Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson - The Hamas Attacks and Social Media, Competing Public Interests, Efforts to Stay Sane in a New Information Ecosystem

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

In the wake of the Hamas terror attacks over the past week, a conversation about tech and war, social media moderation, and strategies for maintaining sanity as society grapples with an unprecedented avalanche of information.

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 okay, Andrew. It's been a nice, slow week. Nothing has happened. Just been, you know, living the offline life. I know.

Great week to be offline, you know. I hope you enjoyed your mini vacation. And I do sincerely wish I could welcome you back with better news to discuss today. Some light, relax. news. Unfortunately, what's happening in Israel and Gaza is the most important news in the world right now. And tech is central to the story. So I wanted to talk through various aspects of that story today on the podcast. And before we get started, even though it should probably go without saying the Hamas terror attacks were appalling and pure evil. And that is a baseline for the rest of the conversation here. We're

thinking of everyone in Israel who was affected as well as any civilians in Gaza who might have to deal with the aftermath of the atrocities that have played out online over the last four or five days. I don't know whether you had anything to add there, but I just wanted to make that clear as a baseline. Yeah, I mean, I think honestly, a bit of frustration and irritation that we have to make that baseline, there's been a bit where I think for several years now, I think it's probably really accelerated in the last five years. There's a sense where if you talk about anything quote unquote controversial, you have to sort of like walk on eggshells.

And I do think there's a bit where it should go without saying that we are against terror and we should not have to feel bad about saying that. And the fact that maybe sometimes we do is itself sort of interesting in its own right. But I guess we can get into that in a little bit. There you go. We will get into that in a little bit. And for me, it's just this little voice in the back of my head that it's like, whatever you're about to podcast doesn't mean shit because there's the scale of suffering in the Middle East right now sort of dwarfs everything. But in any event, with qualifiers and baselines out of the way, thinking about all this over the last couple of days, I am a veteran on the internet.

I'm extremely online and not really cowed by anything I see on there. But I was shaken up a couple different times over the last few days and thinking about why it reminded me of your piece on tech and war back in March of last year. That was when Russia invaded Ukraine and was then immediately hit with all sorts of economic sanctions. And multinational Western companies immediately, almost overnight, abandoned the Russian market. And at the time, I remember you wrote that the speed with which Russia was isolated by the West, should make it clear to everybody that private tech companies are going to be vested with the power to wield tremendous influence in international conflicts moving forward. And that is a great macro read on where things are headed.

I feel like the past week was another dimension of tech and war where people watching the Hamas attacks the past week has been tech and war at like an individual level and how we all experience these conflicts. Did you experience any of that yourself? For sure. It's interesting because we witnessed a similar dynamic, I think, domestically, where there is something about video that is just markedly different than there is when it comes to text or even images. I mean, images have a long story history about their sort of impact. There's that famous image from the Vietnam War that, you know, was thought to be instrumental in turning U.S. public opinion. But that was just an image, right? Like the video is something else completely. And it's sort of both magnified by the

fact that anyone has carried on a video recorder and can sort of post online at any time. And it's sort of leavened with the sort of issues inherent to the internet, which is when anyone can publish anything, then what is true and what isn't true. And that cuts in multiple directions. I think there's been a lot of talk over the last couple days there's like two takes on X, which is, you know, number one, this stuff would have

never gotten out and people wouldn't realize how bad this was if it weren't for Elon Musk taking over. On the other hand is, oh, because Elon Musk took over, there's no moderation, there's lots of misinformation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I actually think the debate is illuminating because it is actually finally like talking about the actual

issues at play. And so, So this is sort of the rich vein of topics that I think is sort of appropriate for us to discuss. And yes, I do, I do have a couple takes. Okay. So just to frame it, this is now how wars will be experienced around the world moving forward. Is a broad thought that I put down on the outline. And to that end, I'll read from Bloomberg this week. TikTok became the world's window into the conflict in Israel over the weekend. a stark departure from the choreographed dances, animal videos, and celebrity lip-sinking content that hooked more than a billion people on the platform. Clips from a music festival in

southern Israel where 260 attendees were killed and more were taken hostage, according to Israel Rescue Agency Zaka, broke through the algorithm's regularly scheduled lighthearted programming. Despite the app's early mission, quote, to inspire creativity and bring joy, there's no question now that TikTok will play a huge role in disseminating serious and often harrowing moments that transfix the world. Studies show that members of Generation Z are more likely to turn to TikTok than Google as a source of news. Noam Schwartz is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Active Fence Limited, an Israeli company which builds technology for trust and safety teams in big tech platforms. For the most part, Schwartz thinks TikTok has played a positive role in the

conflict. Quote, people would not believe the magnitude of this event without it being amplified on social media, he said. Yet the flurry of unchecked videos on TikTok also provides a prime opportunity for propagandists and online clout chasers to seize on the confusion. And that TikTok story could just as easily have been written about telegram or Twitter. So in general, what are some of your takes on this information eco-exam? system and the way information has been distributed over the past week or so. Well, number one, I think this highlights the appropriate concern that some have about TikTok's ownership structure and who actually has control over that.

That was the obvious thought that popped into my mind as I was reading the Bloomberg story. It's like, holy shit, you know, this is exactly why it's a concern for everybody. Right. I mean, you know, what I was first wrote about TikTok and it's probably, was sort of in the context of the Hong Kong protests and Darry's tweet and things on those lines. And as I documented at the time, you know, it was a relatively small thing, but you could not find Houston Rockets content on TikTok, right? You could find every other NBA team. You could not find Houston Rockets.

And number two, you could definitely not find any sort of pro protester content on it. Now, that is obviously a little more challenging to ascertain whether that's true or not. The NBA one was pretty straightforward, right? You search for every NBA team. You see what clip show up. And funny enough, there's nothing for the Rockets, right? That one I thought was pretty black and white. You know, to say that every time I search for Hong Kong, it's showing one particular point of view.

That is obviously subject to confirmation bias. I would assume that was the case. But it certainly seemed to be the case. And it was combined with that sort of Houston Rockets angle. And that was well before the sort of depths of the U.S.-China standoff that were in. and potentially barreling towards much worse. Like if there were a conflict between the U.S. and China, what sort of content do we think is going to be promoted on TikTok?

I mean, it seems like it would be malpracticed by the Chinese to not sort of tip that in one direction or the other, right? You think the picture of the little girl in Vietnam was bad, wait until you see what's going to show up on TikTok. And again, now maybe your comeback be like, that's objectively bad, civilians being subject to war, is inherently bad, which, yes, we just made that disclaimer at the front. But there is also a bit, and this I think applies to my frustration at the disclaimer.

I feel like a lot of people are having a real wake-up call as to the fundamental nature of humanity and the fact that it's not all good. And there is a, you know, there is a bit of a paradox here where on one hand, you can't just like talk people and do the right thing or set down the right laws or the right rules and then people just magically act the way you want them to and at the bounds of discussion or disputes and people are going to abide by that. Like, that's not how humanity works. And on the other hand, we're also here talking about the potential power of propaganda

and the power of these images. And this is sort of a real, a real point of tension and paradox. Yeah, well, and honestly, I don't want to wade into geopolitical waters and takes on, you know, one side or the other. But I do wonder in terms of this story, how. differently it might have played out if there weren't these irrefutable videos and images depicting like pure evil, kidnapping, murder, what appeared to be rape in certain instances. And basically, anybody that might have been sympathetic to Hamas and the plight of the Palestinians

more generally is in a much more difficult position if you're trying to defend what happened over the weekend because we have the images and it's not some abstraction that happened thousands of miles away. Absolutely. I mean, this speaks to the power. I mean, there is sort of no denying it. It does make you question what sort of stuff we didn't see historically, right? Particularly when you see the response of some of our sort of elite institutions and knowing

that the sort of pipeline that goes from there to a lot of our news organizations and wondering how that actually plays out. It's a fair question to ask. On the other hand, I'm not going to dismiss the concerns about people that, you know, this can go, like what, I mean, this is actually an area where misinformation, disinformation is actually legitimate concern. And in this case, I go back to COVID, where Twitter was by far the best source of news at the beginning of COVID before it blew up into the mainstream. It was the only place you could actually find people raising legitimate concerns, talking about it, saying this actually is going to be a global pandemic. And meanwhile, you are having the sort of establishment media poo-poo it and call people literally racist for being concerned about COVID, right? And like, people forget this, but that is a thing that actually happened.

And then after it breaks, once it became a mainstream story, suddenly then the misinformation shot through the roof. And I wrote an article about this about misinformation disinformation. A couple articles I think hold up really, really well. And I think are ones that I'll return to in the future, which was trying to. to chart this like what social media giveeth and what social media taketh away. And there is this timing aspect where before something breaks through, social media is unbelievable. But there is a turning point where once it becomes a big thing, then it becomes utterly unreliable because the flow of bullshit overwhelms whatever sort of. And it becomes politicized. It becomes partisan,

you know, whatever those lines might be. And then it becomes much more unreliable. And I think that one of the tensions is you have to keep in mind this timing aspect when you're thinking about the relative value of all these sorts of things. Is it worth having the actual truth get out and get out sooner? Like I think the example I used then was a COVID researcher who was being ignored by the CDC. And so he took to Twitter to post to say, look, this is what's actually going on. Right. The guy in Seattle. Yeah.

And he was actually breaking like some sort of regulation or whatever to do so. But it was very impactful and it actually broke through and woke a lot of people up that this is sort of a real thing that's happening. And in that case, it's very hard to argue against the sort of value here. But the problems that it presents are very challenging and very different. And a mistake that I see being made again and again is trying to apply some sort of analog paradigm to this to understand it and control it. So one of the really interesting pieces here that I think goes into this and is on X directly is this community notes feature, which I think is remarkable. Now, I'm biased because I was writing that you need something like this years and years ago because my take back then was the issue that you're dealing with on the internet is you're dealing with astronomical scale. And even if you want to have some sort of like censorship regime, which obviously I don't as a matter of principle, but, you know, anyone that wants to control.

information or disinformation, they deal with the fact that it's always reactive, right? Whereas the gating of information, however you want to call it or define it, say, during the Vietnam War or during the Gulf War 30 years ago or the Intifada 20 years ago, that was pre-publication. There were decisions being made then such that we saw stuff or didn't see stuff that was sort of being decided by the powers that be, and that certainly influenced public opinion. It's very different on social media because it just goes up there. and then it's all sort of reactive. And there's this sort of scale issue.

And so the idea and what I think makes community notes really quite remarkable is the whole concept is the only way to deal with internet challenges is to have internet scale solutions. And in this particular case, what you're doing is you're bringing the, the quote unquote, knowledge of the crowd or wherever you want to call it, there's some phrase for it to sort of bear on the issue. And the community notes like functionality is pretty interesting. You have to have a certain critical mass of people that agree.

That's why the super controversial ones don't always have community notes because the people who have that power can't agree. But that's actually good, right? The ones, by definition, if we don't know, it's probably better not to put your foot on the scale. Unlike, again, I go back to COVID where there was legitimately true stuff that was suppressed because it was against this sort of like dominant sort of like what the CDC said or whatever it might be. Right. It's better. If it's unclear, just leave it. We'll sort of have to figure it out.

If it is clear, let's bring the power of sort of scale to bear on that to show what's clear and not clear. And X, to its credit, has done a really good job enhancing and pushing out this functionality to deal with the issues of things like timing. So, for example, today I woke up to one of my Twitter accounts. And it's actually my secret Twitter account that doesn't follow anyone or no likes or whatever. You know, burner account. And I had a notification. I'm like, why would I have a notification? No one knows this account exists.

I go to that notification and the notification, I'm going to actually, I'm going to actually read it here. This is great podcasting years as I flipped through my photos here. It says, community notes. For this unknown burner account, can't wait. Readers added a community note to a post to which you replied, liked, or reposted. And then you click on it and it brings you to the tweet that it was and the note that was on there. And in this case, I think the note was relatively mild. But to me, that that is good.

That is great. That is a great way to deal with this issue, to deal with the issue of timing, to do with the issue of scale, is you have to bring scale to bear when you're dealing with a scale-based problem, number one. And number two, you have to leverage your capabilities to solve the timing issue. So in this case, look, if I retweeted this, which I didn't, but there's certainly, you know, it's great that it's, so now community notes are not just attached to tweets. If there's media in the tweet, like a video or whatever it might be, that note follows the piece of media around. So that media is sort of reposted even if it's in a different tweet. Wow, I didn't realize that. Yeah.

No, it's a recent improvement. Like, this is legitimately great work. And this is how we deal with some of these issues. And I'm not saying this solves the problem. And it certainly doesn't solve the problem in the Middle East to say the least. But it is, I guess, a silver lining in this whole mess. that there is some movement on actually solving these issues in a way that makes sense, that actually leverage the Internet, that preserves the right to sort of speak, that answers bad

speech with more speech in a way that that doesn't have the problem of like the correction has 100 retweets and the initial fallacy has like 50,000 retweets, right? In this context, I find it fascinating that the EU has decided this is the week to go in on X and misinformation when this is. Yeah, I couldn't. believe that. And we could have sort of a sub-discussion on why Musk is such a lightning rod and everyone just wants to tee off on him and make this an Elon Musk problem when literally every social media platform is grappling with these issues this week with this particular situation. And I don't

even really want to get into it because I'm just tired of that argument. The community notes discussion, though, is important to highlight. And it's an example of a pragmatical. And it's an example of a pragmatical. step that can be taken to improve the information environment. As impossible as all this feels or can feel, I almost never see a community note that's not illuminating and useful in some way. And I'm sure there are outlier examples out there, but it is a really cool innovation that has improved my experience as a Twitter slash X user. And it also doesn't solve the problem.

I think it makes important progress because you just mentioned something. There's some key notes that are wrong. Of course there's going to be. It's inherent to the system. But this is where I go to the ads discussion we've been having about what has happened sort of post-ATT and post some of these European regulations

and this idea that companies need to shift from a deterministic ad model to a probabilistic ad model. The point to make here is that probabilistic ad targeting is inherently sort of fuzzy. Imperfect, yeah. You don't have that direct connection as to what went through and what didn't. And that is the case for all of these sort of scale-based approaches. So community notes, you don't have like one definitive like Oracle deciding what's true and what's not.

It's going to be fuzzy. It's going to get stuff wrong. Now, in this case, when we're dealing with questions of truth, I think that's a feature. It's all fuzzy. Because it's all fuzzy. Exactly. And also practically speaking, a lot of. little centralized body, a centralized, you know, ministry of truth at any of these social media

companies, is it going to be able to police all the misinformation and disinformation out there anyways? And that's why you have to weaponize the crowds. And you can do so with eyes wide open knowing that it's going to be imperfect in some respects. But I think you've convinced me over the years that that's the only viable way to really tackle these issues at scale. Right. No, that's right. it's the only way to do it at scale and you're going to have inevitable corruption of any sort of centralized body. And the number three, you don't like who can define truth, right? It's a pretty like, like we these, it's like a fundamental philosophical question that absolutely comes to bear in this case. And this sort of quote quote failure case of community notes where a community note is not attached when the collection of community notes sort of ascribers can't agree.

That is, again, to my mind, a feature not a bug. Right. Like, like, some stuff is like, and there's no better situation to illustrate this than the Middle East, right? Like, like, and so, yeah, actually, good thing. So that's our number one. My number one take is I've been incredibly impressed by community notes. I think it gives a direction of where we're going. I find it extremely disappointing, if not surprising, that X is a target in this context.

Again, largely, I think it's for political reasons. when I think they're the ones that are the furthest along on figuring this out. Number two. That's fair. Well, wait, before we get to your number two, I just want to say that I don't know whether it's because I've been reading you for so many years or we're just generally, spiritually on the same wavelength, but further down on the outline, one of the big picture thoughts I had on this new information environment was social media is incredibly useful for the first

28 to 48 hours of an emergent crisis and then basically unusable from there. So same observation you offered 10 or 15 minutes ago, but I just want to double down on that, that when all of this news emerged over the weekend, Twitter was indispensable for me. And look, other people are consuming news on TikTok, maybe telegram. I don't know how people around the world are getting their news. But for me, it was Twitter. And it was really, really great. And then it was flooding. by people with agendas and misinformation and even with the community notes. Right. Scoring point points.

Yeah. Pretty overwhelming and intolerable. So that's just sort of a feature of the new ecosystem we have here. Let me jump in on that point because I think I'm going to make a new number two. So my previous number two is now number three, which I go to in a moment. My other number two is the other answer to this beyond what platforms can do is this requires a fundamental shift in how you can information in that you have to approach it with a high degree of skepticism. And I think by and large what I saw, obviously I was very online while this was going on. I cannot stay away.

But you saw, I think, an appropriate degree of skepticism of certain claims that were made. And then the outrage followed when they were verified. And I think like even within that sort of time loop where whether it be an hour delay or two hour delay or whatever it was, that is healthy. That is an appropriate response. It's a response where it does make me think what were we missing again 20 years ago or 40 years ago or whatever the time I might be when we weren't inherently cynical or sort of skeptical. But there is, you know, just again, maybe I just surround myself with, you know, well-thinking people that don't jump to conclusions. But I feel like I've seen a shift in folks generally. They know everything online can't be trusted.

You sort of have to, you have to approach with a degree of sort of skepticism. Yeah, well, and in terms of the way we're all processing this information, like I said earlier, I'm not usually shaken by what I see on the internet, but at several points over the last couple of days, like I was pretty shaken up and disturbed by what was coming across my social media timelines. And I was thinking about why this environment can feel so insane, because obviously, like, people would. would read newspapers and be confronted with all sorts of horrifying news. People watched CNN and saw all sorts of horrifying images. But the media we have now is just so much more immersive. And it's along the lines of what we were talking about last week where you've got like a collapse between the physical and the digital reality. So it's not, I'm just reading a story on the front page, but I'm watching like firsthand footage at the scene of mass murder. Right. It was.

And it is showing up in the source between like tweets about the NBA, right? Exactly. It's all one fire hose. That's part of it too. It's like in the past you actively go seek out CNN or pick up the Washington Post. And now as entertainment and news have been blended into one product, it's like the way I'm used to relaxing is also the same sort of mechanism that is feeding me these horrific images that then have me go like hugging my kid afterwards. And so I don't have any profound thoughts on what it means for society. I just feel like there is some value in stepping back to state the obvious, which is that this is an absolutely insane way to experience the world.

And we're all still in the adjustment phase, I would say. Yeah, I completely agree. I'm pretty sure it's not very healthy either. And there's a bit where you're, yeah, you're not expecting it. It just sort of comes at you. Again, to go back to previous conversations, we've talked about how social media commodified. content such that, you know, I always use the phrase, the sixth month investigative story next to a picture of your niece. Well, in this case, it's a beheading next to a picture of like, you know, the new rookie on your team getting a much of steel.

Somebody tweeting at me about the Oklahoma City Thunder, you know, it's like, what the fuck? I don't know how to process all this. And I think this is a matter where, you know, and this may be like a free TikTok sort of bit. you know, I did talk to my daughter this weekend about this sort of reality and just being aware, you know, you have to, the amount of sort of self-control that is necessary in this world is pretty extraordinary and I think is worth considering. It's pretty tough. And I'm not sure to what extent we were sort of evolved to sort of handle this sort of thing. The number one tip I would give is stop tweeting, some advice that I gave myself five or six years ago. just because, number one, your biggest urge to tweet is in the heat of a moment when the emotions are pulsing and you're feeling that sort of adrenaline rush.

That's an excellent time to not be putting out statements that are there on the permanent record, right? Just for one. And this has nothing to do with the veracity of the statement or the quality of the viewpoint or whatever it might be. But just from sort of a personal sort of standpoint, then you have to deal with the blowback and then you maybe regret it. Are you going to delete it, all this sort of thing? I don't want to bag on Twitter and join the masses because I do think Twitter still has some real utility. I will say Twitter is the worst platform imaginable to try to hash out what the future of the Middle East should look like and what the right thing to do is here. It's just like, sorry, but everybody on that platform assumes bad faith of whoever they're interacting with.

I don't know why it's been wired into our brains that way, but that's the way everyone, experiences Twitter, and so you should just act accordingly and take your thoughtful discussions elsewhere. It's the structure of the platform, is short messages, the currency is the dunk, it's fueled by sort of anger and resentment. And this is always my paradox with Twitter, where I love Twitter. I am on it way too much. I think it's incredibly valuable.

And I also think it's bad for you and bad for the world. So, I mean, like, it's one of those things. Like I freely admit I am the world's biggest hypocrite on this point because I may not tweet, but I sure appreciate everyone else that does. So like, but, but, you know, honestly, this is, this is a life lesson, which is one of the dangers and challenges of making everything political and the political is personal or whatever sort of Marxist phrase you sort of want to come up with is it doesn't actually deal with the reality of being human, which is, you know, like, think about your friendships or relationships.

If they were defined by politics, what a miserable existence that is, to have your happiness or relationships defined by things that are out of your control. And, you know, there is a bit where even to have a good, good, quote unquote, good political viewpoint depends on having a sort of level-headed view of the world where you can take in different points of view and understand that. And that doesn't generally happen online. And if you get consumed by it, I think it does things to you that if you were to objectively observe yourself, you would not particularly like. Like we talk about the touch grass movement.

Like having friends in the real world is good. Being kind to people in your real life is important. At the end of the day, the only thing you really have control over is yourself and your own sort of life in the way you sort of treat other people and the way what you let your mind. sort of dwell on. And that is fairly frightening because it requires a fair bit of taking accountability and responsibility for your own happiness and for your own thought process. And it's easier to just sort of like attach yourself to whatever the current thing to Zura is and get excited in one way or the other. And the problem is that that's a route to misery. And it's a route to not actually having any meaningful impact on the world in the first place. And so I am out here advertising,

I am a hypocrite. And saying hypocrisy is good. You know, like, take care of yourself, be a good person. And absolutely it's not a crime to have views about controversial topics. But don't let that define you. Like, I don't know. Right. Don't let that. No, no. It's all downstream from what we were talking about last week with Friday's episode where you, mentioned that global news has become local news. And I think one element of that conversation that we underplayed on the last episode is that global news becoming local news means that we all consume way more disturbing news than we used to because that's just the way news works. Most local news isn't that bad. Well, exactly. And global news, the news that breaks through and circulates all over the planet is almost always either scary or depressing or infuriating. There are very few worldwide

trending topics where it's just, yep, society is functioning normally and everything is basically fine and people are basically good. That doesn't exist. And so not only are we confronted with more news on more mediums than we ever have been in the history of the world, but that news is skewed negative. I'm sure there are studies to support that claim. but I'll just say anecdotally, my experience is the news is heavily skewed toward negative news. And so that too heightens the importance of getting offline because my experience with the world is that most people are basically decent. And as they deal with this like vortex of insanity that we all now inhabit, they can become radical, annoying people online. but the challenge is to not let the most annoying opinions define, you know, people who are otherwise basically good and love their family and interact with the world giving humans the benefit of the doubt because for me, that's the recipe to just happier living.

So this is like a full on digression here, but it's been on my mind this week as everybody screams at each other and we all watch these horrific images unspooled on various. social media platforms. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I agree. And you know what? I will embrace if someone wants to come to me saying like, no, this actually matters. You are derelecting your platform. It's always funny when people get mad at me for, for whatever I do with my quote unquote

platform as if it wasn't like built with like my, you know, literally just setting up a website. Building it up or whatever. No, it's just that. It's like it's this weird entitlement people have that you have to say what they want you to say. When, look, anyone can sign up for a website. You can say what you want to say. And the fact that people read me not because the New York Times hired me and I'm part of a big entity. That's that's there.

I think the platform complaints are relevant. I'm just a just a little blogger here in Taiwan, right? Like, I mean, that sounds facetious, but it actually is true. Anyhow, another digression up top of a digression. But I do like, honestly, I, we're totally off base. But this has actually been a driving impulse for me over the last few years, has been investing in my friends. doing it for my sake and doing it for their sake. I feel bad when I see people who I know getting consumed by things they don't have control over.

And if it ends up the case that I'm gratified by whatever impact or influence of Chekrie has had, what is actually going to be meaningful to me in the long run is whoever shows up my funeral and it feels like I had a positive impact on their life. That's what actually is going to have a long-term meaningful difference and is going to provide me happiness in the meantime. Many of whom won't give a shit about Straterey and just remember Ben as a helpful friend who was there when they needed him. And like that should be the goal for all of us. So. Yeah.

Yes. Emotional week. Yeah. Okay. Hit me with number three. I have another macro issue and question for you. But hit me with your third item there. So you mentioned that this is the way that, you know, news is going to be consumed going forward.

And that's, I'm not sure that's true. this may be the last conflict that is mediated in this way because AI video is coming. And the rough sketches are here. The ability to create like deep fakes is already exists. Now can you like simulate like, you know, a paraglider attacking a music festival? Not yet, but you will be able to soon. And honestly, this may be healthy in the long run where the answer to misinformation and disinformation is an overwhelming deluge of shit such that you don't know what to trust,

which will instill the appropriate response that should have been in place all along, which is you don't know who to trust. And you know, like this is the other bit about investing locally and personally. That's where you can actually establish trust-related relationships. And when it comes to broader-based things, it's a challenge. And it's very hard. I'm not going to deny this idea, like, who do we trust, who can you actually rely on about what is sort of going on and what isn't?

And unfortunately or fortunately, depending how you look at it, that's going to get much worse. So this might be, you know, the last sort of social media mediated event where we by default assume that the videos we see are true. Wow. Well, that is a pretty dystopian version of the future that is also oddly optimistic. But in the event that that's not true, I want to read this from. the Washington Post. They write, as the war unfolds, who can post such videos and what people can say about them, such videos being videos from Gaza and Israel, and what people can say about them, will be determined in part by content moderation policies that vary widely from one social network

to the next. Those policies can mean the difference between a given video going viral or being scrubbed from a site. On Google's YouTube and Meta's Facebook and Instagram, you can stand with Israel, call for peace, or lament the plight of Palestinians, but expressions of support for Hamas are forbidden. Both companies consider Hamas an extremist organization, meaning that no one affiliated with the group is allowed to use their platforms, and no videos or images created by Hamas can be posted there. TikTok confirmed to the post that Hamas is banned from its platform as well. Still, videos that appear to have been taken by Hamas members have surfaced on all three platforms, in some cases, because they are allowed by exceptions for newsworthiness or, quote, counter speech in which people post objectionable content in order to denounce it.

Some have shown Israeli hostages or even the bodies of victims. In contrast, the influential messaging platform, Telegram, does very little content moderation. It hosts a Hamas channel that has been openly broadcasting grisly footage and images of dead Israelis to more than 100,000 subscribers. Some of those posts have then been rebroadcast on Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter, which nominally prohibits Hamas content, but appears to be doing relatively little to police it after Musk laid off the majority of the company's employees. That's an example of the just pot shot at Musk that is sort of a non-sequitur in a really important conversation. But more broadly, what do you think about the way this should be? manage. Like, should it be sort of a company by company basis? Because similar to the tech and war themes with Russia and Ukraine, like, this vests a lot of important power with private companies. And so TikTok is a

Chinese company, but the rest of these companies are American companies. And I'm wondering whether you have any feelings on whether there should be laws governing this, how you approach that process. What do you think? Well, I mean, I think one of the most interesting development for the last few days, has actually been downstream of people broadcasting their support for Hamas and having to face the consequences of that. There is a classic sort of free speech argument that seems pertinent in this case, which is the reason you want people who disagree with you to be able to say what they think is then you know what they think. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Well, I mean, there's lots of different phrases you could

attach to it, but, you know, there's been a lot of expressions. of support for Hamas that have scandalized a lot of people. And it's actually been pretty interesting because, you know, I was in college in the 90s and back then, it actually was there, I think, when the Intifada happened in 2002. And this sort of sentiment was definitely on college campuses. And it was, I think, disturbing to be personally for the reasons that were sort of been articulated. And, you know, again, someone who is actually pretty knowledgeable and has done a lot of. lot of understanding and taking classes about reading about the Middle East, the complexities involved. I am someone that draws a line at terror and targeting civilians and the sort of, you

know, issues that go in place there, acknowledging and understanding, again, the complexities that sort of run in both sides. And I was talking to someone who was pretty shocked at some of these statements that were coming out. And it was interesting because this person is sort of very smart, but they're from another country and they didn't go to college in the U.S. And there was sort of like this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, bifurcation in the group chat of people who had been on U.S. campuses like, oh, yeah, this is like this, this sentiment has been burbling under the surface for a while and someone who hadn't, who, because it had been sort of gated, it hadn't been exposed in the broader world.

And it is a, you know, a testament to I, do I guess, you know, free speech or the, the transparency sort of dictum that, look, it's out in the open now. Now we're all, we're all sort of on the same page. We like we may very stringently disagree, but at least we now know where we all stand. And and there are folks that are backing away from some of those points of view and saying like, maybe I didn't actually think that. I got signed up to something. I didn't know what's going on, XYZ.

And that seems like a healthy societal response. There, I think there are something. And would that have happened if these videos weren't aired as widely as they were? And that's like, because there's just less room to argue for what, was essentially an abstraction on college campuses over the last 20 to 25 years. Right. This is the one thing that makes me question going going sort of back then. Like there's, it's very easy to have sort of trite sort of slogans or whatever it might be and not actually think through the implications. Number one.

But number two, when support for Hamas is banned from the social networks, then no one knows that you support Hamas. Right. Like there's there's, there's, there's complexity here. There's, there's incredible complexity. but I think it speaks to this, you know, is it actually productive in the long run? Does it actually lead to the sort of society that we want, the sort of broadly accepted values? Are those upheld in an environment where the views that we don't want or we don't support are suppressed such that they simply sort of verbal beneath the surface? You don't actually make these views sort of go away. and you don't get the sort of societal function of actually no, that's not okay to believe that.

Right, line drawing. Right, when there's nothing to draw a line around because it's all been buried by a content moderator. And again, this goes back to the, just because you block something or hide something on social media doesn't mean it ceases to exist, whether it be a video or whether it be an ideology. And there needs to be this come to Jesus moment about the complete and utter failure of censorship. It doesn't work. And it breeds the opposite outcomes that you might want. This is why we go back to sort of the COVID thing, right? I mean, it's it's, it's, we responded in a suboptimal matter for years and are going to

deal with the consequences for decades when you look at things like test scores because we were not allowed to have sort of honest conversations about what was going on. Now, that is balanced by the point to go back to what you said earlier in which I completely agree with that social media is just a cesspit for any sort of rational discussion about anything. And there is a bit where, you know, like once you cross a certain line, it's internalize that lesson. Right. There's no, there are no productive conversations to be at sort of at all. And I mean, I go back to one of the real searing moments in my career for techery and one that that, you know, fuels my bit of the frustration that I articulate at the

beginning of this podcast was the net neutrality debate. And I put debate in very large air quotes. Let me hold my hands up debate in, I think it was 2017, where, you know, I think I've told this story before. So bear with me as I tell it again.

I wrote an article, I think it was 2014 about Netflix's dispute with ISPs about carriage, you know, and other sort of things. And I was actually generally against Netflix. Like, and I think they were sort of taking advantage of the principles of net neutrality to sort of get a good deal

relative, you know, the amount of bandwidth that they were consuming sort of XYZ. And it was a fine article, got some debate, you know, people went back and forth, it was fine, wrote another article next week, the way the way things go on. When the net neutrality thing came up, I basically made the same argument.

A similar sort of thing. I put down, I am in favor of net neutrality as a principle. I think using, you know, category two or section two of the creation act, wherever it was, written in, you know, the 1930s was actually not the right approach because of all these issues why bandwidth is different than carrying voice for lots of reasons, including the fact that the amount of bandwidth necessary

increases drastically continuously. So you need continual investment and you need to be wary of regulatory approaches that, in my view, lock in the incumbents and actually disincentivize sort of future investment. And so, and again, nothing particularly, I think in my mind sort of controversial. over the next sort of 70. And now, I made a mistake by my original title was why Ajeet pie is right or something like that. And whereas that was probably a problem. Because this is the middle of like the Trump sort of craziness. Like it was like six months into his presidency and like people were still sort of flipping out.

Can I just share my version of that story is I was a very young blogger writing for SBNation.com way back when. and I published a story that was titled, Dear Ted Leonesis, Fire Ernie Grunfeld, after the Wizards had just won the number one pick and drafted John Wall. And then they made a couple of mistakes on Draft Night and wrote a very provocative article. And Ted Leonesis was a minority investor in SB Nation. And I heard some blowback after I published the Dear Ted Leonsis Fire Ernie Grunfeld article. So every now and then the lesson is, you know, moderate your headlines if you're looking to avoid. That lines are a mistake.

Really disruptive controversies. But what was, what was I wasn't prepared for was the next 96 hours, wherever it be, of overwhelming, it's hard to describe what was like to be on Twitter then. I actually ignored most of it. It was disconcerning of people.

I'm flying to Taiwan. I hope your wife and kids, you know, don't, like death threats, like, and just like very explicit. Like, I know where, you know,

you know, XYZ, but like identifying pictures I'd taken from my deck and like where my house was and stuff like this. And I don't, I don't say this to throw myself

on like the sob story. Like obviously I've been okay and no one killed me and my wife and kids are fine. But what was, what I wasn't prepared for was understanding the mob mentality and being sort of the subject of it

that's sort of like, what, And and what is disconcerting is, you know, number one, it was a bureaucratic issue at the end of the day, which by the way, all of those scare articles, everything that everyone said was going to go wrong. You know it was going to wait. We're all totally wrong. The internet's been totally fine. By the way, now the FCC is going to like re-institute title two and whatever. It's a bureaucratic fight. That's what it is. There were so many, this is the end of the internet as we know it articles, like really ominous stuff. Because Obama. had passed the title two thing in the in the trailing days of his presidency. It had only been in place for like 18 months. As if it would go rewinding the clock 18 months would make a difference. Again, this isn't a, I'm not trying to make a partisan point here.

This isn't a Trump versus Obama thing. What was disconcerning is the extent to which number one, it had become that. And that was a real lesson that it's not, you can't even like for all my talk about debate and questions, all this sort of thing. We talked about it last week. Schectery is about nuance. It's about getting into the details about sort of, like trying to parse sort of the fine sort of differences and sort of things.

And you can't do that when something is the current thing. You just can't. It becomes sort of like this massive parsing thing and you're on one team or the other. And I forgot like my original point here, but this idea of like the true sort of like devastating mob like nature of social media, even when it's trained towards a righteous cause or a cause that you might sort of believe in is incredibly. problematic. It's a major issue. And I will say I do find it generally driven by, in my personal experience, one side of the aisle. That's not the one that's normally characterized with

online sort of harassment and attacks. And the reason why I think this is pertinent to this discussion is the reality is. And setting us, again, try to take off your partisan hat, try to set aside U.S. politics for a moment if you can. This is why we're discussing this in a podcast and trying to be sort of careful and subtle about it. Is that the fact of the matter is that 99% of tech is on one side of the political aisle. Like that's just sort of, you know, and we see this in the numbers from from results, like if you're, if you're college educated, everyone in tech is college educated. You have the coastal sort of thing that's going on. I, I, my experience is the West Coast is pretty different than East Coast.

East Coast is much more confrontational, number one. Number two, in New York, you have the finance is such a huge industry. And obviously, they're all Republicans. And then in D.C., you have like, it's government. So you have a bunch of republics there too. In the West Coast, it's all passive aggressive. It's all passive aggressive. And it's all like one-sided completely.

And there is a real sentiment, I would say, in tech, that if you articulate any sort of, quote, unquote, right-ring position, even including things on a bureaucratic topic like net neutrality, you will be. crucified. And again, I'm a big boy. I dealt with it. I can deal with it. It was scarring. It was something that that impacted me and that kept me awake at night for months or even arguably years afterwards. It is pretty devastating. At the other day, though, to my point earlier, I'm the one that put myself online. I'm the one that has benefited from the internet and I have to deal with the downsides of the internet. So I'm not asking for a sob story for me. But it makes me very, very, very, very, very skeptical of these tech companies unilaterally deciding what is true and what isn't. What is allowed and what isn't?

Because I just, speaking from personal experience, I don't think that the net neutrality debate was handled in a neutral, let's get all the facts out there sort of way. And if we couldn't do that for a bureaucratic debate, how on earth are we actually going to do it for something like COVID? How are we going to do it for something like China? And by God, how are we going to do it for the Middle East? Yes. No, and I think that is what I have been wondering about over the last several days.

I think it has been useful in some respects to have these videos circulated, but also. But it's also terrible, right? I'm not saying we're in a better. There's a bigger issue, which is the internet has been bad, right? And I think there's a bit about us technologists have to be honest about it. You and I are two people who have benefited massively from the Internet, right? Our lives are pretty great thanks to the Internet. I get to live in Taiwan.

I get a great country. But we're also so thoroughly immersed that we recognize how important it is to get offline. And I now feel guilty for repeating it as often as we do. But it's a really important lesson that you and I have learned the hard way. because if you just stare at a computer for 12 to 14 hours, the world starts to look really, really crappy. And there are antidotes to that, but there aren't many antidotes that you're going to find online

if you just keep staring at the computer. No, for sure. But, I mean, you know, the issue, though, is we can't go back. I mean, I can understand the nostalgia and allure of a world where there were only a couple newspapers that mattered, and there were only three newscasts. that mattered and everyone agreed the same thing. And now the appropriate sort of tech technologist's internet file response to that is, yeah,

think about all the stuff that was that was sort of suppressed and the things that we didn't know about. But as you say that, which is true and correct, there was a lot of things that were suppressed and we didn't know about. And I wrote about that in the context, you know, what happened in 2020. Like there's lots of things to discuss about that in all sort of directions. you also have to be honest about the downsides. And, you know, when you're online, it feels pretty bad,

not just in the context of what you see, but the way you feel about your country, the way you feel about groups of people and things on those lines. And unfortunately, the internet is not going away. Unfortunately, no, fortunately, no, I want to withdraw that statement. The reality is the internet is not going away, which means the only way to solve this is, going forward. And I get concerned at attempts to bring to bear, and this is a theme, to bring to bear

analog old solutions to what is a fundamentally different and new problem, which is when everyone can publish, how do you actually organize a society around that? That's why I'm so enthusiastic and impressed by what's happening with community notes. Again, community notes are not perfect, but it is bringing internet. You could not do community notes with the newspaper. You could not do it with the TV. It wasn't possible. But you can do it on the internet. Like, this is leveraging the internet for a solution. It's not saying, let's get a group of moderators and let's get some fact checkers that are definitely nonpartisan or not sort of biased in any sort of way. And they're going to make judgments and tell us what, what is true. It's just beyond the nature

of what's true is not true. It doesn't scale. And what I said earlier in the episode, I blurted out truth changes. The fact is, the fact is, particularly with COVID as the ultimate example, like our understanding of the facts evolved over several years. And so suddenly judgments that seemed objective and objectively correct in 2020 looked different a year later. Right. And one of the challenges is when you're dealing with the deluge of information,

you have to, if you want to build up some sort of wall, that wall has to be so fortified and so strong that it can stand up against the deluge. The problem is building something strong and fortified means you can't change it. And so we got locked into basically like June 2020 or May 2020 takes on COVID that no one updated. For two years. No, I have I have friends and it's it bums me out that their understanding of COVID is kind of still based in 2020. They're still, they're young, healthy and still personally terrified of this, which we knew, by the way, I would say. we do in February. I wrote about Schenckery that

like it's old people that are the most susceptible. You know, but I don't want to relitigate COVID. But this is a real danger of our approach that's underappreciated is we are actually in some respects locking ourselves into misinformation because the moment we get it wrong, that wrongness is ossified and solidified and dare not be questioned for fear that the bad guys got it right. Yeah, well, I've enjoyed this meandering conversation here. And as we wrap up, I've got a couple final thoughts. Number one, as far as the West Coast Echo Chambers are concerned, I've said this in the past, but one of the best things about growing up in Washington, D.C., is realizing that there are good people who are Republicans and there are crappy people who are Republicans. And there are good people who are Democrats and there are crappy people who are. our Democrats. And a person's politics is not necessarily correlated to whether they're fun to be around or we'll treat you well or take care of you when you need them or whatever. So just a

general point there. Just to add to that, I think one of the things that folks struggle with is this sounds super cliche, but like cliches are often true. If you can't articulate your sort of like opponent's viewpoint, you know, better than they can or at least as well, actually probably better. You haven't thought hard enough about it. Well, a lot of people, a lot of people do grow up and they just believe things because that's what they, they've sort of believed their whole life. And actually, sometimes they can't articulate their viewpoint.

It's on you to understand the outlines of like, whether it be liberal thought or conservative thought and what sort of undergirds it. And if your response, this goes back to my bit about analyzing tech companies, right? like the default response of people is to say they're stupid, right? That's not what they say. They're like, that was a nothing to do that's why do you think they did that? And they actually don't have an answer.

Right. And some emailers like nailed me on that when I was like saying Disney was stupid. I do so think they were mostly stupid. But I think, but no, I think it was ego driven. It was locked into an old viewpoint. I think there is explanatory factors that is not stupid per se.

They're not stupid people, but you can do stupid things. You got to apply that to politics too, right? Like you, If your interpretation is that the reason some person believes this is because they're evil or because they're bad or because whatever it might be. Yeah, you might want to think it through a little deeper or at least tweet less. Don't ruin friendships over it. Like there's, I don't know, like just sort of an irrelevant aside in this case.

Yeah, well, and to that end, the net neutrality incident, we've talked about that in the past. I just want to remind people that that was the first Ben Thompson piece I ever read. I cited it in law school on a final exam, got an A plus on the exam. So thank you, Ben. And the reason people assumed bad intentions. Yeah, exactly. You were on the cross for me in that class. The reason people assumed bad intentions was Trump was president,

and it was a fevered time, and people assume bad faith. when they are interacting with others on the internet who disagree with them. And that's another reason why interacting in the real world is pretty important because there's generally a baseline assumption of good faith when you're interacting with normal people. And I think in the case of the net neutrality article, the vast majority of people who read it probably consumed it and thought, hey, that's a thoughtful take on this and a distinct take from 98% of the other pieces I've read about this. but there's that vocal element online that can get pretty screechy and insane.

And unfortunately, you had to bear the brunt of that. The final thought, though, the Twitter message that was going on some of these videos, this post violated the X rules. However, X has determined that it may be in the public's interest for the post to remain accessible. Ultimately, you can argue both sides of that one where I've talked to people over the last day or two have been like, I don't want to have to explain to my kids that they can go on Twitter and see people being brutally murdered at like a mass scale. And I don't think that's good for society. I do think there's been value in having millions of people see the inhumanity and like the

depths of cruelty and evil at the heart of these attacks. But on the other hand, to the extent that Hamas's goal is to provoke like an emotional response and an escalation that scuttles efforts to normalize Israel's relations with other Middle Eastern countries, social media amplifies that messaging and the impact of the attacks. And so there are a lot of different ways you can take the discussion, but it's a lot more productive to talk about it in these terms than Elon Musk is evil and deliberately turning Twitter into a cesspool or Russian disinformation is polluting the internet and everything else. Like these are really difficult social questions and ultimately

thinking about it over the last four or five days, I don't have answers, but I do think that this particular instance has really clarified how, what some of the questions are going forward. And I don't know how we'll address them as a collective society. You know, one of the broad, big picture points that I've made sort of over the years was I, I, I, believe that the printing press was upstream from sort of the overall sort of, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the word I'm looking for for the order? No, no, the, the nation state sort of order, um, Westphalian sort of system, right? Where, because the printing press, you, there was economics of scale that drove you towards

the most popular dialect that actually increased the commonality of languages that led to, the general sort of rise information of nation states and the power of things like the press and the role that it played. Like the burning press was a big deal. It's systematically and fundamentally changed how we organized ourselves as people. We went from this loose tent sort of overarching sort of Catholic sort of system, but really just sort of individual fiefdoms and cities on those lines to nation states. And, you know, the internet goes in a very different direction.

The internet does not unify. the internet sort of because it's so unifying, because it's so accessible, it actually does the opposite. It actually leads to a million different sort of viewpoints and a million different sort of cults and a niches or whatever. A niche is another word for a cult online. To be to be frank, like we're here talking to our cults, right? Like you had to deal with that with the Amazon episode, right? My cult members are on the attack. Hey, I got a lot of support too.

Just rest assured there are a lot of team sharp people out there in the audience. Yeah, I have a girlfriend in Canada, too. But so there was a... Here we are again on Dudley Tech. Love it. It is true. But this isn't... We have to buckle up.

I don't think these are problems that are going to be solved. I think the disruption of the internet is on the scale of the printing press, where the printing press made it so everyone could read, now everyone can publish. And what are the actual implications of that? What returns now come to being a charismatic, persuasive figure online? To what extent does that actually align to nation state borders? Chastecchiari has subscribers in 100 plus countries around the world. Like, borders mean nothing to me.

The way I actually live my life is independent of borders. I know that makes me one of the terrible globalists in many respects that I myself will complain about it, like, what happened to like, you know, the U.S. and, you know, being for the Midwest and those lines. that I have to face the paradox and the hypocrisy of my own sort of life and lifestyle sort of in that regard. But that is a, you know, to the extent, I talked to a few weeks ago. I, you know, I was 10 years ahead of the iPhone reading RSS on my crappy little Samsung phone and running up $1,000 cell phone bills.

That was where we were going. I love that. And you put it in the context of like I talk about VR. Like I'm super, I believe in these immersive experiences. I posted it on Twitter the other day. you know, someone released, you know, the Phillies hit a grand slam. Someone released the mix where if you, you know, because ESPAN will broadcast in 5.1.

You take out the center channel. You have no announcers. You just have the crowd noise. And my point was put headphones on, close your eyes, and you're actually start to understand what that vision pro experience of watching sports was like, just without the visual component. It's the complete immersion. The reason I said to close your eyes is because that clip would show me a home run,

then it'd show fans here, than it's so like the scoreboard flashing and like you realize all these things we associate with TV are just poor attempts to paper over the fact paper over the fact that you're sitting in your living room by yourself watching a flat screen that experience of being there now is it as good as being there in real life no is it an unbelievable step change where we're going yes I think it is and we're going to get that future but that future I just defined it now you are still in your living room, you just feel better about it. Now, is that actually good? Is that good for society? Is it good to have this item? The fact that you find community, you find sort of what your tribe,

you find it online, and you find, and you have no idea what that be. That tribe is no longer mediated by real life, by local experiences. One of the big problems of the internet is if you had some horrible belief, like what's the worst thing that we talk about the internet, like, child sexual abuse material online, right? If you're isolated and it's hard to get, then that's actually a good thing. That is social mores isolating you appropriately for these horrendous sort of things. You go online, you can find people that like the same things you do.

That tell you it's normal. That tell you it's okay. That's the most extreme experience, but we have that for disorders of all types. Or problematic, whatever word you want to use, views of all types. You can find someone on the internet that agrees with you. You can form a niche. You can form a community around everything.

Community, and this is where I would push back against Mark Zuckerberg, sort of, he describes community as an implied good. It's obviously good. It's not. Communities can be bad. They can be poisonous. They can lead you down a road. There is a use for social mores.

There is a use for taboos. It is actually, in my mind, valuable that we are having a national reaction to terror. We ought to all be on the same page that that is not acceptable. We have to understand the reality of humanity, the depravity that exists. And this doesn't just apply to the Middle East. It applies to all sorts of things. And there's a very real worry and concern that I have. And there are people, whenever I talk about this, whenever I talk about the problems of Twitter,

I talk of the issues of the internet. They suddenly start attacking me like I'm some sort of hater or what happened to you. And no, you can't be a polliana about this. You can't just see the good things. We have significant challenges and issues not just as a tech community, not just as a country, but as a species in how we are going to handle this world where we can be in isolation physically and the worst sort of communities. internationally. Now, all that is balanced by the good parts.

Like, we talk about our chat groups, right? Like this idea that you can have. We're not downplaying the good parts. But no, I think what's urgent is that we focus on what the real issues are as opposed to framing this in the dumbest, most reductive way possible arguing about bots or Elon Musk or anything else. You choose the symptom that you dislike and you back up from that, say, good, bad. Right. It's just sort of a lazy way to address any of it. There's real fundamental structural challenges we're facing as a society. And they're a big deal. And look, here's the unfortunate truth.

And this, to go back to our digression earlier, there's a bit where we have to understand and be okay with. We don't know what's going to happen. And the influence any one of us can have on this is limited. To the extent I can have any sort of influence, it's twofold. Number one is not to necessarily take a stand per se, although obviously on tech. issues, I will state sort of my opinion. Broadly speaking is to encourage every person listening to approach things with doubt. Doubt is so, it's always been important. It's more important now than ever. Like, just like we, there's so much we don't know. And, you know, the amount that

we don't know is increasing, right? It's like Donald Roosevelt's unknown unknowns is actually astronomical. It's like the black matter of the universe. And with this particular, you know, real Palestine conflict that unfortunately is probably going to continue to unfold over the next three or four months. I am reluctant to say something not because I'm afraid of being canceled or something, but just as an exercise in humility, I don't feel qualified to weigh in with confident takes on what needs to happen and who is at fault or whatever. And I wish more people on the internet were exercising that kind of humility because that's part of what makes it unenhanced. habitable after 24 to 48 hours.

Right. And so I think number two, if number one's doubt, number two is grace, right? Like give people the benefit of the doubt to your point. You know, and, you know, again, there's also though the sort of like, what's the phrase? There's, I can't remember who coined this phrase, but it was like the idea that, you know, at home, I'm a communist, at the local level, I'm a Democrat, the state level of Republican at the federal level libertarian or something like that. I think it was, who's the guy who's very grumpy online? Talib or whatever. I think it might have been there might have been

there. There are a lot of options there, but yeah. But there is a bit where, guess what, my kids can do pretty much anything and I'm going to be there for them. I'm going to like do whatever I can to help them.

And it's not scalable or sustainable to do that at like a broad societal level, right? Like there's some aspect that's why we have laws. It's why we have social taboos. That's why we have mores because you have to have like expectations if you're going to have a functioning civilization. And there is a gradient there. But the closer people you are to you, and so I'm not saying necessarily I have grace for

everyone. I actually think that's actually arguably unhealthy. But those around you have some grace. But then number three, and this is why, again, we joke about the touch grass thing, but this is actually a very deliberate choice I made in my life is at the end of the day, I just want the people that I know and I'm close to to with their best life possible. And I'm going to expend effort on that. I'm going to measure my life on that, not on how many people I can convince online.

I will keep writing chastewrary. I am on there. I want to make arguments. There are certain things I think are right or wrong. I can argue about the Amazon case for five weeks if you want. So can I. And at the end of the day, and at the end of the day, I acknowledge that what is going to happen is going to happen. And that's going to be okay.

And I'll write about it when it happens. and in the meantime, you know what? You and I are going to be buds and we're going to talk about Charles and we're going to do TikToks. And I know we're supposed to do a TikTok 7 today, but we've gone long. But because that's actually, again, there's, it sounds in the internet, there's this weird scale thing, right? Like, what's the point if it doesn't affect, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of people? You know what?

If this message resonates with 10 people and their lives are better as a result, that's pretty good. And by the way, that's the sort of scale that would be incredible at basically any other time in human history. So that's what I'm focused on. Yeah. Well, and most people are basically decent and normal who love their families. And that's part of why everything that's happening in Israel and Gaza is so gut-wrenching. It's like the vast majority of people who are affected are going to be civilians who are not invested in continuing a never-ending cycle of violence. That's a point where we are going to get a flood of emails and people are going to be mad at us on both sides for insufficiently making the case or not addressing argument X, Y, Z or talking about whatever it might be.

And, you know, I'm practicing what I preach. I'm not going to sit here and give you a pronouncement on the Middle East. I'm going to talk about, to your point, there is a big tech angle here, this question of information and, you know, how it's disseminated and the impact it's sort of has. and I'm going to approach the rest of it with a super healthy dose of humility and probably not going to read your email. So it's just to give you more. Well, we can end it there. We're not going to do TikTok.

What I did want to mention, though, is that somebody transcribed the last TikTok segment we did and said that I think you may have said that once your kid becomes a teenager, then you can be more of a friend than an authoritarian. I don't think I said that, but I definitely did not mean that. That's what was transcribed, a correction. I don't think so. You want to be, the goal is to be friends when they're adults. You have to survive the teenage years.

Actually, when the best analogies I heard for the teenage years is that what your kids want is for you to be a potted plant, meaning that they want you to be there. They'll be very upset if you're not, but they also don't necessarily want you to talk or sort of do anything. So I would like to think that my relationship with my daughter has gotten better than that to date. Then again, she's only 16. We still have a couple more years to go. But yeah, the goal to be clear is that they are your lifelong friend. And in the 18 years that they are under your control, you are their parent. And that needs to come first.

Yeah, well, send us your TikTok emails. Email at sharp tech.fm. I threw out strategic ambiguity as a potential metaphor for the father, daughter, relationship through the teenage years. Let's nobody be too specific about what the relationship actually is. And that serves everyone's interest. It is a transition, though. Like, like, there was a bit like, you know, I think the transition goes from, you know,

I sort of like was saying it jokingly, but there is some truth to it about you have a few years of propagandize your sort of child. Then there's the intervening years where you just need to not do anything at all, let them have their viewpoint. And they don't want you to argue with them. And they will feel because they're becoming their own person. But they're still fragile, right? And they still love you and respect you.

They don't want to feel crushed by you. And then eventually they'll come around. They will try to crush you. Well, no. Eventually they will come around and they will realize that you're right. And then you can have a proper debate about it. So it all will go full circle. There you go.

Well, I've been laughing about the potted plant analogy for several days now. So thank you for that. And Ben, on that note, we will come back next week, back to our regularly scheduled programming. And until then, I hope you have a great weekend. And I look forward to keeping it rolling. Sounds good. I'll talk to you next week.