Pivot - What Happens in Miami....

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

Couldn't make it to Pivot MIA? Kara and guest host Casey Newton bring you the highlights: from Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky's remarks on how his company handled January 6th, to the fireworks at Casey's panel on conservative social networks. Plus, a look at the latest headlines, including Melania Trump's NFT mystery. You can find Casey on Twitter at @CaseyNewton. Send us your Listener Mail questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or 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 the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway has fled the country after our raucous conference in Miami. Actually, there was some raucousness. So filling in for him today is a friend of Pivot and all-around defender of democracy, Casey Newton, who also happens to be the founder and editor of the platformer Newsletter and lots of things to me. He's my tenant in San Francisco. He's my friend, all kinds of things. And he did a great job on stage at our first Pivot Conference. Hi, Casey. Hey, Kara. Thanks so much for having me this week. I like that we're both in Miami in two different hotel rooms. That's what I like. I requested to do this in the same room with you, and the producer said, like, absolutely not. Nuts. I've had enough of you. They keep me away. I have my handlers to keep me away from you.

Anyway, so let's talk a little bit about Pivot Miami. I have my handlers to keep me away from. Anyway, so let's talk a little bit about Pivot Miami. I have to say, I was very pleased with it. It worked out really well. I'm glad we went ahead and did it rather than pull it because of Omicron that we thought was going to be a problem, but it has staved off. We'll see. Florida's a little loosey goosey, I have to say. Florida is indeed much different. Don't you agree? Oh, yeah. I mean, just the utter masklessness of this state is really jarring coming from San Francisco, you know, where we are still pretty locked down.

Florida is another planet in terms of the way they think about COVID. Yeah, they're also very obnoxious about it, I have to say. I've gotten into a couple of beefs with people. I'm like, you know, what's really interesting is, like, they got mad when people told them to wear masks. Now they're mean to people who just want to. And if they want to, they can. So they don't carry their theories out. Well, also, I'm like very susceptible to mask peer pressure.

So if I walk into a restaurant and I'm the only person wearing a mask, I want to cringe out of my entire body. I find that physically uncomfortable. So that's something I need to talk about therapy. It's none of your business. I can wear it like underwear on top of my head.. Like, I find that physically uncomfortable. So that's something I need to talk about in therapy. It's none of your business. I can wear it like underwear on top of my head. It's very interesting. Anyway, Florida's been lovely to us, though.

It's actually, it's been a really great time. We like lots of parts of Florida, and it was a really great conference here in Miami. I love Miami. But we'll get to the big headlines of the day in a minute, including the mystery of Melania Trump's NFT auction, speaking of Florida. She's not too far away in Mar-a-Lago. But let's talk about Pivot MIA. What was your favorite part or least favorite part? I think I have an idea, but I'll get to it in a second. But I really enjoyed what I think of as the media portion of the event.

You know, as a big media nerd, we got to hear from the president of the New York Times and the founder of Puck News. And just really enjoyed hearing from their sort of very different perspectives on the future of media. Yeah, we're going to play a little bit of that in a second. What else do you think? I thought what I liked, I'm going to do an overall thing, is I like the mood of it. I think people were dying to get back together. One. Two, this audience, you know, it's a much more, code is a much more state event, I would say. This was an audience that really came to learn and it felt very fresh and startup-y. It felt,

you know, positive, what can we do, solutions-based, things like that. There's a real energy in Miami and there's also a party energy in Miami. And those things are fun to put together. You know, there was a party on Tuesday night that y'all threw for us and a little speakeasy at the like the Faina, which is I think the coolest hotel in Miami, and was just great to sort of be around people, you know, doing things that many of us have not done in a couple of years. Yeah. And also, I think more to the point is people really had great questions. I was really kind of impressed by people. I think they, again, came to learn and wanted to hear about the things we were talking about, whether it was NFTs, people talking about change moments.

I think Brian Chesky particularly talked about reflection. And moving forward, I thought that was really kind of very, it was a very heartfelt moment, actually. And so it had a lot more heart. I feel like it had a lot more heart and spice than, and it was nice because I think people got a lot of thank yous because people hadn't been back together. Networking and in real life stuff is so important to everybody, our whole world. And so having the ability to be social and then talk about interesting issues, I think was important for a lot of people. My question for you, did you think of this event as more of like a podcast festival where the fans

got to meet you and interact? Or did you think of it more as like, or did you think of it as more like a business conference where people were kind of coming to learn and network? I think both. You know, the fans of Pivot are different than other fans, like in other podcasts they've done. They love Scott and I, I have to say, or they have opinions about

Scott and I. And that's nice. You know, people really, you get a sense that you have changed them or they really enjoy the product. And I really like that about podcasts, for one. And I also like it, they know you, they know us. How's the golden child? How's Bane? Scott, how's the Cialis going? And stuff like that. And so, it's really nice. I kind of was likening it to cooking. Like if you make something, if you're a chef and you make something and people really enjoy what you just ate, it's really, it's really nice. It's a really nice feeling. And so they really

liked the show. They had great suggestions. It's a lot of like some, remember on Twitter spaces on the Peloton, remember how the Peloton fans are really talking about things they liked and wanted more of? That's what it felt like. Like, we have a real community, and I think that's critically important. And we built it all during the pandemic online, so it was nice to get it in real life. But let's talk about one of the spiciest moments of the conference. During your panels at the CEOs of Parler and Getter, which included a surprise question from the audience, I put Casey in this spot, and I had interviewed, I've interviewed both of them before. I'm super intrigued by the conservative social media movement. There's a lot of them, and some of them are going to make it, some of them aren't, but we wanted to talk about it. Let me set it up

a bit. George Farmer is the CEO of Parler and Jason Miller, the CEO of Getter. Jason is well known for working for Trump. George was very famous in the Brexit arena, and he took over from John Mates, who got fired after an interview that I did with him where he said some things right after January 6th. Anyway, you said during your panel that Trump incited violence on Twitter, which I completely agree with. But Candace Owens, of all people, who happened to be George Farmer's wife, who was, we allowed people to bring guests, and that's who he brought, took issue with that. She got up during the audience Q&A and read out Trump's tweets from January 6th, where he urged people to go home and respect the law. That was where some of the tweets he did. Of course, that was after he told the mob to march on the Capitol and, quote, show strength. He also had spent months and months with a lot of stuff that created, sort of started leading up to it. So that's when this exchange happened. Let's play it. So I just wanted to just, if you could expand a little bit on what you mean when you say that that's worthy of being deleted from a social media site because it's inciting violence. I want to operate on facts, not narrative. Well, sure. I mean, I think when you spend the entire period after the election saying that it was stolen, and then you mask your supporters on

the lawn of the Capitol, and then you mask your supporters on the lawn of the Capitol, and then you suggest that they just sort of walk into the halls of Congress while those are being counted. I'm talking specifically on Twitter, because you said this is what would be easy. Right. Well, because what I believe is that we actually should take off-platform behavior into account. I don't think you get to be a terrible person in real life. Thank you for answering my question. All right. Off-platform behavior, you think, should count. Yeah, I do think so.

So murderers and rapists and everybody who has a platform, fine, but off-platform behavior should be taken. These are complicated things, but something else I believe is that the president of the United States should actually be held to a higher standard than everyone else, not the very lowest. Okay, thank you for answering the question. Nice. Whoa, that was, Casey, I mean, that was good. What do you think? Well, thank you. You know, we obviously talked a lot about free speech during this panel. And, you know, you guys always do audience questions, which is great. So I sort of joked at the start, like it was time for the free speech portion of the event. And man, did Candace embrace that opportunity? Yeah, absolutely. I think she was, you know, I spoke with her afterwards,

actually, and I thought she was being disingenuous. I think there was a lot more violent inciting tweets that Trump did and constant and persistent breaking of rules on that platform for a long time. I think it just came at the very end of what had been a years-long violation by Trump of the standards that Twitter had set for themselves. You may not agree or disagree with Twitter standards, but they had them, and he broke them continually. And so, you know, I think it was a really interesting thing. And it's – I know it must have been – I don't think you loved it, the debate that was going on, but I think it's important. You know, it was okay. I mean, I do feel like I'm in a position where I'm a journalist, but I also get to advocate for democracy and what better place to do it than

against people who, you know, in my view, are sort of working to undermine the foundations of that democracy. So, I think it's rare to have a chance to really engage with those folks directly. And, you know, for what it's worth, I also caught up with Candace afterwards, and she worked very hard to bring me around to her way of thinking. And at the end, I think we sort of agreed to disagree, and it was okay. Yeah, it was a good exchange, though. It's just really interesting. And, you know, a lot of people don't like us talking to people like this. And I don't think that's the correct way to approach this. But people can disagree. Another notable moment during that panel, actually the actual crux of it, you asked free speech concerns on Twitter. Here's what George Farmer said. There is a point right now where you think, yes, this is the right thing to do. But at some point,

you will be the subject of all of that, right? Everyone here will say something at some point in their life where all of you will then have the archaeology mob coming after you and telling you that what you said in 2011 or 2016 or 2021 is the wrong thing and you no longer think the right way. And that's why free speech is important because at the end of the day, we all make mistakes and you need mercy and you need grace and you need forgiveness. And if you don't have that and you don't have that sort of social media platform, which allows for that, you're all going to get canceled, right? At the end of the day, you're all going to get wiped out. So is he right, Casey? That was an interesting, he's very, he's a much more moderate sounding person. Obviously has a fantastic British accent, but

what, talk about what he was talking about there. Yeah. I mean, believe it or not, I do agree with him in certain ways. I just think we come at this from very different perspectives. I think he likes to conflate free speech on social platforms with free speech granted by the state. I think those things are different, right? I want to support a lot of free speech when it comes to like what the state can punish me for. And I'm comfortable with less free speech on a business that has business imperatives, right? I think it's really interesting that these Republicans want to... And rules that they make. They conflate businesses with the public square, essentially.

Yeah. But when you think about what they're advocating for, and there are bills that have been proposed that would do this, they want the state to force businesses to carry speech against those businesses' own financial interests, which to me is like the least Republican, least conservative idea that you could possibly imagine. So I think that's strange. Now, at the same time, I agree that like social norms change. And if you're someone like you or me, Kara, who are constantly popping our mouths off on Twitter about this subject or that subject, there is a chance that, you know, society is going

to move on from us and things that we say today are not going to sound great in 10 years. And so that's why I delete my tweets every 18 months, you know. But like, I think that there are different approaches to this, you know, beyond forcing platforms to carry really terrible things. Yeah, it's an interesting debate. And I think the conflation is what drives me crazy. It drives me even crazier when the social media companies do it, right? Like whether it's Daniel Ek of Spotify or Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, when they sort of embrace it and then don't live it. They do editing all the time. And then they say, we believe in free speech. I'm like, well, why are you editing? So they kind of want it both ways. So that really drives me crazy. And in this case, conflating, it's like saying fake news. It's like, it's just, it's meaningless. It's in the

cancel culture. It's meaningless. Sometimes you say things and you deserve accountability for it, or you deserve the consequences. In other cases, it's overkill on these sites and stuff when everybody piles on. And so I think it's much more complicated and they'd like to make it, I think George is very deft and wants to make it a little more reductive. So it's like, it's either you get to talk or you don't. And I think the crowd that's like, I should be able to say whatever I want, just loves that. It plays into the emotionality of Americans who don't realize they're edited almost constantly. And edited is different than not being able to speak. Right. Well, and as I pointed out during the panel, the most popular social platform in the United States right now is TikTok, which is also the most censored of the platforms that, you know, because it comes out of China where they have very rigid. I shouldn't say censorship, right? But I mean, the market has picked, you know,

stricter rules over free speech paradise. But at the same time, you know, I'm happy to let other platforms try to build, you know, networks that have less strict requirements. And let's just see if people actually want that. Like, it does not seem like Parler and Getter are racing up the charts lately. Yeah, I know.

That's the difficulty. I think that's what's interesting, the business thing. I like, one of the things I actually saw Candace after is I was like, do not fuck with Casey. He's my man. But my point I was making to her and to George at the same time was that, listen, have as many of these as you can, right? That's the issue. The issue is not so much free speech as it is there's not enough of them and there's only one in the center. And so we're talking about power and lack and consolidation and not diversity and innovation. And that's what's most important. If we all could agree on that, that would be fantastic. A place where we are in agreement is it actually does suck that there are only two or three,

maybe four big platforms in the United States where you can have this kind of robust political debate online, right? It shouldn't matter so much whether you have a Twitter account or a Facebook account, right? Ideally, there would be more competition, there'd be more interoperability, right? So I think there are ways that we can sort of arrive at that same goal, even though we come at it from pretty different places. Yeah, and I think it's great that they're trying. I think there's going to be a shakeout. There's not enough. They're far too niche-y or a small business, a much smaller business.

And from a business point of view, there's a lot of them. You know, there's Rumble, there's MeWe, there's, you know, and this side of the thing. And that's why we wanted to explore it, because the business is going to be tough. And then, of course, you, Truth Social coming, allegedly. Which apparently just went into beta testing as we're recording this. I think Reuters just reported it. So, you know, I think some people are have been skeptical that it was going to launch anytime soon.

And, you know, just because you're in beta doesn't mean that you're about to go global. But there is apparently at least some sort of product, which, you know, I don't know, a month ago, I would not have guessed that there would be. Yeah, so we'll see. I mean, this is going to be hard on Parler and Getter in terms of keeping people. And, of course, they have just the same problems about monitoring and moderation. They've got issues around security, all of them. They've got issues around making money, all kinds of stuff.

And so they're in the same boat as everybody else, whether you agree with them or not. But I welcome, you know know people say we shouldn't, I think those on the left that are like, this is just terrible. You cannot say that if you believe that they should be able to create. And if they succeed, they succeed. If they don't, they don't. But it should be because they have a product people want to use. But we'll see where it goes. It was a very interesting panel, and I'm glad we did it. Let's talk about something that, as you said, is near and dear to your heart, newsletters. I spoke with John Kelly, the co-founder of Puck, about the past, present, and future of journalism.

We talked about Substack. Your name came up a lot. And he replaced, just so people know, Justin Smith, which we said at the conference got COVID. And Ben Smith and Justin Smith couldn't come. In a lot of ways, I'm sorry they weren't there, but this is really good because he's been going for a little bit, you know, as have you. So let's listen to what John said. I think some people are going to be on Substack forever and they're going to love it. And it's great for them.

I think for some, it's a gateway drug. And I think that the next thing is going to be creating enterprise value as an economic unit, creating a brand. Brands matter. So what do you think about that? They're sort of doing a sub-stack altogether there in a weird way with using their own technology, et cetera. But can you answer this? Can a publication succeed on the personal brand of one writer? You're doing very, very well. Or will Platformer need to acquire Tom Warner? I don't know. What do you think? Well, you know, this is one of my favorite things to talk about. One thing that I would say is that when I left for Substack, I assumed that a bunch of people would be right

behind me, like leaving the New York Times and the Atlantic and other places to come do this. And the reality has been that very few have. I think most people want or need a little bit more security when it comes to the steady paycheck, the healthcare, the legal defense, like whatever your issue is. I think it's been harder to peel those people away. So that makes what Puck is doing interesting. Or they're just lazy, Casey. There's that. Well, I mean, I didn't want to say it. But you look at what the Puck folks are offering, and it is a little bit have your cake and eat it too, right? We'll let you capture a little bit of the upside if you get a bunch of subscribers. But we're also going to take care of all of your normal work needs.

And they've attracted some really great writers. I think they're putting out some great stuff. I really like what Teddy Schlieffer, your old employee, is doing. They're all my old employees, just so you know. Yeah. Well, yeah, you've mentored a lot of greats. But yeah, so I really like what they're doing. I think the risk for them is they get caught in the mushy middle, where they don't offer enough of the benefits of working for the New York Times or the Atlantic, and they don't offer enough of the financial upside of doing what I'm doing. And so that leaves them kind of stranded. Well, talk a little bit about it.

How old is Platformer right now? Platformer, like 15 months. So how do you feel now? Be honest, what are the upsides and downsides? Yeah. I mean, the upside is that I, I mean, financially I'm living the best life I've ever had. I'm building a business that is just growing,

you know, to share a little bit like in January, am living the best life I've ever had. I'm building a business that is just growing to share a little bit. In January, which I think was sort of an average month for Platformer, I didn't break any big news. I think I wrote some nice columns. My annual recurring revenue grew by about $10,000. When you think about what I had to do as a reporter working for a media company to get a $10,000 raise, It was basically get nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, right? But I'm just now in a position where I can go direct to my audience. And when they like what they read, they buy more of it. So that's just an incredible position for a journalist to be in. And I also get to do really cool creative collaborations, right? I'm still a contributing

editor at The Verge. I got to come and moderate your panel. I'm working on some other deals that I'm going to announce soon. And I just love being able to arrange. And I mean, obviously, this is something that I have just borrowed from you and your example. But I see how much fun you're having. And I'm like, I like to have that fun. Yeah, so it's been fun. All right. What's the downside from your perspective? So the downside is, I write four newsletters a week. That is my choice. But I feel I'm somebody who wants to be in the mix. I want to be able to be thinking about the daily news cycle. And it just sort of always has to be good.

I have to try to have four good ideas a week. Of course, I don't have four good ideas a week most weeks. But that's the challenge of it. And so today, I'm in a hotel room. I'm recording this podcast. When I woke up this morning, I had to do do some of the reading for today. So like I summarized the links, then I'm gonna have to check out of this hotel, go check into a new hotel, try to write the newsletter, get it out by 8pm. Right. And that grind is just sort of always

there. On balance, I like the grind, but I can see why most people throw their hands up and say, that's not for me. And you have to also it's all on you. I think that would be the greatest thing. And I think about that a lot as I've been doing. I don't care. But it is, if something happens to you, it's sort of fault. It's like running a small, any small business, right? It's like, if you run a store. Totally. I mean, I've thought about like, 2017 was not a good year for my journalism. I was super depressed after the election. I had no idea what I was supposed to be writing that would be

interesting to people. And I kind of fell into a funk. I was not that productive. The only way I got out of it was by starting in the newsletter. But I do worry. It's like, let's say like three or four years into this, I just kind of fall into a funk. You know, my readers are smart. They'll be able to tell. They're not going to renew those subscriptions. And the whole thing kind of goes away. But I don't know. Like, I've loved it so much these first 15 months that I think of this as a 10-year project. Like, I just want to see what it can do in 10 years. And then maybe, you know, by that point, I'll be about 50. And then, you know, maybe I'll want to employers or anybody else. You don't have to ask anyone for permission. And that's always been the plus of the whole thing is, if you don't like it, you just, you know, the weather, you can change the weather, essentially. Yeah. Can I say one other thing I like about it?

Sure. So, like, these newsletters, I think, can just be so much more distinctive than most of the publications that I read. You know. The way that most publications are run is they hire people to do beats, and then those beats just don't change very much. It's a very slow process to change them. But we cover the tech industry, and the tech industry moves really, really quickly. So there are still big publications in tech that don't have a single crypto reporter. And I've been writing basically weekly columns about crypto and Web3 for six months now. So I just love being in a position where I can move faster than publications to kind of find those frontiers.

And there's nobody to tell me no. This is something we're trying to do at this conference, try to introduce ideas. Yeah, and you did. Scott interviewed Meredith Cobbett-Levian, the president and CEO of The New York Times, about the same topic. Here's what she said. said. You know, if you have a niche and you can actually make something that is differentially valuable against a sea of less expensive or free, we're still competing with free a lot. Alternatives, I think you can have a business. And by the way, I would say that in any space beyond journalism. One of the things I liked about Meredith is she's very open-minded to this stuff.

You know, and that was great. That was great. She accepts this and understands that they've got to think about things differently. So what did you think of her interview? She's a really fascinating person and clearly great at her job. I just think about, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago, you're reading stories about the New York Times having to take on these high-interest loans just to stay afloat. And you look at their digital transformation. And you know, not only have they sort of made it through, but they're pressing their advantage and they're moving hard into games and cooking and and those products are succeeding too. I mean, I think she said on stage that their cooking product, which I pay for now has a million subscribers. That's a that's a really incredible digital media success story. I think the sort of

unanswered and maybe spicier question is like, is the Times' success coming at the expense of other journalistic outfits in America, right? Like, the Times is winning, but there are a lot of losers, and some of those losses are just coming from the fact that the Times hoovers up all of the best talent in the journalism world. Yeah. When you think about the sub stacks, do you see consolidation among them? Because you create your own. That's sort of what John is doing at Puck. Do you see that happening? Do you imagine a time? I know you did this stuff on Discord. How does that work? Because you're kind of like individual players. Do you ever become a team? I have been interested in like, is there a way that we could share some back office functions,

you know, maybe tax, bookkeeping, maybe some editing. I'm still kind of interested in that. My experience with the folks I've worked with to date has been that they're very independent minded. Everybody's working on their own thing. People have very little time

to sort of get together and do those collaborations. I think maybe if I, if you know those people, circumstances change or I find some different people, something like that might be possible. I think everybody assumes that there will be

some kind of sub stack bundle sometime, but you just have to keep in mind like how unusual these products are, right? Like platformer costs $100 a year. That's very expensive for a media product, right? Like you can get most magazines with incredible journalism delivered to your house for what, like six bucks a year, 12 bucks a year? you and so like when i've talked i've talked to folks about

doing bundles and i'm like you would have to give me so many subscriptions at whatever discounted rate you're going to be offering platformer at to make it remotely worth my while that is just kind of a weird thing you know it's like if you could get platformer in the atlantic for like 50 bucks like how many subscriptions is the atlantic to have to sell a Platformer for me to make more than I would by just selling it for 100 bucks a year? Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if that's, but there is going to be a point where consumers are like, I don't want to buy all these things. That's going to happen. What's of value to you? I think a lot about what I buy and what I don't. I do buy puck. I would buy yours if you didn't give it to me for free, but it was, maybe you should charge me. No, you shouldn't. Actually,

you shouldn't. I should get it for free. But, you know, I do pay for it and it's valuable, but the minute it's not valuable, no. You know what I mean? Like, I definitely am discerning about that. And the times I would get rid of less, I pay for the times. So, I actually like that incentive, right? Because I think about how many of these zombie digital media brands are out there that are free, but you look at what's on them. There's not any real journalism. Everybody's just writing for that Google SEO hit. It's what time is the Super Bowl? It's how to delete apps from my iPhone, right? It's just like this SEO wasteland. And there's something about selling a product for money that forces you to get really clear on what value it is that you provide and

then pushes you to offer more of that value. So again, I understand why most journalists do not want to have that ax hanging over their head. But the alternative is you work in some kind of digital media company that is almost entirely shaped by the algorithms of Facebook and Google and Twitter. You know, Matt Iglesias had this great piece today where he wrote about the sameness of publications. And he found in like five or six different publications over the past couple of months, a headline something like American parents are not okay. And you know, it's running in every publication under the sun, Vox, The Atlantic, Wired, right? And that's another kind of downside that I just feel like we don't talk enough about is how similar all these publications have become, whereas Substack's going to be whatever

they want and actually find big audiences for them. Yeah, it's a little like restaurants. I think about it like restaurants and chains and stuff like that. You can think about it that way. One of the things I like about it is it's fair. If you put out a good – I know journalists don't like to think of their things as content or products, but I have thought about it as product forever, forever, always. And I'm not fancy about that. And everyone's just like, oh, it's bigger, higher calling. I'm like, I'm not a priest. I don't know what to tell you.

And one of the things I thought is if I make a bad croissant, like if I'm a baker, just put it into baking and people, it doesn't taste good. People aren't going to buy it. And if it's good, they'll buy it. Like that, it seems fair. It seems like a fair trade. That's how I feel. So. I agree. Like we are in the business of getting people's attention and I think it's okay to, you know, be rewarded for the attention that we create. And illuminate them. And illuminate. Like I think this conference is worth the money. I think I gave think we gave them the value that they came to it, and I like that. I like that train. If they didn't like it, they shouldn't come, and that's how I feel. I feel good about that. So, Scott and I, speaking of really interesting interviews, interviewed Brian Chesky, who I've interviewed many times, of Airbnb, and what turned out to be a wide-ranging

and illuminating discussion. I asked him about his decision to shut down bookings in D.C. ahead of January 6th. Here's that part of our interview. Was there a blowback for doing that? There's a blowback to everything I've ever done, yeah. There always is, because these things get kind of politicized. And does it make you do it less? No. I mean, you know, like, you just do what you think is right,

and people are going to agree with or disagree on the end. You feel okay about editing. I have big arguments, you know, with Spotify, whoever the person of the day is saying they have no responsibility. I'm like, you're editing. You feel okay about editing. I have big arguments, you know, with Spotify, whoever the person of the day saying they have no responsibility. I'm like, you have some. Well, we all have responsibility. If you have a platform, hundreds of millions of people on it, like, and things happen and you could have done more and you didn't, that sounds like the definition of responsibility. Now, whether you choose to do something or not, I understand different platforms have different risks. I would argue the risk is greater than the risk of speech

because you're such a physical body. I mean, really bad things can happen. And so we have to just take a slightly different and I think more hands-on approach. That was a really interesting interview, I thought. I've had lots of them with him, but he seems to have reflected through the pandemic. He talked about loneliness. He talked about being by himself. He talked about the mistakes he made were coming home to roost and good things too. They, of course, just turned it a killer quarter, like really doing well. Come out of this pandemic is doing great. They're one of those rare Silicon Valley companies that I think most people feel mostly good about.

You know, I feel like as issues have come up for them, they have been pretty forthright in the way that they've handled them. I still wouldn't really want to live next to an Airbnb where there was a new person living next to me every day. But I think on most of the other stuff, they've really tackled it and been open about their struggles as they think through it. So good for them for acknowledging the responsibility that they have. That was a really surprising interview. He's running around the country staying at Airbnbs. I think it's given him a lot of time to reflect. He needed to get out of San Francisco. He needed to get out of his apartment. His mother was there all the time. And it was just really an interesting thing. And one of the things is, look, the results are the results. He's done, the stock is way up. He's done incredibly well.

It's a very interesting company. And I think that they have issues around safety, of course. They've got issues, what you were just talking about. They've got customer service issues, like any company, like Marseille, whoever you are in the world, you have these issues as a business. But I thought it was a really interesting thing. And he's been an outlier. And, you know, he was very strong on, like, we're not going to put people in danger around January 6th. He's made a lot of what someone would call liberal calls, but he's made them, and he's stood behind them, which was interesting. I kind of like it.

He doesn't, like, try to – he doesn't hide behind things a lot. He just says, this is what we're doing, and this is what we're doing. And it's unusual, I think, taking responsibilities and acknowledging responsibilities. I thought that was a really, I thought that was a fascinating interview. Yeah, I wish I had heard more of it because that was when Candace Owens had accosted me. It was directly after my panel. She's like three feet below you. You can handle her. It was really interesting. People were talking about Miami. We had mayors here. We had all kinds of things and what's happening. A lot of people are in, come move to Miami. They really like it. And how you sort of disperse talent all over the world. And that's what's really happening. I think that was, whether it's you in my cottage or, talent is being dispersed in a really interesting way. I think that was sort of the message I got. I'm spending a week here and I'm seeing four friends who moved to Miami during the pandemic. I've seen one of them since I've been there. She told me that she had about 40 friends who had

moved to the city since the pandemic. So there really is this new community and these are young people. They're working in like tech or tech jobs, and they're really giving it a go. It's not just the Twitter VCs hyping it up. People are really doing this. I think the question is, and this was right before my panel, so I didn't catch who said it, but you had this great speaker, I believe it was somebody in the audience, who said, okay, but what happens when the sugar high wears off? It's fun to be in Miami, and is this the Peloton of cities? wears off. It's fun to be in Miami. And is this the Peloton of cities? Yeah, that was a great line. John Oranger, who has been here, I think, is one who has not been doing the ridiculous hyping. I just did an interview with Keith Raboy, who does it on, we had a little back and forth about why he needs to insult his ex-girlfriend so continually, which is San Francisco. And that's a joke for people who know Keith. And it was an interesting thing. But John was much more, he's much more measured. We had him on there. And I think it's important to talk about what

you're doing rather than where you were and how where you were sucked kind of stuff. So I thought that was great. But the Peloton, I wrote him, he goes, I didn't like Peloton. I said, come on, it's funny. And maybe you are. Like, you have to see if you can really build out great education here. We talked about that. If they can build out real community, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All the things that, and big companies, right?

Companies that really do make a difference. But there's all kinds of fascinating companies here. And there's no question something's happening, but we've seen it before in Austin or New York. Never, New York's big, but never, never were able to match the company. You don't see Google or any of the big companies leaving California, but they were able to match Silicon Valley. You don't see Google or any of

the big companies leaving California, but they might, right? We'll see. And I think this really ties back to Brian Chesky and Airbnb. That man's living on the road all year. Lots of other people are going to be doing something similar. So what does it even mean to live in Miami, right? Are these people putting down roots? Are they putting their kids in the public schools? Are they running for local office serving on boards? Or is Miami Beach just a fun place to hang out for a couple years or two while things calm down in other cities? Yeah, it's going to be really interesting. I think Brian did make that point as used to vacation two weeks, say, or three weeks, and then you live somewhere the other 50 weeks of the year.

That is definitely changing, and it depends on who you are. I can't get up and move at all. I've got like a caravan, essentially. But it's a... And I'm spending two weeks on the road this month, you know, in Miami and New York for like worky reasons. But of course, I'm having a great time too. Yeah, exactly. Anyway. Okay, Casey, on to the big story. Android may get its own privacy feature, like Apple's app tracking transparency. Apple rolled out that last year. It cost social media networks quite a bit, Casey, as you know. Facebook was claiming $10 billion in revenue. It's also one of the factors that wiped $230

billion off of Facebook's market cap, I think one of the more significant ones. But Google hinted that its new measure would be less disruptive and abrupt, partly because it plans to work with the ad industry to develop replacements. What do you think of this? This is something you've been tracking quite a bit. Yeah, so I'm still learning more about it. But the ad tech people I know seemed moderately excited about this, or at least okay with it. Everybody assumed that Google would have an answer to Apple's app tracking transparency. And when this showed up, the most important thing Google said is, we're going to implement this over two years. And basically, over this two-year period, we're going to ensure that we can track conversions. And essentially, whatever this new

privacy-protecting system is, it's not going to make your sales go down. Or if it does, it's not going to be that much. So that's been the promise. And I think people in ad tech are more likely to trust Google on that because ad tech is basically Google's entire business. But we'll have to see. One of the things, Meta's vice president of advertising ecosystem,

what kind of a nice title, said, encouraging to see this long-term collaborative approach to privacy, protective, personalized advertising from Google. If the ad industry likes it so much, is that a good thing for users' privacy? I think that's a good question to ask. Well, I mean, what exactly do we mean by privacy? I mean, there are some people that basically think we should ban advertising or that we should ban people from knowing what our gender or age is. There's sort of a lot of views on this. I personally don't care if the coffee shop down the street or a mattress company wants to collect some basic demographic data about me. But some people get really worked up about it.

I think they get worked up because they've been somewhat abused. They just do what they want, right? I think that's really the case. And they haven't collaborated. They're not collaborators, you know, except in a negative way. Yeah. Well, like, at the end of the day, I mean, the beneficiaries of all this are going to be Apple, Google, Amazon, and, you know, and companies that can build out really good what they call first-party data systems, which means that, you know, we're collecting the data about you ourselves, we're not relying on getting it from third party, that's the thing to remember, like app tracking transparency,

this thing Google's talking about, this is all about third party data, what like data brokers and other people are collecting about you, when it comes to like what you're doing on your smartphone, or like what you're doing on Facebook, those companies still get to keep all of that data and use it 100% Apple users, of course, are generally more valuable to advertisers than Android users. There are a lot more Android users, 3 billion active Android devices around the world,

1 billion iOS devices. But Apple does have the more trust in this and it's been part of their advertising. It's been part of their branding that we are watching out for you. You see it everywhere. And- Yeah, they're watching out for you

and they're building a huge ad business based on their monopoly advantage on iTunes. Yeah, which is interesting because remember they were in the ad business for New York Minute and now they really are. Yeah, they were in the ad business and then they denounced it. And then while denouncing it,

they built a huge ad business. It's really a great racket they got running over there. Although I got to tell you, if I had to pick between Facebook and Apple, there was no question hands down who I would trust. Yeah, sure. I think most people would. Yeah, I think most people. So they'll be interesting. I'm just curious very quickly, what do you think the stock of Facebook has still not recovered? Any thoughts on that? I think that this could be a medium long-term thing for them. If you look at what's happening inside that company right now, Zuckerberg is

rearranging a lot of chess pieces. He just put Nick Clegg in charge of all policy expressly so that he didn't have to think about it anymore. So that means Zuckerberg is going to be working on product full time. They have to go solve a really difficult set of technical challenges around how do you build a headset, augmented reality glasses. So I really do think that that company is going to be in R&D mode for five years. And a lot of people who bought that stock because it was a great ad business in the news feed just want to go look for something else.

But here's my one thing I'll say about them. People hate Mark Zuckerberg so much that they've forgotten how smart he is. And so I think that investors who are dumping them now might be in for a rude awakening if and when Facebook figures this out. Because let's not forget, we believe that they've sold 10 million oculus uh quest to headsets which makes them the leader in consumer vr and it's still super early days so i just wouldn't count them out the way that a lot of investors yeah i would agree although i have to say you and i do disagree on this i think this the next two things you're going to need the next version is a lot of computing

power so the so big companies will be at whether it's Apple or Microsoft, I think Microsoft's sort of the dark horse here because of the Activision thing where gaming is going to come into it. You need massive computing power and money. And a lot of the people are like, we can't keep up here. So that's going to be critically important. But you need creativity. And I do not think Facebook is a creative company. It's a very executional company. It's a very executional company. It's very good at, you know, here's the goal, here's the hill, we're going to

take it. I think the creatives are going to push back rather heavily, sort of the empire. I mean, the resistance fights back. And I think it will, I think that what we saw from Facebook, and I know they rushed it out very quickly, was so underwhelming. And it's not underwhelming in the way that they're hiding something. I remember when Microsoft came out with their version competitor to AOL. I was with Steve Case and Ted Leonsis and some others, and we were like, this is a fake. This is so bad. How could it be? And I'm like, no, no, they have no creativity. They can't. That's why. And it was a really interesting moment. They never did. It took them a while. Then they went back to their knitting, but they couldn't do it. And if you look at what Zuckerberg's been doing in VR for the past three years, it's been buying up all of the popular VR studios. So basically anybody that's made a hit VR game, Zuckerberg has bought or tried to buy. The FTC has finally gotten wise to this

and is apparently challenging their attempted acquisition of Within, which makes Supernatural the fitness app. But I think Zuckerberg knows this and he's going out and trying to scoop up all the best talent in VR. He is. I just think this is going to require something much more significant. It's got to be

creative. It's got to be. I don't know if he's up to it. I'm going to take the opposite bet. I don't think they can do it. I don't think the people there are oriented toward that but we'll see. Not counting someone out. They used to say that about Bill Gates. You can count him out at some point. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Melania's

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Casey, we're back. Let's see, what else is the news? Melania Trump's NFT sold at auction to maybe Melania Trump, but they're not sure. Blockchain transactions show. You can see these things. That's the whole point of blockchain transactions. That's the same entity that bought Melania's NFT, also listed Melania's NFT. They moved it around a little bit. That practice known as wash trading is illegal for regulated securities, but since it artificially inflates the price. As one of my followers said, I used to buy pretty much all my daughter's Girl Scout cookies every year. But the report from a chain analysis found significant wash trading in the unregulated NFT space. People tend to lose money wash trading because of the fees and everything else. But you're going to see a lot of this. And again, unfortunately,

that's going to dominate so much of the coverage of NFTs and stuff as it did early internet is this kind of stuff. I didn't even know wash trading existed, but it makes sense. Yeah, it's a huge issue in NFT trades. And a lot of folks, the real crypto skeptics will tell me the vast majority of all nft sales are wash trades um of course it's very difficult to know because while the transactions are public on the blockchain usually don't know who controls the wallet right which they have several sort of a mix of like very public and very private yeah um but like in this case it is certainly easy to imagine um you know melania or her people trying to pump an nft NFT by selling it to themselves. But we don't know.

Yeah. So we're going to see a lot more of this. And at some point, it's going to be regulated. We talked a little bit of this on stage about where regulation is coming, who's going to do it. I think there's a push-pull within the governments, both state, local, and federal, about who gets to do what. And that's normal.

But at some point, the same kind of things that happen around securities are going to happen here, and we'll see. It's true, but we also said, you know, after 2016, it's like, oh, regulators are really going to step in and stick it to Facebook. And, you know, here we are five years later still waiting for them to pass one dang law. Dang law. One dang law. But I think securities are different. I think healthcare and securities, they do. They know how to do this. They know

how to do this. And I think they will get in. They seem to have more, like, existing power. So I don't think they need laws to be passed necessarily to start taking some of these enforcement actions. And that does seem to make a difference. Anyway, Melania, good luck with wash trading. Nobody wants your hat. Nobody wants your hat.

Let's pivot to a listener question. You got, you got, I, I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. Hi, this is Brock from Jen Jordan's district in Ohio. I'm calling because I gave up on social media about five years ago when I quit Twitter and I joined Facebook in 2004 and gave up on it three years later. So I'm asking where should go? Is there good social media? Is Snapchat or TikTok? They don't seem great.

Where do I go? All right. Bye. Oh, goodness sake. Well, Casey, you're kind of the perfect person to answer this. But it's nice that Brock is from the Jim Jordan District in Ohio. Did you see George Clooney is going to be making a documentary about his time as a wrestling coach? Wonderful.

Yeah. We'll look forward to that. Yeah. Look, I think, you know, I wish we could follow up with this listener and find out what he wanted from social media. Presumably he left it for a reason. And so it's a bit tough to predict.

But what I would do if I were him is I would go to Reddit. You undoubtedly have some sort of interest and there's probably a community on Reddit that is interested in it that's really funny, smart. I visit a couple of Reddit communities daily that just sort of bring me happiness and joy. Which ones, Casey? I can lurk. Well, I'm a huge pro wrestling nerd and obviously nobody wants to talk to me about that. Yeah. And so I go to the wrestling Reddit. It's called Squared Circle. I basically never post anything. I just read what funny people have to say. I watch short video clips. I learn about breaking news. And it's fantastic. It doesn't make me feel bad about myself. I'm not competing

for clout or attention. I'm just being in a community of like-minded people who are, you know, helping me pass a little bit of of time I'm getting my arms around this pro wrestling thing I did not know this about you we talked about it one time because your family has weird wrestling connections we do, my grandfather was a pro wrestling promoter in his spare time this is why fate brought us together I think

I know, he used to drag me, I met Andre the Giant I used to go all the time I didn't like it, I gotta say I'm not a fan but that's okay. All right. Anyway, I like spectacle. You know, I like spectacle. What else do you like? I'm very curious. Let's see. I mean, you know, the the Reddits that are out there are, are incredibly, you know, diverse, like I was saying, but you know, they have one called oddly satisfying, which is just sort of like interesting patterns in nature, you know, sort of very calming. You know, there are a bunch of great crypto subreddits.

So as I'm trying to understand everything that's happening in this world, I can just sort of see what smart people are saying. You know, there are a lot of gay subreddits, you know, where people are discussing issues of the day. So there's just, you know, kind of a lot in there. And they do have a central feed that'll just kind of show you a little bit of everything. But I actually prefer to go right to the forum and then just kind of like do a deep dive. Yeah, absolutely. One of the, you know, and also, by the way, Brock, Twitter is fun. Parts of Twitter are so funny. Like there's lots of really funny memes, jokes,

all kinds of stuff, depending on what happens. And after a news event, some people are super frigging funny, like very funny. And so I tend to follow people who are very clever and not necessarily acid. I don't like the acid people. Like, you know, when something happens to Trump, they have to like, like, I get I don't like him either. But like, that's enough. You know, not that's not that enough. It just isn't interesting. I like people who are funny about stuff. And you can always find them or interesting long threads. For example, there's some really smart threads on Twitter that I always learn from Facebook. I don't find fun at all at all. I find it exhausting. So I went on it and TikTok is can be really fun too. You know, I don't use Snapchat.

My kids do. But I like TikTok a lot. But usually when Casey points me to stuff, actually, which is interesting. There's great. I mean, TikTok, I do enjoy it. It's more of a time investment. And you never know what you're getting. And so you sort of just have to be in that mindset of like, okay, I have 10 or 15 minutes, let's just sort of see what it wants to serve me up. And I find that I'm not in that mode as much as maybe some other people are. But man, when those TikToks hit, they are truly incredible. I've started saving my favorites to my favorite section in TikTok. And the other day, I just went through some of them with a friend. And within four or five videos, we were crying laughing,

looking at these things I'd already seen. Yeah, Louie does that. Louie has a whole TikTok thing that he loves. He keeps a bunch of them off to the side. And he watches them again and again. It's really interesting. Some of the content is so, what I love about a TikTok, even a Twitter, the creativity. And I think we don't celebrate that enough.

There's enormous creativity of people out there. And I know part of the social media thing that happened is everyone gets to talk and you're like, oh God, everybody gets to talk, right? But there's so much more talent out there than gatekeepers that allowed us to see. And it's not gatekeepers, they just didn't get to it, right? Or they didn't fit the right paradigm. And so that's what's great about it

is there is the amount of either, whether it's dance talent or singing talent or just joking or just funny, just funny. Like it's really quite heartening. And so whenever I'm feeling like, oh God, the human race is finished, I tend to be like, you know, we actually have some very delightful aspects to it. So, sometimes that's an excellent thing. And we'll see. I don't look to the leaders. I look to not the leaders, the other people.

It's true. I would also say TikTok does an amazing job of making creative tools for people to be creative with. So, I mean, they invented this idea of the duet, which is basically you can split screen with anybody else who's already made a TikTok and create something new. And so, you just get this creative explosion of things. And when you compare that to how not creative the tools are on a Facebook or an Instagram, I think it really speaks to why they have fallen so far behind is because TikTok figured out a way to enable that creativity. Yeah. They're not creative. Like the Google people couldn't do social. When they started, remember when they did a Google plus, I was like, no way,

they're not social people. It was just crazy that they thought they could do it. They weren't social at all and they couldn't make it. And that's, you have to know what you're good at. Like, I think anyway, if you have a question about tech business or want some good advice, send it to us. Go to nymag.com slash pivot and or call us at 855-51-PIVOT to submit a question for the show.

Casey, one more break and we'll be back for your predictions. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month at Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at fizz.ca. Okay, Casey, give us a prediction. My prediction is that assuming Truth Social does launch in the next three to six months,

it will probably be the end of Parler and Getter. Oh, wow. I think that the winning platform in this space is going to be the one that has Trump posting to it. And if Trump decides that he does not want to get on Getter and Parler, but he does want to get on True Social for whatever reason, I think it could be the end of those other two. Interesting. That's interesting. I am going to take the opposite bet on that. I think Trump's losing a little bit of his mojo. I think all this January 6th, not the January 6th stuff. I just feel people are like tired of him.

They may like Trumpism, but him, he's a little hard to take anymore for even his most, if you talk to any of the conservatives behind the scenes, they hate him. They hate him. They like, they love Governor Ron DeSantis. They do. They do. They want to move along and get to the new fresh versions of Trump, I think. And so I don't know if it'll be, I think that the hardcores, they always will go. They love them, right? But I think in terms of a wider thing, you know, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. That's my feeling. So I'm going to take that. But you're right. I think it's going to be hard. I would love for you to be right. Yeah. I do think Rumble is interesting. I think one of them is going to do really well just because

have an alternative and then it's going to be broader. But I think it's going to be an interesting time. We'll see. We'll see what he puts out there. You know someone's going to hack into it. You know people. It's going to be... And also, Devin Nunes is running it. And I got to tell you, I'm not positive he's very good at technology. I think that's going to be an issue. One thing that I will say... The questions remain. As I said, I did an interview with Keith Raboy for Sway today, and it's interesting. One of the things I didn't talk about, and I think it's just really appalling for being here in Florida, and the reason I wouldn't move here is Florida, this don't-say-gay bills, would bar the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in primary schools. It passed the Florida Senate Education Committee.

What an appalling thing to do in this day and age in general. It's so horrible. committee. What an appalling thing to do in this day and age in general. The governor- It's so horrible. I mean, you think about all of the LGBT families and what that is supposed to mean for their children all through primary school. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, that's a human rights violation. And they're making it into a ridiculous thing. I can see where they're going. Florida Governor DeSantis voiced his support for a bill that would prevent this discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the state's primary schools. He said it was entirely inappropriate for teachers to be having conversations with students about gender identity, citing instances of them telling children,

don't worry, don't pick your gender yet, and also hiding classroom lessons. That's bullshit. It's just such, the way they reduce this and make it reductive, as someone who came out and you, same thing with you, Casey, this is just so they're reducing it. This idea of don't pick your gender. It doesn't happen. It may be once like, but give me a give me a fucking break with this. And it's the same. Oh, yeah. Also, same kind of crap.

I mean, making LGBT kids terrified of talking about their gender identity or their sexual orientation until they're much older and life has terrible psychological consequences. This is awful for those kids. There are a lot of those kids. And the fact that this is just being used essentially as a way to probably scare suburban voters into saying, oh, no, the Democrats are trying to make my child gay. It's awful. And we've seen this playbook so many times, and it's just always disgusting and has legitimate consequences. Yeah, and this makes the state, I never move to a state that does this, never. And you're not going to attract the right, if you want, you know, blue cities and red states, it's not going to work that way. And I think it's going to be hard. And I think a lot of people do put up with a lot, but having been there and having lived through it 30 years ago, this is

just not. This is the kind of cynical politics that uses students and does very reductive words like this. And again, as someone who came out and has small kids also, kids are, to have important discussions is different. And I agree parents should be at the forefront of that. At the same time, to set people against each other,

it's politics at its worst, at its very worst. It's cynical, it's cruel. And Florida, it's embarrassing. It's an embarrassment. And as much as I love doing this event here, this is grotesque is what it is. And it's a stain on the state and stuff. Anyway. Yeah. And I think it's just really telling how all the all the big miami boosters like nobody's talking about this no but you know but again it's because they didn't come here to get involved in the politics they came here to like drink uh pina coladas at you know miami beach um and and that really sucks uh because we can't afford to you know let a generation do this sort of thing to lgbt no absolutely and this is why california

did have this, this tolerance, this tolerant cultures are the ones that create innovation. They just do. And you could make all kinds of fun of it, but it really is one of the key parts of innovation is tolerance towards others, tolerance about discussing things. And a group of people that goes on and on about cancel culture, this is the absolute, this is what that is. It's not just cancel culture it's um it's discriminated it's all kinds of things anyway

well this is a legitimate free speech question yeah this is the this is the state saying you can't say this right all these same people who are so mad at the twitter d platform trump are going to use state power to prevent teachers from talking about the gay families in their classrooms exactly exactly so that's why this is the way it goes anyway um we'll see what's going to happen power to prevent teachers from talking about the gay families in their classrooms? Yeah, exactly. Come on. Exactly. So that's why this is the way it goes. Anyway, we'll see what's going to happen here. But thank you, Casey, for doing this this week. It was really great.

And you did a great job. And again, Platformer is a wonderful platform. We should get it. Thank you. I'll be back with Scott on Tuesday, of course, and we'll hear all about his vacation and various things and his thoughts on what happened. We'll be running some of our great content from Pivot MIA as bonus episodes, which will be great.

I think you should tune in for a bunch. And check the feed tomorrow for our full conversation with Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky. Casey, will you read us out? I would love to. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Dredat engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows. Thanks, Casey.