Tech Brew Ride Home - Apple's Big Event With The Future Forward Podcast

Episode Date: March 23, 2019

Today, we’re going to talk Facebook’s pivot to privacy and Apple’s big event on Monday. Please do search your podcast apps and subscribe to the Future Forward podcast. Sponsors: Stamps.com, click the microphone and enter RIDE Vistaprint.com/RIDE   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to a weekend bonus episode of the TechMeme Right Home. I'm Brian McCullough. Steve Rosenbaum is a good friend of mine, a digital media veteran, a multi-time founder of digital media companies, someone I turned to for on and off the record info about what is happening in digital media.

Gene DeRose is another NYC Tech and Media OG founder of Jupiter Communications. As you know, it's been a while since I've done podcast recommendations on Fridays. So this weekend, I'm going to rectify that a big. bit by talking to podcasters about some recent issues in the news. Steve and Gene do the Future Forward podcast in conjunction with the I-Triplee. So today we're going to talk to them about Facebook's pivot to privacy and Apple's big event on Monday. Please do search your podcast apps and subscribe to the Future Forward podcast.

Steve, I think you listen to the podcast at least occasionally. I don't remember if it was this week or last week. It must have been last week. I did a segment where I was like, okay, I'm convinced the pivot to privacy to private messaging is real. Are we agreed that this is for real at this point? We're agreed that it's for real, but I actually think it's a bit of a canary and a coal mine. I think it's worth paying attention to not as another Zuckerberg press release, but more as a big acknowledgement.

of just how broken and effed up, the open networks have become quickly. And I'm less convinced. But why? Well, a couple things principally. One, Facebook is such a large and acclimated to by a billion people service, that I find it hard to believe without slight of hand. Footnote there that they will be able to upturn or even quickly gravitate towards that.

It means a lot. My footnote is that I suspect they're going to try to do it in a way that doesn't make it seem like it's happening, which is to say, right now, You don't know necessarily who's watching your feed, who gets your feed, what the priority is. It's possible that they use the very tools that they've used to manipulate who you see and who you don't see to push that. So it's a big question, right? Because or will it look and feel like Snapchat or Instagram? Well, what about the argument that the vaunted pivot to privacy is,

Ben Thompson and others have made this. Like this is, there's all sorts of side benefits of doing this. There's PR benefits. There's, but at its core, maybe this is just an actual business model shift where, again, who has more data in terms of how people are actually using social media than Zuckerberg does? So this is just moving to where, skating to where the puck is going to be. And then it has all of these other dressings around it that, oh, we, we believe in privacy now and things like that.

Like maybe the real truth of it is, is like, this is just, well, this is where social media is going. And so this is where Facebook as a company is going to go. Steve, you can go first, but I don't buy that. No, no, no, no. You go ahead and dig a hole, and then I'll just put dirt on top of it. There you go. Thanks. It's, look, I, first of all, as I told Steve the other day, I don't think Zuckerberg any longer has the kind of advantageous purview.

I mean, he has no more view than his marketers and his, you know, financial people and everyone else are going to give him. A, B, the private sharing is a thing that happens on Instagram, really. And then, you know, I guess I would just go back to something that who says it's such a great thing to do private sharing? I mean, you know, this is a little bit of baby out with the bathwater. The very notion of a public, you know, an open Internet is really important. Now, if they want to just leave it to Twitter and the others that are a little more open in public, that's fine. I just still don't have a picture of what it means to an end user. So I love when you're that wrong, Gene, because this is the thing I love about doing podcasts with you is because it's like you literally lay it out for me and then I can just knock the ball, the battery right off your shoulder.

Here's the thing, Zuckerberg's customer are advertisers. The people who pay him money, those customers don't like this news, noisy, horrible New Zealand murder video world that is the open, the open internet is a different conversation than the open Facebook platform. But he can deliver the same value to advertisers with way less risk by making it safer. How is that not a winner? That's a great baby out with the bathwater again because it's not the New Zealand. shooting that is the only thing that's the byproduct of an open internet. There's the, there's the Arab uprising, and there's Bernie Sanders, and there's, you know, lots of good things that have happened. So I don't, I don't, again, I just, I don't think having the dialogue

on the level of good versus bad on these individual incidents is important as what is dynamically changing. And I'll also say this, what has the golden gut of Zuck done in the last three or five years that is truly kind of a master stroke from he himself versus infinite numbers of apologies for blunders and promises to do better. You know, let me, well, I have my own theory that a lot of people at that company were checked out and were ready to move on to doing things like running for president

and things like that and then the last two years. But let's put a pin because I do want to come back to the New Zealand angle here, but let me give you two more things that this so-called pivot to privacy does. Or maybe even three. Like one, obviously you unify the product so that advertisers are only doing one simple spend. You tie it all together. And so if you're getting ahead of the tidal wave of theoretical, you know, breaking up the big tech companies, it's harder to spin these off if it's all one product.

And then, and this maybe does lead us into the New Zealand thing, then they don't ever have to get into the curation and the editorial. Like, because if everything is behind wall-to-wall encryption, then they don't have to be like, well, you know, we can't even see what people are doing on our stuff. Yeah. I think that's a good point. It's all happening magically.

We're just collecting the cash. We're like a toll booth. Well, but I mean, it's a good point, I think, because of the, of the, you know, difference. the substantive difference between the content that I create as an end user and share within my private networks and the stuff that comes down from various on high, that is mainstream media, other kinds of places. Look, to be sure, ads still reach everyone on Instagram in some ways. And the media players have done a pretty good job on Instagram at creating their own kind of presences.

And so, you know, I don't actually even agree with Pivot to Privacy. pivot to private sharing, I agree with. But that's sort of taking and, you know, trying to steal home on privacy, right, you know, when it's not the same thing as private sharing. So, you know, so let's talk about the Roger McNameet phenomenon because I think it's worth throwing his name in the ring here. So Roger has been on this really rather aggressive, fairly relentless media tour since his book sucked came out.

I mean, I think I've run into him maybe 19 times at book events and then at South Buy and then on this podcast and then on that podcast. And he's essentially said the same thing with some regularity, which is, you know, hey, Zuck, you're 35 years old. It's not like you're going to leave the company and then take your winnings and go do something great a la Bill Gates and, you know, cure, you know, diseases. Why not? Why? Because you have your hands on the steering wheel of a really big problem that really needs a really big solution. And he literally says the same thing every time you hear him. Like he's only speaking to one person.

He's saying, Mark, just wake up tomorrow morning and go, you know what? I'm going to fix this. And I think there's an argument to be made that Mark knows the data. He's seeing downward trends on Facebook that he can't just fix with fiddling the app. And I think there's a fair argument to me made that he's responding to Roger. Yeah, I think it is true up to a point. And there certainly is now kind of a public scenario of like, you know, Roger in a public way, having Zuck on the couch for several years.

But I'm not sure it's as easy as that. Remember, one of the points that Zuck's making, Zuck's making that Roger is also making is that in some ways, Zuck is victimized like a lot of other fast-ascending companies by the very wrong nature of how public markets are structured toward profits and shareholders. And the whole idea of doing better work, serving people, even doing better by their customers, has been kind of lost against this need to grow and expand margins. So, you know, it's kind of a little bit of both. and again, I'm still not sure that Zuck is, I think he's responding a lot more to Congress

and the political wins than he is to Roger. I would agree with that in the sense that I think Roger might be trying to assuage his own conscience. I'm not sure. You might be right that he's pricked Mark Zuckerberg's conscience, but I think that Zuckabberg's, is actually, I actually think if my conversion to believing in the pivot to privacy is that because he can kill all these birds with one stone, this is kind of a genius strategic move. Let me, let me steer us real quick. And I actually don't want to get bogged down in the weeds in this one. But the New Zealand thing happened this week, and there's been so many opinion pieces and think pieces and, well, this is how we should be dealing with the stuff. But like, just through the lens, again, of a theory. theoretical pivot to privacy or pivot to messaging or pivot to encryption and things like that, is that a step towards de-weaponizing social media or the opposite? I think that's the question.

I don't, I mean, I have some guesses, but I think you've nailed exactly the crosshairs of this. I guess the question would be, what would be the evidence that it would? I mean, and I guess, you know, the answer partly is you're kind of, this idea of private sharing kind of inoculates the, to double down on jargon, metastasization of ideas and memes, right? They could become a little more contained, but certainly not stopped, right? Except, right, because let me, I'm sorry to interrupt. And I've criminally undercover this on the show, but there was the whole incident of the me. Anmar genocide that people were blaming on WhatsApp. Now, again, WhatsApp encrypted.

And so the problem was it's almost like the fear would be. And someone made this point last week or this week that in the future, if everything's encrypted, you can't even see how things are spread. So it's almost like in a weird way, as it exists now, by having sharing be in the open, you can monitor the spread of these things to a certain extent. If everything is gone behind a wall, then it's almost worse. That is a great point. And the Hanmar example is really not been brought out enough as an example of what can happen with private sharing.

That's really, that's very powerful. So it's not disagree with you. So here's my take in kind of a simple, simplistic way. I think it comes down to people taking responsibility for the speech that they have. And those of you who know my history, I mean, I got into a fairly famous public battle with Alexis O'Henian about what I consider to be his nonsense pseudonymity argument. And I did not win that argument. But, but, you know, to me, so so here's, I think, the answer to Facebook. If they really, if they, they say that the shooting video was shared one and a half

million times. So that's one and a half million members or registered users who saw something objectionable and decided to amplify it. You know, they took down those 1.5 million shares. And I guess I'll hope 1.2 million of them were blocked that upload is what they're now saying. But they didn't ever say back to those people, hey, you know what? We keep track of this. And we made some determinations about where the line is. And here's our line about terms of service. And you've crossed it. And we're giving you a little, and this is what YouTube does with copyright strikes. They've got a system and you get a strike and then you can negotiate it. But I don't understand why they're willing to take down the videos. So they clearly have made an editorial decision. But they're not willing to say to the

uploader, hey, we're putting a black mark next to your name. You got to stop that. That's right. It almost feels like old Eastern block kind of you don't even know why something happened, talk to the hand, there's no communication. And one other thing really that I think is notable. And we've been talking about this on and off for months. I guess I brought it up, which is I believe one of the principal problems with social networks is a lack of a kind of transparency that everyone would appreciate. And by that I mean more of what traditional media has had forever and even, God, for

forbid AOL had back in the day, which is a kind of ombudsman role where you're willing to have a dialogue and tell your community what's going on, especially when things go a little wrong. Show us some data. Don't talk down to us or not at all. There's a way to sort of do that on a regular basis. And on Facebook, there's some kerfuffle or another cut every three days. And so it feels like they're hiding a lot, you know, hiding and not hiding something bad, just hiding in fear of saying anything.

Well, I guess the fear that I would have it. I got to credit Darya Abashonjo for, I think it was his tweet that turned me on it. Like, if they just go behind encryption, then they can just wash their hands of the whole thing and absolve themselves and be like, well, we don't know. And that's my fear going forward. Let me, yeah, let me, let's pivot to something else because there's people on the, call that have media experience. And it's been so fascinating this week that Apple has cleared the deck of any potential, like in other Apple events, they would always do a little, well, here we're

updating the Mac lineup, we're updating the iPad. It's almost like I said on today's show, they're settling all family business so that on Monday they can only focus on the services and the media stuff. So let's talk about what we think is. going to happen on Monday with Apple's big event? I'll go out first and then Gene can either agree with me or tell me I'm a knucklehead. You know, I think it's worth remembering the history of Apple in that it's rarely first. It often is a fast follower. It wasn't first with the iPod.

You know, they've been slow to get into the video space. They've let a lot of people make mistakes. They've let Netflix get a foothold. You know, Disney's on its way into doing something. big and important. I think that Monday is going to be a surprise, and I think it's going to be bigger than people realize, and I think it's going to be a success. That's what you've been hearing, and I'm not trying to blow up anybody's spot, but we're going to be surprised, you think. It's bigger than what a lot of us are thinking. Well, you know, look, the thing about content is

it's hard, and it's different than other places that they've been. But there's been some complaints out of Hollywood like oh the guys at Apple are messing with our stuff they're you know they're giving us notes like you think you think that they you know and whether or not they're really good at being editorial managers you know having built one iPad app in my life I can tell you you know I was shocked at how handsy they were about the iPad app and the corners of the icon and they I mean they you know no one talks about this because you know you don't talk about fight club but but but You know, Apple is very hands-on. Anything that gets on their platform is going to have their signature on it.

Yeah, so you would argue that that's sort of almost like a Disney-like strike in terms of, you know, flavor and who it appeals to and stuff. But I am a big skeptic on their ability. You know, Steve Jobs famously said right before he died, I had the light bulb. I think I finally figured out how TV needs to be crash. and we're just the ones to do it. That was, you know, eight or nine years ago, so who knows what that even was. But I don't believe that they can truly invent something new.

I disagree that they haven't done that before. I think they've failed a lot in just repeating or buying and aping things. You know, we'll see how iTunes goes for the sixth time. It's been reinvented. But I do believe that I do believe TV still needs. you know, can anything bring TV and video viewing together or in a good way because we're in the golden age of, of, you know, curate your own video experience? You know, can somebody synthesize it all in a way that doesn't mess the shit up? So here, so here's the one question that I'm spending the last two days wondering about.

are they, like, is there going to be a new product? Is it going to be ITV? Is it going to be, you know, or I video? Well, there will be, you know, there will be new programming. I mean, I have a really good friend who's a showrunner on a pretty significant new thing. But the question has always been with that, you know, are they, you know, are they going to be a producer? Are they going to be a network? Are they going to be both?

Will those great shows be able to live on who? Hulu too? This is why I'm skeptical. Number one, not only do I, I'm super skeptical of their ability to be good at this, at, at, content at the Hollywood level, right? Yep. But the number two, okay, we know that they're going to have some original content. They've opened up the checkbook to do this. But if all it is is there's, you know, a Steven Spielberg, Amazing Stories reboot, and there's,

you know, Jennifer Aniston new show and things like that. Well, that's not enough to get me to sign up. And then if it's just that, and then, well, also, we've got this really interesting new way to bundle. Well, we know they're not going to bundle Netflix, but HBO maybe and this one and that one and the other and you pay X dollar. Like, that's still like kind of like a Hulu light with maybe bigger stars for original content. So like I'm skeptical, skeptical because I don't, I can't imagine. what the product would be that would be beyond that.

So wait, wait, wait, who said sign up? Who said sign up? Oh, that's an interesting point. I've thought of that, too. All they have to do is say, if you're already getting Apple Music, it's free. Right, that would be revolution. My iOS is just going to be able to somehow write heard on things, and there isn't even a thing I'd have to own other than to have an iOS device.

So here's why I think it's an exciting. Look, to me, if they should, of the video under iTunes and it's another searchable iTunes thing, that will be a terrible mistake. And my fingers are wrapped around each other across, that they actually have a video landing page and a video home because that would be a big deal. And here's here's the thing worth paying attention to. If you look at Apple News, no one talks about it, no one pays attention to it, the numbers are massive. The numbers are massive because they own that home page position on the phone. And yet it's often overlooked. Yeah, because it's a little bit of a canard.

I mean, you know, theoretically I'm an iTunes user, but I'm not sure I've ever used it. But look, I think you just said something or referenced something that I think is important. For 15 years, we've been tootling around with this notion that you can kind of intercept the screen and some of the intelligence of the television. There have been Chromecast, there have been the stuff that's built in. I do believe we are at the eve at which Apple could let you simply do that in a way through your iPhone and just embed and Trojan horse, these these which what cannot be more than a half dozen or dozen new properties in through that

experience i still know so many people that don't even know how to beam to their tv sets but it is getting pretty darn easy i would so i've been thinking about it this way if i'm read hastings what happens on monday that makes me go oh oh and it would be if it were some sort of a content offering that was completely free for anyone in the iOS ecosystem. Even if it was a Netflix light, but it was a Netflix adjacent, that then maybe Apple opened up the pocketbook to add on, I don't know, Nat Geo, CNN, and it's 100% free. That's the only thing that would be like, wow, that is really exploding this game right here. I think that's right.

And the unrealistic one, which would scare them even more, is that they could somehow co-opt and put everything under their umbrella. An extreme version of what I just said would be that, you know, everything has to go through and under, like all video that's used on, you know, would be through that platform, you know, because in some ways, that's been done in other areas a lot. But I think you're right. And I don't think they're going to do anything like that because they don't have the ability. They don't have the rights. Their history has shown that if anything, they're mercenary with content, quote-unquote, partners, book industry principally. I've booked my Monday.

I put a calendar marking on my Monday because I'm going to watch the damn thing and then I'm going to write about it. and then I'm going to go drink. You know, I mean, I think speaking as a filmmaker and as a content producer, this is only a good thing to have another big checkbook, heavy hitter in the market, ratcheting up pricing, giving people more places to get their shows. It's nothing bad. There's nothing that's going to happen on Monday that's going to make me go on Tuesday morning. Oh, that's disappointing.

Well, the other good thing is that Apple is the inverse of historical vaporware. When they announce things, they're like, oh, and by the way, when you get off this call, you'll be able to buy it, find it, you know, do whatever. Like, you know, it's on. Like their AirPods were next day and the other ones disappeared. Well, yeah, but the air power charging pad, not sort of the exception. Yes, yes. Although, hey, listen, they've been announcing something every morning, so maybe that's tomorrow morning. I don't want to tell.

Well, maybe the biggest news will be the news subscription service. but I'm going to alide that right now. Let's end with this question, because this is something that I've been thinking about for whatever reason a lot this week. And it's timely because the Fox Deal closed today. When I've been thinking lately about everyone's framing it as everyone's going after Netflix, but it's really, all of the existing media giants are all trying,

you know, Comcast, AT&T, everybody. The person, the player, to me that people are not giving enough credit to how powerful they're going to be when they actually plop down in the space is Disney. And I mean, like, library is so important. And then obviously you need to create new stuff, but we know they can. Pixar, all the Marvel. Now they've got the Simpsons. So just your reactions to the idea of like really the 800-pound gorilla that hasn't even spoken yet is Disney. Well, I think the one thing that Disney has historically never done, and I could be wrong, is they've assiduously stayed away from platform delivery, et cetera.

They've just been content cornucopia that prefers to have no limitations on where it can be distributed and how. and the only ones in the world that redistributed famous movies every 20 years and things like that for a whole cycle of theatrical release. So it is an odd thing, and I wonder if they have the DNA to create any kind of a Hulu or Netflix.

To be sure, they're going to do it, and maybe they just have such a sizable library that they can, but they're going to do it at the cost of a lot of assets to continue to, to pay off. So I have two takes. One, part of the problem I have

with getting excited about Disney, even when I look at all the brands that are wrapping into the package is the Disney brand to me is so powerful and has such an identity that, like, it's hard for me to imagine non-family-friendly,

non-kind of warm and fuzzy stuff that lives in a Disney-branded package. That being said, if Warner Media can stop imploding executives for five seconds and actually, you know, write the shtip, you know, that's a package of brands and catalog value and interesting stuff and HBO and all like CNN. I mean, like to me, they're the elephant in the room, but every time you wake up in the morning, somebody else has quit or gotten fired. I feel like they're a constrained elephant in a

certain way, right? Like the biggest thing they could do to yank you over and make you think about paying for something new would be if suddenly all of the ESPN properties were only available through a Disney offering. And that isn't going to happen. Wait until... Wait until Apple or Facebook starts bidding on NFL rights or MLB rights. Right, or March Madness or, yeah, I agree. You know, look, again, I'm back to my... I'm not a techno-optimist, but I think I'm a web video media optimist, which is just, you know, giving this. This is the choice infrastructure that consumers have been begging cable to deliver to them for the last 20 years. You mean where we are right now?

Yeah, where we are right now. Like, pick what you want, buy the right bundle. It's not cheap, by the way. I mean, no one's getting a bargain, but I like choice. I think choice for consumers is a good thing. Well, you know what, it's just the fallacy of cheapness because we're paying in all sorts of different balkanized chunky little things instead of getting that one giant, you know, cable or telecom bill that jails it all in. Yeah. All right. Before I let before I let you gentlemen go, please tell me about future forward and what you guys do there and how we can get more of your great banter and insights. So it began as a goofy idea over a drink now a year and a half ago in which Gene and I were debating some future of something,

and we kind of went, this is kind of entertaining. And then I think we did a couple of, kind of, we did for a couple of weeks some tests to see if we could actually keep it up. And we realized, A, we've been around a long time. We know the space really well. We both are insufferable gossips.

And so we talk to people all week that tell us things that we can kind of, without attributing it to anyone, kind of leak into the podcast. Yes, I got to say, you swore me to secrecy, but you have given me some juicy goss lately that we had to keep off the record, yeah.

So that turned into future forward, and it's a fun half hour, and sometimes people learn stuff, and sometimes people send me emails afterwards and say, you guys are idiots, which is okay. And it's getting better. I think, Steve, it's funny, my memory is a little different than yours

because I tend to be, take forever to get things launched and everything because I want things to be perfect, and they never are even when you launch. And I was like, let's work on this. Let's fine tune to Steve was like, no. Sunday we're recording the first one and we'll get better as we go. And I tell you, that has been brilliant for the engine of creating nearly 80 or 90 of these things.

And we're getting better. I mean, I do feel like there's lots of room for improvement, but we're really, really enjoying it. And we're having guests now for the first time, which I hope maybe you'll be. join us for one and we get you some payback. But it's, it is great. And we have a New York angle as well as an angle that is, I think,

kind of lodged elegantly between sort of business to business and the consumer point of view. We're not there yet. But what I think the world needs is a tech equivalent of the old car talk. Remember, Rick and Frick and Frack, these guys on NPR. And it was like,

wow, I don't even like cars in that thing. It was so awesome all the time. So, you know, it's interesting. We try to keep a foot in what's going to happen in 18 months and three years, but things are moving so fast. Today's announcement is the future. So we should talk about ICCI because that's important.

So at the end of the first year, we said, you know, we're ready for a partnership. We looked at a bunch of people we know. We talked to some folks. And it became clear to us that ICCI had this incredibly robust internal editorial engine and didn't have a podcast. And so we reached out to them and said, hey, how about if we partner? Some weeks we talk about articles from ICCLEE spectrum.

Some weeks we have the writers and reporters on. And the dirty secret, which is they're just way smarter than we are. Like they're just like they do a very good job of that same thing of not translating. I mean, you can get deep in and suddenly you're in deep engineering land. But a lot of their articles are very accessible. And it's a very good time for them because this whole internet of things means, if anything, historically, they've skewed hardware. And now it's a big mishmosh. But this is an era where devices and all the little things you can do with them, it's kind of happy hunting ground.

Yeah, it's really good. It's really good. Well, listen, so because I haven't done a podcast recommendation in several Friday episodes, so this is a bonus episode that is also a podcast recommendation, check out search your podcast. app for Future Forward. Thank you gentlemen for coming on.