Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon 02/07 – Rogangate And The ENS DAO Controversy

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

Rogangate rolls on. Why a controversy in the Ethereum Name Service community might be even more interesting, because of what it might teach us about the viability of DAOs. Twitter is, oddly, testing ways to make it easier for folks to DM you. And rumors of a new entry level MacBook Pro. Sponsors: Workable.com Grammarly.com/techmeme Links: Spotify CEO Addresses Joe Rogan’s N-Word Use, Doubles Down on Keeping Podcaster on Platform (The Hollywood Reporter) Spotify CEO defends Joe Rogan deal in tense company town hall (The Verge) Ethereum Name Service Removes Core Team Member Brantly Millegan Over 2016 Tweet (CoinDesk) Twitter’s direct DM test is a terrible idea (The Verge) Gurman: New entry-level MacBook Pro with M2 chip coming this year, but no ProMotion (9to5Mac) Gurman: Apple Event on March 8, At Least Four M2 Macs to Launch Later This Year (MacRumors) Mapping the celebrity NFT complex (Read Max) 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 the Tech Meme ride home for Monday, February 7th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Rogan Gate rolls on why a controversy in the Ethereum name service community might be even more interesting because of what it might teach us about

the viability of Dow's. Twitter is oddly testing ways to make it easier for folks to DM you and rumors of a new entry-level MacBook Pro. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. So the Joe Rogan Controversy, or Rogan Gate, I guess, if you're a new entry-level MacBook Pro. I guess, you will, rolled on through the weekend. Joe Rogan apologized for his past use of the N-word on the Joe Rogan experience after a compilation video of him using the slur on the show went viral. 70 Joe Rogan Experience episodes then disappeared from Spotify. A source told Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg that Spotify took down the episodes at Rogan's request. All the removed episodes were recorded before Rogan signed his deal with Spotify. Then a memo from Daniel Eck surfaced,

where the CEO of Spotify said that, quote, silencing Rogan is not the answer and committed $100 million to licensing, developing, and marketing content for marginalized groups, quoting the Hollywood Reporter. In a letter sent to staff obtained by the Hollywood Reporter, Eck, acknowledged that Rogan's comments were, quote, incredibly hurtful, quote, and confirmed that Rogan decided to remove multiple passes. episodes from Spotify, but said he did not believe in removing the podcast from Spotify. Quote, I want to make one point very clear. I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer, Eck wrote. We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed,

but canceling voices is a slippery slope, end quote. On Friday, 71 episodes of the Joe Rogan experience were removed from Spotify, according to the website J.R.E. missing, which tracks when the podcast episodes are missing from the streaming platform. The site noted that a a total of 113 episodes, which includes this 71 taken down on Friday, have been removed from Spotify. While some might want us to pursue a different path, I believe that more speech on more issues can be highly effective in improving the status quo and enhancing the conversation altogether, Eck wrote, end quote. I do want to point out one detail to the story that I think has been going overlooked so far. This is from a verge piece by Ashley Carman from last

week. Quote, so when it came time for the town hall, employees hope they might come away with more clarity or understanding of the situation. Eck instead offered an impassioned pitch for why Rogan is critical to Spotify's well-being. Despite Rogan's show never being available on Spotify prior to its deal, the program was the most searched podcast on the platform, he says. And when the company decided to enter the podcasting industry, its catalog was, quote, not that differentiated, end quote, from competitors. It had been struggled. to make deals with, quote, critical hardware partners like Amazon, Google, and even Tesla, end quote, given that they were building, quote, similar streaming services with essentially the same

content, end quote. To combat this, we needed to find leverage, and one way we could do this was in the form of exclusives, he said. To be frank, had we not made some of the choices we did, I am confident that our business wouldn't be where it is today, end quote. He said the company now operates the number one podcast app in the U.S., end quote. So we thought the move into podcasting on Spotify's part was a simple calculation of adding the high margin ads with podcasts that would solve the problem of the razor-thin margins and general unprofitability of music streaming. But what if the primary motivation was to gain leverage against hardware partners even, as he said, Tesla? And the higher margins of podcasting was just an

added bonus? In other words, what if Spotify thinks it needs Joe Rogan, more than Joe Rogan needs Spotify. I actually think a more interesting controversy erupted over the weekend as well as the Dow behind the Ethereum name service removed Brantley Milligan as steward of the project, as well as director of operations, over a 2016 tweet by Milligan. I'll tell you in a second why I think this is potentially more interesting than even the Rogan controversy, quoting Coin Desk. Over the weekend, the Ethereum name service, or ends, ENS, community voted to remove Brantley Milligan as a steward over a tweet he posted in 2016 that recently resurfaced. He will also be removed from his position as Director of Operations of the Dow's corresponding legal entity, True Names Limited. In the tweet, Milligan wrote, quote, homosexual acts are evil, transgenderism doesn't exist, abortion is murder, contraception is perversion, so is masturbation, and porn, end quote.

Milligan hasn't apologized for the tweet, citing his religious beliefs. In a post on Discord, he reaffirmed his beliefs and said that he's open to working with and being friends with a wide range of people. He also said that traditionally minded Christians, Muslims, and Jews should not be excluded from Web 3, and he has received messages of support from those who self-identism identify as being traditional followers of these religious groups. As of late Sunday Pacific time, community delegates from the ends Dow voted to remove Milligan from his position with a majority voting in favor. But the vote wasn't unanimous with some delegates warning about the dangers of

cancel culture or the irony of a decentralized service centralizing around the voice of one person. Quote, Brantley contributed to ends success and deserves to be here. I respect the fact that he stands by his words and doesn't pull the usual. It was four years ago. I'm different now. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Wrote, quote, woke and cancel people are more toxic than Brantley ever could be, pure herd mentality at work, end quote. Nick Johnson, founder and lead developer of ends, said mid-Monday, Asia time, that Brantley would be removed from the Dow's corresponding legal entity, end quote. So as I say, this controversy is more interesting to me because one of the bigger ideas that has been swirling around in the Web3 discourse is the idea of Dow's decentralized autonomous

organizations. If crypto is software and thus programmable and Ethereum, especially, is designed to be programmable for things beyond money like contracts and such, then in theory you could run a project or even a whole company on the blockchain with stakeholders voting with their tokens, and thus when you hear Web3 proponents say the users will be the owners in Web3, this is what they mean. The counter argument to this has always been the one that I first heard when I first heard of DOWs, and that would be, have you ever tried to serve on a community board or a condo association or even a PTA or anything like that? Was it a nightmare of infighting and disagreement that made you wonder how anything ever got done? I know that has been my experience. Serving on your neighborhood community board can be a nightmare.

So imagine what a Dow would be like. Imagine running a company where the board of directors is everyone and meeting. are held on a Discord channel. Can that work? Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens here and on other DAOs when controversies arise. Can DAOs actually function better or on par with traditional corporate structures? Or will they too fall victim to the Twitterization of everything? Just a new venue for endless infighting? Speaking of Twitter, the company is apparently testing out, adding a DM icon to tweets on iOS to help, quote, start a conversation, end quote. Though a lot of people say the shortcut could make users

even more susceptible to harassment, quoting the verge. Twitter is exploring a new way to send DMs on iOS, and it involves letting users slide into your inbox through a link on your tweets bypassing the DM button on your profile. The platform says this will make it easier to, quote, start a conversation from your timeline, but you can probably see how this can go very, very wrong. As public defender, Eliza Orleans points out, offering a shortcut to your DM. could make users even more susceptible to harassment. Instead of having to click through to your profile to get to your inbox, users can share their thoughts through a private message without ever having to leave the timeline

and just as easily as they could reply to your tweet. It's hard to see who exactly this feature could benefit. Close friends may want a quick way to DM each other, but I think most people are comfortable going to a friend's Twitter profile to send them a message or just simply continuing an existing conversation from their inbox. Giving users a shortcut to someone's private messages could open a pandemic, doors box of problems. Twitter already knows nasty DMs can be a problem, which is why it rolled out a feature in 2019 that automatically filters out abusive DMs. While Twitter did roll out a messenger-style

pop-up tab on the web in 2020, it actually makes sense. Unlike this new DM button, it doesn't really give you a shortcut to DM someone in direct response to a tweet. It instead lets you choose from your existing conversations or type in the username of the person you want to DM. If this new DM button never exits the testing phase. It's not clear if there will be an option for users to turn the feature off for safety and privacy reasons, end quote. There was also a lot of speculation over the weekend about when the next Apple event might be. The date March 8th keeps getting batted around, and in his newsletter this week, Mark German discusses that, but also the idea that Apple may release an entry-level MacBook Pro with an M2 processor sometime this year, and it will probably come without a touchbar,

motion or mini-l-D, quoting 9-5 Mac. To differentiate the 2021 MacBook Pro from the M1 Pro and M-1 Max, German expects Apple to compromise, display, processor, and storage. Not only that, but this Mac would also lose the touchbar, likely ending it once and for all. As German notes, this Mac is likely to keep an LCD screen, which means no mini-L-D or Pro-Motion. The rumored MacBook Air, on the other hand, could feature a mini-L-D display, but not Pro-Motion. Last but not least, not only will the entry-level MacBook Pro be updated with the M2 chip, but also the 24-inch iMac in entry-level Mac Mini and this revamped MacBook Air slated to launch sometime this year, end quote. And quoting Mac rumors. In his Power On newsletter

today, Bloomberg's Mark German reiterated that Apple is planning to hold a virtual event on Tuesday, March 8 to introduce new iPhone, SE, and iPad Air models, which are both expected to feature an A-15 chip and 5G support. German said Apple also plans to launch at least one new Mac this spring, but it's unclear if that Mac would be introduced at Apple's event. This new Mac could be a high-end Mac mini, powered by the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, and an Apple Silicon replacement for the 27-inch iMac is not expected to launch until as late as August or September. Apple has at least four new Macs powered by M2 chips in its pipeline, including refresh models of the MacBook Air, entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, 24-inch iMac, and entry-level Mac Mini, according to German.

It's likely these Macs will launch later in the year after Apple finishes releasing its final max with M1 Pro and M1 Max Chips, end quote. Not sure what to make of this, but on the Reed Max Substack, Max Reed, pointed out that many of the celebrities that you might have seen out promoting NFTs lately, like Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon on that Now Notorious Tonight Show segment, are either represented by or have links to OpenC Investor Creative Artists Agency. Fallon and Hilton are only two of the many celebrities who have purchased Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, Gwyneth Paltrow, Logan Paul, M&M, and the dreaded chain

smokers, all own apes. Justin Bieber has one, though the precise purchase mechanism and ownership of his is somewhat unclear. Other celebrities have gotten into different NFT collections. Reese Witherspoon, for example, is a collector and promoter of the World of Women NFT collection, which Gus Wenner's Rolling Stone tells me is, quote, cracking crypto's boys' club image. Witherspoon is overall an apparently intense enthusiast for the blockchain-based Web3 vision of the future of the internet in which NFTs are predicted to play a prominent role. I find the world of NFT-flogging celebrities fascinating, both because of the visceral skin-crawling

embarrassment I feel when I see people like Fallon and Hilton half-heartedly try to express enthusiasm for their new expensive Twitter avatars, and also because it gives me, you the sense that there is something going on behind the scenes here that I am not quite privy to. Where does a person like Paris Hilton or Eminem even hear about Bored Apes, who is recommending that they buy one? Is this really the best thing any of them can think to do with their money and fame? If you pay attention to both the Hollywood trades and the crypto press and smoke enough weed, you can begin to pick out the contours of an expanding interconnected celebrity-based Web3 financial cultural complex. Did you know, for example, that Jimmy Fallon is represented by CAA,

which is an investor in the NFT marketplace OpenC and which recently signed a deal to represent the NFT collector XeroxB1 who owns NFTs from BORDAPE Yacht Club and World of Women. Did you know that another CAA client, Ashton Coochor, is also an investor in OpenC through his company Sound Ventures, or that Coocher will be starring in a Netflix rom-com called Your Place or Mine with Reese Witherspoon, the most prominent owner of World of Women's NFTs,

who also happens to be married to a CAAA. agent, or that the people behind World of Women and Board Ape Yacht Club are both represented by Kucher's partner in Sound Ventures, the music manager Guy Oceri. Did you know that Oseri's other major venture these days is Peripop, a platform for connecting TikTok influencers to celebrities for collaborations, a platform used by none other than Paris Hilton? I don't quite know what to make of this. Is it a scam, a Dodge, a conspiracy? One of the funny things that the world of Web 3 seems intent on revealing is the extent to which the boundaries between concepts like Ponzi, scam, pyramid scheme, multi-level marketing, conspiracy,

and just regular old financial capitalism working as intended, are not really as clear as we might like or hope. In which case, maybe it's just a bunch of rich people and companies in the same couple businesses forming close ties. In NFT Kiritsu, as Malcolm Harris puts it, if you took a close look at the upper echelons of any industry, you could probably make a map like the one that I did connecting all these dots for NFT influencers. There is a lot of money in Hollywood and not always during a transitional era at clear place to put it. Celebrities are a natural fit for the Web3 world. More than anything else, the value of a given NFT is a function of its perceived exclusivity, coolness, and prominence. And so a halfway decent celebrity should be able to generate capital

gains on their NFT holdings simply by going on a popular nightly talk show and discussing their NFT portfolio with the host. One reason the clip is so weird and funny is that it's not all that different from Hilton going on The Tonight Show and talking about her favorite penny stocks, while Fallon enthusiastically confirms that he's invested to, end quote. As always, I don't know. I just thought it was interesting to note that CAA connection. And again, I have to do a quick disclosure here through an investing syndicate, not the ride home fund. I was a tiny investor in a secondary offering of Per Pop Shares at the end of last year. Hey, here's a mystery that has plagued me for the 20 years or so I've lived in the north.

Does anyone know why every year, in the very depths of winter, at 3 o'clock in the morning, inevitably all of your fire alarms suddenly start chirping, like they're low on batteries. But when you replace the batteries in all of them multiple times, again, at 3 in the morning, they still keep chirping, asking for a friend, a tired, tired friend who wonders why this always happens, who has been up since 3 a.m. two days in a row now. Talk to you tomorrow.