The Bill Simmons Podcast - Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Plus JackO's Sports Hell Continues | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 472)

Episode Date: January 23, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey to discuss Twitter's origins, the birth of the #hashtag and @ symbol, NBA Twitter, new technologies, Twitter reform, and much more (2:15). Then Bill calls up his buddy JackO to discuss Tom Brady, the New England Patriots almost moving to Hartford, Connecticut, some questionable decisions by the Yankees' front office, and Donald Trump's presidency (1:28:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. You know what's smart? Tony Romo knowing every single play the Patriots were going to run down the stretch of the AFC title game. That was pretty smart. Here's what else is smart. Go into ZipRecruiter.com slash BS to hire the right people for your business. It's technology. It identifies people with the right skills for your job.

It actively invites them to apply to get qualified candidates fast. Right now, my listeners can try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash BS. ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire. We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com, the world's greatest website, as well as The Ringer Podcast Network, which features a bunch of podcasts that we've already put up this week, including Winging It, Vince Carter, and Kent Bazemore. They talked to Dwayne Wade. He's only one of the 40 best basketball players of all time. You should probably listen to this.

We also did a Rewatchables, a brand new one, about Fast and Furious Part 1, which was called The Fast and the Furious. Shea Serrano and I broke that one down. We have The Recapables, where you can find The True Detective. A Flat Circle, our True Detective after show, hosted by Chris Ryan and Jason Concepcion. By the way, Game of Thrones is coming. It's happening.

Binge mode. They're getting ready. They're finishing up Harry Potter right now in binge mode, but eventually Game of Thrones is coming. It's happening. Binge mode. They're getting ready. They're finishing up Harry Potter right now in binge mode, but eventually Game of Thrones. We will be preparing like it is the NBA playoffs. Coming up, we're going to talk to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. And then just to get a little sports in here,

we're going to call my buddy Jacko, who really hates the Patriots. I don't fully understand it. I don't know what the Patriots did to him personally, but we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the Yankees-Red Sox offseason as well. Maybe just a little dash of Trump, a little sprinkling. We'll see how that part goes. But first, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this on a Friday.

Jack Dorsey is here. What is your official title? Creator of Twitter? How do you like to be? I'm a co-founder. Co-founder. There wasn't a singular creator of Twitter? How do you like to be? I'm a co-founder. Co-founder. There wasn't a singular creator of Twitter, though. It seemed like it was in a car.

We had a bunch of people who were creative that all kind of helped to get it. But we all came in at it very different ways. I came at it from, for the majority of my career, I worked in this field called dispatch, which was around taxis and ambulances and black cars and whatnot. And that's where my fascination was, just kind of seeing what was happening around a particular city. Ev and Biz came at it from Blogger.

So this simple one button publishing. And then Noah Glass started this company called Odeo, which was a podcasting company. It's kind of weird that didn't work considering podcasts became a thing. We gave up a little bit too early. We shifted a bunch of our strategy because Apple entered into the space with a directory.

And the big part of our offering was a directory, although the really interesting part of Odeo was that it was one-button podcasting. You could record right from the web. You didn't need any special recording software and upload it right there. But after that moment, we weren't as passionate about it.

And that gave rise to working on things that we were passionate about, And Twitter came out of that. So the status thing really intrigued you as part of what this was. Just like, hey, I'm doing this. Yeah, well, LiveJournal really intrigued me back in the day. IRC, the Internet Relay Chat, intrigued me. And then AOL Instant Messenger, this concept of being able to set, I'm in a meeting, or I'm on a call, or I'm listening to Kendrick, or whatever it is. But in all those services,

you were bound to a desk, into a desktop computer. And the idea was, what if you could be anywhere? And I worked on something with, I don't know if you remember the RIM 850. It was a predecessor to the BlackBerry. It was this email pager. So I built a little system that allowed me to take my RIM 850 and send an update to it. Kind of like LiveJournal. But anyone could choose to subscribe to that. But no one was really using the 850s back then. And it was just

the wrong time. But in 2005, 2006, text messaging got really big in this country. And that's what unlocked everything. And we started Twitter as almost a text-only service. We had an archivability on the web. We had an updateability on the web. But the electricity of it was the fact that I could take out my phone anywhere I was. And you had the keypads. Blackberries were just getting big. But I could take it out and I could just say what was happening, what I was doing, what I was thinking. And any time I did that, Biz got a buzz in his pocket pocket and he could take it out and see what was happening with me. And it just made it made our world feel a lot smaller.

So 2008, because I remember I didn't join Twitter until the spring of 2009. 2008, I remember Facebook had done that status thing on the top, which I think was probably ripped off from you guys. But it was basically, you know, I would have my wife's friend would be, you know, like, Shannon is getting ready for my big meeting today. And that would be her status. And it was kind of interesting. And then it got a little bit annoying. And then I think with Twitter, it was a little bit of the same thing. I'm doing this.

And then eventually it seemed like people started to figure out, oh, wait, this is a way to comment on things, to weigh in, to weigh in on a moment. And I had two friends, Dave Jacob and Kevin Watts from ESPN. And both of them were like, you should be on Twitter. It's great. You could watch a basketball game and just tweet your thoughts. And I was like, oh, is that a good thing?

And then I think that April I just started messing around with it. I was like oh this is cool and then people react and it seemed like everybody kind of figured that out somewhere between 08 and summer 2009 right yeah we we started playing with it in 2006 and that was back in uh back in march of 2006 and it was more focused on um kind of what was happening around me and my status. It was much more narcissistic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People would talk about what was happening in front of them, not just kind of a text selfie, but what was happening around them.

But in 2007, we were at South by Southwest and people used it in a way that they would kind of share what sessions they were visiting. And all the people that were speaking would say something like, if you want to know what sessions I find interesting or what I'm going to or what bars I'm going to tonight, follow me on Twitter. And that was also the first South by Southwest that New York Times and Wall Street Journal and major media had presence for the digital aspect of South by Southwest, not just the arts. And we came into focus because of that. And after that,

to me, this is one of the most beautiful things about Twitter is the people that used it showed us what they wanted it to be. So, you know, you started out with this broadcast of status and then people were trying to talk with one another and they were using this funky little symbol, the at symbol, to address one another. And we noticed this happening not in mass, but consistently. And they were just addressing each other by name using this at symbol in front. We programmed it so that anytime we saw that in the text, it would actually link to their profile. And we evolved that even more by creating a whole tab within the service that allowed us to see any time their name was mentioned by anyone, even if they didn't follow them. And that opened the door to conversation. So that opened this

experience where people could watch a basketball game together and not have to know who to follow to do it but simply by mentioning someone else you are in the conversation yeah and uh and that gives us gave rise to this feeling of you know what you experience at a at a basketball game or a football game where you have this you know kind of roar of the crowd where you can see what people are thinking and how people are feeling and these are people you probably don't know. They're not people you have in your address book, unlike Facebook. But you're sharing an interest in that moment in time, and that's enough. And sometimes people follow each other based on that, but it's not necessary.

So you get all this unique insight and perspective almost immediately because the thing is open, because it's public, and because it's text, it's so fast to consume. And the constraint helped us a lot, too. Could you see, was there a point where people were just grabbing handles left and right? Oh, yeah. Because your handle's at Jack, and there's probably a year-long window there where it's like, oh, here's my name. I'll just grab the Twitter handle. Yeah, there's a— And that must have flipped where it's like oh here's my name I'll just grab the Twitter handle and that must have flipped right?

I have a very common name it means 14 different things in the dictionary and there's a real benefit to starting a service and getting the name first I remember I couldn't get at Bill Simmons initially because when I joined in like beginning of 2009 that was gone

I'm sure somebody had a parody account version of it. And I did something else and then eventually Twitter, I think with people who are a little more visible, they tried to figure out ways to get them the usernames if it was possible. There was definitely a tidal wave. We've benefited a lot from

some of the older models of the internet and pseudonymity. We didn't require real names on our service. And that was important and remains important because you get, you know, you get to express a little bit more of yourself, but you also get to build identity. It's not anonymity because we're not incentivizing or we don't want to incentivize people coming into the service saying something and then bouncing out. We want them to build up an identity around whatever name they choose.

But there was definitely a tidal wave of people claiming names and then us having to, if someone did want their real name and represent that or something that represents their brand, try to retrieve it. But generally it's, it's, it's worked out and we, we saw, we saw a lot of creativity around the names, but then the next big thing was, was the hashtag. Yeah. Well, you've also, you, especially lately, you've gotten a ton of criticism for the fact that the anonymity and the pseudonyms is actually a really dangerous thing. Yeah. criticism for the fact that the anonymity and the pseudonyms is actually a really dangerous thing. Does it seem like there's ever been an effective path to solve that? Although now people have been really pushing you

and everybody else that runs Twitter, like, you have to solve this now. I actually agree with that. Identity is hard, and I do agree with that as well. But if you look at services with a real name policy, they see the same sorts of issues that we see on our service. So it's not as simple as requiring real names. What I think we need to do and what we're looking much deeper into is we had an open API, which

gave a window to a lot of automations. Explain what that means, because open API is what? It's a programming interface. So a developer could connect with Twitter and basically act like any account, act like a human. And that's where some of the problems really began. There's a lot of benefits to that as well, because you can have something like sports PSA or a lot of automations that allow you to see something in real time that humans just aren't capable of in terms of speed. But there's also a lot of confusion that ensues from it as well. So one of the things that we're focused on right now is how do we clearly identify the

humans on the service? And even that is complicated because scripting gets more and more sophisticated. You know, we can, folks can script the mobile app, not just the web, not just the programming interface that's meant for developers. So if we can utilize technologies like Face ID or Touch ID or some of the biometric things that we find on our devices today to verify that this is a real person, then we can start labeling that and give people more context for what they're interacting with. And ideally, that adds some credibility to the equation. So it is something we need to fix. We haven't had strong technology solutions in the past, but that's definitely changing with these supercomputers we have in our pockets now.

It's funny, there's been backlash with Face ID now too because Facebook just did this 10-year challenge thing and Wired wrote a really good piece about, wait a second, this is a really kind of ingenious way for them to actually get more facial recognition and help their software. And now they have this 10-year span of photos of people, and this is actually kind of nefarious. And that was the first time I was like, oh, man.

Because I was pro Face ID, and I still think for, especially like with going into baseball stadiums and basketball stadiums and stuff like that, I actually think it could be a really effective way to make stadiums safer and arenas safer, things like that. But then something about giving people my face makes me nervous with all the advancements we have with the ability of people to put faces on other stuff. So I don't know. How do you feel about that stuff? Like just people using technology like that for nefarious ways. Well, I mean, first, if you consider what FaceSpec has access to, they already have all the variations of your face throughout 10 years. So they don't need to create a meme challenge to do that.

They can do that if they need to. If they have some objective around that. Something like Face ID to me is a very thoughtful approach because Apple when they created this and a bunch of the other standards that have ensued,

a lot of the technology is local. You've seen this as a conversation in terms of, well, what does that mean for law enforcement? There are no back doors into it. Security is, you know, a constantly evolving thing, of course. But I think it's important that people have control over their own security. So the local aspect of it is critical. It's not networked.

It's not accessible by Apple or third parties. But I think the most important thing is, how do we get behind this principle of earning trust? But you understand why people's trust has eroded in basically all social platforms. Totally, totally, totally. And I think it's easy to go to one method of earning trust, which is transparency. But there are to one method of earning trust, which is transparency.

But there are so many methods of earning trust. Explainability of what algorithms are doing. We're offloading so many of our decisions to these algorithms. And a lot of them are engineered to explain why they're making the decision or what the criteria they're using to do so. Reliability is an element of trust. Straightforward communication is an element of trust. Straightforward communication is an element of trust. So as a company, we've set a principle for ourselves. And one of our most important principles is earning trust.

And there's going to be multiple ways to do that. But every initiative that we do, whether it be within the product itself or how we talk, needs to carry with it an element of how are we earning trust with this move? Do you feel like this is a crisis for you? Because I know it is for Facebook and for Twitter, I think in a lot of ways it is. But with Facebook, it seems much deeper and darker. But it's not great for Twitter either.

No, it's not great for Twitter either. No, it's not. It's not great for all of us. I mean, and not just the technology industry, but society in general. I mean, I think a healthy skepticism, I think a healthy distrust is necessary when in relation to government, in relation to companies like ours, in relation to technology that we use every single day that we move all these decisions to. I think that skepticism is healthy and it's critical. So I wouldn't call it a crisis. I do think it's existential. I do think if we don't pay attention to it that we become less relevant, less viable to the world, and we won't be used. So we have to put it first and foremost in everything that we do. And, you know, we build these technologies and, you know,

when you start creating these things, at least back in 2006, we weren't thinking a lot about what we now see because we just didn't have to. We didn't see the scale that we now encounter. I would guess you wouldn't think about it at all, right? You're just creating this thing for people to tell, hey, I'm here, I'm doing this, I'm thinking this. And I don't think anybody could have seen within 10 years it's affecting elections and doing all the things that social media has turned into. We definitely didn't predict or perceive or give much thought to it. How do you reconcile that personally?

Because it certainly ballooned into something you couldn't have seen. But at the same time, you and everybody else who runs these big platforms gets criticized all the time. I just read an interview today about, I think it was the Huffington Post, and they were just directly asking about all these different things about Alex Jones and all these things that Twitter had kind of opened the door for.

And on the one hand, I'm like, yeah, I'm glad they asked that. And on the other hand, I'm like, I don't really know what Twitter can do in some of these situations other than to basically completely change what it is. Which leads to the question, is it time to really start thinking that way? It's definitely time to start thinking that way. But I don't think we're in a different world right now.

I think we're in a different phase of what was already happening and everything is a lot more visible. It's a lot more visible to the world, but it's also a lot more visible to us. And as you reach certain scale and you solve particular problems, new ones emerge. And back in 2006, we weren't thinking about it because we didn't have to. And I'm trying to diagnose why we didn't feel like we had to. I think some of it's like you're always building these things with a desire for them becoming more and more successful, but knowing that the probability of such is very low. And the thing that we control right now is what we're building and if people value it. And how do we put more checkpoints in place that as we do become more valuable to people, that at the same time we're earning more of that trust? And how do we become a leader within that?

How do we become a company that is one of the most trusted in the world. We have a few questions around what might get us to better answers there, but nothing really solid. We know that we need to be a lot more open. We know we need to be a lot more transparent. We know we need to invest heavier in technology that is clear and straightforward and can express for itself how it makes decisions and why it makes decisions. And those are all really tough problems.

But we feel the responsibility of how people use our tool and the off-platform ramifications of what that means. I think harassment's your biggest issue. And I think it's been your biggest issue all decade. And, you know, the first five years of the decade, it was basically like

you put the onus on the user to be like, I didn't like what that person said on blocking them. You know, it was their decision.

It wasn't really Twitter's decision. You know, being a public figure during most of the Twitter time, I read horrible things about myself on Twitter. And sometimes with Block,

and then I finally stopped reading my replies. I think what's happened the last three to four years with how women are treated on Twitter and how minorities have been treated, it doesn't seem like it's getting better. And I don't really know what your alternatives are with this other than to really severely change the platform. Because I'm fascinated by all this.

I've read some of the stuff you've talked about, and you're acknowledging that there's a problem. But at some point, something has to roll out, right? So when is it going to roll out? When are we actually going to fix this? Yeah, so first, I don't think there's going to be one single fix. It's just going to be a constant evolution. And we've, um, we asked ourselves a question some time ago. Um, what is, what is healthy conversation look like? What does it feel like? It's a good question. You all, I mean, we, we've all been in conversations that just feel toxic and that we want to walk away from.

We've likewise been in conversations that feel really empowering, that feel awesome, that feel like we learned something, we took something away from it that benefits us. And we feel, if we have those feelings, if we have those experiences in real life, in the physical, we can probably measure them more meaningful conversations to a higher level and maybe put some of the ones that might lean more toxic a little bit lower. And I think with all this, it's a question of friction. How much work does one have to do? I will say that we don't feel great about the state that we're in. Like you mentioned five years ago, the burden was on the victim. Today, it's still on the victim. Our entire harassment and abuse framework is dependent upon people reporting harassment and abuse.

And it's completely unfair that the victim of the abuse and the harassment has to report it themselves. when they're already in a situation that feels dismissive, shuts them down, or may put them in some sort of state where they don't feel safe. And they certainly don't feel safe to express themselves. So we've been looking at how we can use technology like machine learning and deep learning to automate some of that, to be more proactive about... So certain trigger words and trigger sentences? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or if somebody is more prone to being kind of negative, maybe that person needs to go? Yeah, we started with looking at behavior. Yeah. Not the content, but the actual behavior. So it is probable that if one person is attacking you, they're probably also attacking others. If they're slinging slurs at you,

they're probably doing the same to others. And by looking at the network first and the network of behaviors that they're doing, we can be a lot more predictive about how these things should be amplified within your own space. Most of Twitter is by your discretion. You follow certain people because you find what

they have to say valuable. It's your own little bubble. Yeah. But that's the flip side of this that we should talk about. But there are parts of Twitter like your replies, like search, like trends, which are shared spaces that anyone can inject themselves in. And we found over the past 10 years that people have found ways to game this. People have found ways to circumvent some of the, well, we didn't have a lot of algorithms back in the day, but circumvent a lot of the products so that they can rise above it all.

And they're really targeting this abuse in a velocity that is hard to, hard to deal with. So we've been, over the past year, we've been identifying these shared areas and then where people are gaming the system and not allowing the amplification. You can still get to the content, but you have to do work to do so. And, you know, there are people who want to see everything and, you know, see all the critique, you know, no matter what the flavor is and no matter the toxicity. But the unfair thing is the stuff that you don't ask for that just comes flying at you that has an effect of shutting you down. Now on the flip side, I do think a big challenge we have and something that we are definitely responsible for helping to create is this concept of an echo chamber and a filter

bubble. If you follow only the perspectives that you want to hear, it just constantly emboldens your own view. Like during you know, during Brexit, if you followed the leaders of Vote Leave, all you were hearing is reasons to leave. However, if you did some work to go to the hashtag Vote Leave, 95% of the conversation, 95% of the tweets you would see there are reasons to leave, but 5% are different perspective. And maybe if you see that there's an opening that you might just consider something a little bit different or weigh your own thinking process against it, it may embolden you even more. And there's some research to suggest that.

But in the product today, we don't allow anyone, we don't enable anyone to follow the topic or an interest of a conversation. We only allow for this account-driven methodology and that also builds these filter bubbles in the echo chambers and we need to be aware of that. So we focus a lot of our energy in addition to the health of the conversation So we focus a lot of our energy, in addition to the health of the conversation,

on making Twitter a lot more conversational, making it a lot more interest-driven and topic-driven instead of account-driven. I don't see us as a social network that benefits from the address book you have in your phone. I see us as an interest network. You are interested in the NBA. You're interested in your phone. I see it as an interest network. You are interested in the NBA, you're interested in the Warriors, and you may not know the people having the conversation

around this topic, but they have something interesting to say that you find valuable. I would say you have nine to 12 months to figure it out before people really turn on it. You think that's fair? Well, we should certainly have that urgency. And I don't know a specific timeline that we have to figure a bunch out. It just seems like an issue that's becoming more and more written about, talked about, people being fired up about. And I'm sure the presidency hasn't helped either from that front. But that's another issue

that we should talk about that you have to deal with where you have somebody who's running the country who's using Twitter as basically a way to circumvent the press and to circumvent talking to reporters who might ask them questions that have balance. And some people have said, you should kick them off.

Don't let them use Twitter that way. That would also defeat the purpose of everything this platform has created. people have said, you should kick them off. Don't let them use Twitter that way. That would also defeat the purpose of everything this platform has created. And I got to be honest, I see both sides. I don't really know how I feel about it. I don't think it's a great idea to kick Trump off Twitter, but I also see the case for it. I'm sure you've been asked this a million times. What is the case?

What's the case for and against in your mind? Well, I believe it's really important that we hear directly from our global leaders. I believe it's really important. I do too, but I wish we could hear from him when he has reporters that could ask him stuff. If he's just going to use Twitter to avoid that. That, to me, seems dangerous. You know, I've seen patterns that he communicates with on Twitter in similar ways he does with reporters. So I think there are some parallels there. You think it would just be the same quotes?

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that have been said on Twitter that have also been said to reporters and vice versa. The crazy thing is sometimes he, you know, he says something to reporters and people assume that he actually said it on Twitter, but it was actually on television or calling up a, you know, a television show and saying it there. So I think the communication pattern has been fairly consistent, but I think it's really critical that we hear from our leaders. We under, see how they think, whether we like it or not. That generates a conversation about what we need to do and how we need to act, and it influences how we vote.

But you can see the wanting to, you know, shut that, you know, shut the voice, shut that voice down or what, what he's saying in a particular moment down. But I just think it's so critical to understand how a person thinks and, and what they think about. And that conversation in between the tweets to to me, is critical to moving the world and understanding what we need to address, what we need to acknowledge, and how to move forward in the first place. So I would see it as a significant gap if we just went around and shut down accounts that we don't agree with. I would rather have a conversation about why we don't agree with it. So that has been one of the recurring themes of these last couple of years about Twitter

and I think Facebook as well and Instagram have tried to position themselves as we're just a platform that people use. We're not here to judge. And then eventually over the last two years people have said actually we need you to judge. We need your help. So now we're in this no man's land

where you had the Alex Jones thing and some other incidents like that where you guys have actually had to intervene and change your policies or tweak them in some ways. And then the other side's like, well, this is now, we no longer have freedom of speech. How does this get resolved?

Does this just go on forever? Is this one of those things where people are on this side on the left, people are on this side on the right, and we're never going to figure out the right way to do this? Well, there's a lot to unpack there. I know. So it was a big question. I'll say this.

Let's talk about this from a use case perspective. How do people see Twitter? And I think people see Twitter as they would a public square. And I see, I believe that they have the same expectations that they would of a public square. I can go into it and I can say whatever I want. And some people come up and they'll listen to me because they find it valuable. But when it crosses a line of me yelling across the public square and harassing someone, there's usually a fairly typical reaction

where concerned citizens within that public square will call that behavior out. Or some form of protection or guardian or people who are paid to look out for the public square go over and have a word to change a behavior. So I do think in the minds of so many people, Twitter acts like a public square. And I do think we have a responsibility to watch when people are taking advantage of some of the mechanics of that public square to inject their message to people that weren't, didn't ask to receive it? Or just openly made something up.

Or disrupting the peace. Yeah. Making something up is a completely different thing. You know, we've been lying as humans forever. We're not going to solve the lying problem. We can help provide context around what someone is saying. We can help provide context behind helping to show what people's intent is. Misinformation is not a solvable problem. When misinformation crosses a line into intent to mislead, mislead into a particular action,

that is something that we can at least recognize the patterns of. And that's what you've tried to step in a little bit more with the Alex Jones type situations. We're trying more broadly. I mean, a good example of this is we, you know, back in 2016, we saw some tweets that were

intending to suppress votes. And the way they were intending to suppress votes is they tweet, someone tweeted out an image of a number to text to register to vote. And people could text this number. And if you texted this number, you actually weren't registered to vote. And something really interesting happened. First, the wisdom of the crowds really took over. So people started calling it out. And the number of impressions of people calling this thing out as fake, as something that's misleading to an action that wouldn't result in what you thought it was going to be was 10x more than the impressions of that originating tweet. But we can't rely upon the crowds to do this. We can't rely upon the wisdom of the crowds in the network. So we also need to be aware of the actions and what people are trying to do with the network so that we can diminish the amplification. So back to the question of freedom of speech, I just think that's the wrong conversation. I think the conversation that we need to be having is around attention and around amplification. And that to me is the responsibility that we have. Like people pay us with their attention, um, to serve up things that they, that will intrigue them, that will, that are interesting, that, um, you know,

push their thinking. Um, and we need to be hyper aware of the, um, the ramifications of those recommendations and the ramifications of that amplification. And the reason I don't think freedom of speech is the right conversation is because technology is making it such that some years from now, all content will be available forever. It won't be centralized.

And it's really a question of how we contribute to it and what we get out of it. And that I think is our role, to make it easy to contribute, but also to make it valuable to get something out of it. And I know it doesn't feel this way today. And I know it feels like this is a far off future and not something that may not even be possible for Twitter. But I would love for people to end a session with Twitter and to walk away from it feeling like they learned something new, whether it be around an interest, whether it be around another human somewhere around the world. But they actually walked away learning something. And I don't think most people experiencing Twitter

have that feeling today. I think it's one of being overwhelmed. I think it's outrage. It's how do I make sense of all this or anger. It's passionate. I think that's why people seem to enjoy Instagram so much these days because it's just pictures. And it's really-

It's light. It's light and it's easy. And it's like, here's my picture. It's not showing what we don't want to see. The comments are much tougher to kind of dig through. It made me think, well, first of all, is that one of Twitter's biggest mistakes was not figuring out how to work with Instagram way back when and letting Facebook take

it. I don't know how close was Twitter ever involved in potentially buying Instagram. It was, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We, like I was, so Kevin was our intern at Odeo and I was, I was one of the first 10, 10 people on Instagram. I was one of the first investors in it. I love what they did, but it's very different. You don't think it could emerge with Twitter in some cool way? Oh, I think it certainly could. But I don't know. I just think there's something so powerful about text because it gets at thinking directly. You just can't get the vibe of how someone thinks

necessarily through an image or in some cases, even a video. And both video medium, it takes a long time to consume it. And text is really fast. It's to the point. It's just so close to our thinking process. And I think it's so beautiful. So's not something that we enjoy seeing, but it exists and we need to acknowledge it and we need to address it. And, you know, there's all these calls for, you know, when, you know, we need to make Twitter better, but like Twitter is a reflection of the world

and what we need to make better. But maybe people don't want that reflection right now. But what we need to make better... But maybe people don't want that reflection right now. But what we need to make better is some of the parts that people have taken advantage of it. And people have taken advantage of spouting stuff that diminishes others in a way that isn't fair because they've gamed the system. So we should be reflective of the world,

but we should not enable people to be so vocal if they haven't earned that audience. Why haven't you given your users more say over who comments on their tweets and also who can even see them? I mean, you have the block feature, but for instance, what if there was a box that people would be like,

I can tweet, but there's no replies underneath this. Yeah, we're considering this. So what are the pros and the cons of that idea? Yeah, we're considering a lot of these controls specifically around conversations from the original tweeter. So if I tweet something, how might I control the conversation? So the pros

obviously are you as a as someone who's starting the conversation or maybe hosting the conversation, you have more curation abilities. And that can generate a conversation that can be more thoughtful and deeper and going

down a path that you want to take it. Well, especially if it was just the only people that could reply are people that you follow. Yeah. Yeah. So now it's like a more confined more confined conversation that feels more like a, like what we have on Slack with the ringer, where it's basically like we're on these little Slack channels and it's just a little more friendly and collegial. Yeah. So the, so the cons of that are, are the bubble that you're creating and the fact that you're, you're limiting the variety of

perspective and some of the power of Twitter, but also can be strewed as a negative, is that really anyone around the world can come into a conversation with you and talk with Bill Simmons. It's extremely powerful. And for you, that person might have an insight that you just weren't thinking about because they're in the middle of a place

that you've never visited or never thought about or have a context that you just don't have. So that's one thing we need to balance. But the other thing that we need to balance is Twitter has been so useful in speaking truth to power. Yeah. And as you have powerful figures who are able to curate a conversation more, shut down comments or shut down conversation, that becomes a real significant negative. And, you know, you can imagine global leaders that you don't agree with shutting down comments

that they don't agree with that then you don't get to see. So the only way we can address this- Right, you think you would, I can see that case. I still feel like, I would like to see it like from a trial period to see how it goes. Yeah, we need to feel it. So we are working on this, and we want to experience it ourselves, and we want to give it out to our beta program,

and we want to be eyes wide open. And the only way we know how to do that is to add more transparency in the product. So you can imagine that if you were to moderate a comment, for instance, or a reply, we should show that you did that. We don't necessarily detach it from the conversation.

We just add a little bit more friction so that people want to see everything. People want to see the stuff that you moderated or that you pushed down below the fold. They can see it and they can form their own opinions. Maybe they quote tweet that and they start their their own opinions. And maybe they quote tweet that and set, they start their own conversation about the thing that you moderated around. So,

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you get $80 off your first month. So that's it. Back to the pod. What about editing tweets? Because that's the one I've always been mystified by. Twitter has operated like, look, you typed it, you're stuck with it for life. It's like I misspelled somebody.

Now I have to delete the tweet and rewrite it because my Apple phone changed it to a typo basically. And now I look like an idiot. No, I get it. Can I give you some context on why no edit first and then like how we're thinking about it? So back to the start of this conversation, we started as text messaging.

Yeah. And if you were, one way to view Twitter is, what if you had the ability to text the world? Yeah. You'd have a text conversation with the world. You can't take back text. You can't edit text. You can't take back text.

And the beauty of conversation is that if you say something wrong, you correct it. Like, conversation evolves. It's not a post. And that's the thing about, you know, Instagram or blogs. It's a post. You compose yourself. You put something up. It's a post. You compose yourself. You put something up. It's a statement.

And conversation is different. The conversation that we're having, if I say something that I need to correct, I just say it and the conversation evolves. And it's only as good as this last part of the conversation, how it twists and turns. So we're mindful of that, but that's the historical context of not enabling edit

because when you tweet something, we fan it out to all your followers and to search and the replies. And it's already been seen within five minutes. People have been pushed. The horse is out of the barn. It's been pushed. But then we look into the use case.

And there's a few things that people want to do with edit. One is the example that you brought up is, I just made a mistake. Like, you know, I misspelled something. I don't want to be known for this misspelling. So that's me like once a week. A five minute window to correct might be an interesting feature, but you have to keep in mind that.

Oh, I like that. Like a one minute, 60 second shot clock. And that might be an interesting feature, but you have to keep in mind that. Oh, I like that. Like a one minute, 60 second shot clock. And that might be too long, right? That might be too long. So you,

you get some time to reflect on what you just said and, and maybe correct it. But you have to keep in mind that it pushes back the delivery. It pushes back the, the fan out. So it pushes back the real time. So like if I'm commenting during a basketball game and and now it's a 30-second window delay. Now it might be delayed 30 seconds.

So we just have to be mindful of some of the power of Twitter and the electricity of it is this real-time feeling and the vibe of it. So we have to be mindful of that. Another thing that people have asked us for is, man, I tweeted a URL. It's the wrong URL. Or the URL changed. This link to a website, it changed.

So I need to correct that. Now that one might be longer than five minutes. People want to go back to an original tweet. Or they brought the URL down and reposted it. And now that tweet has, that's happened to me a lot of times. So the danger with that is you sent that out 30 minutes ago or maybe a day ago or a week ago and it's

up, it's updated and you really need to crack that. But all these people might've retweeted you or reply to it or quote tweeted it. And meanwhile, you're, you know, you want to do something a little bit more devious and you change the URL to

something completely different. So you were, you started this tweet saying one thing. That makes sense. People agreed, more or less, with a retweet. And then you completely changed the message. So that requires a change log. So that requires showing that you edited this thing

and you completely changed the message. So there's a bunch of complications there. And then there's another use case where, I said something stupid 10 years ago, and I need to clarify what I said. And I think the world right now, I mean, we see so much of this right now where people are being, you know, tweets from 10 years ago or 13 years ago are being dragged up and pointed out. And this is a reason you should be canceled completely when it was a different context. And if we don't give you the ability to clarify what you said, or we don't give each other the ability to clarify and the ability to learn and evolve as conversation does,

then what are we doing here? We're creating a culture where people can't make mistakes and feel bad for making failures instead of what we should be doing, which is learning from them, admitting it and moving on. But Twitter is also, I mean, you know the irony of that, right?

Twitter is also the number one reason outrage culture exists. So, I mean, it literally is by far the LeBron James of that conversation. It allows people to just basically be like, this happened. Let's get them. And then we're off. And that's basically been Twitter since I would say around

2012 maybe. Took a couple years. But eventually people kind of realized how to use it in group. And in some cases it's good. In other cases it's not. It's dangerous. Going back to your question on is this fixable

and do you have to look at the foundational aspects of it? Yes. We have to look at what the service incentivizes. And I would agree that the service doesn't incentivize learning right now. The service does in degrees incentivize

echo chambers. It does in degrees incentivize echo chambers. It does in degrees incentivize outrage. And self-promotion. And self-promotion. And I did this. I have this book coming out. Here's my new column. Here's my new podcast. Or look at this idiot Twitter do your thing. And these flash

mouths of people going and attacking. That's not something we feel great about, but that is in the mechanics of what we built. And to truly fix this, and it's not going to be nine months. It's not going to be a year. This stuff takes time because these are the underlying dynamics of the service. We have to look at what we're incentivizing. And it's not that we should be incentivizing anything, but we are right now. People open up the app and we are telling them something to do. Whether it be look at that heart and look at how many people have liked this tweet or look at how many people have retweeted this or look at how many people replied or look at how many people follow this account. And all those signals are incentivizing a desire in me to contribute in that particular way.

And if there were one thing that I would want to incentivize, it's contribution to a global conversation. I know, but you realize how holistic that sounds though, right? You're probably not getting that. I know it sounds great, but you're just not getting it. We're not going to get it in the next... This is the internet. The internet is a dark place.

You're never going to find Nirvana with Twitter. It's always going to be polarizing. There will be polarizing aspects of it, but if we don't help get this, I just believe it's dire for the world. There are significant conversations we should be having as a world, not as a nation, as a world. Like climate change, like economic disparity, like the displacement of work from AI. Well, you've shown democracies in foreign countries.

There's been a lot of good things that Twitter's done as well. But no one nation state can fix these problems. This has to be done with a global conversation. So if we can't do our part to at least incentivize more of the conversation at a global level, then we've failed. I've been dying to ask you this. I was like, someday I'm going to meet him and I'm going to ask him this. Why isn't Twitter a subscription? Why haven't you thought of some sort of model?

First of all, you'd make money from it. But isn't there some model where it could be like you get four free tweets a day? And then for a dollar a month, you get 10. And then if you want to tweet 15 times a day, that's $4 a day. And then if, like, isn't there some way to do this where you're basically de-incentivizing people who can just go on and go nuts and there's actually some coherence to it? Or am I overthinking it?

Because the subscription model is now becoming a thing all over the place with media. Why wouldn't that happen on Twitter? There is. The simple answer is accessibility. Not everyone can afford to pay a service like Twitter. But if you're giving them five free tweets a day or four free tweets a day, wouldn't that help?

It may. We should be experimenting with our models. We should definitely be experimenting with how we run our business and what we make money from. The thing that's important to me is that we're aligning the incentives with who we serve. I don't think they're in perfect alignment today. We benefit from people's attention. I'm hyper aware of what that means and what that means for our business model and, and how that could evolve.

But we should be looking at things like subscription and we are. What does Twitter platinum look like? How expensive is it? What do I get? I don't know. I can follow anyone and nobody can see who I follow. Premium or prime or, I don't know. Is it, is it, is it something on the consumption side? Is it something on the consumption side? Is it something on the reach side? Is it speed, access to information? All these things are consideration. One of the interesting things that I have issues with on the service is I read a lot of news articles through Twitter because people tweet about them. And every single publisher has a different paywall and they all have different gates

for those paywalls and one might have three free articles and then another one might have five and as someone who uses the service I just want one thing like you know just make it easy so I don't have to go through all these paywalls so. Paywall bundle.

These are all solvable problems and interesting products, but we will prioritize them. Right now, the prioritization is on health. Twitter bronze, Twitter gold, Twitter platinum. The branding will be interesting. It should be bird-related, maybe not metals.

I want to do a speed round with you. Just some questions. 2008, as you were figuring out what Twitter was, how would you describe that stage of your life? Because you got bounced that year, and there was a book written by Nick Belton about the whole thing. I never know, because I've been reported on.

There's always two sides to every story. But the perception at the time was like, you created this thing, but you also want to do all these other things. And your focus wasn't 100% on it. Is that a fair narrative in retrospect? Well, the one word for it was, it was an awakening for me. I, uh, you know, I, I attribute a lot of who I am today to some of the events during that time. I didn't want to do a lot of other things. I wanted to make, I wanted to experiment a lot with. It was like, you're doing hot yoga and you're, you have all these other interests and people

are like, why isn't this guy working 19 hours a day? Seemed to be the criticism. Yeah. Look, but you know but if I can't be healthy, I'm not going to be able to show up for work. What would you do differently about 2008? I don't know. There were so many circumstances that I didn't control that ended in the outcome that happened. So I don't know if I,

I guess I would communicate better as to why I thought doing hot yoga, Bikram yoga was important to my health. Take a fashion course. Yeah. Like all these things inspire me and they make me more creative and I don't want to be one dimensional. I want to, I want to, you know, I, I believe my creativity is, is only a function of what

I see. And if I'm only seeing one thing, I'm not going to be reflective of, of everything in the world. And we're going to build something for just one class of people or one dimension of people. And that's not interesting to me. What is it like after you create something to then basically get pushed aside for a couple of years? It's like you've, you've fathered this baby and now you're being told to just leave. It's, it was really hard. I, I, I cried that day. I mean, it was, you know, I'm an, I'm an introvert, meaning that not like when a lot of people

think about introverts, they think shy, but introvert is someone who gets their energy from solitude and being alone. And I just kind of, I went away to a cave. And it was pretty dark, but I love the service so much and I want the best for it. And if the organization didn't feel I was it, then eventually I got to some amount of peace with that. And the thing that helped me realize that was starting something else,

starting Square, reconnecting, going back to St. Louis, my hometown, reconnecting with one of my first bosses when I was 15 years old, deciding that we wanted to work together again, not knowing what we wanted to do, but that we just wanted to work together. And Square coming out of that was instrumental. And I just learned so much from that moment. But I guess if there was one thing I'd do differently, it's just communicate

the why. Why all these things are important to me and why they ultimately will make Twitter better. But it also needs, it requires some time. These things take time. They require patience. What's your life look like if you actually joined Facebook? Because that was a big dalliance right after you left Zuckerberg. You'd been talking to him anyway. It didn't seem like they from everything I read didn't seem like they had the perfect job for you.

There's a world in which you go there, right? There was never a world that I would go there. Really? They talked to me. They wanted me to join. I met with only two people there, Mark and Chris. And we had conversations,

but it's not something that I want to do. I wanted to start something. My life is, with the exception of Odeo and this company called Riverbed, I never had a real job. I consulted. I created my own things. I lived on consulting paycheck to consulting paycheck. I had no money whatsoever. When I started Square, I was in significant credit card debt to the tune of $400,000. Jesus.

Even before starting the company. Sorry, Kyle. But I didn't want to work at a traditional company. I tried it for three months at Riverbed. It wasn't for me. I went to Odeo because I respected Ev.

I respected his design principles, what he was saying in the world. When Biz joined, I thought it was amazing and fun and that evolved into something different. So I just love creating stuff

from scratch and I love that feeling. I love the electricity. I also like that feeling. Yeah, it's amazing and it's just I can't imagine myself maybe, you know, building a company and maintaining a company outside of the startup phase has also been a lesson. Square taught me so much in that. But just coming into someone else's company and having an impact feels very foreign to me. Yeah, that makes sense.

Somebody on The Ringer asked me to ask you this. I thought it was a really interesting question. How much interaction do you have with Zuckerberg and all these other people who are running social media platforms that are basically shaping where the world's going? Should you have some sort of council where you meet every six weeks and talk about the different challenges you have and try to work together better? Does that happen or is that happening secretly?

What's the deal with that? Not enough. We don't have enough conversations as companies. We've definitely met individually over over the years um sometimes to talk about what we're doing with with our companies and our services and the problems that we're facing but um a lot of times you know entrepreneurship and technology and what we're seeing and sometimes just getting to know each other and just hearing what it was like for someone else starting something. But our

teams meet on a regular basis. So we do have folks from Twitter meeting with Facebook and Google. Yeah, but I'm talking about the people. Well, they are the people. They're doing the majority of the work. I'm saying like in The Godfather, the heads of the five families getting together to talk about

life. Yeah, we don't do it enough and we probably don't do it enough publicly. It seems like there should be some council of basically all the people who have shaped where the internet's gone these last 15 years. And you guys should get together. I worry about it. Under closed doors, you worry about stuff leaking out? No, I worry about a council. Like as someone who...

This is important though. No, it is important. I'm not saying it's not important, but like as someone who, you know, grew up on the internet and loves everything that it purports to do in terms of decentralizing and freeing so much that has been captured

within central organizations in the past, creating another centralized organization to determine where all these things go. But maybe it's not an organization. Maybe it's just dinner every three months. Yeah, I'm totally down for that. I think you should start this.

But I would want to, we'd have to have really clear goals about what we're trying to get out of it. And I would want it to be public and transparent because I just wouldn't trust it otherwise as someone who uses the internet. I wouldn't trust the quote-unquote five major companies getting together

to determine what I use and what I don't use and how to think about it. Not unless it's public and it's open. And I can see the conversations and I can see what the outcomes are. And I can voice my concern with it too. You guys are the new mafia. You're running things.

No, no, no. That's the beauty of the internet is like anything could happen. And that one thing could completely change the course of the internet. And that to me is beautiful. And it's not a leader like me or a company like ours that does that. We're going to help in whatever way we can.

Yeah. But the beauty of the internet is anyone, anywhere can start something that significantly impacts society in a, in a positive way. Was there a specific moment when you stopped thinking about Twitter as just this fun, cool, social internet toy, basically, and realized that this was actually going to have a massive impact? The plane landing in the Hudson. There's so many. But the plane landing in the Hudson.

Where you was at? The Sullenberger one? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason why is because you have this gentleman who has less than 100 followers. Yeah.

And he was in the right place at the right time. He captured a photo of this plane landing in the Hudson and he tweeted it out. And again, 100 followers, but it was

an international conversation and seen around that photo was seen around the world within 10 minutes. And that to me is like, wow, that, that is powerful. That, that is something that, that just feels amazing. The other one was a student journalist in, in Egypt, um, by the name of James. And, uh, you know, he was,. And he was on the ground. He's also an activist. He was on the ground covering some protests. And he saw these folks come up to him from the military and he knew he was about to be arrested.

Yeah. And he quickly took out his phone and he tweeted just one word, which be arrested. And he quickly took out his phone and he tweeted just one word, which was arrested. And then all these people started doing whatever they could to get him out from this prison. And the next day, 24 hours later, he tweeted one more word, which was free. And that to me just showed the power of language and the power of text and how even just one word can say everything. Do you know what it was for sports? Because I have the answer for you.

For sports... It's a very clear answer. I don't know. The listeners are listening right now, racking their brain, wondering what it is, but it's unequivocal. There's no question this was it answer. I don't know the specific, but in terms of a league, it's probably having to do with

the NBA. Nope. Well, for me, it was. Tiger Woods' Escalade crash. And that whole thing the next day as that unfolded, that was the first time I remember following a story on Twitter. Because being like, I want to know what's happening. I'm going on Twitter every once in a while

to see if there's any news about this. So maybe there's something for that, but I felt like that was the first one where Twitter combined with something to make it seem like, oh, this is a thing. Oh wait, new information. Oh wait, there's going to be a press conference? And it just,

from that moment on, before then we had ESPN's bottom line, that little ticker on the bottom. Yeah. Or we had ESPN.com's main page. But we didn't have that thing. Unfolded. How much has Trump helped Twitter survive as a business?

Because three years ago, it was a little rocky. And I mean, look, it's undeniable. Him as a Twitter personality has been, it's given Twitter a bigger everything. Whether that's good or bad is another conversation, but it has certainly made it bigger. You know, we're not dependent upon any one account or any particular market we we have seen

over close to 13 years now that this thing is evergreen because i think it's so essential i think we reach something that is essential and foundational what trump did on the service though is increase the percentage of news and politics conversation. We saw a market increase. For better or worse. During 2015, 2016. I think he started on the service in 2012, maybe even earlier, maybe 2009.

His tweets have been consistent all the way through. There has been literally no change. If you look all the way back through all of his tweets, they've been consistent. He definitely has a style. He has a style. But a lot of Twitter is really dependent upon, your experience at Twitter is really dependent upon

who you follow. And if you follow news and politics Twitter, it can be a pretty alarming and sometimes toxic place. If you only follow NBA Twitter, it's all good. If you follow K-pop Twitter, it's just fandom all day. And K-pop Twitter is one of the biggest conversations on Twitter. Game, like e-sports and gaming is, you know, one of the second largest conversations on Twitter. So, but at the same time, you, you see same time, you see Trump and a lot of people don't like how he's using the platform and what he's saying on it. But then you also see in the same moment of time, the Parkland students using it. And you see what AOC is doing with it. And it's a function of how real time,

how public the medium is. And if you want to make it positive, you can make it positive. And people can make it positive. And that is the key. There is a lot of things that we disagree with in this world. And I just think it's so important to acknowledge and address them.

And there are people who are flipping that on its head and taking it into a positive light and directly engaging in the negative and influencing it and making people see something a little bit different.

It's unclear if you have any distinct political or moral positions other than a lot of the stuff we talked about today. Is that by design? Are you intentionally withholding stuff because you feel like it's better for the business? No, I've always been that way. I've always tried to pay attention to the issues and not to a particular party. I grew up, you know, my parents are from St. Louis.

My dad was Republican. My mom was Democrat. And we had a lot of arguments around the table. And I'm just so grateful for the fact that number one, I got to see some ends of the spectrum, but also I felt safe and also respected in voicing my own opinion and that I wouldn't get in trouble for it. I could be free in how I thought about it and I could evolve my thinking. And, um, you know, St. Louis is a very, uh, tough place to grow up. It's a, it's a city that's seen a lot of, a lot of issues and a lot of circumstances, very segregated. Um, and, uh, you know,

my parents, they always stuck by the city. They always stayed right in the middle where people come together. And I'm really grateful for that. And it's shaped who I am and how I think about things. So I haven't felt any particular allegiance to any party, but I have felt allegiance to individuals. What about something like gun control? Does it matter what you think about gun control? Do you feel like you have to stay away from that

because then that would compromise what Twitter is? No, I think I need to be clear that this is my personal view and this is not the view of everyone in our company and certainly not the people using our service. And we also need to be clear that we're not unfairly biasing how the service works towards my own views. And if we can't, then people should not trust us. People should trust the fact that we're showing the mechanics behind things.

And if we can't do that, I completely understand people not trusting us. What's the biggest mistake you made with building Twitter this decade? This decade? Yeah. What would be your one mulligan if you could just go back in time and stop it? Not focusing on our superpower.

I think we just got so reactive to what everyone else is doing and we didn't go deeper into what makes Twitter Twitter and that is conversation. Public conversation is what we do and it's what we're good at and it's what people I think come to us for.

So what year are we talking about here? Where you feel like you lost your eye on the prize? It's not one year. It's multiple years. Within the past two years we've regained that focus. And, uh, you know, I, I think, you know, we're, we're, we're starting to see some of the results of that. Why does it take so long for, um, harassers, perpetrators to be apprehended or blocked?

What is it about Twitter's Twitter as an entity that allows people to be terrible and then some time will pass before something happens? One is because we work on reporting. Our whole system is reactive to someone reporting. In the not too distant past

it was only the victim could report. Now we enable bystanders to report as well. When did that change? If it's not reported, we don't see it within this year. Oh, good. So if it's not reported, we don't see it. And then we get a queue of these reports and we prioritize a queue based on severity. So someone's physical safety comes first and foremost.

Right. severity. So someone's physical safety comes first and foremost. And those get prioritized before everything else. And then we have to pay attention to context. And context matters. An example of this, we have a lot of gamers on Twitter. And we have people who are saying, at Bill, I'm going to kill you tonight. And what they mean is within the game that they're playing together. Like in Madden. Yeah. So that context is important. We have people using slurs in ways that aren't meant as slurs to the receiver,

the context of the receiver. Yeah. And humans have to review all this. How many humans do you have reviewing this? Or is that not public? It's not public because we want the agility to change it. And the reason we want the agility to change is because something might flare up where we just need to direct people to this particular thing. And then that's not a fixed number. And number two is we want to move this whole thing to technology.

We want to recognize the role of amplification and attention and the behaviors on the system. And we want to be proactive about it. Having the burden of reporting on the victim is not acceptable at all. And it's just taken some time to even utilize machine learning in the right way at our company. We were very, very mechanical in the past. But all that is changing, and we're working as quickly as we can. But that's why it takes time. Number one, people don't report it, or they report it later.

And then number two, we have to go through a review process that takes into consideration the context and circumstances. If Zuckerberg called you right now and said, give me one tip, give me one thing that would help me right now, our company's in crisis, what would be the one thing you told him? It's a good question because you can't really get out of it. I don't want to get out of it um I I think the most important thing right now is that we as companies and as an industry earn trust and I think the most that their trust is gone nobody trusts them so what do you do but the most impactful way to do that is just to explain why

like why we're doing the things that we're doing. And to admit where in the past that trust was broken. So being super open, being super vulnerable, being explicit about why we're doing the things that we're doing in the trade-offs, but not overwhelming people with information, but prioritizing it. This is the most critical thing and not everyone's going to agree with it, but this is what we're focused on and why. And it all comes down to why. It all comes down to like explaining the why behind our actions. Do you think it's recoverable for them? I think everything is fixable. I do, but I do think it requires a different mindset.

Yeah, I do too. Who are your five favorite follows? The people that I follow? Yeah, just four or five people that you're just like, they get it. This is what I want from Twitter right here. My mom. And the reason why she gets it is every morning she says good morning. Every evening she says good night, usually with a sunset picture or sunrise.

But the reason why I think she really gets it is because she's built up this group of women all around the world that just say hello to each other. And they haven't met in person. And they have coffee together. And I think that's just so awesome. I think it makes the world feel smaller. Elon Musk, I think, really gets it. I think he really gets it because it is his thinking process. And I think we need to see more leaders how they think.

And again, we're not always going to agree with it. We're not always going to agree with the actions. But I think it's critical that we see that vulnerability. I don't do enough of this. I don't use Twitter in a way that I feel like I should. Well, you said you're an introvert, though. I'm an introvert, but I'm better on text. But at the same time, I always feel the weight of my role

and how people might pick apart a particular message and remove the context and whatnot. So I'm working on that, but he uses it in a very free way. Yeah. And I really appreciate that. Draymond Green's mother is one of my favorites. Really? I don't know that.

I don't follow her. She's amazing. Babers Green. So you really like parent Twitter because my dad's Twitter is my favorite Twitter. Yeah. It's just like him flying off the handle about Boston sports, but in a very nice way. I just like it. It's like his text.

He's somehow mastered it. She's amazing because she's found all the other NBA moms and she trash talks. With the moms? With the moms. I had no idea. Even with Draymond. When he's playing, her insight into how he's playing is amazing.

So that's one of those moments when I feel Twitter is just a fantastic compliment to watching the game because I see what's on the screen I see all the plays but like having Draymond Green's mother like right in front of me and like she's just so funny

it makes it more entertaining what is your favorite blank Twitter so you have like NBA Twitter Gamer Twitter like all these different NBA Twitter you think is the, like all these different. NBA Twitter. NBA Twitter you think is the best one? For me. Yeah.

Yeah. Because, you know, Adam Silver said this very well. He was asked, we were on stage together and he was asked, why Twitter? And one of the things he said is like, look, our players, unlike a lot of leagues out there, they're just so exposed. They live so much of their lives in public. They're wearing shorts and tank tops. The fans are literally right next

to where they're playing. And they've taken to it in such a way where as soon as the game is over, they're checking it. They're talking about what they did. They're talking about whatever they're interested in. And to live in public, this concept of living in public, this concept of working in public, that's what they do day in, day out.

I think they've handled it amazingly well. If you told me this was going to... No, then the players, too. If you told me 15 years ago, this is what the world's going to be like, I would have been like, oh my God, this is going to be a disaster. These guys are going to fuck up left and right. But it's not better. I mean, you just get to see how they tick and how they think.

It makes me feel closer. I think the replies drive some of them a little crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially when their contract's heading toward free agency and people are hammering them left and right. I don't know. It's basically replaced heckling. Because in heckling, you're not really allowed to heckle games anymore.

If you do, it's just like, Durant, you suck. But nothing really mean. And Twitter has now moved into that, I think. Especially when... I noticed when... This was right around when I stopped reading my replies. When I was on TV for two years doing Countdown,

and every series we had, the fans from both teams were convinced I hated the team. And I was like, I have to refer, if we're operating from the premise that I care about what happens in this series,

then how could I hate both teams at the same time? So it's just basketball hate all the way around. But I do feel like that is a fan-based thing of like, it's either people are on my team or I'm against them.

And that's it. It's us against them. Yeah, but that's in the stadiums too. Yeah, it's good mostly. But yeah, we've- It does get a little crazy. But we've, you know, technology changes the amplification and changes the velocity of that.

So that's where we can help. Yeah. Um, Square, it seems like it's been a success. Yeah, we're doing, we're doing really well. What is, what's been your biggest surprise about Square? Um, you know, it's just in, in, in terms of, uh, in terms of attitude, it's just such a well-run, mature company. And the reason why we were able to do that so early is because we felt the immediate burden of moving people's money around.

This is people's livelihood. And if we lose even a cent, we have really damaged someone's potential. And this is a concept. Every single person in this world has at some point in their life felt bad about money. It's not something that anyone normally feels great about. It's not something that we look to as like, wow, that feels amazing. But it's so critical. It's so critical in our society. So we put a lot of emphasis on care and deliberateness and thoughtfulness. And the deliberateness of the company is just

through the roof. And at the same time, we haven't backed away from taking risk and doing some things that might look a little bit too early, like Bitcoin. We have this amazing app called the Cash App and it was a huge surprise for us in terms of how quickly people adopted it and especially when considering our competitors and how entrenched they are. But it became less of an app and more cultural.

And we just have such resonance with early musicians and a lot of folks who are just starting out. We've seen that a lot of people use it as their primary bank account. They don't link another bank account. They don't link another bank account. They don't link a credit card. This is it. So to be able to be in a state where people trust us that much with their livelihood and with their money and with how they feed their family is amazing. And we take that responsibility really seriously. When a celebrity, when something horrible goes on their Twitter account or something embarrassing, and then they claim they were hacked, what percentage of the time were they actually hacked?

Do you have to guess? I don't know. 50-50? I don't know. I don't look into these things. You should have your analytics wrote on that. We have more important things to do. This was great.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm really interested to see what happens over the next year with your company. I think it's incredibly important. And I think as you've realized over the last year, especially with the reception that you've gotten, this has to be fixed in a lot of different ways. I think it's a really hard challenge.

It is. But at some point, you're going to actually have to announce things and try out things. Yeah. Right? So I don't know when that is. It might be nine months from now or whatever, but it feels like you feel the pressure,

though, for it now, right? We've been doing that. We've been doing that. I think people expect these big feature releases that fix everything, and that's just not going to happen. Yeah. I'll just let you know,

that's not going to happen. But we Just to let you know, that's not going to happen. But like we are, you know, I would say that, you know, in the past we use policy and whatnot more as a crutch and we didn't look deep enough into the product. So we are looking much deeper into the product right now. And you will see releases that address a bunch of these issues. But a lot of the things that we've been releasing have been addressing some of the health and harassment issues

in sizable ways, including, you know, making the number of reports that we see go down. Because a lot of it is working. But we understand the importance and everyone has our commitment and my commitment that we're going to be open about it. We're not always going to look great, but we're going to admit our mistakes and we're going to tell people what we're seeing so that, you know, people at least have the opportunity to, to trust us and that we're doing the right thing. You must be thinking about the 2020 election now. Oh yeah. Well, not just the 2020 election. I mean, this could be a big test case for you guys. Well, we have the Indian elections coming up this year. So, you know, the biggest democracy in the world, the elections are coming up this year. And, you know, the biggest democracy in the world.

The elections are coming up this year. And, you know, so we have elections around the world that we want to make sure that we're preserving the integrity of the conversation around those elections. So every election that we see is another opportunity for us to learn how to make the next one better and better.

I forgot to ask you about, because we do these live post-game Twitter shows, basically for Game of Thrones, all these different things. And I really thought it was just a cool platform for it. And that's why we doubled down and did some more this year. Why do you think Twitter is the best place for this?

Because Facebook tried it and all these different places. I'd always had this dream dating back to, I remember at Grantland, we tried to do a live March Madness show. And for whatever reason, Twitter just fits it. Do you guys see like the entertainment standpoint of Twitter? Like, what do you think the ceiling of that is for you? Because I feel like it's a little bigger than maybe even you guys realize. I don't think there's a ceiling. I mean, I think people want to talk about what they experienced. They want to talk about what they just saw.

Tell me what happened. They want to talk about it. And I can talk about it with only the people I know. Yeah. But that's not as interesting as hearing everything else. It does feel like an advantage for you guys, right? Oh, yeah. Like the fact that we are not dependent upon your address book is an advantage.

The fact that people come to us as an interest network. The fact that people are to us as an interest network, the fact that people are interested in Game of Thrones and wow, I want to talk about what I just saw on that episode. I'm not going to get it from my friends because they're probably thinking the same way that I do. But all these other people who are expressing opinions, they're not. And I'm going to see something insightful. Look at, I mean, look at what happened with Bird Box. And that was just a phenomenon. The main thing. Everyone wanted to talk about it.

And then not just talk about it, but apply it to every single thing they saw, especially like in NBA Twitter. I think it's just inherent human behavior. And if we limit it to the address book or the people that we know, that's the ceiling. If you focus on global conversation, that's the ceiling. If you,

if you focus on global conversation, there's no ceiling. Thanks for doing this. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Okay. Appreciate the conversation. Let's take a quick break to talk about SeatGeek, the best app for buying and selling tickets to sporting events,

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That is all on the Ringer Podcast Network. All right, back to the podcast. All right, for the first time in 2019, my buddy Jacko is on the line. The Patriots have yet again prevailed in a dramatic way. 25 years ago, Bob Kraft bought the Patriots and nearly moved them to Hartford where our buddy Jacko lives. And Jacko bought, I would say $300 worth of Patriots gear just preparing for the day when the Patriots and Bob Kraft came. And he became the football Messiah for the whole region of Connecticut that would get the Patriots. And then it didn't happen in the Patriots state of

Massachusetts. Jacko has hated them ever since. They are his version of the Yankees. Congratulations to me, Jacko. Congratulations to me. Well, I would congratulate you, but I don't congratulate you when the sun comes up or when it sets. And really, the Patriots being in the Super Bowl has really become just a way of life. Good point. Sure.

Congratulations. But it's not unexpected. You can't even enjoy it at this point. It's just like, oh, ho-hum, another Super Bowl. Oh, I disagree. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I know Nephew Kyle's enjoyed it. The whole Simmons family's enjoyed it.

I found it really enjoyable. That's great. About time you guys caught a sports break. Don't you like being around greatness, this Tom Brady thing, just like having greatness in your life like this? People say greatness doesn't really exist, but yet we get to live with this year after year. I was ferrying my daughter to several basketball games that she had yesterday, and I was listening to the, and you can't argue it, you can't, that this is the greatest combination of coach, quarterback, and owner in the history of the NFL. I mean, you know, Mad Dog is a big proponent of Lombardi as the greatest ever, which, you know, he's been for half a century. But Belichick has done it in an era of free agency and salary caps and just sustained greatness at a different time with more teams where guys can become free agents where they've got to manage the draft.

Lombardi did it at a different time where he didn't lose players and he could get any players he wanted, essentially. So it's amazing to see. And, you know, part of me wishes I was a part of it and on the bandwagon. I'm like, you know, if it's going to happen, maybe I should just join the team. And what's the point of like, it's trying to stand in the ocean and keep the tides back.

Like, what's the point? You can root against the IRS, but I'm still going to have to pay taxes. Like, what's the, you know, what's the point of rooting against them? Hold on. I just took my pants off. Keep going.

Keep going. Do like three more minutes of this. This is on. I just took my pants off. Keep going. Keep going. Do like three more minutes of this. This is great. I'm going to make a scotch. The incredible thing is that it's the New England Patriots, which having grown up in Connecticut, I literally, until I went to college and there was you and a couple of other guys that were legit Patriot fans, I knew one guy growing up who was a Patriots fan, and that's because his cousin was Matt Cavanaugh, who was Steve Grogan's backup for about 100 years.

And he's the only Patriots fan I knew in Connecticut, in New England. And the Patriots were, to call them the ugly stepsister of Boston sports is an understatement. I mean, they were the weakest team in Boston. They had, there was like zero fan base. There was probably a diehard fan base of 50 people or something that lived in Foxborough and were hardcore. But if you were to list the favorites of Boston sports teams,

you know, Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, and some order, but the Patriots were a distant fourth. Yeah. And now I can't walk down the street without tripping over Patriot flags

off of houses and Patriot gear on every other person. So as our hallmate Gene McDonough said, I think you put it in the comments, it's like Bangladesh becoming a superpower, like with the United States and the Soviet Union. It's incredible. Because they went from a laughingstock to, I mean, you know, it was always the Steelers were the definition of greatness because they had the four Super Bowls or the 49ers in the 80s

or the Cowboys in the 90s. And now, I mean, now the Patriots have done it for multiple decades. It's incredible. It's amazing. Yeah, I remember people on our hall freshman year teasing me about the Patriots because we had me, we had Nick Aida, we had Gene McDonough. Right, I looked up Nick Aida. The blue boy. He was a legit fan too.

Right. Probably had like five Pats fans on there. But I think the first year we were in college, they were bad. And that might have been the last Doug Flutie season. And then the second year I was in college, I think was the year they went one and 15. It was either sophomore or junior year. That was the year I started gambling. Because I just didn't have a team.

I remember being in college and they drafted you. You were all fired up for the draft and we were watching the draft and they drafted Eugene Chung. And you just suddenly walked into the shower without even, like, saying a word. You just walked into the shower. We're worried you're going to harm yourself.

I remember the other thing was. To see them in their, what, like what is this, their 10th Super Bowl in the past, you know, 15 years or whatever it's been. It's just, it's incredible. I remember the other thing people would get mad in college who weren't from New England that, remember they would do the thing, they would just show the local games. Yeah. So the Patriots would always, because it was within whatever remember they would do the thing, they would just show the local games? Yeah. So the Patriots would always, because it was within whatever, they would always show the

Patriots as like whatever the AFC game was. And the people who didn't care about the Patriots were like, what the fuck? Can we watch games that have good teams in them? It was a miserable game played in essentially a high school stadium, you know, with terrible coaches and terrible players. And, you know, John Hanna was the most famous Patriot there left guard or whatever he played left tackle, whatever he was at offensive lineman.

And, you know, poor Steve Grogan with his neck brace playing football. It was, they were a laughing stock. And now they're, you know, they're the, God, they're calling like the model of the NFL is an understatement. I mean, they're like, you know, they're the, God, they're calling like the model of the NFL is an understatement. I mean, they're like, you know, they're the New York Yankees of football. And like the Yankees of the 1950s. It's ridiculous. We went nine and seven when we were freshmen.

I don't remember doing that well. That's amazing. Nine and seven was like a win. But then the wheels came off. I remember making a lot of Raymond Berry jokes in my column at the time about them propping up his corpse during games. That was like the first wave of those jokes. Yeah, they went 1-15 in 1990 when we were juniors.

And that was the year I started gambling. Because I needed some sort of action. And then, you know. They always had the, they had, what's his name? Victor Kayam was the owner. They had the thing with Lisa Olsen. Yeah, that was horrible. Flashing her in the locker room.

That was horrible. Horrible stories like that. They were known more for like horrible stories and being a laughingstock on the field. And controversy and just, just awful stadium in an awful location. And, and, you know, Bob Kraft came in and was like, I mean, to call him a savior is also an understatement because that franchise was moribund. There's a good SAT word. And now he's built them into the best team in the NFL by far.

It's not even debatable. Yeah, I'm looking up how long we went to college in Worcester, how long Foxborough is, 55 Foxborough. It was 55 miles. Or 46.4 miles. I never even thought of going to a Patriots game. Never thought. None of us ever looked at each other and said, let's make the wreck down to Foxborough.

It'd be really fun to sit on metal benches. And I probably brought it up twice and then got laughed out of the hall. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, like we could have driven down there. You could have tailgated and had some beers, tickets were probably about $3. And that never even occurred to us once we went to Red Sox games and Bruins and Celtics, but the notion of going to see a Patriots game, like never even crossed our mind. Yeah. Well, there's a great, there's a great fork in the road. I'd love to know what happens to Connecticut if the Patriots actually just go there.

Because you could argue all the same things. It might be a thriving, breathing state, actually. Well, I mean, we don't. It might not be hooked up to an IV, essentially. So that might be, that might've been a good thing. That might be a bonus. Because you could argue all the same things could have happened. It's not like the location of the team really mattered that much with Brady Belichick and Kraft.

The location wouldn't have mattered. It just would have been phenomenal for this region instead of for Massachusetts. I mean, can you imagine if the Patriots leave New England, go to Connecticut, and then immediately rip off the greatest two-decade run in the history of probably definitely football, definitely. And it's on the short list of professional sports. And all of that happened after they moved to Hartford. Hartford's a different city at that point. Of course. And I'd probably be some moron that leads the Hartford equivalent of the dog pound with my face painted or something.

And my own celebrity tailgate or whatever. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. You would have some sort of Hartford Patriots podcast on the ringer. Absolutely. We would have had to suspend it for three weeks after something horrible happened at a tailgate with you that you had to apologize for. Right. Imagine me during Deflategate.

My God. Look at me with Sonny Gray. Imagine what I would have been like as a Deflategate defender. We really needed you during Deflategate. I would have had the ideal gas law tattooed at some point on my body to show to people all the time. We've made four Super Bowls since Deflategate, just in case Ferdinand's going home. Even Goodell can't keep you down.

But you can't even argue that anymore. I mean, the team didn't look that great this season. Everybody loved the Chargers, and they embarrassed the Chargers. Everybody loved the Chiefs. And yeah, if the guy doesn't jump off sides, okay. But I mean, there was never a feeling I had that the Chiefs were going to win that game. Really? I wish I felt that way. The Chiefs got a first down one time and a third and 10 or something. And they celebrated like they just won the Superbowl. I'm like, this is not a great sign. Can we act like we've been there

before Chiefs? Even though you have it, can we act like it? You know? So. I'm like, this is not a great sign. Can we act like we've been there before, Chiefs? Even though you have it, can we act like it? You know? So, I mean, you know, Mahomes is frightening. He's good. But their defense is an atrocity. And Bill Belichick against Andy Reid, I mean, come on. That's not a matchup.

Well, we almost lost. And the thing that mystifies me, I'm no NFL coordinator, but I'm going to give Sean McVay some advice for the Super Bowl. Maybe have somebody cover Julian Edelman. It's crazy, but it just might be crazy enough to work. They showed a replay the other day where Edelman caught a 15-yard slant, and the two defenders, they actually ran away from him to cover somebody else. You're going to cover him with a linebacker? He's open every play of every game. I could throw to him. Sage advice from Jacko. Yes, Sean McVay, a little tip for the Super Bowl. Cover Edelman. Put somebody on him. Just a thought.

You can only imagine how crazy it is here in Los Angeles with the Rams finally making it. Really harder to get to work. Was it the ringer that retweeted it where they said, I can see why there's two teams in LA because it was like four guys in a bar and the Rams won and they were like, oh yeah, great. Like there was no like jumping up and down or any other celebration.

It was just like, oh yeah, Rams, look about. There is a diehard Rams base from dating back from, you know, when they were here the last time. And then there's like an under 25 group of people that got into it when they moved back. But LA is so gigantic. It's like a fart in the ocean. You're definitely not seeing an influx of Rams caps as you're driving around LA. Plus, everyone's in their cars anyway.

It's just tough. My mother actually sent me a semi-taunting text today asking me who you were going to root for in the Super Bowl, your old hometown or your new hometown. Your mom did that? Yeah, I was pretty confident. I said, I think Bill's going to be for the Patriots and not the Rams. Wow, your mom's sending daggers at me? I can't believe that. Yeah, unbelievable. Mom from the clouds there on that one, yeah. I get it on the other hand after you know four Red Sox World Series your family's kind of in sports tatters right now I see it that's what I was thinking of on Sunday

is that freaking kid that they show after every Boston Championship and he has a sign in like 2008 that he was like seven years old and he's been to 47 parades or whatever and now he's like 20 and he's been to like a hundred more parades than people like more, more parades than veterans have been in.

This kid's been to like watching Boston championships. I was thinking of that kid Sunday and I'm like, I can't see that kid in his side at another parade. I just can't, but you know what? I'm going to, he's going to be there in about three weeks. I hope so.

Two weeks in a couple of days, he'll be there. I hope so. Yeah. That the 23 to be there in about three weeks. I hope so. No, two weeks and a couple of days he'll be there. I hope so. Yeah. The 23 to 24 year old in Boston, it used to be the wheel hunting kid who's like, you think you're better than me? And now it's the kid who's had 11 titles potentially. And just can't remember the Patriots not being good and is just used to everything and has to have a different level of confidence, at least, I would guess. I would think so.

What a run. What a run, Johnny. It's incredible. You can't wrap your head around it. You really can't. When Brady retires, if that ever happens. He might not. What do you think?

Just immediately becomes the president? What's the rule on that? He has to wait a couple years? He has to serve lower offices? Well, no. Trump shows you don't have to go into lower offices. Brady, he's a big Trump guy. Maybe he'll be Trump's VP. No, we don't know that. He doesn't say anything. Maybe he'll drop Pence and go Trump-Brady. I can't stop that.

All Brady wants to do is work out and throw footballs. There's no way he even knows there's a government shutdown right now. I'm sure Gronk's more on top of that, current affairs and things. Yeah. Before, I wanted to talk about Trump really quick, but can we quickly talk about the Yankees offseason? So you guys. Sure. The Red Sox just broke your spirit and net, what is it?

Five year rebuilding plan until the Red Sox dynasty is over. What, what's this game plan you have right now? I don't know. They were, the Yanks are a small market team now of, you know, scrappy minor leaguers and the analytics. That's what we're all about now. We don't want to spend money. I wasn't that gung-ho to get Machado because I think while it makes some temporary sense, I think it creates problems when Didi Gregorius comes back unless you had some plans to ship Andahara off for pitching. The thing that I will never understand is why

they haven't dipped their toe in the Bryce Harper waters when we're apparently going with a left field of 35-year-old Brett Gardner, who hit 230 last year. Clint Frazier, who, you know, hopefully he's great, but you don't know what he's going to be. And the corpse of Jacoby Ellsbury. And the Yankees lineup is all right-handed, which doesn't make any sense. That's your left field situation? Yeah, that's our left field. Yeah, Brett Gardner, who they just re-signed for $10 million, even though I think in the second half he hit about $1.90.

And the 230 was actually inflated by a halfway decent first half, but he collapsed in the second half of the year. He's literally 34 years old. And then we have Clint Frazier who suffered, unfortunately, from several concussions last year. And you hope he's been cleared to play and cleared for spring training. And he's a highly touted prospect. So he could be great. He also could not be great. And then we have Jacoby Ellsbury's corpse that hasn't played in a year. We got two guys. We have Jacoby Ellsbury and Troy Tulewitzki that haven't walked, I don't think, since Barack Obama was president. And they're going to be key cogs in the Yankee machine now.

They have two 26-year-old superstars that can be had only for money, and you're the New York fucking Yankees who have a license to print money and you don't want to go sign either one of them. Now, I can understand why Jacoby Ellsbury would make you gun-shy from signing free agents, but everyone on earth that had a brain,

including me, screamed at the time that that Jacoby Ellsbury signing was horrific because he was made out of porcelain with the Red Sox and he wasn't going to get healthier as he got older. And they still went and did that. And the Yankees think their fans are stupid because now they leaked to friendly media sources over the weekend, well, the guy we really want is Arenado from Colorado. He's a

free agent next year. One, I don't know why we're trying to become the Colorado Rockies of the East. I missed the part where they were really like a wonderful team that's won multiple World Series. But put that aside, you could have Machado this year who's younger and doesn't have Coors-inflated numbers for just money,

and now we're going to talk about, oh, we're going to maybe trade for Arenado so we have to give up prospects and then pay him? Give me a break. That's just to shut everybody up who's been complaining that they're not going to go sign free agents. Now, I do like that they got Zach Britton back and they went out and got Adovino. On paper, they have a killer bullpen, which is great.

They went out and got Paxton, which is good. Except that Machado and Harper are sitting out there, and the Yankees haven't shown little interest. But that's which is inflaming their fan base, and they're crying like poverty when Steinbrenner's like, oh, we don't have to spend $200 million. Your biggest rival just won the World Series last year with like a $250 million payroll.

They weren't afraid to pay price. They weren't afraid to pay a JD Martinez and the Yankees are like, Oh no, we don't need free agents. We're going to outsmart everybody. It's, it's perplexing, Johnny.

I don't know what to tell you. I, especially not like the, you know, signing to Colby Ellsbury was rank stupidity going after Machado or Harper is not. Like, their generational talents are 26 years old. Yeah.

And it's not like, apparently, if they had great offers, they'd already be signed. Even though the White Sox have hired every person Manny Machado has ever met in his life, I don't think he wants to go play for the White Sox. I don't think either of them want to go play for the Phillies. Now, maybe they'll end up there because there's nobody else. But if you're the Yankees, you know, that you might be able to get them for less money or more importantly, less years. And it's just like, nah, I don't know. We don't want to spend the money. Hal needs another plane or whatever. It's frustrating. Zach Cram did an awesome piece for the Ringer a couple of weeks ago about, actually, I guess it was 10 days ago ago about why no team should ever be concerned about

overpaying Machado Harper. And the case was basically what you just said about Ellsbury. Like when you signed Ellsbury, all the, first of all, it's a bad sign when the team's fans that are losing the guy are all like laughing and pointing, which is basically what's going on. It's like, wow, you're paying a lot of money for Ellsbury. Good luck keeping that guy in the field was basically the attitude. So that's a bad sign.

I remember when he was a free agent for the Red Sox. He was a Red Sox and he became a free agent. And I was joking with a Red Sox friend of mine. And I'm like, oh, you guys aren't going to have to worry about it. Some idiot team will overpay. And I was thinking it was going to be the Mariners because he's in the Pacific Northwest. And I'm like, oh my God, some team's going to get suckered into him. And it turned out to be my team.

Yeah. And everybody knew that was a disaster. But that was the prototypical free agent that fails where you're getting, you're paying somebody on past performance. He's hitting his 30s. These Machado Harper, it's so unique with them that how young they are.

I personally like Harper more than Machado just because- Me too. I'm not sure about Machado, the guy. I don't like the Johnny Hustle thing from the World Series. That is weird. He just seems like he might be a dick, you know? Yeah, he does.

And the Yankees already have a hustling situation with Gary Sanchez, so you don't need more of that. That's going to be picked at like a scab by the New York media. It's going to make things even worse. He checks need more of that. It's going to be, that's going to be picked out like a scab and by the New York media, it's going to make things even worse. He checks his prickly about it. Yeah. He checks a lot of boxes for, I'd be concerned if this guy has 10 years of $300 million guaranteed, what might happen of just,

all right, are you going to keep working as hard as you did? Are you going to become more of a dick? All that stuff. I also felt like the Red Sox really could pitch to him in the World Series in a way that by the end of the World Series, I just wasn't scared when he was up. Harper feels like there's another level he can go to.

And I know he was probably better three years ago than he is now, but I don't know. I just like that guy. I think in Yankee Stadium, it's such a place where it's such a match of personality and fans and judge in right. And you have, you have Stanton there. I mean that, that two, three, four, five of a lineup, you know, or in some order you have, you have judge, uh, Stanton, Harper, Sanchez, and that's lethal middle of the order. And you need them, right? They don't have it. I mean, it's not like we have, Oh my God. Well, that's okay. We don't need a left fielder. Cause we have Brett Gardner. I mean, give me a break or they're going to the think, oh, we're going to play Stanton in the outfield a lot more

and have Judge play left and have Stanton in right. That's great. That's a chance for both of them to get injured. I don't understand that at all. I'm wondering. So here's the flip side. I'm wondering, because I've always wanted to see baseball teams do this, where they just don't love the free agent choices,

but they know come June, July, there's going to be some expensive dude that becomes available. And that's when they go all in on. Maybe. So maybe that, maybe that is what they're thinking, but I don't know.

I Harper just seems perfect for them. I'd like as a Red Sox fan, I would be scared if that, if they got him be like, Oh, the other, the other thing they're leaking is, well, we're going to have to pay Judge, and we're going to have to pay

Sanchez and Severino down the line. But one, you're years away from that. Two, Jacoby Ellsbury's rotting $20 million that you should set on fire is going to be coming off the books. They're paying Gardner $10 million, and they're paying CeCe, I think, $8 or $9 million. That's like $50 million. They're paying Gardner 10 million and they're paying CC, I think eight or 9 million. That's like $50 million. They're paying 1.2 million to Greg bird. That's $51 million of dead weight money that you're not going to be paying in a couple of years.

So the notion that one, the Yankees are crying poverty and two, even if that's a consideration, you're going to have so much money coming off the books. And the other thing they're leaking because they think their fans are gullible or like, well in two years, trout and fans are gullible are like, well, in two years,

trout and bets are going to be free agents. But I don't think either of those guys are going to get the free agency because the angels are crazy. If that's not a blank check. Yeah. And the red Sox are never going to let bets become a free agent. So the notion that you're going to sign one of those guys, it's not going to happen because they're not going to be free agents.

I think it's crazy that for whatever these stupid baseball rules are that are, they're probably colluding, but like bets goes to arbitration. He makes $20 million for one year. He's like worth, I don't know how much, but it's definitely more than $20 million. It's just weird that you can't take care of young players with bigger deals like that. And then the, the thing I would change over everything that drives me nuts is the service time thing.

Like we had, we had a Jimenez, the White Sox super stud prospect on our, on our league of dorks team. And they didn't bring them up, even though he was just tearing up the minors and they had nothing to play for. It's like classic,

bring this guy up, get him some reps, but they didn't bring them up because of the whole fucking service time thing and now they probably won't bring him up till may so then they'll get to keep him for the extra year after that it's like this is right this is dumb um just that's what the yankees did with you know tried to do with glaber torres and what the red sox did with bogarts too, the same thing, right? Everybody does it. It's not unique to all the White Sox, but it's just weird that that's the rule. Like in basketball, you play one game, you're a rookie. That's year one.

You play two games second year, that was year two. I don't know why baseball doesn't do that. The service time thing is out of like the 1920s. It's very strange. This offseason, you can definitely see they're heading towards, if not a work stoppage, then certainly some labor strife, let's put it that way. Because even on Twitter, like baseball players themselves

are reacting and saying like, what the hell is going on here? It's January 22nd, Machado and Harper haven't signed yet. Well, can you imagine if this was the NBA and your two signature, you know, like this year it would be, I guess, Kevin Durant and who's the other signature fridge. And let's say Clay Thompson.

Yeah. And it was just like, they're still sitting out there. It was like August 29th. And there was like no movement on the Katie sweepstakes. It just makes no sense there, whether they're colluding or whether they just finally realized that there's no reason to rush. But the part I don't get, why are the tickets still so expensive?

Why do all these teams have to have $250 million payrolls when we're clearly heading toward this world where the TV rights are just where most of the money is going to come from. The attendance, they still have the 81 games a year. It's still going to be a cash cow to some degree, but I just feel like attendance is going to matter less and less every year. How many games did you go to last year? Well, I didn't go to any of the games last year. Yeah. But that was inconceivable 20 years ago. You were younger 20 years ago. True. I didn't have kids and whatever. Everyone's got nicer TVs now.

You just hang out and watch the Red Sox at home or the Yankees or whoever. Nobody wants to go to 81 games. Beer doesn't cost me 15 bucks a clip in my house. Yeah, and the parking and everything. It's just not worth it anymore. 50 bucks to park, right. It's ridiculous. So they have to think about how,

how they make the tickets more accessible first. That's why everybody's just on the secondary market now, just cherry picking whatever the best seats were. But I, I just don't, I can't wrap my head around that part. The economics of it that were so built on, Oh,

we'll, we'll jack up like the Yankees, we'll jack up our tickets and that'll help. Like you watch the Yankee game in May and it's just empty seats behind home plate. But they don't care because it's all season ticket sales all behind home plate and everything. They don't care that it looks ridiculous. But at some point- Seemingly nobody hit the game and it's a sterile corporate environment where nobody's really

into it. But at some point, why have season tickets for the Yankees when you can just buy them online? Yeah. Makes no sense. No, it's true. Just jump in. It's a different world, man. Different world.

Different times and now the Yankees are the Kansas City Royals. So congrats. Thanks. I got that going for me. Donald Trump, just quickly, government shutdown. That's gone well. Proved this point there. He's become increasingly erratic.

And I want to flip this the other way. Did you see his, did he have, was it real? You never know what's real or fake these days. But I think it was a real thing where he had a tweet touting Curt Schilling's Hall of Fame candidacy. Was that a real thing that happened over the weekend? I hope that's not true. I think he had a Twitter thing about how he always came up big in big games and he should be in the Hall of Fame. Not wrong.

He really is like a sports radio call-in guy. In the United States, like let's worry about Curt Schilling's hall of fame candidacy. That might've been a better career path for him. Maybe they should, you know, talk about ways things could have been differently. If the NFL would have just let him buy the Buffalo bills a few years ago,

how different would everything be? I wish. You know, what a different world it would be. He never would have been involved in politics. He'd have been like, you know, he'd be driving Goodell insane

instead of, you know, other world leaders or whatever. So what a difference, what a difference in history that would be. Well, we passed the two year mark with him. Yeah.

What would have been some of the highlights for you? It's so hard to choose because, you know, every day is just more over the top stuff and you know the tweets and the things he says and the the misspellings and just the inanity of everything you know like bringing in clemson and buying a thousand quarter pounders for them and everything and serving like the pictures of the pictures of trump and some white house state dining room with like the fine china was covered in like french fries burger king and mcdarris it was mcdonald's or whatever and you know it's just so incongruous so damn funny like you look at this the funniest thing i saw on twitter was trump in the in the

white house underneath the picture of abraham lincoln and he's got this table laid out with all kinds of fast food. And then it says, the Twitter caption, it said, what's your third wish? Like the genie. I want to be president. I want all the McDonald's I can eat. You know, it's so damn funny. Yeah, I don't know how this plays out, because I don't think the government shutdown's working.

You know, people always say it on social media. It's like being in a movie or a TV show and you're just like, what are the script writers going to come up with next? Because it's like, it seems like it's fiction, but it's real. Yeah, it seemed that way for the last year and a half. I don't really know what to say about it anymore.

I get the whole everybody's got to be on both sides of something, but you just kind of look around and it's like, what's better. What's better than it was two years ago. I don't know. Like,

honestly, I, I, I'm not even trying to be a dick. Like, just tell me what, tell me what's. Unemployment is allegedly low.

So, you know, I guess the unemployment rate is, is solid and allegedly it's a good economy, but you know, his tariffs and things are, are taking a bigger toll. Everybody's really worried about that stuff now.

Yeah, the tariffs are stupid and the government shutdown is not helping things. 800,000 government workers aren't getting paid, so that affects, if they go on the unemployment line or whatever, that's not going to be great for, that's not great for the economy because it's 800,000 people

that aren't putting money back into the economy and spending money. So, um, Hold on. Not to mention a big reason for the shutdown was the whole, we've got to, we've got to build this wall. We've got to protect America. We're in danger. And then the solution for that is to cut off TSA, which is like, I'm pretty sure those guys protect us from stuff. So I don't know. You know, he, he had the gall to come out a couple of weeks ago and say, well,

I never said Mexico was going to pay for the wall directly. Like, well, there's like a million and one quotes of him saying exactly that. It's just, you know, the whole thing like this is shut down because the government isn't going to pay for his wall. Well, the whole, his whole campaign was, Oh, it's really easy to get Mexico to pay for this. And like, I'm going to snap my fingers and bing, bang, boom. There'll be a wall that Mexico's footing the bill for.

I can't wait. It's just ridiculous. I can't wait until he weighs in on the Oscars race and is a huge fan of Green Book. That's the next thing. Green Book, it was great. That movie's catnip for 72-year-olds. There you go.

Yeah, he's going to weigh in on that. Really, nothing is going to happen from an outrage standpoint until he does something with pets. Until he angers the pet owners, there's really not going to be anything yet. You can put all the federal employees on hiatus,

all that stuff, but when he does some new thing like I'm laying off all the veterinarians or we're having a new dog tax for rescue dogs. It's going to be $5,000 if you rescue a dog that goes to the building, the wall. That's when shit's going to go down. You can't fuck with the dog owners.

No, you can't. He's not a big dog. He does not like pets. He's a germaphobe. He doesn't like dogs. So he doesn't drink. He doesn't like dogs. That should tell you everything you need to know about him. He doesn't drink and he doesn't like dogs. He doesn't like dogs. So he doesn't drink. He doesn't like dogs. That should tell you everything you need to know about him.

He doesn't drink and he doesn't like that. We didn't need to drink. He's naturally high guy. So natural. But you know, that's yeah, that's yeah, I suppose.

God, imagine if he did drink, cause he said himself like, God, what would he be like? Well, year three, it's been a rocky start to year three.

Still holding out hope. Maybe it'll get better. Maybe, maybe the script writers have something better in store for the rest of the year. Johnny. Yeah. Anything good happening for you these days? The Pats?

The politics? The Red Sox? What are the silver linings? Well, my daughter's basketball team is undefeated. Oh, there you go. There you go. So we got that going for us. That's huge. So we're going to ride right through to the Grammar School State Championship. You haven't gotten kickedfeated. Oh, there you go. There you go. So we got that going. That's huge. So we're going to ride right through to the grammar school state championship.

You haven't gotten kicked out of a game. Have you? I have not. No, I was, there was an outrage in the game this, this weekend. They were in a tournament and then we were playing the,

the home team. And I, some of their parents were a little too animated. And then a kid on our team was caught. It was the other team was shooting a free throw and a kid on our team was on the line and she coughed. And the ref said that was a violation. And then our coach was like, she has a cold. And her mother's like, she has asthma. And he's like, no,

the timing was suspicious. So the girl started like crying, bawling. And then the ref like followed her to the huddle and was like yelling at her. And you know, I, I've said a few things to the ref like followed her to the huddle was like yelling at her and you know i i've said a few things to the ref that was just outrageous and i never say anything to the refs i never do but it was a tense atmosphere in this game it was a tense crowd i didn't love some of the behavior from the parents the other team and then when this poor kid is like coughing and the ref claims that was like gamesmanship to like throw the shooter off. I was, I was a little angry. You were always not just a first round draft pick of my friends to get into some sort of an altercation with a youth sports ref. You were a lottery pick for me, Johnny,

and a high one at that. I'm always well behaved. And you know, I'm like the coach. A lot of times I do like the book and keep score. Sometimes in home games, I like do the clock. So I feel like I'm part of the action. It's exciting stuff. Kyle, you'll like this story. We're in college. We're throwing, we threw a party when we lived off campus and we had a keg and we had to limit the number of people that were there.

And these kids wanted to come in and we were just like, let's say we're out. We're not selling cups anymore. These kids left and they were a little drunk. And one of them threw something through our window. What'd they throw through our window, Johnny?

Like a rock or a brick or something. So me and one of my other roommate, we run out to go get these kids. We're chasing these kids down and they're drunk. So it wasn't hard to catch them. We jump on them. What are you going to do? Like it wasn't a fight.

Cause we were way more sober than they were. Sure. Sometimes it feels, it settles down. They're like, sorry, man. All right,

we'll pay for it. We know who the kids are. 10 seconds later, Jacko comes chugging in swinging. Oh yeah. It was like out of a movie. I don't know where you were. You might have been in the bathroom,

and he comes chugging and swinging. A couple connections, yeah. And yeah, that's Jacko. What did you guys charge for cups, if you don't mind me asking? What did we charge for cups back then, Johnny? Ah, geez, it was a simpler time. I don't know. Was it even five bucks, or was it less than that?

I feel like it was like two. I feel like it's like five now. Yeah, I think it was like two. Yeah, it might have been like two bucks. Okay. Remember the one time we splurged for Moosehead? Yeah. That was great.

Because usually we'd get like the Milwaukee's best cake. Whatever is $45 and under. Exactly. We're always jumping on that one. All right, Johnny. Thanks as always for coming on the BS Podcast. Congratulations on yet another championship. By the way, if you want to jump on the bandwagon, tell me. I always for coming on the BS Podcast. Congratulations on yet another championship. By the way, if you want to jump on the bandwagon, tell me.

I'll mail you some Pats gear. For your children, you say the word. All right, I'll let you know. I'll let you know. See you, buddy. Bye. All right, thanks to Jack Dorsey. Thanks to Jackos.

Double Jack. Double Jack today. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to go to zipcruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to HelloFresh. Fresh, pre-measured ingredients. Easy to follow recipe cards delivered straight to your door. They do all the planning, shopping

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