Tech Brew Ride Home - (Bonus) Ed Zitron On The Social Landscape

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

Catching you up on the great Substack controversy and who is winning the race to be the new Twitter? Ed's new podcast is called Better Offline, which you can find wherever fine podcasts are found. And his newsletter is called: Where's Your Ed At? 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 another bonus episode of the Tech Meme Ride Home. I'm your host as always, Brian McCullough. We have a friend of the pod on today, someone that's been on before.

Ed Zitron. You might know him from the socials, but also from his newsletter. Where's your Ed at? But also up front here, Ed, you've just launched a podcast, right? Yes, me and IHot Radio and Cool Zone Media launched Better Offline. podcast. It's going to be something special. I'm pumped up for it. Right. We're recording actually before the launch, but it's better offline. So is it an interview show or round- So it's a mixture of narrative stuff, interviews, and sometimes

me running through a story with someone talking with me. So the first episode is actually about the ROT economy, which is a greater economic theory I have with Robert Evans of Cool Zone Media. Second episode is going to be about the Vision Pro, for example, and that's just me talking, but actually, I do talk with the Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern during that. Oh, she's going to kill me for that one, Joanna Stern. Well, that sounds great. As I said, we're recording before the launch, so I can't vouch for it yet, but I'll subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Just have to trust me. Yes. Betteroffline.com will get you everything. Awesome. Okay. I'm having you on to do a couple of stories that I sort

of didn't give proper time to on the show for various reasons. First, there has been over the last month or so a bunch of controversy around Substack, the newsletter platform, which your news was on. Could you briefly just real quick in like 30 seconds kind of summarize what the controversy was, and then I want to hear about like your involvement in the controversy as well since you had to leave Substack? So in November of last year, 2023, there, There was an Atlantic story that found out that there were substacks just that were outright Nazis, Nazi imagery, Nazi topics, Nazi stuff. And as a Jew, it's kind of vile to read any of that on there. When this was raised over the following months to substack, they went, well, look, look, it's just, you know, we don't, we're a free speech company.

We, we could, they're not breaking any of our very weirdly written rules. So we're not going to do anything. So there was a group of people led by Maris Cabas, I believe, who did substackers against Nazis, who basically called this out to Substack, published it on their Substack newsletters and said, Substack, please just ban the Nazis. At that point, Casey Newton of Platform were waded in, spoke with Substack. Substack said, well, what have you got for us? Casey shared several Nazi substacks with them.

They then said, oh, some of these have broken our terms of. service for inciting violence. Casey then published a headline that basically said Substack will ban Nazi publications. This was taken as gospel. Casey is a good guy, but his article misled people, in my opinion. And then basically, a few people, myself included, reported that, no, they banned five Nazis, five Nazi publications. And then Casey, good on him, actually left Substack for Ghost a day or two later. Now, in my case, I decided to leave the moment I saw everything. And honestly, I should have left Substack a long time ago. Moment that you platform people are Jesse Single and anti-trans freaks like that, you cannot.

There's no reason I should have been on that platform. I think I speak for everyone. Well, I probably can't speak for everyone, but everyone should leave Substack right now for the people that they've supported and the people that they choose to support now. And the vacuous argument I hear is, oh, well, it's only a few Nazis. Tell that to my goddamn grandma. who lost, like, tell that to my family weren't in big goddamn ovens in the Holocaust, you asshole. Sorry, I'm a little bit pissy about this one, but I still see people going on Substack. I see LGBTQ newsletters on Substack. What do you think the Nazis want for, like, it's just disgraceful. And anyway, I'm kind of going off there. I feel like the moral question is one thing, but if you are someone who makes your living with a newsletter and maybe you have been

on substack and you blood, sweat and tears to get the followers that you have. What is the calculus in terms of moving away? Number one, is substack really the superior platform in terms of the tools and stuff that they give you? Is there not that's comparable? Number two, is it risking your business if you do jump ship? So first and foremost, substack is very easy to use, and the tools they have are very easy.

They just, it really is turnkey. Ghost, which I moved to, is not quite as turnkey. I had to work with a guy called Ryan over at Outpost, who really did a lot of the stuff. But, and I understand if people aren't moving because it's difficult. And indeed, the first time I sent my newsletter to my 22,000 subscribers, at first, a lot of them didn't get it. It made me freak out. If you move to Ghost, then that happens, it will be okay. It just takes one go.

Anyway, but it's not the superior platform. They trumpet their network effects and their recommendations as a way of finding, you subscribers. Only kind of, and Substack really picks their winners, kind of like the App Store does. It's like, well done, you've sent more people to formerly platformer. Like, if you're one of the big substacks, Substack sends you more traffic, and it sucks. So I don't judge people who have stayed because it's hard to move. What I do judge are the people who have started new newsletters, who ostensibly are against Nazis,

who chose Substack in the first place. It's not really much better. Like, it does podcasts a little easier than other platforms if you need to launch a podcast and then use that. A sub-stack is just easier. But at the same time, I don't want to even slightly contribute to a company that supports this. And it is really easy to just ban Nazis.

Well, there's the famous analogy that people have used for years. I can't remember who first did it about the Nazi bar, where the bartender kicks out the Nazi and the patron says, why do you? you do that, he said, because if you don't do it right away, within a week, you are a Nazi bar because more of them come, more of them come. So it's that sort of parable of guilt by association, and people made the argument that, listen, any sort of platform that isn't completely a protocol, you are making editorial and curational decisions one way or another if you have terms of service. So where is Substack at at the moment? A lot of, some prominent people that I,

read their newsletters have left, but do we know if it, has there been an exodus? I would say so. Molly White left, Casey Newton and Platformer left. I don't know what others have stayed or left. I don't have the raw numbers, but substack was already based on reports from the verge year or two ago, already not particularly profitable, by which I mean not profitable at all. But also, quite frankly, I think they will continue fine from this. I think that they're not going to shut down over this, but I do think that this tolerance means that they are going to become the gab of newsletters, and it will be a slower burn, but guess what, you tolerate, it becomes the Nazi bar. But I've seen a few people start newsletters recently on Substack who really need to check

themselves because it's disgraceful for anyone who supports any cause that is not just hard right stuff to put their newsletter on there. It's one thing if it was an established project. It was a pain in the ass for me to leave. I'm not going to lie about that. But if you were starting something new and you choose substack, that is a choice you are making and the full knowledge of the company you were supporting and the people that they in turn support.

shifting slightly to throwing your lot in with platforms. Chris and I spoke to the CEO of Blue Sky last week. They're doing a lot of interesting things in social. I'm curious your take, again, someone that is very online and builds their audience that way. I get the sense that there are different sort of cultures that have moved to different sort of places. Like, over at threads, you have the controversy about some people, about suppressing news. And so some people say go to blue sky because it's innovative, but then some people don't like blue sky because of like just the tone there. And maybe threads is a little more

influencery. So first of all, give me your sense because I've said on the show, I want to keep people abreast of, for me doing this podcast, where is Twitter at? Where has everyone gone? What's your sense? Who's still at Twitter? Where has everybody that you care about gone or most of them? Where are we with the diaspora? So I think that there is a much louder contingent of journalists who claim they've left Twitter than actually have. I think a lot of news is still there. Threads, well, first of all, let's stay on Twitter X, whatever it's called these days. Cesspool right now. Every third post someone responds with ass in bio. And I'm not kidding. It's that common. That place is falling apart. Question is how fast. But journalists are still there. Sports is still there. Sports really has found a home on Twitter. Threads is trying, but Threads is also just a kind of a crappy social network. It's not, it's ugly. Comments are weird on it. The algorithm sucks. It's full of the worst influences. It feels like 2009 Twitter, which was very boring and was very normy facing. But also, you go on threads and it doesn't even feel like you're speaking to normal people. It just feels like, everyone's doing a puppet show of some sort. It feels to me like it's a social network for people that have been trained to be on social

networks for 20 years and know, okay, this is new. I'm going to plant my flag here and grow my follower base. Everybody is all about growing that follower base because they've seen that happen for previous cycles. And so it's like, we've been trained. Here's a new thing. I got to establish myself. I got to grow my follower account.

That's to me the problem with people's behavior on threads at the moment. But also, by that logic, engagement on there is trash. I have like 5,500 followers. I sometimes, and this is not me just being like my posts are wretched, because sometimes they are. But the engagement on there is trash. You'll get like a reply every so often, I like every so often. It's as bad as Twitter was. It really sucks.

Blue Sky, on the other hand, very lively. They started it with a contingent of extremely online posters and found out and fanned out from there even. And you're starting to find more normal people on there now. It feels like mid-2010s Twitter or maybe late 2010's Twitter. A lot of fun, very energetic. It has its problems. It has dogpiling problems because when you get above a certain follow account, everyone can see your replies and everyone decides to get involved. So people can get jumped on a bit there.

This is a problem with Twitter. This is not a problem that's easy to solve, but Blue Sky does it where if you delete a thread that people are responding to, everything disappears. If you block someone, a whole thing disappears. This kind of cuts down on that, more poisonous chatter. But in general, I love Blue Sky. Most of the people I know are in Blue Sky. I think that if journalists could try it, I really encourage you. It feels like it used to on Twitter.

It's intimate, fun, cool community. NPR just joined. I love Blue Sky. I really do. Threads, it's almost as if they put effort in to make sure it's not a social network. Suppression of news is insane. Why would you do that other than you just don't want the heat? So now it's just this swill of people having history on like episodes because they click.

There's an account there that goes by God or something saying, there's a bug. Adam Messeri, help me with a bug. Thousands of likes, tons of responses. No explanation as to what the bug is other than it is very bad. It feels like an entire social network designed like one of those forward forward, forward email threats used to get in like the early 2000s, where it was like the government is taking away Social Security due to George Bush's new program. And it's like so clearly fake. It's just, it sucks.

It's wretched. I want to use it in the sense that I'll take anything I can get as far as promotional stuff goes. But it isn't even good for that. For the, this is a litmus test. For the new podcast, where if you could only do one post, which network would it still be X, Twitter. I mean, you probably still have Twitter. You probably still have a larger follower. I still, well, I have 67,000 followers on Twitter, and I have somewhere like 19.5,000 on blue sky.

I get more engagement on most things on blue sky. Weirdly enough, though, some podcast-related stuff, I get way more on Twitter. It's weird. I don't know. And I'll use Twitter until I'm kicked off the service or it sinks into the sea, like the Titanic. Do you mess around with Mastodon at all? Oh, God, no. No, I'm sorry. Mastodon people seem so dedicated to the cause and I respect that there's an unfedited thing. But every time I try and log on, they're like, it's very simple.

What happens is you load these three plugins and then you type in passwords to these eight windows, and then when that's complete, then you can make your account. I have an account on one Mastodon thing, but there's multiple servers. And every time I say something like this, I get an email from someone saying, it's very simple. And then like there's an 11-step thing. I'm like, I'm, no, I can't do it. Also, it sounds like the culture there is kind of weird. I've heard some very strange things about how aggressive people can be on there.

And I just, there's no, I don't, if I need to find a network where everyone's going to be mad at me, I already have two or three of them. It reminds me very much of Usenet and bulletin boards in the early 90s. Yes. No, it really has like web for, this whole thing has deep, like, web forum antagonist energy, like three competing forums from the night is about a video game. It's so that I kind of admire. This, people were saying crypto. Well, people said that crypto felt like the old internet. No, this feels like two or three different forums that just hate each other for no good reason other than they are vaguely competitive.

Nothing's stopping you from posting on both. They can coexist, but you hate each other. I kind of love that. It's so people don't get hurt, obviously. Real quick, since you mentioned that you're going to do an episode on the Vision Pro and you just wrote about it on your newsletter, give me your three minutes takeaway on the Vision Pro. Fascinating device, very annoying. I think I said of my newsletter, it's one of the most interesting and annoying devices I've ever used, if not the most. It is something where when it works, it feels like the future. It You have this endless desktop. You can move around with these subtle gestures. It's really cool. And then one of the gestures goes wrong. Or you try the on-screen keyboard is truly awful in a way that Apple should be ashamed of. But also, even when you plug in a Bluetooth keyboard, things go crazy. And I think the problem is that when you wear something on your face, these little bugs that might be more avoidable or forgivable on the computer or a phone are so much more claustrophobic. But watching movies on it,

it is incredible. I wrote my 4,600 word vision pro review and the script for the episode on the Vision Pro sitting on the couch, just looking at it, typing on my magic keyboard, my cat on my lap, well, kind of on my legs behind my keyboard. That was cool. The focus, I have severe ADHD that I'm medicated for. The focus it gives me is really great, but then again, it can give you a little headache. It can feel weird. Sometimes you put it on wrong. It doesn't fear right. There aren't enough apps. Basic things to get signal on there required me to do a series of things that are just ridiculous. I had to mirror my Vision Pro to the television and then scan the QR code with my phone. It just, the whole thing feels incomplete and it feels delivered in, oh, and also, I should add, the first few days with it were really bad because the fit was wrong. And the only reason I found out the fit was wrong was Reddit. Apple just hasn't really tried hard enough with this.

And for $3,500 or more, if you get the higher storage on it, you'd expect just a tintsy-wincey bit better, and it just isn't there. Are you one of those people that is going to return before the return window closes? No, I genuinely am going to use this. I'm going to use this to write. I am more focused. If I can't sit at a table with my laptop, I can't really write. I need the focus of the sit-up thing.

But on this, I can write thousands of words because you can twist the knob on the top of it, the digital crown, and it will drop away the world around you. And you could just focus on what's in front of you. And it's really cool. It works really, really well. I can focus on this thing in a way that no other device lets me. And this is why I'm so conflicted on it, because there are moments where I've used it. I'm like, this is so cool. I watch a giant Queensland's a Stone Age concert.

I'll be talking to someone on text and signal while I do it. It feels very cool and new, and there's nowhere else I can do that. And then I will try and select the title of a Google Doc, and I won't be able to do it, despite staring at it really intently with my eyes. And it doesn't work. And it just makes me wonder, did nobody while testing this thing, I wonder if anyone will use Google Docs, a product used by, I think over a billion people? You'd think you'd check that one. And if it didn't work, you'd contact Google and go, hey, hey, hey, hey, this is Apple. You already pay us $18 billion a year to make Google the only search engine on the iPhone.

Could you just fix this for us? And then Google would have said, no. And then there would have been an annoying argument. But there would have been an argument. It's just, they half asked many parts of this. It just feels very un-apple at times. I've said this many times, the fact that they didn't launch with some big whiz-Benzhen. new app from a developer that wasn't possible before.

They didn't have Disney create some new, you know, 40-minute 3D. They should have had a puzzle. I'm deadly serious. They should have had a puzzle company. This thing, you do your little gestures and you do things. Just have a thousand piece puzzle company as the first thing. That would have been cool. You put the puzzle piece in the part.

I'd have done that all day. I'm an idiot. I love this crap. But they didn't even do that. It just feels so ramshackle at. times and you'd think that they would bother, but I think they know that people would buy this crap, me included, without them really trying. Half a billion dollars they made off this damn thing now. I wonder if they're selling it at a loss. I can't remember. I think probably break even.

They don't tend to ever sell anything at a loss. But two more real quick. Give me your take on the metaverse generally because, you know, something came out the other day and was like, you know, the Quest is already better than this. The Quest is already doing this, the thing that Apple is promising. You can talk to that if you want, but just generally, do you feel... You almost were describing the Vision Pro as... It's a work thing for you. It's a productivity thing.

But this idea of Metaverse, where it's like, well, I go live there, where do you feel... Yeah, there you go. It's just... The Metaverse either existed or... already doesn't exist at all. We're not living in the computer yet, other than the fact we use it all day. So I guess we're already in the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg just made that up. So I think he's made that up and it's spent billions on it just so that people forget that Facebook did Cambridge Analytica. I don't think it's much more complex than that. I think the Quest 3 does absolutely not do what the Vision Pro does. I'm sure there are some like-for-like things and people will be wanky arseals. Oh, you can use a web browser on it. The Quest 3 is not as comfortable. as the vision pro. It's not as smooth as the vision pro. You still have to use your little clicky thingies with it. It doesn't feel right. The Vision Pro actually, the eye gesture stuff and the grasping stuff actually works. But also, of course Mark Zuckerberg's going to say the Quest 3 is better. He won't

admit he messed up. He's a little scumbag. But also, the MetaVus doesn't exist. We're not living in it. To do the thing that Mark Zuckerberg showed us in the meta release video, you would have to have extrasensory interfaces. You'd have to have something that clicked into the site, parts of the body. You can't wear things and have the experience he had. What he did was tantamount to what Magic League did, in the mid-2010s, and nobody gave him shit about it. It was insane. Every journalist who was like, oh, yeah, yeah, in the metaphors is yeah. Absolutely, absolutely ridiculous, absolutely letting the readers down. And now Mark Zuckerberg's talking about artificial, sorry, it's talking about AGI, he's talking about average general intelligence.

Now, Alex Heath is like, yay, I can talk to Mark Zuckerberg again. With the limited amount of time we have left, I was going to, that was my last one. Give me the patented Ed Zittron take on the AI moment right now. Overhyped to you or overhyped for now, but definitely the future. I mean, it's as much the future as it was six years ago and five, 10 years ago. I mean, we've been hearing about AI for a while. I think the generative AI thing is exciting because it's able to create. something, but also, I think it's, I think they're running out of runway. I think they're running

at the limit of what this thing can actually do. If you watch the Super Bowl commercial from Microsoft's co-pilot, you'll notice at one point it says, make me like a classic logo for Mike's truck shop, or truck repair shop, actually. If you type that, and when he did that, there were three or four usable logos, all of which said mics. When I put it in, only one said mics, and it was surrounded by just nonsense, because these things can't even write English. They don't under, it's all math trying to say, what is the common other thing that comes after an M in a truck logo? So I think it is overhyped because the tech industry needs a new thing to point out and say this is why we're around. And I think that AI is approaching its upper limits, but also give me one killer app.

A lot of people giving the Vision Pro a hard time, and they should. You should give Apple's a near $3 trillion company. You should bang on them. But you should also do the same with chat GPT, Sam Altman should be roasted alive, same with Satchin Adela, same with Sundar Pashai, all these companies. Google is forcing Gemini that they replace the name of Bard to Gemini, their generative AI. They are planning to, and they fired a lot of the assistant people. They're going to replace their assistant with it. J.R. Raphael from Computer World had a good thing about this, basically saying Google is trying to force a generative AI onto their assistant,

despite it not doing the job. Right now, the moment we're seeing is not that AI is the future in a good way. It's that AI is being forced into everything so that these companies can continue to get double-digit growth every quarter. It's extremely annoying because there are useful things this can do. New Samsung phones have AI in them. They can do live translation. They can do live voice, voicemail transcription. Cool. Those are useful.

Are those worth an industry where Sam Altman is trying to roll? raise five to seven trillion dollars for a new chipset company. No. No, this whole thing feels like a con on some level. So if I wanted to get more Ed hot takes like that, what was the name of the podcast? I can know. Better Offline. Better Offline. You can go to betteroffline.com. You find the newsletter. You find a beautiful new logo. It's really something. The newsletter is where's your Ed at, which I can never see that name without the Basement Jack song. And that's where it's from. That is actually the original. That's the providence of that title. I figured, I wonder how many people know that song. But yeah, great. I'm a loyal reader of the newsletter and I look forward to

the podcast. Thank you, Ed. Thanks for having me.