I mean, and kind of the gorgeous idea of social was it said, hey, customers, you create our content for free. And the thing that makes the content interesting is the friction. The thing people like about this show is kind of the friction between Kara and Scott. It's the tension in social that makes things interesting. And when it's basically the membership of a Georgia country club yelling at each other and confirming each other's biases, that's interesting for about a hot minute. So I don't – I think they're just niches.

I don't think they go anywhere. Well, what happens when Trump appears? He should have done a deal with either Getter or Parler or whatever, and he didn't. Or Rumble. I think he has some deal with Rumble. But, you know, what is his going to be? Like, it's just him yelling, right? D-Wack.

I don't know. Other than an incredible short opportunity. It's got a $2.5 billion market cap. Yeah, that's right. I don't know. I just think, I'm just very excited because I think Devin Nunes is an outstanding, thoughtful executive. Jesus Christ.

CEO Devin Nunes. I mean, that's literally like- He doesn't get much respect amongst the conservatives just that I've been speaking to. Let me just say. That's like, you know, best actor, Keanu Reeves. It's like,

this just doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's really like knife-fighty in behind the scenes in the conservative scene, I have to tell you. Is it?

They don't like each other? You know, like, I'm used to like, you know, Mark Zephyr's like, Elon Musk seems a little odd. Like, that's the worst thing he'll say, right? The more polite, yeah. That kind of thing. Or Tim Cook is like, like, you know, Mark Zephyr's like, Elon Musk seems a little odd. Like that's the worst thing he'll say, right? The more polite, yeah.

That kind of thing. Or Tim Cook is like, oh, that Facebook, you know, ooh, that Facebook. But these guys are like knives out, literally like sharks and jets. And there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes there. But what, like is Getter, are they making money? I just have no idea how these things are doing. No, of course the Rogan thing was a big opportunity for them. They've had a lot of sign-ups, according to their people.

You know, Rogan going, they've got to get, like, he's very popular, and he'll bring in sign-ups. Sources there told me they didn't pay him. I don't know. Who knows? Obviously, getting Glenn Greenwald is very popular on Rumble, I suspect, and he's got a popular sub stack. And Tulsi Gabbard has her fans, I guess. You know, that's what they got to do, sign up all these various stars of conservative firmament and get them in one place. Just like Fox did, right?

Fox created Hannity and Carlson and I guess. I don't know. I think this group of people who consumes this stuff has an endless love of it. But how endless is it, really? Like, how much streaming bile can you take, I guess? I don't know. They're popping up everywhere. I was contacted by a very high-profile political person who supposedly has signed up a very high-profile comedian, philosophers, and says we're starting a centrist network.

And I said, well, okay, I'm all for it. But the thing that whenever I hear about these things that they sort of diminish is they never say, well, okay, the most successful media company in the world, they found, maybe with the exception of Oprah, they found talent. But the secret sauce was they had outstanding business minds. Ted Turner was not a media guy. He was a businessman. And it seems to me that these organizations undervalue what it's required to actually run the business and build a media company.

They start with a talent, which I get, or they start with the content. But I just can't imagine. I would just wonder, are they well-run companies? You know, they're so new. These are so new. I mean, Parler's the most interesting one. They did have some momentum and then not because of their involvement in January 6th, which, of course, is coming up in just a few days. But I think you're right.

I think it's too niche-y, but you just never know. What's interesting is, look, Fox News and all the others have a very high-aged demographic who do not get on these social networks, right? Who consume the cable stuff, but not that. So that's an issue. The question is, can they inspire younger people who are conservative to consume this stuff? And that's a big given. It's not a given, excuse me. And I think they have space on Facebook

to pull this stuff. Facebook has tons of right-wing content there. Yeah, why can't, isn't it just another, I don't know. Well, then the man runs everything, whatever. We'll see, we'll see. It'll be interesting. You have to have, it seems in social networks, you have to have the network part. You have to have the network effect, meaning that almost everybody has to be there or otherwise, I don't know. I just, how do you get to that sort of scale to create? People want to be outraged at each other.

And when they're all agreeing with each other, it just becomes an interesting chat group part. I don't see how they ever get the sort of momentum the others already have. We'll see. We'll see. The funding is also, you know, as you talked about the Trump social, Getter got funding from a fugitive Chinese billionaire. Parler is the Mercers. I would not want funding from a fugitive Chinese billionaire, Parler is the Mercers, you know. I would not want to be a fugitive from China.

Your odds are not good when you're a fugitive from China. He's doing fine. He's doing fine, I think. So, anyway, I think Twitter will remain. And by the way,

let's just be clear, Twitter doesn't just ban people on the right. Here are some high-profile left-adjacent people and groups who have been suspended by Twitter in the past.

Al Jazeera Arabic, Joseph Cox of the Daily Beast, Splinter News, Raul Castro, all kinds. Anonymous Germany. Anonymous Germany. We will not give you our name. Whatever. They've suspended lots of people. I think the question is transparency and consistency. Anyway, Scott, let's take on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Netflix's Russian woes and take a listener mail question about capitalism. do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter.

These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion. bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people. These are organized criminal rings. And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better. One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple.

We need to talk to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim and we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. And we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash Zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Support for the show comes from Alex Partners. In business, disruption brings not only challenges, but opportunities. As artificial intelligence powers pivotal moments of change, Alex Partners is the consulting firm chief executives can rely on. Alex Partners is dedicated to making sure your company knows what really matters when it comes to AI.

As part of their 2024 tech sector report, Alex Partners spoke with nearly 350 tech executives from across North America and Europe to dig deeper into how tech companies are responding to these changing headwinds. And in their 2024 Digital Disruption Report, Alex Partners found that 88% of executives report seeing potential for growth from digital disruption, with 37% seeing significant or even extremely high positive impact on revenue growth. You can read both reports and learn how to convert digital disruption into revenue growth at www.alexpartners.com. That's www.alexpartners.com.

In the face of disruption, businesses trust Alex Partners to get straight to the point and deliver results when it really matters. Scott, we're back with our second big story. The Russian government has some recommendations for Netflix. The streamer must carry state-owned channels in Russia per a government order. Netflix must also comply with Russian bans on so-called extremist content, which could potentially be used against Russia's opposition parties. Netflix may need to set up an office in Russia as well. Last November, Russian authorities decreed that other tech giants, including Apple, Google, Twitter, TikTok, Meta, all had to establish a presence in Russia.

Hmm. I don't know what's going to happen here. Yeah, we've talked about this a lot. I think it makes for interesting media and everybody stares at Netflix, expecting them to have much greater morality than other companies that have to operate. The bottom line is,

if you want to operate in these countries, you have a decision to make. You either play by their rules, which oftentimes are corrupt, or you leave. And so I don't, you know, it's pretty easy. I think they'll decide to stay and comply

and we'll get outraged and there'll be articles, but I don't. Yeah, I agree. It's happened before. Happens everywhere. At Netflix, particularly in 2019, it pulled an episode of Patriot Act from Saudi Arabia after the government threatened illegal action over a joke about the crown prince and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2020. It blocked an episode of Designated Survivor in Turkey because the Turkish government objected to its portrayal of a fictional Turkish president as a menacing dictator, which he is in real life.

You're right. It's like all the companies. All of them. All of them. I remember the first time I went to Dubai, I checked into one of these nine-star hotels on the 30 millionth floor and went upstairs. And wireless or internet was like $46 a day. And I figured out and I paid my 46 bucks. And then, you know, they block all sorts of websites, porn.

And that's what they get to decide that. They get to decide. And then the media organizations have a decision. Do they want to operate or not? So I think that's a bit of a – I want to know why you travel to Russia to watch porn. That's fascinating to me. No, Dubai.

Dubai. I'm sorry. Dubai to watch porn. That's fascinating to me. No, Dubai. Dubai. Dubai, I'm sorry. Dubai to watch porn. That's the one hobby that's portable. I see. It's like taking badminton. It's like taking a volleyball net with you wherever you go in the world. You know what you should do in Dubai?

Go to their breakfasts because they have beautiful brunches there. Beautiful brunches in Dubai? If you go to their hotels, they just have- I know. I stayed in the Armani Hotel in the Al Barad. I was literally like a fifth of the way up. I was on the 700th floor. It was so weird.

Yeah, it's a weird place. I agree. It's estimated that Netflix has about 1 million paying customers in Russia. So this is the problem of all these companies expanding. And obviously, there's a lot of more. We don't pay as much attention to it, but there's all kinds. Casey Newton writes about this a lot, actually, and so do others. In India, there's all kinds of crackdowns that are very serious. A lot of the

action is taking place not in the U.S., even though it seems like it's taking place here, all the screaming. But serious pressure by the government on these companies is across the globe, like including Russia, India's particularly, you know, Saudi Arabia. And so, you're right, they're going to have to just comply. They're going to have to just comply. They're going to have to comply if they want to work out. I mean, they could take their, I don't know, Queen's Gambit and go home, but I don't think so. Yeah, I agree. We'll see.

Russians play a role in Queen's Gambit. Russian chess players. That's right. They must be mad about that. Yeah, they lost, just so you know. To an American woman from Ohio. But, you know, and they're gracious about it, which, of course, they wouldn't be. They'd they lost, just so you know. To an American woman from Ohio. And they're gracious about it, which of course

they wouldn't be. They'd like poison her or something. Anyway, all right. I'm triggered. I'm triggered. What? Whatever.

He was so gracious. It was ridiculous. Those people are vicious, those chess players. Anyway. St. Petersburg, most beautiful city in Europe. It is quite beautiful.

Maybe with the exception of Paris. Yeah, I went there without boots when I was visiting someone I was dating. I went there without boots. That's a great way to

start a story. No, I went there without any, it was cold. I was wearing sneakers and I was like, oh, this is, and then I thought I could just buy boots, but of

course this was pre early capitalism there and there was no boots available. Do you remember you there in the 70s? No, it was when they

just right after. You got a lot of embourshed? I had a lot of, it was when they just right after. You got a lot of emborshed? I had a lot of Balmini. Balmini is what I ate a lot of. A lot is the car.

A lot is the car, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, okay, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question. You've got, you've got, I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman.

You've got mail. This one came from Bobby from Florida, the email. I'm going to read it. Hi, Kara and Scott. I have a question about something that won't sit right in my head. Let's start with an assumption.

The ethical problem with Facebook is that they accelerated too quickly and ignored red flags about the harm it caused. It did so purely for the sake of enormous growth and profit. Couldn't we then argue that Twitter's abnormally slow growth could be saving society from similar harm? How do we rationalize wanting Twitter to think and act bigger for the sake of shareholders if we know that when tech companies go big, they often do so at the detriment of our society and humans in general? Thank you, Bobby from Florida. Let me just say, Scott, this is yours because you're the one always pushing the Twitter to get the bigger.

So what do you think? I don't necessarily know if this is true, what she's saying, but go ahead. Yeah, so I just sort of don't buy into the premise of the bigger. So what do you think? I don't necessarily know if this is true, what she's saying, but go ahead. Yeah. So I just sort of don't buy into the premise of the question. I think Twitter is all of the calories of Facebook. It's all the toxicity, the junk science, making our dialogue, our discourse more coarse, but none of the great taste or profits. So Twitter is the worst of all worlds. At least Facebook is creating an ecosystem and profits and tremendous shareholder value. Today, Twitter's stock price will close below where it closed on the first day of its IPO. It's been a 10-year experiment in proving it can't compete with Google and Facebook, yet it keeps trying to. So I don't – and not only that, Twitter, I'm addicted to Twitter.

I love it. It's a sewer. And it's – they are just as bad. I would say with the exception, they haven't been as successful at depressing teen girls as Facebook. They haven't been as successful as deploying very charming individuals to delay and obfuscate damage to the Commonwealth whose grandchildren will just be horrified that grandma graduated from Harvard and had tremendous opportunity to go on and be Mark Zuckerberg's lipstick and beard. And then the bottom line is Twitter would like to be more evil. It just doesn't have – it's just not as well run of business.

It's not as evil. But you were saying they have this opportunity to clean up like with green, et cetera, et cetera. This is a huge opportunity for them, not only for them to clean it up, but to shift business models. And he's got, you know, he's been there about three weeks now. That means he's got about five months and one week to do whatever he wants because the board can't, you can't fire a new CEO. Right. So this is his opportunity to not only make a shit ton of money for him and his shareholders, but to go down in history as like a Ken Chenal or a Ken Frazier or someone who will be talked about by Jeff Sonnenfeld. Well, should they do that centrist social network thing? Do you think they should pivot to the center in news?

I've heard a lot of cable stations talking about this. I think that's what CNN Plus is doing. I think they're trying to occupy the center. Yeah. I don't even think they need an editorial view. I think what they need is to say anything that resembles toxicity. First off, let's clean up all the anonymous bots where a ton of the venom comes from. advertisers that we have X number of daily active users, not 7X, because 6X are bad actors putting on ski masks and showing up and pretending to be people they're not for their own malicious

reasons. Let's clean this shit up. And they don't need an editorial view. I mean, they can, like you said, they've kicked people off on the left, except the right always claims they're being censored, which is total bullshit. The most visited sites on Facebook tend to be conservative leaning. But they could say, I know, let's be less damaging to the Commonwealth. Let's realize that when people tear the fabric of America and have algorithms that pit one person against another, there's just so many people you get into arguments with Twitter. You just shouldn't be in arguments with. Yeah.

And it's because the algorithm's saying saying, fight, fight, fight. So lately, have you seen the tense thing that they're doing? The like, this is a tense conversation. Do you really want to be in it? But that's popped up a lot maybe because I have tense conversations. But I don't know. If Alexa had that, it'd be going off every three minutes in my house. Yeah, I know.

It's interesting. This is passive aggressive. He does have an opportunity here. You're absolutely right. And I think you're right. They're not good at being evil. They're not good at here. You're absolutely right. And I think you're right. They're not good at being evil. They're not good at being, they're just not. And they also don't.

They've tried. They've tried. They just can't scale it. It's a different platform too. It's a different thing. Facebook is a very different thing than Twitter. Twitter is like a quick twitchy communications thing. Facebook is a whole universe essentially.

Like you could do all kinds of things that you can't do on Twitter at all. You know, they've got more landscape. They don't have the technology. They don't have the ad sales team. They don't have, I mean, they just don't, it's not as well run a business. It doesn't have the resources. It has an engineering team. The engineering team at Facebook that does nothing but sit there and wait for any innovation to snap so they can rip it off is bigger than the entire engineering team at Twitter. Yep. So they just don't, they don't have the resources,

they don't have the scale, they don't have, oh, and they used to have a CEO spending four hours a week there. Anyway, don't get me started. Don't get me started.

All right, so, Bobby, Scott does not agree with your premise, so they should go as we talked. I think she's, I don't agree with this premise.

I don't agree with this.. I don't agree with this. It's not just because capitalism does it. It's that I just think they're badly executed. I think you're right. I think this is a bad execution. I think they could get big in lots of ways. Twitter's that one company. It's always in the news.

There's so much promise, and it never delivers. And I don't think it's because it can't deliver. Does that make sense? It can. This company never commands the space it occupies. We're talking about it every day. If CNBC or even Fox kicked Marjorie Taylor Greene off of their networks, there'd be a big yawn. But Twitter is so powerful.

Your ability to just, whenever you want, push stuff out to your 10, 20, 50 million, it's incredibly powerful. And yet it's never been able to monetize that level of influence. Her question is a more broader existential one about capitalism. And that is when you have a profit motive and you try to constantly grow, what happens is there are externalities. It happened in pesticides. It happened in big meat. It's happened across every industry. And every industry will claim the same thing. They'll say, oh, we're different. We're the pharmaceutical industry. We're extending life. And even though we're addicting people with our drug, we're going to figure out ways to mask over

that externality such that we can continue to clock a lot of money because profit is an incredible incentive in a capitalist society. It's also mostly good. The butcher and the baker don't give each other meat and bread out of purity. They give it so they can have better qualities of life. And that's what capitalism does. It leverages our self-interest. But what we also do is long-term, we go, I know, let's take a little bit of that money and that prosperity, and let's hire smart, thoughtful people who will regulate us when there's a tragedy of the commons. And that's the problem with social media is that the growth, the externalities have scaled with the growth, but we have not been able to scale our regulation and our, if you will, our discretion and our thoughtfulness around these companies the

way we have with other industries. But that's a key component of capitalism is profit, growth. The thing that's really interesting that I've been reading about, and I'm trying to understand it better, is that some people, economists, will say that over the last 20 or 30 years where we've really lost the script is we have been so focused on asset values. Save some people the real fight, the greatest level of effort and resource allocation around COVID-19 was around maintaining asset inflation. That over the last 20 or 30 years, we've been so focused on the value of assets, we've lost even the capitalist notion of trying to increase productivity or good things for the world. things for the world. We're more focused on sending a rocket up 60 miles and creating a PR event such that you can inflate the stock price of Virgin Galactic such that you can use it like an ATM to fund your failing airlines and cruise companies as opposed to actually trying to do

anything for mankind. It's just everything's around maintaining asset prices, which have disconnected from the economy and disconnected from any sort of real value add. That is a very good point. Bobby, good question. We don't agree with you. economy and disconnected from any sort of real value add. Right. That is a very good point. Bobby, good question. We don't agree with you. Bobby from Florida. Bobby from Florida.

That's from Florida. In the news, Floridians. Please send us more. If you've got a question you're curious about, go to nymag.com slash pivot and submit it for the show. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Uncertainty. Self-doubt. Stressing about not knowing where to start.

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big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Okay, Scott, give us this week's wins and fails. Can I start? Can I start?

Let me just say, I love Don't Look Up, Adam McKay's thing. I loved it. I know it got... Oh, you... Tell us about it. You enjoyed it. I thought it... The person who... Mark Rylance, who played the billionaire, is so fantastic. It's worth the price of admission. But it's actually very good. I think it got really sort of

meh reviews. Not bad, necessarily. But I guess they expected a lot from him. I thought it was very funny. I thought it was exactly right. I liked it quite a bit. And I also like Matrix, I think it's Resurrection. The new Matrix. The Matrix Resurrections.

I thought it was very tongue-in-cheek. I thought Keanu Reeves, who I love, is terrific. And I thought it was very heartfelt. I thought they were both very heartfelt. And I wrote about that in the Times. But I just like them a lot. I find them to be wins. And fails.

Yeah, that's nice. Fails. My entire Christmas vacation, which wasn't one. COVID. Yeah. Oh, my God. I'm sorry to hear that. Whatever.

I'm sorry to hear that. I. I'm sorry to hear that. I'll live it. Live it, love it. Anyway, yours? Mine are sort of long. So my win, or I have two fails. My win is obviously

Betty White. It's sort of taken away my, it's taken away my motivation for being a person because I always used to ask myself what kind of world are we going to leave Betty White because I didn't believe

she would ever actually pass. But a great actress, served during World War II as a member of the American Women's Voluntary Services. And I think the thing that we really liked about her is you always got the sense, and it's similar to Keanu Reeves, you always got the sense she was a kind person. And I think that that matters over the long term. I think when you're in the public eye for 60 or 70 years, I think kindness does – I think it's better to be kind than clever. She was clever, too. Let's be clear. And by the way, she also did things like protect –

Well, snarky. You know what I mean. I know. But she also did things like the stories about her protecting that African-American dancer that she did in the 50s. She said, get used to it or something like that. Like, she was brave in the right times, but not like explicitly performatively brave. She just did it and then said, just get used to it kind of thing. I just, yeah, you're right. She's fantastic. That is a real thing. Is it a fail? That's an obvious one. I have two fails. My first is I fell a need

to talk about a couple of things. One, I get very contemplative at the end of the beginning of the year. Any excuse to go inward and be depressed. What do you do? Do you take a drink? Put us in the scene. Do you sit in a chair in Britain, in London, near the War Museum? What do you do? What's your methodology?

No, I'm like Patrick Stewart in X-Men. I go into Cerebro with that thing on my head. And then bottle of Jack and, you know, it is New Year's. It is New Year's. Anyways, so I joke a lot about my alcohol consumption, but there really is, alcohol abuse is like so many things through COVID has become a big, a bigger problem. 18 months into the outbreak, one in five Americans is consuming an unhealthy amount of alcohol. And also gray area drinking, when someone experiences or has a drinking problem, but it's not a severe alcohol use disorder. And I think that everybody, I think January is a great

time to think about restraint and just evaluate your relationship with substances. And just think about, are these things getting in the way of relationships? But my real fail, we had something terrible happen in the Galloway family. My cousin Andy, who is 52, he and his mother and his sister, 80 and 55, all came down with COVID. Andy was not vaccinated, admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, put in a breathing tube. He was supposed to get better. That was very hopeful. And then he crashed and died. And this was not vaccinated, admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, put in a breathing tube. He was supposed to get better. That was very hopeful. And then he crashed and died.

And this is not a vaccine. Yeah, it's really rocked the family. Oh, my God. This is not a speech about vaccination. I'm kind of under the impression that anyone who isn't vaccinated at this point, they're just kind of gone. We've lost them. It's really a lesson about staying in touch with people because, you know, we were close when we were younger. We lost touch over the last 20 years, even though we really liked each other and enjoyed each

other's company. I was trying to think, why haven't I stayed in contact with Andy? You know, it's the same excuse, right? Life gets in the way. You have kids, you have your work. And here's the thing that you realize when something like this happens, nothing gets in the way. You have kids. You have your work. And here's the thing that you realize when something like this happens. Nothing gets in the way like death. And what I'm doing, and I hope other people are doing, is I've written down a list of everyone that I have intentions to stay in contact with. And I'm just going to do a better job because I think it's easy to fall into the trap. I'm just going to do a better job because I think it's easy to fall into the trap. If you are successful or you get a little bit of notoriety, people do a better job staying in touch with you than you do with them.

Yeah. And it's lazy. And what happens is eventually people melt away. And I'm one of those people that has a real flaw around this. I haven't done a good job of staying in touch with people. And you kind of wake up and something like this happens and you realize, shit, you know, I really fucked up. And so my lesson isn't about vaccinations. Scott, you didn't fuck up. You had no way of knowing someone was going to not get vaccinated and then die of COVID. Well, no, what I mean is I think when you become lazy and you don't

maintain relationships, it can really come back to haunt you because things like this do happen. But anyways, my cousin Andy, he survived by his mother, his sister, and a nine-year-old son. I mean, so this thing, it's like I feel like we're at the end of the war where there's going to be a lot of tragedy we're not expecting. But anyway, stay in touch with people. You just never know. You don't. That is, I'm so sorry. That is sad. That is incredibly sad. It is sad. It's terrible. Nine-year-old son. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of that. There's, unfortunately, that's, you know, again, we would like you to get vaccinated if you can, if you have children. Yeah, agreed.

That's just, sorry. I mean, one of the things that I don't like about this whole thing, even though I really abhor people who are not getting vaccinated, because I think they're putting themselves and everybody else in harm's way, is sort of the cruelty around, like, they deserve it or don't be doctors. My brother was horrified by those sentiments, you know, of like, why are you treating? Yeah, I saw them. He's like, of course I'm treating them no matter what. Of course. And the reason, I mean, this kid, I think it was a kid, he lived with me between his first, between my first and second years of graduate school, six foot three, handsome, thin, no comorbidities. I mean, you could have put a list of everyone in our family together and he would have been at the bottom of the list of people that had a probability of dying of COVID.

So, I mean, it just not only was it tragic, everyone was just shocked because, you know, healthy, fairly young. Like a little thing. Pneumonia is one of those things. Pneumonia is one of those things. Yeah, just really has waylaid everybody. Anyway, stay in touch with people. Yes, indeed. And get a vaccine.

You should. I spend a lot of time staying in touch with people. You'd be surprised. I call a lot of people all the time. I think about that a lot, you know, people I didn't... I had one person many years ago I was going out with who I wasn't in touch with, and I had started to write an email, and she died really suddenly of something really bizarre, a bizarre accident.

And I had the email in my queue, like I didn't have time and I never forgotten that. I've never forgotten that. You know, apologizing for not being in touch, et cetera. And, you know, introducing her to my kids and things like that. Anyway, I'm so sorry, Scott. I'm sorry for your family and the child especially. Oh, thank you. Anyway, on that note, Betty White. Now we've got to protect Dolly Parton at all costs. Betty White. Betty White.

Let's protect Dolly Parton at all costs. She's moved up into the pole position of favorite person on the planet. That's right. Correct? Is that correct? That's right. Am I right? 100%.

Speaking of someone who did a lot for vaccine development and, in fact, has been really pleasant and reasonable in promoting it and singing a great song with her hit, Jolene. Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine. I'm begging of you, please don't hesitate. There you go. Okay, Scott, that's the show. Please read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mia Silverio. Ernie Andretod engineered this episode. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot and Fox Media. We'll be back next Friday for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Nothing gets in the way of life like death. Are there people in your life that you care about and that you love? Reach out and tell them. Stay in touch.