Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Sell or Die. TikTok’s Sophie’s Choice + MKBHD on his viral ‘takedowns’

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

Today, President Biden signed a law banning TikTok, assuming it can't work out some long-shot deal to sell to a U.S. owner. TikTok of course is going to fight all this in court. Editor in Chief at The Verge, and host of the Decoder podcast, Nilay Patel joins Taylor Lorenz to discuss TikTok’s uncertain future. Later, YouTube star Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD stops by to discuss how one critical review turned him into the internet's main character, his favorite tech products of 2024, and where the tech landscape is headed. Full video of this episode will be available on Taylor's YouTube channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Biden officially signed the TikTok ban into law, and we talked to decoder's Nilai Patel about the company's path forward and how this law will affect users. A little later, star YouTuber Marquez Brownlee stops by to discuss the art and complications of critiquing products online. I'm Kayla Lorenz, and that's all coming up right now on Power User. Last night, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that will effectively ban TikTok, assuming it can't work out some long-shot deal to sell to a U.S. owner. The proposed law allows TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. for roughly nine to 12 months.

TikTok, of course, is going to fight all of this in court. At this point, it's unclear what TikTok's fate will be, but what is clear is that the next year is going to be very messy. Here to discuss what's going on with TikTok is editor-chief of The Verge and host of the Decoder podcast, Nilai Patel. Okay, Neelai, where does TikTok go from here? And what is their strategy? Obviously, this is going to be a long court battle. How is that court battle going to play out? You know, shows you chew, he put up a TikTok today, saying we're going to fight this in court.

Don't worry. We're going to protect your rights. We're going to go all the way to top. Rest assured, we aren't going anywhere. We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts. The facts and the Constitution are on our side. I imagine that they're going to do that. They've been saying they're going to do that for quite some time. That looks like a First Amendment lawsuit fundamentally, right? I think that's what they're headed towards. There are probably some other grounds based on just how this bill was written. whether it's procedurally correct, technically written correct. We'll see how that goes. But the core of their argument is you're chilling our speech. Just like every other company in America,

we have our own free speech rights. We made this platform. You can't just kick us out because you don't like what we're saying. There are experts on either side who will argue vehemently whether that is 100% successful or 100% destiny to be failure. It feels like a coin flip. And it feels like a coin flip because, one, we're not even sure what level of scrutiny, like legal scrutiny to apply to a First Amendment case to this. Congress has not said, This is the specific content we wish to ban, right? They have intimated that there are some things, but in the law, it doesn't say specific content wishes to be banned. It says some stuff about foreign ownership and all this stuff. So you might lend in a different level of like just legal scrutiny called intermediate scrutiny, which is easier to get over.

And things like national security interests, things like foreign media ownership tend to survive intermediate scrutiny. Another one that tends to survive intermediate scrutiny is just constantly. of media ownership. You are just not allowed to own too many TV stations, the United States. And people argue that that's our First Amendment. Like the government is issuing some First Amendment regulation, but they have a compelling argument that maybe Clear Channel shouldn't own all of the TV stations and all the radio stations. You want some diversity and viewpoints from the ownership of the media. If TikTok gets to that point where it's a conversation about national security, it's a conversation about foreign media ownership, it's a conversation about concentration of power, then the courts are just going to defer to Congress. can see that coming pretty fast. They're going to say that the Congress, the United States has spoken, we are not going to wait, and this is courts say this all the time, we're not going to evaluate the national security interests of Congress. We're going to defer. And I'm not saying that this is a great, like, in the post-9-11 world, the courts just routinely deferred to Congress on things like the Patriot Act and warrantless wiretack. Like all this stuff, but the justification was national security. So if TikTok ends up in that spot, I think it will be very challenging for them. If they can get to what's called strict scrutiny where Congress doesn't like this content and they're banning this content

and that is a viewpoint restriction or something like that, I think they have a better shock. All of that is a year of legal wrangling to be done. I don't know what will happen. I don't know how TikTok will pursue its case. We obviously not seen their complaint. They have a lot of strategic decisions to make. I think in the background of that,

every tech company is irritated. They're basically said, this rich prize is for sale, but Lena Khan will let me buy anything. Yeah. And that is the conversation we're hearing from everyone. I think personally that it's kind of a long shot that they would ever sell. But who knows, back against the wall, down to the wire, who could even buy them? You know, Microsoft was in the running in the weird 2020 moment when Trump got mad on an airplane

because of his rally. Oracle has obviously been in the mix for a long time. You can see how one of the big tech companies doesn't create. currently operate a large social platform, would use this as a moment to say, look, we do want to do acquisitions, get off our back on other stuff, and we'll solve this problem for the U.S. government. Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, I was furious that he wasn't allowed to buy the Rumba company, I Robot. He gave an interview to CNBC where he was like, the Congress is out of control, like FTC is out of control. You can see him showing up and saying, look, I can buy TikTok and solve this problem for you. It's already a shopping network. It is already an advertising platform. I'll just run TikTok shop, but get off my back with the wrong.

robot vacuum, like fine. You can see how Microsoft could say, look, we'll syndicate with some smaller social media platform. We'll do a partnership with Snap and, you know, we'll fund it, we'll fund Snap buying it and they'll use our AI algorithm to rebuild the recommendation system. Get off our back about this weird deal we have Open AI. Because if the Snap deal is fine, then the Open AI deal is fine. Yeah. And you can see that kind of, it's beginning to turn. The wheels are beginning to turn that this is actually a leverage point for the big U.S. tech companies to start getting deals back in the mix. Yeah, I was actually going to ask you about, I was talking to a SNAP person recently who's very pro the ban and, you know, feels like

also Snapchat has sort of struggled to really ascend, especially against these tech giants. Is there some sort of deal that wouldn't get SNAP in the mix? And what, you know, they have their own clone spotlight now. How likely is something like that? I feel like they're always kind of like in like fourth or fifth place in the sort of social network ranking. Right. And I think that's the reason why, you know, the Lena Kons and Jonathan Cantors of the world would not. get in their way, right? You want to make this big acquisition that puts you firmly back in a competition with meta and YouTube. Great, go for it. Like, that, you know, capitalism is supposed to do that. That's kind of what they're always saying is like capitalism is not just the big get

bigger, right? It's the small, fine ways to compete, and maybe that is roll-ups, and maybe that is fine. So that doesn't have the money. So if you're Evan Spiegel, you're like out there trying to raise a whole bunch of money to buy this thing. And maybe some people will give it to you, maybe some people won't. Maybe some people would be like, look, we just gave Elon $44 billion for Twitter, that didn't go well. Why would we give you twice as much money for TikTok when it might not come with its algorithm or any of this? Well, exactly. Let's talk about that too, because even if it sells, China has said, well, we're not going to give you the algorithm, right, or any of the core technology along with it. You would probably just be getting a shell of the app. Is it even the same app at that point? Or do you think a company like Microsoft just that might be able to negotiate licensing the algorithm or sort of work out some sort of deal? Yeah, I think it all depends on what that technology turns out to be. If I told you tomorrow the TikTok algorithm is going to get 20% worse, would you notice?

I actually don't know the answer to that question. How really? Worst is like a hard thing to measure. Like, what if it just showed you more stuff from people you were following instead of more stuff from Randos? I think we have an example of this, which is the Instagram Reels algorithm. It is essentially tons of the same content being syndicated across these other platforms, but with a worse discovery algorithm. And so I think we see why it's not as sticky. I think it's not just algorithmic distribution, too.

It's the sort of iterative nature of TikTok. Instagram Reels is so much repurposed TikTok content. I think that's like why it's not as good. The user base of Instagram Reels is a bunch of people who would much rather be on TikTok and they're like hedging their bets with Instagram. I feel that way about shorts, too. They don't drive the culture the same way. And it's because the sort of primary focus of all those creators is on TikTok.

So maybe the algorithm gets worse. But I don't think you're going to lose the main asset of any social platform, which is like a vibrant user base that is posting a lot of creative things every single day, which is the hardest thing to get. And TikTok had to spend billions upon billions of dollars to get that. And that's fundamentally the thing that you cannot buy.

I think you can lose that, though. I mean, Twitter is a good example, right? You can sort of like alienate your users. I mean, one thing that I have been reporting on this week as well as Capcut, and it seems like the way that the law is written, Capcut would also be subject to this type of a ban, being that it's underbite dance and lemonade, their sort of Pinterest knockoff. Capcut is the primary mobile video editing software for the majority of short-form content that we see online on these other platforms. So what do you think it's going to

happen to these sort of like ancillary bite dance apps? I think Cap-cutt's really the only one that's gotten traction, but what ripple effects will that have? And do you think that any of those will get any kind of deal? Yeah, I don't think anybody has like really thought about that. I think they assume they just come along for the ride with the TikTok user base. Like TikTok without Cap-cut is kind of a weird thing to buy, actually, like in a weird sort of deeply fundamental way. You know, and it's weird to me that, like, YouTube has never built a competitor to Capcutt. That's also quite shocking. Well, I mean, just interviewing Capcutt users and people this week, there's really no mobile

competitor to Capcutt that offers the same feature set. It's weird. We make videos for Instagram and Caput all the time. It's, like, just a weird thing, but it is the default tool. So there's something about that that's really valuable as well, right? And you could see another company wanting, you see Apple being like, screw, it doesn't have any of the weird social network features that gets people in trouble. Capcut is now Imovie. Everybody buy an iPhone. You can see how a bunch of other companies would be interested in these

tools. I'm not sure about limited. Like, even Pinterest itself is not a success. Clenching in Pinterest competitor is like a weird move. I fundamentally believe if you are a responsible business owner, and you've been given this ultimatum and your choices are, Trump gets elected and somehow overturns an act of Congress, we went in the courts, which is a coin flip, or we have to make a deal. You have to at least investigate all the way through what does a deal look like. If you're to predict now, and I know you're saying it's a coin flip, but you think that there will, like some sort of deal will be struck? Yeah, I really do. I think there's going to be a lot of noise and we'll see how these lawsuits go. And again,

I don't know what Byte Dance's legal argument will be. They've just talked about the First Amendment challenges they wish to make. I think there are probably some other legal challenges they could make based on how the law is worded, how it is implemented under what a It was enacted. Like, that's all stuff. They have to do it. We'll see. We'll see what the United States government says on turn.

We'll see who is the president by the time this lawsuit gets to any level of the court system. Also, of course, Biden has said as well that he's remaining on TikTok. His campaign is remaining on TikTok continuing to campaign there, which is hilarious. But just just finish that thought. Like, that's going to take some time. And I just, I interview a lot of executives and all of them are constantly hedging their bets. I think it would be remiss of bite dance, of its Chinese investors, it's American investors. it's American investors to not have that bet firmly hedged.

Because if what you're doing is you're just burning your asset that you spent billions of dollars to build to the ground, someone's going to get sued them on the other end of that, right? Like, that's how that goes. So I think it's going to be a lot of noise, and then somewhere there will be a quick deal. I agree. I think it's going to be a lot of back and forth. I thought it was interesting, too, was sort of like citing the Constitution in his statement this morning. But I do think it's quite unprecedented and still quite shocking that this is happening.

I think it's also unprecedented in large part because we've never had a major social app built outside of America, meaningfully compete in America. And I think that sort of is really what grinds a lot of people's gears in the tech world and in Congress. It'll be interesting to see going forward to what the next generation of platforms look like and what those ownership structures look like. Personally, if I was at a company and some company like ByteDance or another, you know, big tech conglomerate based in another country that maybe as an adversary came and wanted to invest

billions. I imagine they would be more skeptical of a deal like that these days. Yeah, I think so, too. And really, we don't know anything about Baitense's business, really. Like, that's the perspective that I'm always looking at this. It's like, is this a business? Right. Is this just an utterly subsidized thing of the Chinese government that is here to have that bulkhead? Like, we don't know if they make a single dollar of profits in the United States. We don't know how much are it subsidized. We know a decent amount about TikTok, though, and the profits driven by TikTok. And But we don't know that TikTok itself is profitable in the United States as it runs. Oh, sure, sure, sure.

Yeah, yeah. Right. We don't know if that company is just running at a loss. We do know that its startup costs were so high, right? They were running all of those app downloads ads on Facebook that all got wiped away because Apple made its changes to how its ads work on the iPhone. So you can't even run that playbook anymore. Yeah. I do think that the landscape has changed, but also the notion that foreign power should own a whole chunk of the media ecosystem here.

I think that foreign ownership of media companies and tech companies is clearly going to be a huge issue going forward. I mean, let's not forget that we have huge Chinese interests in the entire gaming ecosystem and the AI, right, as well. I think that these are issues that are going to keep coming up. I mean, I think also just our relationship with China is evolving. And I think it appears to many people as more of a threat today than it might have 10 years ago when we were more focused on the war on terror or other sort of adversaries. But just to bring it back to the sort of like what things overcome the First Amendment, right? What government regulations overcome the First Amendment? It's a vanishingly few in this country.

It is really not a lot, which is why they have utterly failed to regulate the social platforms. Even on the social platforms are shown to be causing harm. Like, Instagram is doing all these studies when a teenage girl are depressed on our platform. Like, they know it and the government can't do anything about it. It's weird. There's a weirdness there about our First Amendment. things that can overcome the First Amendment. A bunch of foreign laws, usually, laws focus on children, which I see so many laws

focused on what children can I can't see right now. And then national security and then foreign media ownership. Yeah, and the Internet is so different. I mean, those media laws were written for this inherently limited and restricted media ecosystem where there were only five broadcasters, right? The social media landscape is limitless. Yeah, I mean, look, I always imagine Marsup has a dial, you know, that just like controls the Facebook algorithm.

And he's like, today, we're all going to pivot to video. And it turns it and, like, a bunch of newspapers go out of business. And, like, I think that's what most people actually think these companies work like. Yeah. It's not true, but it's not not true. Right. Like, you really did pivot to video and make a bunch of media companies go out of business. The big social companies all believe in their hearts that individuals are more persuasive

and powerful mechanisms of distributing information than any media brands. That is a thing of their creation. That has not been true in the media ecosystem until they, showed up. Why? It's not that everything is just neutral and it's all just happening to us. It's that the companies want things and they go out and get them. And I think saying, okay, we can apply that reasoning to TikTok and we can apply that reasoning to some very old ideas about concentration of media ownership, some very old ideas about foreign media ownership and say, okay, if you think there's anything closely resembling the knob for the algorithm, we should know who's turning it

and why, and that's required. And I think that leads you to... would love that if we had that for American companies. Right. That leads you to algorithmic transparency. That leads you to privacy legislation. I think that stuff has to come next. Right. But I guess that's what's so frustrating, especially right, as like those of us that spend time on these platforms, is these are issues that have been reported on for years, that have been problems. Congress has never joined in bipartisan support, really, to pass any sort of legislation targeting those root problems. As we look ahead at the social landscape, I don't know that we're necessarily better prepared for the future by banning this one. one app. I'm just thinking of, too, what will social media look like in the next few years? I think we had this explosion of social media and this optimism about sort of connecting everyone,

right, like throughout the 2010s. And I do think we're seeing this contraction with Twitter, basically becoming increasingly unusable. Facebook is an AI-generated wasteland. You know, Shrim Jesus. You know, Instagram is so crowded and so cluttered. And I think YouTube primarily remains an entertainment platform and not one that sort of users, directly engage with. So I think that's, TikTok does offer this sort of like unique place. Do you see other companies coming in to fill that?

Or do you think that that era of social media has sort of gone? I honestly think it's gone. I think actually TikTok was entering a period of declining relevance all on its own. Because you can see the revenue pressure was starting to come. Yes.

How they were tuning the algorithm with the pushing of TikTok shop. I mean, all of them are turning into QVC. So at the end of the day, everyone is just at the end of the day, everyone is trying to get you to buy a hairbrush, and that is just what it's going to be. I saw one today, a TikTok today, a woman was trying to sell a water bottle that injected hydrogen in your water. Oh. And it was just a light, right? And it's like, this is crazy. Like, you're ruining your own

platform. Let's, let's not hate on some of that. I did buy some sort of crystallized water thing from Instagram one time. And I think the quality of online advertising general is so bad. It's permitting. I think you're the one who said there's a bubble in online video, right? And you can feel it. And you can feel that it was there for TikTok. Yes. And it's sort of every creator hits a scale where it's easier to make the product and advertise the product themselves than to collect advertising revenue. Or it's more lucrative to sell feastables or Adam's shoes or whatever, all the big creator.

It's more lucrative for Doug DeMiro to start a card dealership. That's weird. That's just a weird place that all these creators have gotten to once they hit a certain kind of scale. And I think the next generation sees the burnout associated with that, and they are not participating at the same rates as people were before. And so all of that, even if you don't ban TikTok, you know that, I think all these platforms are about to contend with that all together at the same time. Like, the rates are too high, the ROI isn't there on the advertising side of it.

And then if it is there and you hit the scale, you can't even buy Mr. Beastad because it's too expensive and he would rather sell you his own product. Yeah. Well, it's like, truly, what are we doing here? I'm of the mind. The internet is about to go through a revolutionary period where a lot of these closed platforms do become just ultra commercial and polished and shiny and people turn away from that. and they find the thing that they were looking for in the beginning,

which is like connection with a peer group of friends for being sincere. What that actually looks like, how it's built, whether that's controlled by a company or more decentralized, which is what I hope, no idea. But you can just see the platforms themselves, the commercial pressure on them is so high that they are ruining the thing that made them special to begin with. I totally agree.

And I think you're right that TikTok was sort of declining in relevance even without this. Like, even if this band never happened, And I don't think TikTok is going to be as relevant five or six years from now as it remains today because of those shifts. Yeah. Which is kind of ironic for everyone to. This thing is trying to get me to buy off-brand power tool batteries like every day. It's just like, will you buy this battery that will burn down your house? It's like, I don't, I know.

Just like super no. But the pressure is there. You can see that is algorithmic pressure to try to get you to complete a sale, to try to get you in a TikTok shop. You can see the creators, the sort of mid-tier creators. are extremely incentivized to hawk products in TikTok shop. I mean, we see this with Instagram too, though. I mean, and I think that we've seen that cycle go through, like we've seen Facebook go through that cycle, right?

Where it was like the excitement, the organic reach, everybody's sort of setting up Facebook groups. And now it is like, you have to pay. This is a commercial platform. I mean, Facebook is still technically, I guess you can connect with your neighbors. I think that these pressures come for all these platforms eventually, and TikTok spent so much money to grow.

Also, I think they're less likely to get regulated if they're selling people things. it's just a less liability. We've seen all these platforms turn away from news, right? TikTok has never been a, yes, it's been a great place to express opinions and news and learn about things like wars. But it's always been hard to sort of discuss things openly on there. A lot of words are restricted. Same with Instagram and all these other platforms.

Yeah, the thing that gets me about all of the platforms, none of them share enough revenue with the people who make the stuff to support a news operation. Right. Like, there is not an ABC News of YouTube. That is a failure. That, like, truly in my part, I believe that is a moral failure on YouTube's part. You're going to run a thing this big and you're quarrel about how much revenue you share back. And not one newsroom that sends reporters out in the field to go look at stuff and report back what they saw. Like, really exists.

A lot of news operations exist that read the Washington Post and the verge to their audience in the New York Times. A lot of people are doing great on TikTok yelling at the New York Times all day long. That is a business you can run on TikTok tomorrow. We should actually just start doing that. Yeah. I'd be more lucrative than this. But it's weird that none of these platforms support the actual economics of journalism, which it requires people to not produce content all the time in order to learn new things.

I just keep coming back to that. Like, at some point, people want new information, and these platforms cannot produce it on their own. They have to – something else has to happen. Yeah. And I know I think it's a huge failure, and it's dystopian and disturbing. And at the same time, we're losing access to sort of, like, networked technology. I guess, this era of social media where we could all spread things organically. We're also seeing the news industry crater.

And I just think it's leaving everyone less informed. Hopefully that's why they go, you know, to The Verge and watching the toast. You'll forever be smaller, I think, than the largest creators. But, you know, I see this all the time. I'm curious for your read on this, actually. I'm very worried about sort of influencer media and the expectations it has created as it has grown to be this massive behemoth, which is effective what your book is about, right? We invited a company to come on Decoder,

and they were like, yes, we would love to. The CEO would love to be on Decoder. And then very sincerely said, how much will it cost? And it's like, no, we don't. And they're like, oh, that's so refreshing. And it's like, that's weird. That's weird that everyone's expectations is that the media is like fully pay to play.

And those are expectations that creators, you know, they don't know. They're just doing what seems natural to them. They're trying to make money any way they can because the actual rates from various creator funds don't pay high enough, so I find other revenue. And then, you know, a bunch of PR agencies and comms people, whatever, are like, well, if we pay you money, we can tell you what to say. So that actually works out for us, too.

And I just think that cycle in the creator economy with TikTok, with Instagram, with everything, it's spinning ever faster in a way that will collapse. I totally agree. I think it's really concerning. I mean, one of the most common questions that I get when reporting is, do I pay you for the quote or is you paying me? It's like, no one's paying anyone. We're here to report. I mean, I talk to a lot of news content creators on TikTok, actually, about all of this. And a lot of them are desperately trying to partner with legacy media organizations and sort of get into the traditional news world and use that as a springboard because those incentives are hard.

And they realize that a media career, if you want to have a career in news media, it's just increasingly hard to do that on the back of these platforms. Yeah, and I think it's really challenging. And like I said, you know, I don't know what's going to happen at TikTok. They have to choose to shut it out, right? Even if they are forced into that choice, they have to say, okay, this is what we're going to do. that's a totally fair choice. I think it's holding a gun to their head and asking them to make the choice. I agree with you that something will happen and there's too much money at stake for some sort of thing to not be finessed out. And then over the course of the coming year is the likelihood of

that choice, waxes or wanes. I think all the people trapped in the maelstrom of TikTok are going to start making their own choices. Yes. And that will actually, I think, lead to some kind of big reset. That I love, by the way. That I'm very pro. Like, although I think my views on this ban are clear, I really do think that more, that forcing people, whether even if it's for bad a reason, off these platforms and sort of forcing them to think differently about the content that creator, their media platform online is a good thing and sort of getting people out of this cycle of just TikTok meta. And you saw, I think we've now seen it with Twitter where the bad thing happened in Twitter, a bunch of people were forced to reconsider a lot of people. lot of things for a bad reason. And you actually see a bunch of green shoots now of innovation of new ways of thinking. I feel like my brain is less poisoned. Like I'm just like a healthier media consumer now, you know, a bunch of weird things happen. Like Apple News became a very important part of sort of the media revenue pie. Yeah. Why? Like, and it's because a bunch of

of media companies are like, well, we're not getting any traffic from Twitter anymore. Where can we get some distribution and some money? And Apple is like, here we are. You can see all the federation stuff, all the Fedover stuff that's happening. Meta-built threads, which is now, by some imaginary number, has more daily active users than Twitter. All of these companies are publishing imaginary numbers. Like, I won't harp on it too much, but you can just see a bunch of stuff happened, and that stuff is leading to different outcomes. And I think that is the most sort of underappreciated aspect of this. It might be a bad reason.

But all those creators are going to start making different decisions or reconsidering how they build their businesses and getting even more cynical about the relationships to the platforms and how stable they are. And I think that will actually make for a more stable media environment. That's a good lesson. And I think that we are going to have that vine moment for a bunch of new generation of creators where they realize that what journalists realized with Twitter, which is that, you know, we're all building on top of quicksand here. Well, Neil, I thank you so much for joining us.

I really appreciate your time. I'm always happy to be on. This is great. Coming up, YouTuber Marquez Brownlee on how one critical product review turned him into the Internet's main character. If you're looking to buy a new phone, laptop, or even a car, how do you decide what to buy? 18 million people go to Marquez Brownlee's YouTube channel. Marquez, or MKBHD Online, is undeniably the most powerful man in tech product reviews. I actually love this thing.

I love this thing. Not because it's flawless or anything. It is far from flawless. But because it's actually interesting. He's typically noticed being extremely excited about. about new technology and very fair. But recently, he's been getting a lot of heat online for a few negative reviews that he's done

on things like the Humane AI Pin or the Fisker car. I think it's just the worst car I've ever tested. People in Silicon Valley have been blaming him for destroying companies, calling him a traitor and unethical for giving honest feedback on products that didn't quite live up to the hype. So I called Marquez up to talk about what it means to review a tech product in today's internet climate,

how content creators are reshaping the tech press, why people in Silicon Valley can't seem to handle criticism and to get his thoughts on the biggest products out right now and what we might be seeing in the future. All right, Marquez, you've reviewed the Humane AI PIN. I've seen tons of negative reviews from a lot of people on YouTube, but then you reviewed it. You said it was the worst product that you've ever reviewed.

People lost their minds. Why do you think people are so sensitive right now about this review? Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like a lot of people, and this is probably true about articles too, react to the headline without even watching the entire video. Totally. I mean, it's, it happens all the time. It's a 25-minute video. So the title is particularly interesting. It is the worst product I've ever reviewed. And I thought about that one for a long time. And the reason I landed on that, because I did deliberate a bunch of different titles, is there are other bad products that I've

used where there's just one thing or two things that are horrible about it. I reviewed the Dyson headphones. I don't know if you remember those, like a couple months ago. So when this first started popping up on actual like Dyson's social media channels, I had to double check the calendar to make sure it was on April 1st because seriously, Dyson, are you pranking us right now? This is, it's $1,000. I wasn't really sure what to think. Probably safe to ignore it. Yeah, with the air filter thing, I called it the dumbest product I've ever reviewed.

Like, all they really do is their headphones and their filter and they were not great headphones and not a great filter. Anyway, this humane pin had lots of things that were like a shocking amount of things bad about it. Overheated all the time. Slow, horrible battery life, didn't feel useful. Projector not usable outdoors. Like, the list is longer than I've ever seen. So I was actually totally fine. And I said in the videos, the worst product I've ever reviewed. But that was probably the thing that lit people up. Because like you said, a lot of other people reviewed these, but not everybody used the same headlines. So that probably had something to do with it. There were some reactions you

probably saw on Twitter, kind of set off a whole chain. You know the rest of the story. I have to say, I actually watched the review, having seen their reaction, and I found it to be extremely thoughtful, actually not totally vicious review at all. I mean, you were totally fair. You also, I mean, you start off complimenting it and kind of the design. And obviously, you know, you go into most of the critiques of it and how impossible it is to use. In your follow-up video, you were saying sort of, I think the headline on it was do bad reviews kill companies. Do bad reviews actually kill companies? And who's at fault for that?

A review video, all really is doing is accelerating whatever is happening. If this review is honest, which we're saying this negative review is saying, okay, this is a bad product. And it's telling more people that it's a bad product. All that's really doing is accelerating like all the people who were going to buy it and then realize it's bad and return it or all the people who are going to eventually find out via research or word of mouth or whatever that it's a bad product. It's just moving us further down that timeline. So I don't feel like it's the review that's sparking this like downfall of a company by any means. I think it's pretty clear that you only get a negative review if you have a product worthy of a negative review. And that's what really sparks everything.

So it's just a matter of time before people find out. Right now we're living in this era of SponCon. And I feel like so much of what you see about Tech Online is these sponsored rave reviews of everything. I work at the Washington Post, and we sometimes no longer get access to products or events because Silicon Valley is looking to go to content creators over journalists for reviews because they tend to be more positive. How do you navigate being truthful and critical of these products while still making sure that you retain a certain level of access?

Yeah, luckily, I don't find that too much of a difficult navigation. I think it's an interesting question with a lot of creators because there may be more in a position where, okay, if I am too honest here, and this is too negative, then maybe the company won't like what I say, and they won't invite me next time. They'll invite someone else. And I definitely sympathize with that. But I'm happy to say that because we're basically always honest about everything,

companies expect that from us, that they're not going to revoke access because we're suddenly honest about something. And as a matter of fact, that kind of looks bad on their part, doesn't it? If I say something about a company that's truthful and negative, and then, you know, some, you know, blacklisted, whatever happens, that's not a good look for them. Yeah. And I feel like also, I mean, you have made a name for yourself and have 18 million followers and kind of like are this revered reviewer. I guess I'm curious how you think about contact creators that are starting out a little bit, where I think actually developing those relationships and maybe getting access to those products early, if you have one of the first, for instance, Apple Pro Vision, whatever, videos, that can be enticing.

How do you suggest younger creators kind of build those relationships or navigate those relationships? I would actually suggest do not make that one of the key elements of your new channel. If you're starting up, one of the hardest things to do is differentiate yourself in a way that makes your video worth watching. And that's doubly true when you're making a product video, because if it's this thing that we're all reviewing, everyone's reviewing the same thing. why would I watch 35 videos on the same thing when I can watch the first four and get everything I need to know? So if you're trying to differentiate yourself, it is extremely difficult and rare to differentiate yourself by being in the early wave. Some people are able to do that with the access that you're talking about. But I think there's other better ways to be more

personable or more honest in your own way. I think that's a better way to differentiate yourself. I think to find niche things that you're really passionate about more so than the average reviewer, I think is another great way to differentiate yourself. So I'd actually advise against making like your access or your connections to the company is the thing that you're differentiating yourself with. So I want to talk more about sort of like the algorithm and, you know, being thoughtful in a review, you've posted this very thoughtful video with this title that got people talking, got people in.

How do you balance being thoughtful about your review versus? appeasing the algorithm, which favors this very sort of click-baity and extreme framing. Yeah, I mean, it is an evolving and very complicated process. The relationship between the creator and their audience and the platform that they're on and the tools available to them, you know, YouTube now will give us A-B testing for different thumbnails. But oftentimes the thumbnail has a direct relationship to the title, and we can't A-B-Test titles, so we have to do two different thumbnails that work with the same title.

Like, it gets really into the weeds really fast. But I think in general, my philosophy is, okay, we're trying to reach kind of two buckets of people with our product review. Bucket number one is people who are shopping for that product. Bucket number two is people watching videos on YouTube for entertainment or being informed. So the title, the packaging of the video is sort of a balancing act. at being able to frame it for both those buckets of people. It's a bit of a writing exercise, to be honest.

We have lots of drafts of titles and thumbnails and things that can come together eventually to be the final packaging for the video. How big is the team that works on that? I mean, that literally, I might turn around on my desk and be like, hey, guys, you think this is a bad title, and I'll write it on the whiteboard, and it's like all 12 people here at the studio, like, how about this? How about that? Many minds is better than one. So it comes down to me at the end of the day.

But, yeah, the Humane Pin one was a harder one to come up with, because I, again, I don't think most people actually knew what this product was when clicking into the video. And I think they were getting educated about it right from the second they clicked. And I think that's important. I think here's maybe a hot take or not. I think if I titled this Humane AI Pin Review, and that's it. None of this is even a conversation. It's just another review of a thing that not too many people are interested in.

So not too many people watch. And here we are. And so in order to get the other bucket of people who were here to learn something, and didn't know about the pin to actually watch this video and learn something, I had to try to package it in a way to loop them in as well. Why haven't you ever gone to work in tech? And is there any tech company that could sort of successfully woo you? I feel like you're everybody's number one favorite tech personality, I guess, commentator, you're so smart about products. Has Apple, one of these car companies, like, tried to

recruit you? And would that ever be a path that you would go down? Yeah, I mean, so it's happened. I do think the line in the sand for my own priorities is pretty clear, which is if I review, let's say I review a lot of smartphones, right? If a smartphone company comes along and says, hey, would you like to work with us on making a new smartphone? Even if I am extremely conscious about siloing off that section of my brain to help them make this phone really good, I have to understand that when people watch me review smartphones from that moment on, In the back of their head, there's always like, is he taking it easy on this phone because it's his? Is he being more harsh on this other phone because he wants his own phone to do better?

Like that, conflict of interest is impossible to fully navigate. So I just completely avoid it. If it's a company that does anything in the area of products that I review, that's where the line in the sand is. I can't. I'm not doing that. Do you have like a formal ethics policy or it sounds like, you know, what you're talking about is ultimately like conflict of interest? Do you have somewhere that says, like, hey, here's all the policies we abide by kind of like a newsroom? I don't, but that's a good idea. Yeah, it's more informal. I mean, I've done a video. The video I did is called Can You Trust Marquez Brownlee or MPBHD, one of those two things? But can you trust me? And in that video, I just lay out, like, okay, here's where I draw the lines in the sand. So that's the closest thing I have to an ethics policy. But yeah, I'm actually probably like write it down. That would be a nice, that's a good idea. Yeah.

How much are you using AI? I feel like there's so much talk of AI disrupting creators. A little bit. I use the chatbots a little bit, sometimes for brainstorming, sometimes for coming up with clever alliterations or analogies for videos. They all know what an MKBHD video is, so I can kind of ask it what an MKBHD video would be and just kind of play with it and see what it says.

But it's not making thumbnails or videos for me at this point. It's kind of just a fun tool to play with. Have you seen any products come along lately that you think will really impact life for content creators? I know there was all this hype about the Apple Vision Pro and then that kind of faded away, but what do you think is going to sort of shape that market? If you're in the tech world a lot, you can kind of get really optimistic about a really rapid changes. Like, oh, this in three years is going to be huge for content creators. But every time that happens, it seems to sort of fizzle out. So what I will keep doing is keeping my eye on things.

the one thing that keeps coming back up over and over again is VR. Like, clearly we're going to have VR content or 360 content. This was what we thought, like, eight, nine years ago. I made, like, a studio tour with, like, a 360 camera so you could, like, look around the studio. And still isn't, like, full-on mainstream, but I think eventually it feels like the next step where, like, we can make fully immersive content for people to watch on more than just, like, a 2D screen like this. Other than that, you know, I could be surprised. It could be anything. Yeah, I feel like we see these cycles of excitement.

I mean, I'm thinking of all the talk of the Metaverse just two years ago and, you know, Facebook pivoting, renaming their whole company. And then it fading out. The 360 camera thing was also really big. I think it was F8 in 2017 when they gave everyone the little Theta 360 and said, you know, this is how you're going to consume content. Yeah, we fully thought that would be, like, when I did that studio tour, that was in a time where I remember, like I got asked about 360 and VR a lot and it was like, yeah, I do videos from the first person perspective so you can see the phone in my hand. But yeah, the natural progression of that is you're in my studio looking at the phone in front of you just like sitting where I am. So yeah, we're going to make 360 videos like next year, right?

Like it's happening, right? And here we are. Like I don't know how long it's going to take to actually get to that point. I will tell you, Marquez. I tried to become a 360 video vlogger that year. It was, I was doing social media. What I found is I've made a whole Facebook page called Taylor 360. Most people couldn't understand the video.

And when you looked at sort of how they were viewing the video, they were just looking down. You know, your phone, you're looking down. And 360 video, you really have to put the phone up. No one was picking the phone up. And they were just kind of like, what is this video? Yeah, that sounds like a challenge. I think we can't. I think 360 video is not meant to be viewed on your phone, TLDR.

Yeah. What about autonomous cars? That's another thing that I feel like we're all told as just a couple, you know, it's really close. I think Waymo is now here in L.A. How long until you think we won't have to drive ourselves? If you ask just Silicon Valley this question, very optimistic. I mean, Waymo's roaming around the streets,

like everybody, a lot of people buy Teslos for the feature. But then you get to suburbia, and you get to Middle America, you get out of the bubble, it does feel any time soon. Like, people are not thinking too hard about it. Like, yeah, of course, highway cruise control is nice and convenient. But autonomous cars are like a trust issue with a lot of people. The headlining part, which I think to Elon's credit, he's said a lot of times,

is like getting the error rate down below human error rate is probably a good benchmark. So, yeah, I don't know. That's also another thing where tech fails sometimes, and that's going to be a problem every time it happens in this world of self-driving cars. Yeah. You know, speaking of Elon, he's trying to pivot X into more of a video platform. We've seen people, creators like Mr. Beast, you know, put their content on there. I think he has some monetization options. What are your thoughts on X as a platform and what Elon is sort of doing with it?

It's been a wild ride, honestly, very interesting to watch. I am curious about posting videos on X, and I have tried a couple. I've tried a couple clips. I've tried a couple full-length videos. One thing that's been true forever about publishing videos on a platform online is ad support needs to exist, like monetization has to be built in, and a lot of them don't want to touch X right now, so that just can't work without them coming back together, so that's still a thing. Yeah, I personally want way more analytics.

I think YouTube analytics is like the gold standard for learning about your video's performance and improving. And X does not do that well yet. So I would really hope they improve that too. Is there a product of the year for you so far? Whoa. So product of the year, I assuming you mean like positive, like MVP award type product of the year. Yeah. Assuming Humane is maybe the worst product of the year.

What are you really hyped about? Yeah, we've got some bangers. I mean, CyberTruck is this year technically, right? Vision Pro is definitely this year. We have a couple others that we know are in the pipeline. Smartphones are always getting interesting. Product of the year so far, it's probably between Vision Pro and Cybertruck. Both very expensive.

Both very few people have bought it. Both have had headlining issues with durability. But both pretty interesting. and we don't get a lot of truly interesting products. So it's probably between those two. Awesome. All right, Marquez. Well, thank you so much for joining us.

This was really great. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. I will not be buying the Humane AI PIN anytime soon. There you go. All right, that's the show. You can watch full episodes of Power User every week on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Power User was produced by Travis Larcuk and Jalani Carter.

It's mixed and mastered by Brandon McFarland. Our video producer is Brandon Kiefer. Our executive producers are Nishat, Kerwa, and Zach Mack. Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you like the show, please give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Power User. See you then.