Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson - Meta’s EU Plans and Microsoft’s AI Pricing, The Barbell Effect Hits College Football, Photo Sharing in Parenthood

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Musk vs. Zuckerberg as the undercard to another round of Meta vs. the European Union, Microsoft's pricing strategy for Copilot, and the latest universally unpopular move that makes perfect sense for college football's biggest market participants. At the end: Free speech follow-up and introducing Tik-Tot, our new parenting segment.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing? Doing well. Doing well. It is our last Sharp Tech episode from the United States. We are back to our regular across-the-world setup starting next week. But that means we will not have an episode later this week. Just one episode week and then we're back in the regular flow of things.

Exactly. An end of summer mailbag. today. I'm excited to get into it. We're going rapid fire. Going to try to cover as much ground as possible in the next hour or so. Definitely end up not being rapid fire. That's just the kiss of death. We're going to get to about two and a half questions on this episode. So get excited, everybody. As a reminder, you can always send questions to email at sharptech.fm. We would love to hear from you. But Ben, before we get to emails, we're going to start with an X as Elon Musk took to X this weekend and Xed that Zuck v. Musk will be live streamed on X. All proceeds will go to charity for veterans. And then Mark Zuckerberg took a screenshot of the Musk post and said on threads, shouldn't we use a more reliable platform that can actually raise?

raise money for charity. A platform burn there. So I just want to congratulate all of us for inhabiting the dumbest future imaginable. Do you have any thoughts on where things stand between Musk and Zuckerberg? Nothing better than a platform burn, as it were. Definitely write up sort of a sharp text alley. The only problem is you referred to an Elon Musk post. It was an Elon Musk X.

So please keep your nomenclature correct. You started out strong and then it fell off towards the end. Yes, there we go. Do you want this fight to actually happen? I don't know. I mean, on one hand, there is something sort of like viscerally appealing, right? It's like your leader in like martial fight, like rally the troops sort of idea. On the other hand, it is deeply stupid.

It definitely feels like a societal regression. But I don't know. What's your take? Well, I think we all should keep in mind how. depressing it will be to watch these guys actually flail at each other. Like, you shouldn't underestimate how stupid normal people look when they're trying to do, like, professional sports. So I'm sure Zuckerberg's in great shape and has been training for the last, like, 10 years

to fight. At the same time, he's not a professional MMA fighter. Musk, God only knows what he's going to look like flailing around like the octagon or whatever. And so I think everybody should just keep in mind that if they do actually go forward and fight one another, there's going to be a lot of like leaning on one another and it's going to look pretty stupid and depressing most of the time. Yeah. And I think every like delays help Musk, right? Because he has the size advantage, but Zuckerberg obviously has the sort of training advantage. And so the longer that Musk can put this off and get in shape, the, the better chance he has. But that's

about the extent of my knowledge of martial arts. So we should probably move on and live up to our rapid fire promise. Well, and also, who knows, the story could change by the time this podcast publishes. Sunday night, Bloomberg came out and said Musk was going to get an MRI on his neck or something, as if he's like a professional athlete and we need to be updated on what Musk is doing with his body. We don't really need to be updated. That's all part of the fun summer 2023. All right.

a real tech question for you. Dylan says, the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that META plans to offer users the opportunity to opt into data targeting on Instagram across Europe, although it's not clear if this is only Instagram or will include Facebook as well. Do you think this kind of offer is a proactive step to shape the language ahead of inevitable regulation or have META been able to use AI to solve targeting and measurement using significantly less data from users. What about both? If meta goes down this path, what does it mean for search, YouTube, and or other forms of advertising? What do you think, Ben? Well, they're not getting ahead of language. They're responding to a court decision that they can't, like, they're basically thing was

if you're going to use our service, which entails using data to give you content you're interested in, you're going to get ads that are going to be using the same data that you're interested in. And basically the court said you can't do that. Now, I think that's a ridiculous decision. I think the appropriate response is take it or leave it. Like it seems pretty reasonable to me, but that's been also barred. It's like you have to give people access to these personalized feeds, but you can't use that personalization to deliver them ads. It feels like a fundamental attack on what I consider a legitimate business model. And the sort of compelling them, you must still offer it, but with the way that you make money offering this thing, I think it's very problematic, right?

Like the answer should be fine. If you don't want this, then don't sign up. Again, there's multiple issues of how you grant permission. Can it be part of the terms of service? Can it be part of a some sort of dialogue that you have to click through? Right. And this bit that because some of the personalized data is used to provide a service and some of the personalized data is used to write ads, which make money, that the second one is fundamentally bad and the first one is fundamentally okay and you must offer it, it just seems like an attack on making money. So I think it feels very sort of overreaching and really fundamentally anti-business. I'm fine with the sort of take it or leave it model, but that's

either here or there. It's already been mandated that they have to do this. And yeah, this is going to trickle down to other services. It's going to apply to them. Facebook for, you know, better or worse gets to be the giddy pig and all this. Is it essentially just setting a precedent that will then be followed across the EU? Because that's the law. Yeah. I mean, like some combination of GDPR and DMA and all the other things that have been, you know, I've been writing about this on Shetri.

Like one of the challenges with these European laws is they're not clear, right? And they're very sort of like, you have to do this and you figure out the details. And it's not until you actually implement something that then this sort of. regulators in question come back and say, nope, that's not okay. And by the way, here's a $10 billion fine or whatever it might be. Like I'm just, you know, that point, that number of thin air. But it's kind of a, it's a very sort of sketchy way to operate.

Like it's like, yeah, try it. And you'll see we're not going to tell you what can or cannot be done, but we're going to have these limitations where, yeah, use. And again, just to back up, we've talked about the context of ATT, the difference between first party data and third party data. What ATT cracks down on is that third party data. It's saying that Facebook can't use data they collected via other apps and via other websites within Facebook. Now, we can have a debate about whether that's good or bad or what harm is actually being addressed,

but at least there is clarity that first party data is fine. So Apple can collect all the data it wants and use it to advertise apps to you. Amazon collect all the data at once in its app and do ads for you. and there is, and that's led to And Instagram would then be able to look at the videos that I'm stopping and engaging with. Right, you stop on all those MBA videos and you get shown in the T-shirts, right? And what the Europeans are saying is, no, you can't even do that. Ads have to be completely untargeted.

And it's just, if the issue is using data, then why are personalized feeds allowed? That's using data. It's using your data to deliver you content. And so it does irk me that the only difference between showing you targeted ads and giving you an algorithmic feed is that one makes meta money and one doesn't. If your concern is privacy and the use of data generally, then why isn't the whole thing illegal? And that's what I'm getting at. It's like the only distinction here is does one make money or does it not? And the one that makes money is illegal.

So it's basically a law against making money. and it's combined with this mandate that you have to keep offering the service, you have to keep using user data to give them a personalized feed, and it's not a coherent policy at all. It's just an outright attack on these business models. Again, say what you want about ATT, there is a coherence to it about this first party versus third party sort of distinction as far as data goes,

and there would be coherence to a, look, you have to ask for data. And if you don't, then they don't, could use the service. That like that's the trade like that's the trade off of using Facebook or Instagram. They give you personalized content. The whole idea of the timeline is that's customized to every individual. The idea that the only distinction between showing you some random piece of content across the network and showing you an ad again is that one makes money. So it's it's to my mind an attack I'm making money. And that doesn't seem consistent with the sort of general free market Capitalistic Society, but whatever, you know, Europe's going to do what Europe's going to do.

Yeah, well, I mean, the ambiguous language point, it actually reminds me of a sharp China topic where the counter espionage law under Xi is so vague and sort of broadly drawn that you're terrified to do anything if you're a foreign company operating over there. And I think there's a parallel there where it's like, okay, we don't necessarily know what, violates the GDPR. So I guess companies are going to have to take like an abundance of caution and or just pull out entirely or change models entirely. Yeah, well, I mean, what they do is they just go after Facebook because Facebook's everyone's

bogeyman and then Facebook pays a fine and then everyone else has to deal with it. Yeah. Well, and then as a tech user, one of the things that's interesting to me is these opt-in solutions sound great in theory, but practically speaking, you're still going to be crushing Meta's business. And that just comes down to like customer psychology. They can craft this as friendly as possible and make it much more appealing than some of the language that Apple is putting forth with ATT. But at the same time, like, I'm someone who actually doesn't really mind targeting. But if you hit me with a dialogue box and say, do you want to help us better target advertisements

to you? Even me having podcasted with you for a year and thought about these. issues and I like I don't really care that much if people are tailoring ads to suit my needs and interests. Even me though, I'm going to be like reluctant to help out the trillion dollar corporation. And so I just think it comes down to sort of an idiosyncrasy of human nature that no matter what, people are going to want to click no when you hit them with these dialogue boxes. Yeah, for sure. I mean, well, if you want to understand what the future looks like, just use X. and you get some of the worst ads you've ever seen that don't feel particularly relevant to you at all.

I, for the record, and people have asked me this, I do click, allow to track because honestly, the experience with targeted ads is way better. Like, I would just, like, I'd much rather, occasionally they're actually useful, and I get stuff that I like, but I can't stand the ads that are wildly untargeted

and just have nothing to do with me. They are much more of an interference and distraction. And the reality is, you know, the unfortunate or reality or whatever you want to call it, nature of the internet is, my data is out there everywhere anyway. So look, if it's going to be out there, at least give me ads that are interesting and relevant to me. And I generally, like, again, for better or worse, would trust Meadow or Facebook more than

lots of other sort of sketchy services, which I think is where a lot of the genuine, and to be clear, say this all along, there has been genuine abuse and problems with this data, including from meta like a decade ago. But I think today it's been cleaned up a lot and there's there is a bit where the rhetoric does not match sort of the reality. And yeah, you're right. If you get this dialogue, everyone's going to say no. And then they're going to complain about bad ads. And it's like, well, I mean, that's what you wanted.

Yeah. Well, and part of my decision is informed by my annoyance at a pop up dialogue box that I have to click through. And so it makes me want to click no just to screw whoever's hitting me with that dialogue box. But your point on the X ads is well take. that would have been a good approach for Zuckerberg. Oh, wow. Our fight is going to be sponsored by Cheech and Chong and we'll raise money that way. So just a free idea for Zuckerberg as the trash talk continues to unfold this week. Did you have any final thoughts there or should we move on? I mean, I think this is just a reality going forward. Like this is going to be a reality of the European

Internet. Of course, all the large companies that have businesses in Europe are just going to sort of go along. already built out. But I do think the real cost is going to be in the long run where for lots of businesses, and it's not just ad-supported businesses. Like we've seen this come up with around questions of AI, things on those issues. It's going to be questionable whether it's worth the cost and trouble to build anything for the European market. And, you know, again, that's going to take time to play out. But it, at some point, it becomes more trouble than it's worth. And even the other thing is the European market is not a great monetizing market in general. Like the UK makes, I

throwing it out, I want to say they make as much like the rest of the EU combined. Like I dived into this with Facebook something. Don't take my word for those numbers. But. And it's not Mailbag. Anything goes here. Right. There is a bit though where it's like there is a real

question of is it really worth of trouble. And, and hey, we'll see how that plays out for the next sort of five to 10 years. But if I were a startup, that's certainly a question that I would be thinking about. Yeah. Well, I wonder how many more like $4 billion, $5 billion fines it'll take before meta's like, all right, we're just going to be done with this market.

Time will tell. Meta in particular, though, it's tough because their entire proposition is that everyone's on the service, right? And so they will probably continue to take it. There might, but it might be the case. It would be fascinating to sort of go through their financials and over the fullness of time, have they ever really make money in Europe? It's going to be a fair question.

Because of the fines. Yeah. All right, to keep it moving, Ansel says, what do you guys think of this story from CNBC? And this is from back in July, Ben. The headline is Microsoft closes at record after revealing pricing for new AI subscription. And CNBC writes, Microsoft's co-pilot subscription service adds AI to the company's popular office products such as Word, Excel, and Teams. It will cost an additional $30 per month and could increase. monthly prices for enterprise customers as much as 83%, bringing in additional revenue

through recurring subscriptions. Do you think this price raise is a case of Microsoft skimming the market or are the inference cloud compute costs beginning to catch up with them? So, Ben, what do you think? It's early. Co-pilot still doesn't have a release date for the general public. But what do you think of the pricing strategy here? Well, I mean, I have a few problems with both the premises of this article and the question.

Okay. At the end of the day, the point of a business is to make money. So it's like it's framed as if charging for this is all negative. Oh, they're, you know, they're skimming the market. Are they skimming the market? Are they charging for value provided, right? Are inference could be catching up to them? Why should they offer it for free?

Like, there's a weird premise here. The part of the reason and why their stock would be up is the proposition that they are bringing a new product. to market that customers will value and pay for, which will allow them to make money. That's why businesses exist, right? It's a win-win. Customers find it valuable. They pay money. Microsoft makes more money. Stockholders get a good, get a return. Like, that's all the way things should work. And like, they say here in the CNBC article, if I can keep sort of picking on the premise, it will cost an additional $30 per month and could increase monthly prices for enterprise customers. It's not increasing prices. The price is the same. So number one, this is looking at like

the lowest cost plan, which is like $10 a month or something. You know, like, you know, John, we use Office 65 for reasons because I, that I do prefer. And like John Gruber, my Dothering co-host has the lowest price plan because he's only on there as a calendar sort of user. Like he's a quote of sort of exchange user, right? And I want him to be able to change the invitation in, you know, whatever. You don't need to get in the details. The point is he's paying like $5.10 a month. Yes.

We have the seeds of strategy plus sausage is made. That's right. That's right. And so he's in there and like I'm not going to give him a co-pilot subscription. He can go get a Microsoft thing his own. Who's going to pay for this or the people are getting like E5 subscriptions, which is the highest enterprise plan, which is like $5760 a month or something, like per user. Like there's a reason Microsoft makes a lot of money.

And why do enterprises? Why are they on the E5 plan? Because there's enough benefits provided by that plan that it's, worth it to them to pay like $60 per user per month to get it. They will increase to $90 a month if they think it's worth it. That's the way selling things works. And so it's not a price increase. It is.

But what I'm curious about is how will they know whether it's worth it? Like are they just going to be, you know, operating on faith that Microsoft would it be bringing it to market if it didn't have $30 per month of value? Like they could try it out. And the beautiful thing about the subscription model and why it's more customer friendly than the old. It used to be you would go and do a big software installation that was license per seat. And it was like a multi-year effort to move all your data and to install it. And half the time it wouldn't work.

And only once it was installed would you see if it would actually make a difference to your business? Like like IT buying in the pre-SAS era was pretty miserable and pretty tough. Now you can go to Microsoft. You can put in your credit card or whatever it might be. you sign up, it's like, you know what, we're not using this and you cancel. Like it's, it's much more customer friendly than it used to be. And so it's not a price. I mean, are you, may you end up paying more per user?

Sure, but that's not because Microsoft raised the prices. It's because they added a new product that you, that you paid for. So I mean, again, this is part of the reason why Microsoft, there is excitement about AI. From a shareholder perspective, it's because they seem very well placed. Thanks to their products, thanks to the fact if you're already using Microsoft 365, all the data you might want to co-pilot for is already there. And now they have the capability of providing new functionality that's so compelling you're willing to give them more money for. And that's good. That's the way that's the way a market works.

Yeah. And I guess I'm wondering how long it will take before businesses like high-end knowledge businesses are actually willing to trust co-pilot. and integrate it into their daily, monthly, yearly workflows. That's the same as any other new product, right? Like Microsoft has to go and sell it. They have to go make the case to users. They have to, you know, they have their whole sort of force of like partners and go to market people that will work with companies to get their stuff working with

it and do trainings and all this sort of thing. That's how business works. Like, like, and maybe it will succeed and maybe it won't. If it doesn't succeed, people won't pay for it. and Microsoft have to come back in a monthly earnings call and say, yeah, our turn rate super high on co-pilot. We're going to have to lower the price. And then their stock will go down because it's going to the promise will not be delivered. And that's fine.

Like that's how it works. Sharp tech listeners, this is how business works. Free lesson here from Ben. I mean, but there is a bit where there's just. Thank you, Ansel for inspiring this. There's a lot of just lack of faith in the market that sometimes people have, right? Microsoft is not forcing co-pilot down to people's throats. And if it doesn't work, it's not going to work.

And they're going to have to report that. And then the stock will go down. Like, that's fine. Like, we don't need like a regulator coming in and dictating the price of co-pilot. This is how the thought process ends up working. It's like, look, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And if it works, companies will happily pay because they feel they're getting more return than the month they're paying right now just as they happily pay all this money for

Microsoft 365 today. Okay, well, final observation before we move on. Early on, there was so much excitement about what this was going to do to white collar work and the way this would supplement and or potentially replace certain sectors of the economy. But now I'm beginning to see more and more errors from chat, GPT, GPT4. Like people are tweeting out these questions that are just wrong, or these answers, that is. that are just wrong. And it occurs to me that these large language models are going to have the Tesla problem,

at least for the next five to ten years, where every time they get something wrong, it's going to be newsworthy. And if they get something wrong in like a business context, people are going to make a big deal out of it. And we'll just ignore all the times that humans get things wrong, just like we ignore all the human powered car crashes that happen. And then anytime there's a self-driving accident, it's like national news.

And so that's an additional hurdle that this technology is going to face, at least in the short term. Yeah, absolutely. That's definitely going to be true. But that's why in some respects, I think people are optimistic about Microsoft's position in this place because the place where you're most likely to have a rational cost-benefit analysis is where you have like a centralized decision maker for a company saying we're going to implement this or not.

and they can go through an account where copilot makes a mistake or reports the wrong number. They will see that that happen. And there's a bit where like mistakes are going to happen. That's the normal course of sort of life. And yeah, a mistake happening is not fatal to the entire enterprise. No pun intended. Like to your point, mistakes happen all the time.

And one of the sort of benefits and one of the reasons why consumer is in many respects much more difficult than enterprise selling is there is a certain rationality to enterprise selling, particularly when you have a more centralized buyer where they will sort of like go through and evaluate the pluses or minuses and XYZ. Consumer, it's like bad PR can like sort of spiral and there can be sort of like a real damp and it takes effect because you're dealing with folks at mass, at scale, and you don't have a direct relationship to them. This can play out in otherwise.

This is one of the core thesis is one of my very, you know, early article. about what I argued Clay Christians got wrong about the iPhone was a lot of his examples about we're dealing with enterprise questions where they were going through and they're evaluating feeds and speeds and things on those lines. One of my argument with the iPhone and Apple in general is that in the consumer space, the look and feel of it matters. And it matters when the user is the buyer, right? That's the case in the consumer space.

You're buying something that you use. You're not having something foisted on you by sort of your CIO, right? There's a reason why enterprise software has the reputation it does, which is that it adds all these features and X, Y, Z that may or may not work, but they look good in a sales presentation. So you get signed off from the CIO. And then the poor sort of workers have to deal with terrible software because they're not, they're stuck with the bad experience, but they're not making the buying decisions, right? And that can be a negative. That's a reason why a lot of enterprise software has traditionally been terrible. It's also a reason why SaaS has probably been good for the quality of enterprise software, both because.

you can quit much more easily, there's no sunk cost involved. And also there's an aspect where it does, it can move the buying decision down the stack to a team leader or to an actual individual individual user or what it might be. But there's also a benefit there where, where there can be more sort of rational decision making, which again, may ignore things like usability and touch and feel, but also can sort of more easily balance what's the upside versus what's the downside and make a rational decision about that. Well, look, this is a pro Microsoft office podcast. It's a pro Microsoft Outer podcast.

I get in trouble. I do get in trouble for like being generally like a Microsoft cheerleader or whatever might be. And I mean, it's for 10 years, it's worked out. Right? Like I was very anti-Microsoft to start out because I didn't think they knew what they were doing. I was anti-Balmer.

And I thought their whole, they needed to shift to this sort of services model. away from their Windows-centric strategy, they did, and it is work. So until like further evidence comes in, I mean, there's a reason why their stock has increased like a gazillion percent in the last 10 years because they're doing stuff that makes sense. And just AI in general, it's another example of why it does seem to be the case that AI is going to be what we call a sustaining innovation. It's going to benefit the folks with products in the market, with ownership. This came up on the Amazon call sort of last week.

Whatever you want to say about AWS and their lack of their own sort of foundation models or whatever it might be, at the end of the day, the most data is on AWS compared to anyone else. And people aren't going to want to move their data to somewhere else or they're less likely to if they can get a good enough product from sort of AWS. That's an example of having a strong position is going to be augmented by AI, as was to AI creating these sort of like from scratch companies, that existing companies can't respond to because it's too difficult or it's too disruptive to their business model. No, this feels very additive to their business model. Look at Microsoft's pricing strategy. Hey, instead of charging $60 a month, we can charge $90 a month. Yeah, well, to balance out the cheerleading, Microsoft Teams sucks and is really frustrating to use on a regular basis and Microsoft Outlook, can they please fix the search function on Microsoft Outlook? It's a

$2 trillion company. Figure it out, you're better than this. This is like your signature product. It's the best thing about Microsoft Office. And yet, it is really difficult. Anytime I'm trying to put together these shows to search through like months of emails should be easier than it is on Outlook. So that's my message to anyone who's listening out there in Seattle. Oh, the one I do feel shaking about is like my general teams defense. I think teams is understood as a organizing entity for cloud services. That's what Microsoft does well, that Slack and stuff never figured out.

But there's no denying the fact that for actual chat, it's terrible. It's just bad. It's not good. And it's shocking. They've got so many resources. It should be better than just outright terrible. Yeah.

I mean, Microsoft has never been good at the look and feel thing. I've told this story before where I was obsessing about some sort of PowerPoint point slide or something or other, you know, back in the day when I worked there and some fine details. The guy's like, oh, we're not Apple. We don't worry about stuff like that. I'm like, yeah, well, I guess it goes all the way down into the culture.

Yes. Well, speaking of Seattle, uh, let's head to PAC 12 country. Ian says, as I write this email, five schools have left the PAC 12 conference starting in 2024. Oregon and Washington are going to the big 10. Utah, Arizona and Arizona state are going. going to the big 12th. And Colorado.

And Colorado. There you go. DeN Sanders, baby. Oh, that's actually kind of fun. The PAC 12 thought it would be able to renegotiate its next TV rights deal in a great position. But bad officiating hurt the on-field football product while the conference spent millions that it did not have on a PAC 12 network that was a bad idea from the start. Not too different from Ben's critique of TV networks getting into the streaming business that they are ill-suited for.

rather than just selling their content and sticking to their core competency. It is a sad day for college football, but where does this leave us? Is a dreaded Super League inevitable? Or could the complete breakdown of the cable bundle reduce the rights fees that Big Ten and SEC schools have come to expect and push schools back into a traditional, geographically sensible model for conferences? So, Ben, you wrote on this last summer when it was announced, that USC and UCLA were leaving the PAC 12 for the Big Ten.

I believe that was a Stratory article. So we'll link it in the show notes free for any listeners who aren't already subscribed to Stratacri Plus. But what do you think of how we got here? Are there any aspects of the latest developments that you find particularly interesting? I mean, I do think it is sad sort of as someone that grew up with traditional conferences. You know, I saw there was a great, a great joke photo on on Twitter that the Big Ten should absorb all the PAC 10 sort of school. I'm called a Pac-10 because I'm old.

The sort of all the Pac-10 schools make it into a Western division, then have the Eastern Division and then have a championship game in the Rose Bowl. Playing the Rose Bowl, yeah. I think that was like a Chip Kelly joke at UCLA practice. And I endorse that idea. Yeah, I mean, I miss the fact that the Rose Bowl was the ultimate goal. and Wisconsin finally made it back to the Rose Bowl in 93, 94. It was amazing. It was just like incredible.

After I remember one in 10 seasons and going to games and no one being in the stands and it was such a big deal. And I find that like the saddest part of all this is the diminishment of the Bulls and that whole New Year's Day sort of thing. But, you know, it is what it is. The, you know, market forces can be positive or negative. The reality is that live sports remain compelling, but the implication of the Internet is for there to be the big get bigger and the small get washed away into sort of the long tail. We've talked about that in the context of text. We've talked about that in the context of music. We've talked about in the context of movies, and this is happening in the context of sports.

The Big Ten is not going to get a smaller rights deal. They just signed massive ones. and it's actually quite interesting. The Big Ten strategy, I think, is very compelling where they, they're the ones that are banned at ESPN, which is a huge deal. The idea that a college sports conference would not be on ESPN, given the importance to recruiting and, like, people want to be on Sports Center and be shown, that doesn't matter anymore. Social media takes care of all the sort of publicity as far as, you know, recruiting sort of goes and having your highlights be spread around. And so the Big Ten made a deal with Fox, CBS, and NBC. They're going to have a national game at 11 on Fox, a national game at 2, 2.30 on CBS,

and a national game at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m., whatever is on NBC, it'll be the same time slots every week. What does that sound like? It sounds like the NFL. They're basically consolidating all these major brands. And the Big Ten schools, you know, they're not just huge schools. They're not just located in like the most fervent sort of sports area in the country. Yeah, bring it East Coast.

It's true. But also they have this huge diaspora of all these people like me that went to Big Ten schools and then ended up in California or ended up in New York or ended up abroad or whatever it might be. And so they can command the audiences that still move the needle. But they're also not necessarily on cable. They'll be over the air, right? You can get an antenna and you can watch your sort of Big Ten game or, you know,

be involved in whatever package you might get. And it's going to be a great advertising vehicle. the advertising will still be on sports. Yes, people are going to YouTube. Yes, people are weaving these areas. But sports remains compelling. It's the only thing that actually pulls together these new audience these days, which increases its value.

But you're only going to be able to capture that value if you deliver the goods. You have to deliver the audience. You have to deliver the fans. You have to be worth it. And the PAC 10 has always struggled in part because they're on the West Coast. So everyone like you is asleep when they're, their games are played. So they've always had sort of a smaller audience. Yeah, their network idea was a bad idea. It wasn't just that they were late. The Big Ten was the first to do the network and they did it

in the cable heyday. So they made a ton of money off that and it was sort of the model for everyone else. The Pac 10 was late. And then also, I should call Pack 12. They tried to do a network by themselves without any partnership, without partner like the Big Ten partnered with Fox for their network. The SEC partnered with ESPN. What did that get you? That got you negotiating leverage. with the providers where they're like, look, you have to have ESPN, you're going to take the SEC too. You watch the Fox channels. You have to take the Big Ten as well.

The PAC 12 made the same mistake that Sinclair made, Diamond made with their RSNs, where they got these RSNs, formerly Fox RSNs, and suddenly the providers are like, look, we're not going to pay for this RSN. And then what's the response? Okay, I guess you're not going to pay. Whereas Fox, when they were Fox Sports Regionals,

It's like, okay, then you're not getting Fox News, which is like the second highest, most popular cable channel if you're not paying up for the RSNs, right? There was a just a negotiating leverage that came from a bundle internal to the bundle that the PAC 12 sort of skipped out on. And there's lots of other discussions about mistakes the PAC 12 made and the demands they made as far as their network goes and rights fees and all those sorts of things that can be litigated. But there's also the fact the PAC 12 has sucked at football for like a decade, right? And I don't know the extent to which it's officiating as, as, you know, our Ian says or whatever it might be. The fact of the matter is that they haven't been important. They haven't been relevant. The championship of the Pac-12 hasn't made like the final four in ages.

And at the end of the day, like when you get to the internet, when you get to everything can be measured, you either sort of produce or you don't. And it's almost like backdoor relegation here where a lot of the back-door schools, They just got relegated and like it's going to be tough to make your way back up. Yeah. I mean, I was reading about all this over the weekend. And first of all, I know this isn't a sports podcast, but for anyone who doesn't follow sports at all, I really think that with college football in particular, regional conferences are part of what distinguished it from the NFL and made it special. Because number one, you had great rivalries that are now going to be much weird.

or in this new context where the conferences are unrecognizable. And then also with college football, you had regional trends and like styles of play so that each conference had its own distinct brand of football. And only at the very end of the season, would you get to see those styles compete with one another? That's why like the Rose Bowl was such a huge deal because the Big Ten would play the Pac-10 winner.

I love that we're going to just continue to refer to it as the Pact. 10 throughout here. Hey, we still called the big 10. If they could, if they can do it, we can do it. This is two washed guys talking tech and business here. But honestly, when I was covering sports, the single coolest assignment I ever had was going to the national championship game at the Rose Bowl just because that stadium is so special. It absolutely lives up to the hype. But that's a aside. As far as the realignment is concerned across college football. You know, I look at all of this as a good, very low stakes parable about why sometimes regulation

can be a good thing because what happened here is the optimal and most efficient market solution was achieved and it continues to be achieved with each passing year. And almost everyone in and around college sports finds it like incredibly depressing. And so I think there are like aspects of the value that were harder to quantify when you look at traditional conferences. And now we just have this mishmash setup where there's going to be there is going to be a super league probably five to 10 years from now where there's like 25 teams. And that's like the Premier League version of college football. And then everybody else can fight amongst themselves. It's the SEC and the Big Ten.

Like that's really what it is. And it's, you know, there are also jokes about how the, uh, the geographic boundaries of those two conferences, uh, reflect other battles in the past. Uh, but there's like, there's, there's just, like that, but you, again, this is what you see in other markets, right? You see with text, you're like the New York Times succeeds and Schoectery can succeed and everything else in the middle is decimated. Everything that was based on geography is exactly what gets decimated because the internet removes geography. It removes boundaries. makes everything into one market.

And the optimal, when you have total efficiency in a market, we see it again and again. You get this barbell effect. You get this super big can succeed and the super small can succeed. And everything in the middle gets sort of wiped out. And the reality is, is most conferences and most universities were in that middle. And if anything, the biggest questions going forward are about the sort of the dregs and like the big 10 or whatever. It's like, wait, why are you getting all this money? like Illinois football like what are you providing I probably shouldn't say that day I think they beat Wisconsin last year but but there is uh you know it is kind of depressing and and but it's depressing in a a reproducible we see this again and again depressing like this is what happens with large markets I mean this is there is an aspect of aggregation theory again I wouldn't apply it to this but the underlying principles that if you have demand everything has to snap into place in

order with you. That applies here. The Big Ten commands an audience. So the Big Ten is getting all the riches. And again, I find it depressing as well. Like, I don't like it. I was mad when the Big Ten had Penn State, right? Like, I, I, 10 was fine. Now you're really dating yourself. Penn State has always been part of the Big Ten in my life. But there you go. Still you surfers. All right. Well, to keep it moving, Robert says on the July 31st episode of Sharp Tech, You both mentioned the importance of free speech in America, and then later on mentioned that the idea that people take in information and then update their knowledge going forward is not correct for the vast majority of people. Isn't there tension between those two statements?

The underlying philosophy for the notion that free speech is valuable is undergirded by the idea that some semblance of truth will emerge from a free flow in the marketplace of ideas. This is echoed repeatedly in First Amendment jurisprudence, not merely as legal justification, but as the judicial philosophy behind a broad interpretation of the First Amendment. If the vast majority of people don't take information and then update their priors as a result, then are we upholding free speech just axiomatically? Love the pod, by the way. It's an eclectic mishmash of policy, law, and tech that speaks right to the intersection of many of my interests. I totally feel Ben on the pronunciation of things. Now, look, I mainly read that email because his final sentence there is a fantastic logline for the show,

an eclectic mishmash of policy, law, tech, and people mispronouncing words. That's what we're all about here. I will compliment Robert, because while we were podcasting, sort of in my head, I noted this seeming tension and I was going to come back to it. but we never did. But it's a, you know, I appreciate that our readers were on top of it and gave us an opportunity to go back to it. And alas, Robert, this is where I'm going to have to stop complimenting you and use you as a, use you as a foil to make a couple points. So, number one, this, his point about what the goal of First Amendment and Jewish jurisprudence, this idea of the marketplace of ideas is misinformation.

Okay. Okay. The whole idea of the marketplace of ideas actually came up in a dissent in, it was the Justice Oliver Window Holmes, the 1919 case Abrams versus United States. He wrote in a dissent in a defense of free speech talking about the marketplace of ideas. Last time I checked 1919, again in a dissent, which it wasn't the predominant idea, is a long time after the Constitution. was written and ratified in what 1792 something along those lines so by definition we actually know that was not the point of the first amendment was not the marketplace of ideas now i bring this up for a couple of reasons number one i will get to the reason it exists but number two i would imagine robert felt very confident about this statement he sort of put it in here what this is the reason why it exists it's an example of how loose a hold all of us can have have on the truth, right? Like Robert very confidently asserted something that was wrong. And that should provide a bit of humility about all sorts of things. There's lots of things that we think are true.

And I include myself in this. And it's why we get the benefit of users listening and email saying, no, that's incorrect. That is great because we do get stuff wrong. And there is a bit about getting corrected and finding your way forward that is a way to the truth for sure. But But that's not why the First Amendment existed. The First Amendment existed as a shield against tyranny. That's what the founding father said. And the whole debate I referenced before about Hamilton not wanting the bill of rights because he didn't want to define rights because he said all are other rights that were undefined but exist would be whittled down to a legalistic interpretation,

which is exactly what has happened. The counter was from Jefferson, which is like, look, yes, that might happen, but let's at least make sure we write down the really important one. ones to make sure we have something. And both nailed it, right? At least we don't have the government coming in and tell us what we can or cannot say, at least explicitly. They'll just lean on Facebook to do it, right, or whatever it sort of might be. And so there's an aspect of the actual motivation for it and the arguments pro and against it were validated in a major way. And they've been validated just this year with the sort of revelations that we've gotten and the debates that we have about what is

protected, what is free speech, what is it a legalist interpretation? Is it a spirit? Is it a generally existing rights? All those things remain true and the motivation, I think, remains valid about the question of tyranny. So that's sort of number one. And I thank you, Robert, for sort of being my foil. Okay. Number two. We did a bit. John Gruber wrote about this question of censor tower and, like, they're, there are reports of uses of data. We talked about on dithering today, so you can go sort of check it out. I thought it was a great piece. And one of the questions he raises is is it actually a representative sample when they're collecting data from people who willingly install like free VPN apps and, you know, these tracking things that show what data they use?

Are they actually showing what the general population uses? And, you know, and I think it's a very sort of very fair question to ask. There's a bit where you can get trapped looking at everything as everything is perfectly substitutable as far as sort of folks go. So it may be the case that most people don't update their prior. that they don't actually incorporate new information. It may also be the case that it is valuable to have new information so you can update your priors, not because we're expecting every single person to do it, but because a sufficient

number will that the benefits will sort of benefit society as a whole, right? And so the goal here as far as the marketplace of ideas bit, which again was not the founding father's sort of motivation, but I think is a valid argument, is not that every single person updates in time, but that there's room for some people to update, those updates will be valuable and will be dispersed across society in a way that is sort of meaningful. So you can get stuck just looking at the average, right? I would argue the average person does not update their information well. That doesn't mean every person doesn't update their information well. And the whole idea is to leave room and space for those that do and will, recognizing there is a tradeoff.

There is a tradeoff. There is stuff that maybe Robert is right. And he actually is correct that this thing is true. And it would be better if it was in force that everyone believe this thing. But there's a sufficient number of space where that's not the case, including areas that Robert thought he was right about, but he wasn't, that ought to give us all humility about thinking we can sort of pull this off. Okay. I think that's well said. The other thing that I would add is that it's a good thing for our laws to reflect ideals, even if humans often fail to live up to them. And so the fact that a majority of society is not really changing what they think based on new information that they consume does not mean that, you know, we should alter our laws to that effect and just assume that society needs to be controlled by some central.

arbitraised arbiter of truth. And systematically, that's a better way to do it. Systematically, it's better to value a marketplace of ideas. Right. Well, the other thing that, of Robert's point, do we just uphold it axiomatically? There's an aspect of yes. Exactly. I was just going to say, that's the thing. The alternate model where the government can pick and choose what's allowed to be discussed is going to create more problems than it solves. And that's a function of human nature also. And we've seen plenty of examples of that over the years. Right. But that yourself, there is an aspect of there. Now, I think historically, it does support your point of view. But there's plenty of people

that think otherwise. And there are systems and countries like China that are acting with the other viewpoint. That it actually, the tradeoff is worth having a centralized locus of truth. And that sort of filtering down. Anything that comes down to a philosophical question like this, of course you want to get data. You want to look historically and try to make the best choice. And you can have utilitarian debates and arguments about what's the net gain. But it's okay to admit, and I freely do, that there's some things like, look, this is an axiomatic belief for me. Yeah. I will make the argument in favor of free speech.

I'll make the argument against sort of the Chinese system. But I will admit I was born and raised as an American. I make my life on the Internet by spouting my opinion about all sorts of things for better or worse. What was the eclectic, mix, policy, law, and tech and bad pronunciation? right? That is the case. That's what we're all about. And there's a bit that like, look, at the end of the day, I believe that is true and I'm not going to move off that position. And if you want to take that and say, look, Ben's lack of flexibility and invocation of faith to some respect makes me not take his argument seriously. I accept that trade off. I'm telling you that's the reality of where I'm coming from.

And everyone, if you drill down far enough, everyone has first principles. Everyone has something that they actually believe to be true. And I think it's dishonest to suggest that no, every opinion I have and every argument that I make is supported by evidence. That itself is an axiomatic statement because it's impossible for that to actually be true. Right. And as you're talking about our own personal values, it reminds me that as much as we focus on the government and the way they approach the free speech question, the fact of the matter is a lot of is a social question. So, right, you go back to the pandemic, which is a useful example because it was eye-opening the ways that truth was sort of disregarded or suppressed in certain ways.

So many people who were saying trust the science during the pandemic were not actually trusting the science. And that's become clearer over the last year or two as, you know, different documents have been subpoenaed and whatnot. And the way people were sort of censored during that period was not by the government. I mean, sometimes it was, but frequently there was a real social stigma to speaking out and questioning some of the scientific wisdom that was being dispersed from like on high. And that is a function of the way humans are using social media these days, as opposed to any sort of centralized government policy.

And it's something we're all going to have to sort of reckon with over the next. Right. And the reason we keep on, me back to COVID is not to argue a civic COVID point of view. At least that's sort of my motivation. Right. It's to ask for humility. Like, like, we have this shining example right in front of us of how we got so much wrong and how the human tendency in a moment of crisis is not to step back and be extra careful. It's to overdo it. It's to go too far. And if the only lesson we got from COVID is, like, there's so much we don't. no, that would be a good thing.

And it's kind of frustrating. It seems to have, you know, in so many places, got in the opposite direction. Right. And when I say that people weren't actually trusting the science, what I mean specifically is, like the lab leak theory was discredited on a scientific basis for a while there. What, I just that, like, the things about how it spreads, right? Mask efficacy. Yeah.

There are a lot of aspects that have since become more complicated than they were presented. Right. Or like, you know, the vaccine stopping transmission, right? The funny thing about that was if you actually read the papers at the time, Pfizer and whatever never made that claim. Right. But that claim undergirded things like mandates, right, or the whole sort of push. And that ought to, like we violated human freedoms in a meaningful way based on a premise that never even existed. It wasn't a disproved one.

No one actually ever said from a scientific perspective that they stopped transmission. Right. But that undergirded a lot of choices that were. were made. And again, I'm not here to settle scores or fight fights. Like, I wasn't involved in those debates. I'm just asking for humility. Like, we, there's so much we don't know. From a sociological perspective, there were six months there where if you spoke out expressing doubt about certain policies. You got kicked off social media for saying that the vaccines did not stop, did not stop transmission. Well, and it would impact your professional stature. And there

are all sorts of social consequences to being publicly skeptical about any of this stuff. And so that's where it's bigger than the government. And it's something we're all going to have to wrap our arms around over the next generation or two. But it'll make for some entertaining podcasting. So to keep it moving, Paul says, how do you reconcile the following two views expressed in the last week? On dithering, Ben said, by and large, their social feed didn't really change their viewpoints at all. People seek out and read stuff online that confirms what they already believe. It's not the other way around. On Sharp Tech, Ben said it's a lot easier to avoid stuff that really bothered you before. It was a lot easier to avoid stuff that really bothered you before the internet.

The problem with the internet is you're exposed to all the stuff that you don't like and you can't escape it. How can you think information is unavoidable because of social feeds, but also people choose what information they want to see. These ideas seem to be at conflict. Well, I mean, in some respects, I already answered the question to Robert. Like, there is, like, we're talking to raw friends. Right. But number two, the algorithms aren't perfect, right?

You will see stuff that you necessarily want to. But number three, the way you often see information you don't like is because it was surfaced by someone on your quote unquote team dunking on it. Exactly. And so you're primed to hate it, right? It actually makes it even worse. It exacerbates the differences. The reason I wanted to include it is it reflects a nuanced reality of social media, which is most people are encountering news sources that do confirm what they already believe.

And part of the way they do that is by exposing people to outrage-inducing content of political opponents and framing it in the most extreme way possible. Right. You always see the worst of the other side because that's the stuff that's dunked on, right? You're not seeing the vast majority of the middle ground that have a few small differences and, you know, it's a hard question with big tradeoffs and they may be fall on the other side. You're seeing the extremist on the other side. And this goes, this goes in both directions. That's how you get currency. That's how you get likes.

That's how you get sort of reactions. Find the most extreme thing. Hold it up as this is an example of all 49.9% of people on the other side or whatever it might be. And then like I think it's pretty self-evident why that's not really beneficial or helpful to him. anyone and also why it shows up to you because you like yeah you can step back and be sort of in a sort of a sober moment say it's not good that I see that stuff but when you're on you know when you're on the bus or on the can sort of scrolling through your tritur fee is like yes well let's clip that and use that as a sound effect for future sharp tech episodes we'll get dumb and working on

that um but end of summer bail back here i hope it sounded better than yours geez Yeah, exactly. We'll see. We'll let the listeners decide. Email at sharp tech.com. Let us know who had the better grumble. We're going to close today with a segment. We're going to be calling TikTok a tech version of Parent Corner. What happened to screen time? I like TikTok, man, you know? I mean, screen time, TikTok. I think we're going with TikTok. Send all future TikTok questions to email at sharp tech.fm. and we're going to kick things off with Misha here. He says, I have what I feel like is a simple parent question, but it doesn't have a great solution. There's no great semi-private way to share photos of your kids. We just had our first son.

He's five weeks old. Congrats to Misha. We had an extended hospital stay, and we were using ICloud photo albums for sharing photos. But then one grandparent has an Android, as does one of my brothers. and we also lost steam on uploading photos there once we got home. We were also just asked to print photos for my wife's uncle and mail them to him. They even sent us envelopes. And then my wife and I wanted a way to share photos between just the two of us.

So my question here is twofold. One, what do you think are the best ways to share photos with friends and or parents? Some friends have suggested various photo-only apps tailor-made for boomers, but I'm not sure I need another app to update. And then two, Instagram now offers shopping in all areas, but not printing of photos. I don't really want to sign up for another Instagram account for my son's photos. But honestly, at this scale, I'm surprised Instagram doesn't integrate a third-party app directly for printing photos. Is the market just too small now for photo printing?

So, Ben, what do you think about, let's go broad. us to most specific. What do you think about his question on photo sharing strategy for kids? Well, I'm, my era of photo sharing was a long time ago. So I'm actually more interested to what you're doing. I just want to take a little shot at Misha here. Sorry, this is sort of me taking shot at that readers thing. Your wife's uncle gave you envelopes. Are they like pre-addressed? Extremely considerate. I was impressed by the uncle. I've got to blow it away. by the relatives here who are doing their best to let's you sort of help them. There is an aspect here of like, Misha is, you know, spoiled Gen Z or whatever it might be.

Back in my day, we had to go, you know, we had to get slides made and get a slide projector, Don Draper style. I mean, maybe not that extreme. But look, let's recognize the fact that we are complaining about very sort of large, large sort of rich, rich world problems or whatever they might be. I think, honestly, my view, and maybe this is going to be a theme for TikTok or whatever it might be, and we should get away from it. It's going to make me lose listeners is, Misha, do some work, right? Like, look, you can do the effort to sort of make some of this stuff available.

Instagram does have the close friends only function. That's sort of one thing that could work. You could do a separate account and have it locked and protected. ICloud Photos lets you publish a website that you can share the link to. There is a bit where that's security by sort of obscurity in that regard. And I do think it's fair to some of your relatives to say, look, I'm going to this effort. You can click on a wink and go see it as opposed to having to completely dictate to them. But there is a bit where, look, you're adding a new sort of person to the Misha clan.

You are here, Misha, because of your parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles. And look, you're just going to have to deal with this for a little bit. Yes, come up with a good workflow, but I promise you, it's a lot easier to pull this off than it was for me back in the day when I actually created a website for my daughter that I uploaded photos to that it was password protected and all those sorts of things so people could access. Believe me, it could be worse. So what do you do, Andrew? What's your strategy? Well, first of all, I think this is a great question. Every parent is different.

I know it's such an old man answer to say. Just buck up and do better, Misha. Well, an old man, but also an old nerd, you know, back in whatever year your daughter was born, you created a website, a custom-made website, password protected to share photos, the original iCloud. I cloud before I cloud. Great job by you. That's hilarious to me. And, you know, it's hard. Every parent has different takes on putting pictures of their kids on the internet.

And I try to be respectful of the people who are super intense about not wanting any photos of their kids on social media because certain parents who believe that are really, really annoying. But I also know some cool, good people who feel that way. Which one do I fall into it with that one, Andrew? You're one of the good ones. Both. Both annoying and good. It depends on the segment. It's a good point.

Yes. So, you know, I think in general, I am just not. that particular about what photos are being serviced online. I have a public Instagram account. I post photos of Charles on there on a pretty regular basis. And I just feel like the era that Charles inhabits, Charles being my four-month-old son for anyone who's new here, the era that he inhabits,

there is just going to be such an abundance of content and photos and sort of digital footprints. for everyone that it's not really going to matter if baby pictures are out there or whatever. And so I'm just not all that precious about it. And as far as sharing photos with family, the ICloud link is really, really useful. I have to say it's a great way to sort of streamline the process so you don't have to take the extra 30 seconds and reach out to aunts and uncles and brother-in-law. sister-in-law, whoever it may be, because as pathetic as it sounds, relative to you, taking the effort to create a custom-made website and everything else, that extra 30 seconds,

extra 60 seconds, like, it's just a little bit too much for millennial ass Andrew Sharp here. And having a link that you could just send to people and they can go check it is a really nice little innovation here that has made the first. couple months of parenting easier. Yeah, I mean, I think the I called photo is hard to be. Because I think if you add people to it, then they get notifications when new photos were added. So the other solution for the Android users, which again, they have to like go to an actual

link that goes to a website and then it's, it's kind of public. Buy them an iPad. Buy them an iPad mini, a refurbished one. Say, look, this is your photo viewing thing. Oh, wow. Hey, you think about it. You spend two, 300 bucks and you, you've done your commitment. This is like your photo viewing.

viewing entity if you want to sort of see it. Thanks for the for the envelopes, but this is what's going to what it's going to be sort of going forward. There is a bit where old people like, look, they just want to get photos in the mail and maybe just make it part of your routine. Once a month, you're going to print like 10 photos. Get away

laser printer. They don't even super high quality. Like I don't know. You don't have to overdo it, right? There's a bit where perfect can be the enemy of the good. This is part where my website fell part because I would, you know, I was just too many photos. And like, look, people they just want to see photos. It makes them happy, right? It makes it happy in the mail to get that notification, to go on and see it.

And so, yeah, I think that there is a bit where you can ask people to meet you where you are. In Misha's defense, he is a new father. As you know, there is a lot to do when you're a new father. Going through a custom sort of photo service for all of your extended family ought not be high on your list of priorities. There is a bit about standing up for yourself and say, look, here's the answer. Here's what's sort of going to happen. I'm going to help you achieve that. Be like a tech company make the upfront investment so your marginal costs going forward are sort of low low to zero um so yeah but the other thing is and i'm older now and i'm never been a huge sort of photo person i just text photos something happened like yesterday you know we're seeing some cousins text a couple

photos to the grandparents they're happy to receive them and and that's okay if they want to come back and ask for a printing be like okay i will mark that and like once a year i'm going to do like a big print job. Whatever it might be. And honestly, they'll probably forget by then and they'll be off the hook. Well, listen, final thought here. And you reminded me as you were talking about printing out the photos. So that was one thing that my wife, Alice, did recently.

She printed out about 400 photos. And I mean, first of all, in the iPhone era, like every second of this kid's life has been documented. But you talk about the abundance. When you actually print out physical photos, there's something different and more meaningful about holding a physical printed photo in your hand. And I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. And it's more meaningful than just scrolling through photos on an iPad or an iPhone. And so I don't know, like touch photo stock paper. I don't know what the precise advice is, but it's another sort of variation on the theme that, you know,

Grass. Touch photos. Exactly. Like the physical world has real value. Physical photos have real value. So I guess the theme of the answer here is that Misha's wife's uncle has the right idea. He's sending out envelopes and requesting physical photos. I'm very grateful that my wife printed out physical photos. So one thing I do wish I would have done. I always had this idea of doing it, but I never set aside to get it done is make a, annual photo book. Imagine like every year of like your kid's life and there's like a photo book of it or something on those lines or maybe your family as a whole. I just did that with the summer. Yeah. And there are all these different services

that will do it for fairly cheap. Yeah. Again, it's easy to let the perfect end of the good. You get so obsessed with editing and just writing and getting laid out just right. Like just get it done. Right? Just get a bunch of photos.

And like there's a bit people come over. They love to flip through it. It triggers memories in a way. There's a bit where. you're creating scarcity out of abundance, right? Because you have this abundancy of photos and something printed is scarce, but value comes from scarcity. So you're actually creating value out of this bit that does feel a bit overwhelming.

And like, oh, but it costs time. Things that are valuable cost time, right? Like, that's the whole bit. Thank you. Thank you. That's a better way to articulate it than me just sitting here. Yeah, I can't really explain why, but I loved just flipping through physical photos. You are.

You're creating scarcity. out of abundance. And the reality is five to six years from now, you're not going to go back to 20, 23 and flip through like 9,000 photos and relive what it was like when this baby was a newborn. Yeah. But if you have a photo book with like 50, 75 photos, yeah, absolutely, you'll love it. So the other thing is, I, as you sort of hinted that before, I hinted that, I don't put

photos of my kids online. I did a little bit sort of at the very beginning. Obviously, I'm a different situation in that I'm a very, very minor, very small public figure. I was going to say the calculus would change if I were a little bit more famous. Right. But when I did that, I wasn't. And I had things like pictures from my porch that were years old. And then later on, people were backwards engineering my address and like posting it online.

And so like, again, you, you know, Shark Tech. I mean, I didn't know you were the resident pessimistic. that we're not sort of going to the moon. So I am sort of wary of that and sketchy that. Again, obviously my circumstances are different, but that is sort of a reality. I mean, you're in the millennial generation who like again and again had to learn the hard way to not put too much information online.

Clearly haven't learned my lesson. Yeah, I mean, there is. We are going to the moon. Charles is coming with us, though. That's all I would say. Yeah, a baby, a baby is a baby. And of course, it's fun to share. But there is a bit, particularly,

once they become, you know, I don't know what it is. There's some aspect where your features actually do become sort of more understandable and trackable that I think it's my kids' decision to put stuff online. And I actually counsel them not to put too much online of themselves. But I do think it sounds annoying and irritating. And I've asked you to take one or two or you know, you've been good about checking of photos, photos of me. And again, it's just there's a bit where maybe I'm unique,

but I'm the world's smallest celebrity ever, and I've had to deal with these issues. And I can see that getting a bigger problem over time. And so just I do counsel some degree of caution. Okay. I think that's valuable advice and good for me to keep in mind. 10 to 12 years down the line, I can picture myself angrily lecturing my son about putting too much information on line. So can't be too much of a hypocrite while he's still in this newborn phase. All right, well, that is the end of summer, Ben.

We will get back to a normal schedule next week. And I hope you enjoy the remainder of your time in the States. And we'll keep it rolling. That's right. He'll be back with my Taylor Swift report. I know. Do you have your little friendship bracelets ready? Like, are you set for the concert?

My daughter has made like 50 of them. It's out of control. She's still making them. She can't stop. Oh, man. Well, I can't wait to hear. all about it. You're also seeing Oppenheimer this week. A lot of exciting things on the horizon. All right. We're coming back next week. Hope everyone has a good week. Talk to you later.