Pivot - Twitter will stop running political ads ... your move, Facebook

Episode Date: November 1, 2019

Kara and Scott celebrate Jack Dorsey announcing that Twitter will not be running political ads anymore. That puts Facebook on the spot. They talk about Kara's interview with Edward Snowden on her other podcast Recode Decode. In streaming wars news, HBOMax is joining and sweeping up all the content. How will net neutrality affect the streaming wars? In listener mail, we dig into a new bill introduced in Congress that would force big social media platforms to loosen their hold on user data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Pivot comes from Virgin Atlantic. Too many of us are so focused on getting to our destination that we forgot to embrace the journey. Well, when you fly Virgin Atlantic, that memorable trip begins right from the moment you check in. On board, you'll find everything you need to relax, recharge, or carry on working. Buy flat, private suites, fast Wi-Fi, hours of entertainment, delicious dining, and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. delicious dining and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. Check out virginatlantic.com for your next trip to London and beyond and see for yourself how traveling for takes forever to build a campaign. Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you,

tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway. Rebecca, cue the bad 80s music. Oh, no. That's right, you nose-ringed, bearded, yoga-babble bitch, Jack Dorsey. You take my breath away. I hate Twitter, but I hate it less today. Oh, my God. OMG.

Did you see last night? Talk about, like, the massive bitch move. He announces they're no longer doing political advertising. All right, okay. Can we find another word? When I say bitch, I say it in sort of like a Jack Dorsey kind of way. I know that, but ladies don't like it. Let's try to find it. Say gangster.

Just call him a gangster. No, no, no, no. Anyways, so he announces this literally five minutes into the Facebook earnings call. I know. It was before. It was just before. It was literally like, talk about waving your little bird finger in the face of Facebook. He announced it five minutes into their earnings call.

I think it was right before. It was enough that they had a chance. So they had a chance they're going to ask about it, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, it was perfect. This is a big deal. It was like, I said, coincidence? I hope not.

Of course it wasn't a coincidence. Have you, so has anyone called you or have you heard anything? Yes, I've heard a lot. And you're like, what's going on there? So say more. Say more. All right. So first of all, happy Halloween.

I love Halloween. Do you love Halloween? I do not. I hate it. You hate Halloween? I hate dressing up. I hate costumes. I hate the whole nine frigging yards of it.

I hate the whole thing. Wow. I don't get it. I just find it fascinating what people pick to wear. I always found it interesting. I only wear one thing, hair. Hair. Okay.

You really do? You put on a wig? Oh, God, any chance to put on hair. You put on a wig? What are you going as? What should we go as if we were going? I went as Elvis. I went as the king.

What would be our couple's costume? That's an interesting one. I think we're Cagney and Lacey. Cagney and Lacey, really? Interesting. I think we should go as Jerry and Ronan on Succession. Anyways, where are we? Okay, Twitter.

What happened? Twitter, okay, all right. So here's the deal. So the people know what exactly happened. Yesterday in the afternoon, in the late afternoon, Jack Dorsey suddenly started tweeting that he was going to stop all political advertising on Twitter. Obviously, Facebook has been dealing, and not so gracely, with the same issues around false political advertising, and in fact, encouraging false political advertising.

And last week, in the last two weeks, Mark has been making pretty much a fool of himself in Washington discussing this issue. Earlier this month, Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign wrote letters to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube asking that they don't run false or misleading political ads. And among other things, Jack pointed out that, quote, some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents, but we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising. They're putting more details out on November 15th, although Vijay Gade, their chief counsel, I suspect is quite behind this in a big way. It'll start on November 22nd. So here we are. They're just not going to take political advertising. Now, they don't have a lot.

They're not the big player in this. Facebook is. But it's a big stake in the sand. And so he did it right then. And I think it came as a shock, I think, to Facebook people. Well, it's interesting because first you had a key component of Facebook and the Zucks Kevlar is they were like, OK, we can't all be evil. It was sort of big tech is evil.

And then Tim Cook said, I want off this evil train and purposely said, actually in an interview with you, that I wouldn't put myself in this position and began to disarticulate himself, remove himself, extricate himself. Removing Alex Jones. Apple was the first mover on Alex Jones. And also said, we're doubling down on privacy. And be clear, there's big tech and there's Apple, and we're off. We're out. We're no longer having lunch with the mean girls here. And now Jack Dorsey is doing the same thing. He's like, I want out. I want off this big tech train.

So it kind of isolates uniquely Facebook. And to a lesser extent, Google is the bad guy. And the argument that Facebook has, which is so indispensable is that letting false ads run rampant creates more discourse. That you should – we should have the opportunity to see who lies to us, recognizing that makes – We're doing you a favor. Yeah. At the same time, two days later, and by the way, we're a platform. And then Campbell Brown, who is kind of the less well-paid, less effective beard to all this bullshit, goes on. She's the head of news. Head of news, former journalist, totally throwing her reputation out the window in exchange for options that are more in the money today because as per our prediction, the stock is up on earnings. per hour prediction, the stock is up on earnings, but basically said, you don't want a tech platform making these decisions in the midst of announcing that they're launching a new service that they

will curate, where they're announcing what we will get to see. So when they pay for content, they get to decide what we see and edit it and show some journalistic or editorial discretion. But if you pay, there's no journalistic discretion. As long as you're paying, we'll put anything up. But when it comes to us putting news out, we're going to have that same editorial coverage. I mean, it just, it literally makes absolutely, their position is literally the definition of indefensible and they're now in a corner, totally alone. What was interesting is Cheryl Summer put out a video, it was on Bloomberg's TikTok. She was talking about, we believe in free speech, the same thing that Mark was spouting, the same stuff.

And one of the things they were talking about is we – and Mark talked about it in the earnings call. We're going to double down on transparency, like saying what things are and where the political ads come from and everything else. And we believe more speech is better speech. That's essentially what she said. And one of the things is these very elaborate transparency, I don't know what they are. They're like desktops where you can look at things, which nobody looks at. One of the things was really, what they're doing is offering all these really complicated ways to figure out who's doing what, but it's completely, utterly impossible to use. And someone from Facebook, I sent them this, and what she was saying is, we believe in free expression,

we believe in political speech, and ads can be an important part of that, said Sheryl Sandberg when asked why Facebook decided not to ban political ads. What the person said is, as usual, the company is being astonishingly confusing about what they're doing instead of doing something easy to do. Not to cut out – and this is what someone from a former Facebook person told me. They love complexity. It's amazing. Not to cut out political ads but create all kinds of difficult-to-understand rules. It's classic. Yeah, they're just more attractive versions of Rudy Giuliani. They have a 750-person corporate communications department, which is bigger than the newsroom of Washington Post, which tries to craft this bullshit narrative and talking points, whether it's we want to give voice to the unheard. I mean it's just all narratives, all earnest, thoughtful commentary is always about an excuse to cash anybody's check.

And it's just so ridiculous that they've decided not to take this cycle off. And what's great, the Twitter thing isn't that big a deal. They weren't getting that much money from it. What it is, is it now puts Facebook in a corner alone. And it puts more pressure on Facebook. And actually, I'd like to think, and this is, I don't know, I'll come up with another prediction, but by Thanksgiving, Facebook – All right. You said that. You said that.

Tell me about that. Well, okay. So under the cover of darkness, right, in the midst of the earnings call, under the barrage of cloud cover and flack from other news, Susan Desmond Hellman left the board. Now, what have we had here? We had anyone who has a conscience that isn't a venture capitalist or corrupt has decided to get the hell out of Dodge. I'm not sure why she left. But, okay, all right. Well, she claims, and I want to be fair, she claims that some of it was health reasons.

And obviously we hope that she's doing fine. She's a terrific person. My guess is she's like Erskine Balls or Reed Hastings choking on the corruption and bullshit of Facebook. You just don't have this many people running for the hills on a board this prestigious and probably this well-paying. So essentially, you have board members who are like, okay, let's be honest. I'm kind of done with this 34-year-old Jesus Christ total control, fucking up the world and humanity train. I'm on off. And people who are worried about the reputation, people who are supposed to be curing malaria as the CEO of the Gates Foundation is supposed to be doing, are just all quietly saying, I'm out.

Which leaves us with the Zuck, Peter Thiel, and Sheryl Sandberg. What could go wrong? Mark Andreessen is there, too. And Mark, yeah, okay. I feel so much safer. So it's literally, okay, this is arguably, I mean, this thing is turning into the Pollard Bureau, the board of directors there. But I thought it was telling that she decided to leave under the cover of darkness. It feels like all the people he would point to and say this is a high-integrity person.

She was quite active on the board too. Is that right? Oh, she was the lead director, right? She was one of them, yeah. So one of the things that was interesting that I liked about Jack's announcement – and I'm not going to slather Jack with it because I think they still have massive problems of bullying and everything else and this is the lowest hanging fruit I wrote a column

in the Times that appeared this morning about this I did a quick take on it you write for the New York Times? yes I do thank you

I didn't know that hush up I didn't know that anyway what do you want to say that's where you can find it oh good god you're so jealous

it's sad you were once on that board I have a blog I have a blog you have hot takes you have lots of fans I have a blog alright listen have hot takes. You have lots of fans, Scott. All right, listen. This is what Jack wrote, which I thought was the best.

He wrote a very smart thread, which was very in contrast to having heard Mark's speech, which was very lightweight. It was sort of free speech, good. China, bad. That was essentially Mark's speech. You said there was no nuance. There was no nuance. There was no complexity. Complexity is what I'm looking for.

I thought this was highly complex. Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse. Machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information,

and deep fakes, all at an increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale. These challenges will affect all internet communication, not just political ads. Best to focus our efforts

on the root problems without the additional burden and complexity that taking money brings. It was just so smart. I was like, and it went on. It was like one smart comment. That also wasn't ducking the difficulty. That's what I like. It's like, look, we haven't fixed it. And, you know, so he also said, for instance, you know, we're well aware we're a small part of a much larger political advertising ecosystem. Some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents.

Talking about all these things that were like hard. And I was like, and he didn't say we haven't really fixed it. You know, we haven't really fixed it. And we know that. And it was so refreshing to like get an actual – it's not letting him off the hook for the other stuff, but at least it addresses it in a complicated way that this is a complex issue that nobody has good answers for. I give him – Smart move. Great for shareholders. But although let's talk very quickly, they had a terrible earnings.

There's some issue around ads and stuff like that, but they've been doing really well. The stock had been up to 40. Now it's down very quickly. They had a terrible earnings. There's some issue around ads and stuff like that. But they've been doing really well. The stock had been up to 40. Now it's down much lower. It's come back. It's come back down. You had talked about it going up higher. But Facebook, killer earnings.

Killer earnings. Everything up and to the right. So what was our prediction? That Facebook was going to blow away earnings and go over 200 bucks a share. It touched 198 this morning. I think it's going over 200 the next few days. But here's the thing. Just as Trump has his base of loyalists, regardless of how corrupt or how much he lies, Facebook has their base of people who are totally loyal to them, regardless of how corrupt or how much they lie. And it's called the global advertising market. I think at some point, I started-

Yeah, they own everything. You have no option. Someone asked me if I had a small business. How do you say monopoly? Yeah, someone asked me if I had a small business, would I advertise on Facebook? And I said I'd have to on Google. There's no choice. You have no choice, no options. That's exactly right, Kara.

And here it is. When you have no choice, it's not a tool, it's a tax. Facebook and Google have become taxes. The biggest tax cut to small business in America would be if you banned Facebook and Google have become taxes. The biggest tax cut to small business in America would be if you banned Facebook and Google. Because what they are now is they're not means of differentiation. There's something everyone has to do. You have to own the right rail. You have to own those first two spots up top, two-thirds of all social media. So everybody doesn't use it as a point of differentiation. One of my colleagues at L2, who quite frankly is responsible for the success there, a woman named Maureen Mullen, who's like this incredible blue flame thinker, highlighted to me.

She said, name a single company that has established competitive advantage over the long term using Google or Facebook. And that just blew me away. Because if you said TV, you'd go, oh, well, Nike. If you said catalog, you'd say, oh, Williams-Sonoma. No one has been able to establish long-term competitive advantage. No, they can't. And their genius is they've made the tools so egalitarian and the best practices so porous. Everybody figures out how to buy more words and how to catch up.

So it's really – anyways, I hope at some point the CMOs do it. You're probably right. They can't do it because everyone would laud them for their efforts and then their stock would go down the next day. They can't. Yeah. It's the only game in town. My prediction is Facebook. It's the company store.

A hundred percent. It's a tax. It's the company store. You cannot buy. That's how much potatoes are going to cost. Right. It's the one railway, right? I called it Mother Russia the other day.

Mother Russia. Nice. Speaking of Mother Russia, let's talk about your interview. Yes, I interviewed Edward Snowden. It was fascinating. He was in Moscow. So we were talking about the idea of whether he's a whistleblower, a trader, a leaker, an activist. Broadway dancer.

Broadway dancer. He's a cat. He says he's an indoor cat. That's what he Broadway dancer Broadway dancer he's a cat he says he's an indoor cat that's what he told me he's an indoor cat I said how is it in Moscow he's like well it doesn't really matter

where I am I'm an indoor cat and I like to look at the screen so it doesn't matter where I am and what what came out what was the most surprising

thing about your interview that he was so thoughtful I think one of the things look there's all these whether he's a Russian asset or not I don't believe he is I think a lot of the

intelligence points that way. I think the question is what he will become someday. As long as it continues to be established that he acted on his own, what is he? What did he do? Because he did reveal the US government doing unconstitutional legal actions. Sure. That said, the way he did it was illegal. Yeah.

And they later passed laws to stop the government from doing what he pointed out was illegal, but him pointing it out was illegal. So it's really complicated. And I think the only issue is proving whether or not he's a Russian asset or a Chinese asset or a spy of some sort. But again, if he is not, then he's a whistleblower. He's a whistleblower who whistleblowed classified information, which you're not allowed to do. Although that's sort of what the whistleblower did, went through the right chain of command

in this recent Ukraine thing. Although it wouldn't have come out had not someone leaked to the press that there was a whistleblower. So, you know, it was a great conversation about what he is and where he's going. And then we talked a lot about Facebook and the big tech companies and how he feels, you know, whether government is more dangerous to people and stuff. So let's listen to him talking about that, Facebook and data collection, internet privacy. Facebook's internal purpose, whether they state it publicly or not, is to compile perfect records of private lives to the maximum extent of their

capability and then exploit that for their own corporate enrichment and damn the consequences. This is actually precisely the same as what the NSA does. Google has a very similar model, and they go, oh, we're connecting people. They go, oh, we're organizing data. But we can see privately what they're doing, right? You open your weather app, and it's communicating with Facebook because someone baked the Facebook SDK into it. And you didn't even realize that. You don't see who served a certain utility. And this is going to sound very hawkish and Republican. I agree with Hillary Clinton. I would have liked to see us drone his ass. I think when you, I don't know, subject this many people in our national security apparatus to this kind of danger, which I think he subjected them to, there's no doubt about it.

Well, no. He makes the case that there hasn't been and they have not revealed any instance where he did. So they're just saying that, but then don't provide any proof to it. And his contention is that if he had actually damaged people's lives, they would have said, look what he did, and they haven't once.

So he's contending, one, that he leaked it. I'll just give you his argument. He says he gave it only to journalists. He made sureending, one, that he leaked it. I'll just give you his argument. He says he gave it only to journalists. He made sure they didn't – the stuff that he gave them, that they didn't write stories that would put – and contact the government about if there were people in danger's way. Revealing that we spied on Angela Merkel doesn't put anyone in danger. It just doesn't. And he's correct about that. It makes – it embarrasses us for sure that we did that

and probably not a surprise that we did that. But his contention was that he made sure the journalists agreed that there was nothing and they would check with the government on anything that was even slightly. He never released anything publicly himself, so he didn't do a data dump. He's differentiating himself from WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. And he said that

none of this stuff has been proven to hurt anybody. So it's really, it's interesting. Like, so how do you, I'm not a fan of Sully, but like,

how do you show that the government is cheating and doing illegal things that they were never supposed to do, which is this mass surveillance without breaking the law?

Well, look, I don't know. If he wants to be a martyr and a whistleblower, then come back and face the consequences and maybe he's right. Well, actually, the Espionage Act, he can't have it. Well, he didn't. He says he doesn't. He says he didn't. Oh, come on. Well, I don't know.

And Russia's looking after him. Well, no, they're not. He doesn't work for it. He doesn't work. He lives in a small apartment in Russia. In Russia. Yes, but he got stuck there because we pulled his passport. He wasn't traveling there.

He was traveling to Ecuador. He wants to live in Europe. He wants to live here. Well, I want to live in Europe. That doesn't give you permission to like be a spy. No, I get it. But I'm just saying it's a lot – I think it's a lot more – it's a very interesting complex issue of what you do. Let's put aside – say he isn't a Russian asset.

Okay. Or a Chinese asset because he went through Hong Kong. He picked Hong Kong because it was an area that was at the time not Chinese territory, but it was a free area. What would you do if you were sitting there? What I found most intriguing about this interview was that he had a vision of the internet as a young man, and he's very typical of a lot of people I cover, where the internet was a safe place. It was a great place. It's where he lived, where it was his world. And then it perverted into not just, it perverted by the government and master balance,

and it was perverted by big tech by mass surveillance. And I think he was in love with the internet as he conceived it, and he had the arrogance to think, I can stop them. And that's the best case scenario for him. And he still broke the law. And under the Estimation of Agile, he can't have an actual trial where he can give a reason for doing it, which is they were doing something illegal, and I was pointing it out. That's not a defense, actually. He just goes to jail. He just goes to jail. That's it. There's no other thing but go to jail. I think your voiceover is a romantic script

on a young man who is probably very thoughtful, very intelligent. It was a great interview. I get it. I get it. History will judge this man. And if things come out in Russia that he was indeed a Russian asset, that could happen like it's happened before. You don't think he negotiated safe haven in Russia in exchange for something? No. Why would they want him? They tried to go everywhere else. And he's still trying to get out of Russia.

He's trying to get – Why did Russia agree to host him other than to make us look stupid or they got something in exchange. Or make us look stupid. Yeah. Okay. He doesn't have a visa there right now. He gets extended year after year, I think, or something like that. So he's trying to get somewhere else right now.

Yeah. But he doesn't have a passport. He can't go anywhere. He's a man with a money. You know, speaking of- And by the way, the U.S. clamps down anybody that offers him anything. As they should. If you want to listen to the full interview, it's out now

on my other podcast, Recode Deco. All right. All right, last quick story, very quick story. HBO Max makes its debut on the streaming scene. Oh, the streaming wars,

Kara. Yeah, streaming wars. They're now white hot. They've been heating up. White hot. They're literally- It's coming in May, $14.99 per month.

That's why we need another streaming service. It's more expensive. I'm just sitting around waiting for Peacock. I don't want to buy HBO, but that's what HBO costs, I think, monthly. Yeah, what is it?. You know, if you like HBO but don't want to buy HBO. That's what HBO costs, I think,

monthly. Yeah, what is it? It costs that much if you have cable. But anyway, you can get it by yourself. Cara,

last week you said that the streaming wars are going to be won by whoever has the best content. Yes. And, you know,

HBO Max is trying to get in there. It's the only place you can stream Friends. They also bought the entire run of South Park for over $500 million

out from under Disney Hulu. So they're trying to get in there. Who has the there. And that will matter. The most interesting thing here, and I'm parroting a Vox article, which by all measures is probably going to launch their own streaming network. We are not. This will test net neutrality because the only thing, so Netflix and Disney Plus, what they don't have relative to HBO Max, relative to the Peacock network from Comcast, is they don't have vertical distribution. And that is basically what HBO Max has with AT&T as a parent is you could flip on your TV or your direct TV channel and they could start promoting it. Or they could make it more expensive to stream Netflix. And that will be a real test of the banishment or the banning of these net neutrality laws. So I've always contended that if you look at companies that have been able to get over $100 billion in market capitalization,

they all have one thing in common, and that is they're vertically distributed. They go from creation to they control the end unit phrase. So Apple TV Plus could be pre-installed on a billion devices. When they sell their 110 million phones a year, and I don't know if that's the right number, they can pre-install it with Apple TV Plus and give you a free year. So vertical distribution is an unbelievable competitive advantage. And the biggest player doesn't have it, and that's Netflix. That's why I've always thought that Netflix should probably, at this point, merge with someone who's vertical and can control the distribution. Apple?

That would be an interesting one. Amazon? Or Google, pre-installed on more. It's actually more kind of from a brand positioning standpoint, I think, congruent with Android, pre-installed on 2.5 billion devices. But when you don't control the distribution, you are subject to someone else's decision to say, you know what, we're going to make it almost impossible for distribution.

That's what's happened to Spotify. They don't control their distribution, so they're at the whims. So interesting. They're both still the best products, too. A hundred percent. Yeah, Netflix is the best product. Let's see how good these products are. I think it does depend on the content.

It's a lot of them, though. I mean, every one of them are coming out. And people say it's going to be bad for Netflix. Netflix needs distribution. My prediction or my thought was they should buy Sony because they would get some distribution on handsets or on PlayStation and also great content. Oh, that's interesting. And Sony's kind of cheap. It's kind of a shadow of its former self.

That was considered the most innovative company in the world. Yes, it was. That was the Apple of the 80s. It was. But without vertical distribution, I don't know if they can bust through from wherever they are, 100 plus billion to 200 billion. I like it, Scott. That's an excellent prediction. We'll see.

But we're going to get more when we get back. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Pivot. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we'd 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.

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We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim. And we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at Vox.com slash Zelle.

And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. 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. Welcome back to Pivot. We're going to dig into some listener mail before we get to wins and fails. But you went to the Apple premiere. You went to a premiere I didn't go to. Yeah, Morning News. Stephen Carell, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, a story. It's basically what I'd call the Diet Coke version of the Matt Lauer story. And it was actually, I thought what's interesting, I think it'll be quite controversial because at least in the first episode, it treats, you know, the serial or the harasser, you know, the guy with very much kid gloves.

It portrays him as a bit of a victim. So I don't know if there's a twist coming. But it felt very aptly in the sense that they spent, they must have spent literally- Everyone said the money. I have a friend who went. Game of Thrones like money on this thing. Yeah, I have a friend who's a docu,

who has a show with Netflix actually, and was like the money was insane. And that's what's- And that was just, you know- That's what's become so interesting about content is it no longer needs to be self-sustaining. It becomes something, as you said it aptly once you said, well, we can sell more paper towels if we have the marvelous Mrs. Mizell. And what it all, it all leads to one point, and that is it's a great time to be in the business of creating

content. You know, young kids or a lot of kids meet with me and I'm like, you want to get close to processing power? You want to get to a city. You also, if you have the ability to be in the business of creating mass consumable, differentiated content, it is a great time to be. I don't know if you're a gaffer, I don't know if you cater movie sets, but you know, when you and I have been approached about doing TV shows and when they're coming after Kara and the dog, it means there's too much capital swashing around original scripted television. Did you get to meet Jennifer Aniston? Was she there? I didn't.

I saw her and I saw Reese Witherspoon. I was too intimidated. Tim Cook was there. Yeah. But it was – Tim Cook in an environment like that is weird. You could just tell he's uncomfortable. He's way too –

He's so uncomfortable. He likes to talk about football and – He's not having a midlife crisis. Bezos wanted to be there smiling and laughing. He really just wants to talk about football, really. Yeah. He's so damn likable. He's got good hair and he seems nice.

Anyways, but I saw him. That was my celebrity sighting. So you were at a premiere. I was at a premiere. I put on a tie. Did you? The dog was looking good. Were you?

I was looking good. Yeah, I showered. I'd love to see you at these premieres. You're very shy. People don't realize you're quite shy. Well, I'm paid to be an extrovert, but the reality is when I'm off mic, I don't want to talk to fucking anybody. Yeah, that's true. You are.

It's interesting. I will talk to anybody. I'm complex. I'm so complex. I'm quite an extrovert. I'm a very – So many layers to the dog cake. All right.

In any case, let's – listener mail. So we got an email question from the listener, Michael Swain, about an article that was written on our sister site, The Verge. The article looked at a new bill introduced by some big Silicon Valley critics this month that's meant to undercut social media monopolies. The augmenting compatibility and competition by enabling service switching act access is designed to make large communications platforms loosen their hold on user data. Senator Mark Warner introduced the bill last week as part of an effort to rein in big platform monopolies. We reached out to the writer of this article, Addie Robertson, to sum up the bill and how it might play out. Access is a bill that's supposed to promote interoperability between big platforms and their competitors. Interoperability is the idea that if you're a giant platform like Facebook, you should create tools so that competitors can interface with your service.

But it's supposed to make sure that competitors can access the giant user bases and backlogs of data that giant platforms have already amassed. The Access Act tries to make clear that companies are supposed to preserve privacy. They're supposed to not use data in any untoward ways. But if this does pass, then it's going to raise really big questions about how you would preserve security when you are swapping data across services and how you make sure that bad actors don't get access to these systems. That's interesting. So data portability- That was not interesting. That was boring. No, it was not. You're wrong.

Who came up with that clip? No, listen to me. Listen to me. It is interesting. No, data portability is really important. The ability to move services. But these big companies have already amassed so much data, there's no way rivals can compete. It's actually critically important. It's a very fascinating bill. You're absolutely wrong. So can people tap into what Facebook or Google has already compiled and create new businesses? So it could potentially be a font of innovation so that you don't – there's no way these companies can compete or create what you were saying, different choices in online advertising without access to this data. And so how do you do it right is a really important thing. And secondly, the ability to do it is a big deal.

Thank you. And not only that, it's legislation that's difficult and hard. And you can imagine writing this thing took a ton. I'm a big fan of Senator Warren. Depending on how you categorize or qualify the statement, somewhere between four and nine percent of our elected officials have a background in engineering or technology. And Senator Warner is one of them. And he's very thoughtful. I got the opportunity to spend some time with him. His questions are right on. He seems very interested, really wants to understand the stuff. And I think a lot of our elected officials who are clearly very smart, clearly have good instincts, clearly have resources, quite frankly, they don't want to take the time to write this kind of legislation

because it's hard. I mean, it's really difficult. You're already saying this, but it's actually really important. A bill like this is critically important to allowing competitors. And we do have to safeguard against privacy issues of moving this data around. But Mark Zuckerberg talks only about data portability, not that he has to turn over the data he collects to competitors to let them build businesses. I get it. This is important. Kudos to you. At the end of the day, though, it solves a fraction of the problem. We need to break these companies up because right now, I'm pissed off at Facebook. I'm taking my data to Instagram., though, it solves a fraction of the problem. We need to break these companies up because right now it's, I'm pissed off at Facebook. I'm taking my data to Instagram.

I mean, it's just— It's not taking your data. It's actually letting rivals build businesses off this data that never will be compiled again. So it's that you own your data and you can begin—when you fire up another service, you would have your friends fire up and you would contact them. No, that's data portability. Data—this is talking about the ability of some company X decides to make an actual competitive search service. They can use data from Google.

They can use Google's data in a way that they can create a new business. I think it's a great idea. I think it's a great bill. I think theoretically it is. Do you think all of a sudden across America, venture capitalists are going to start funding Well, at least it gives them like, literally, I've interviewed just today Alexis Ohanian, Ben Horowitz, never going to invest in a social media company again because of Facebook. And do you think that changes as well? Yes, it does.

If people have more stuff. And right now, these big companies are hoarding all the data. Let's use their data to create competitors. And maybe we don't have to break them up. You know, I don't know. I think it's a great bill. It's complicated, which is why it's difficult, but I think it's great. Agreed.

All right. So wins and fails. Wins and fails. What's your win, Cara? What's my win? Oh, God. Jack Dorsey. Just Jack Dorsey.

Jack. Yeah, well done. That was a good one. My win is Claudia Lopez. Okay. Who this week, do you know who Claudia is? No. Please explain.

She was elected as the first female mayor of Bogota, Colombia. And she's also a member of the LGBTQ community. Okay. And after decades of abuse, it was especially difficult as most civil wars are on women. There's a wonderful story. Women have decided, have turned to political activism, and the second most important office in Colombia, the mayor of their largest city, is now a 49-year-old gay woman. And it's a huge, I think it's a really nice victory, and her speech was wonderful. It says a lot about the progress of a country that's been war-torn, and she's now one of the two most powerful lesbians in the Americas, the first, of course, being the senior senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham. Anyways, my win is Claudia Lopez. I think that this is a victory for Columbia, a victory for her, and a victory for women. And by the way, what is the number one source of news on lesbian leadership?

The dog. The dog. Don't call. Don't impugn lesbians by calling Lindsey Graham one. Don't do that. No, that's okay. We are not going to take him. He's not tough enough anyway.

Anyway, actually, I do have another one. Casey Newton for taking down horrific contract Facebook content moderators. Cognizant is shutting down its moderation business. A few months ago, Casey published a couple blockbuster stories about contract workers moderating the grimace Facebook content. This week, two of the companies doing that work said they'd stop working with Facebook. Yeah. Facebook's got to do this bizwax themselves. If they make a mess, they have to clean it up.

I get it. I like it. All right. What is your fail? So it's not so much as a mess. They have to clean it up. I get it. I like it. So, all right. What is your fail? So, it's not so much as a fail. I just wanted to recognize a guy I went to college with and was actually an attorney at UCLA. A guy named Keith Boski passed away at the age of 53. That's very sad.

I know Keith. Oh, you know Keith? Yeah, not well, but. And we had lost touch and reconnected. He was the president at DLD in Germany. He was the president of a video game company and a thought leader on robotics and drones. The thing that struck me about him,

I've never had a chance to meet his wife or his son, Sarah and Kevin, but within 30 seconds, he would begin talking about it. Oh, I'm a mess. Oh, no. I'm sorry. Anyways, Keith Boski, dad of 53. Oh, so sad. Very upsetting. Oh, no. He was a lovely guy. Oh. Very upsetting. Oh, no.

He was a lovely guy. Yeah, he was a lovely guy. That's why I would see him every year at DLD. Yeah, he was a fascinating guy. Always interesting, send me interesting ideas and stuff like that. Nice man. I am so sorry. That is sad, right? Yes.

Short carrot. We got to enjoy it. You know I'm death obsessed. Not obsessed. I'm death focused. Yeah, so am I. You know that. It's motivating, though.

It's nice. It is motivating. I think it can be a source of energy and power. People always think I'm crazy, but I'm like, no, no, no. It makes me happier when you recognize that we have very short time on this planet. Very little time. And everywhere we go, we're going to hit this, whether we like it or not. And so I think it's very touching, Scott. Faster than we think, right?

Scott, I'm so glad. All right, let's go to predictions. Predictions. Let's get you out of this. Okay, so there's this artificial—the unicorn industrial complex is all about pumping and dumping and trying to create a ridiculously artificial high stock price until the VCs and the institutional investors can sell. And we saw that with Beyond Meat, and that is they only had about 16% of their float. So the idea is only put a small percentage of your ownership out there,

and then it creates artificial demand, more demand than supply. And then the moment additional shares come out, Beyond Meat goes public at 25 bucks, rockets to 250, ridiculous valuation. I mean, just an insane valuation. They do a secondary. The stock goes down 20%. The lockup comes off last week. Stock goes down again. And now the stock has lost two-thirds of its value. We're about to see the same thing

happen at Uber next week. It seems like Uber is your next thing to talk about. Well, Uber doesn't go to zero. There's real value there. But it's going to, I think my prediction is I think Uber gets cut 20 to 40% in the next 30, 60 days as the artificially low float goes away and the lockup comes off. And people realize this company is not worth more than Ford. It's a nice company worth 10 to 20 billion, not 55 billion. Wow. Anyway, so the artificial demand and the artificially high stock prices created by a minimal float that the investment bankers

and the companies manage, at some point you got to pay the piper. It's happened with Beyond Meat. And by the way, what Uber was to WeWork, so Uber breached the firewall and everyone said, all right, we're not going to be fooled again

and killed the WeIPO. That is what Beyond Meat is to Impossible. Impossible has lined up its IPO. That's not going to happen. Because now that Beyond Meat is crashing to something that reasonably reflects its value, the bankers and the folks at Impossible are going, oh, fuck, we're not going to get out. So what happens to the businesses then? They're nice businesses. They're good businesses. They're worth perhaps billions of dollars, but they're not worth more than the entire agri-food business. Do they get bought? I don't know.

Not for a long time. They're way too expensive. I mean, I find a decent strategy. I only buy chicken and beef stocks because, Cara, I want to be a billionaire. Get it? A billionaire. That's good comedy. because, Kara, I want to be a bullionaire. Get it? A bullionaire. That's good comedy.

And he's recovered from his moment of sweet, kind, poignant. That's good comedy. Bullionaire? No, that was just I'm very hungover. Yeah, okay. But anyway, so my prediction is Uber gets cut 20% to 40% as the lockup comes off and some sort of reasonable valuation. Everyone realizes this thing is not going up. It's going way down, and they head for the doors.

Okay. What does that mean then for IPOs going forward? I'm going to push you. We're just going to have a massive recalibration of value in the public markets. It's happening in the private markets. The public markets have been the rational ones. It's usually – supposedly usually the retail investors in the public markets are the stupid ones, and the private markets are supposed to be the smart guys, and it's actually been reversed. Next year will be a very interesting year for IPOs, and we have all these companies delaying their IPOs.

Like Palantir will be the most interesting because they benefit from this kind of black box. Oh, they're so mysterious. That would be just a fascinating S1 to see. All right, let's enjoy that. We will read that together. Yeah, that would be. Together, by the fire. Yeah, I like it.

Reading S1s. That's our Sunday. And just very briefly, the rumors that Alphabet, Google's parent company, might be buying Fitbit was interesting. We'll talk about that next week, the wearable space. That's right. I thought that was bullshit, and it ended up I got that wrong. I thought that was a lie released by Fitbit, but it looks like, in fact, Google is, in fact, in talks to acquire them. Anyway, interesting.

We will talk about the wearable space next week and so much more. Scott, I'm so sorry about your friend dying. I really am. You know, it's a stretch to say we were friends. I know, but still, it affects you all. It's so very sad, right? I don't know if you know this. I use the WeCroke app constantly so I can hear death quotes all the time.

And so I get five of them a day, which everyone makes fun of me. But there's a really good one I got today, which was oddly enough. Liz, live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. Mahatma Gandhi. Oh, that's Gandhi? That's Gandhi, my friend. With the flowing robes?

Yes. Yeah. Benjamin Franklin, death takes no bribes. That's right, isn't it? And on that note, on Halloween. That's right. Let's go out. Let's dress up our kids.

Let's dress up our kids. My new rescue dog from Puerto Rico is going as a little wiener dog. It's going to be hilarious. Oh, God. God. My 12-year-old wants to go as an archer, a medieval archer. He's way too thoughtful last year. He went as an artist.

I wanted to do Star Wars as a family, and he said no. Okay. And you're going as Scott Galloway. No, every year I go as Starship Commander Jean-Luc Picard. Huge crowd pleaser. Anyway, everybody, thank you so much. We will be back next week. It's time to go.

But if listeners have a question or an idea of a company Pivot should mercilessly take down over the next couple months, shoot us an email at pivot at voxmedia.com. We're not limited to anything. We love new ideas and companies and different things. I know we talk a lot about Facebook and Uber and stuff like that, but we were definitely willing to talk about lots of different companies. Also, we're hiring a new producer for Pivot. Scott, give the pitch, please. Come work for the jungle cat and the big dog.

And for the rest of your life, be angry. You're not skill and sell it. Anyway, please apply at voxmedia.com slash careers if you think you're the right person. We have snacks. We do have snacks to join the team. Scott, please read the credits. Oh, good. I'm sorry.

Find the script, Scott. Do you want me to start? Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanes. Try to get there. Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer. Thanks also to Rebecca Castro, Drew Burrows, and Yashat Kerouac.

Make sure you've subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts, and if you like this week's episode, leave us a review. Thanks for living to Pivot from Vox Media. Living? Oh my god, I can't. What did I say? Living. I got that wrong? Yeah, it's listening. Dude, if you were as hungover as me right now, you would be seriously impressed. Thanks for listening to Pivot.

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