The Vergecast - Bluesky's quest to be the next Twitter

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

Nilay and David talk about the future of social, in light of Bluesky's recent surge in growth. Threads is huge, Bluesky is ascendent, Mastodon is... around, but can any of them become the next Twitter? Is that even the goal? After that, Kylie Robison joins the show and the gang discusses Apple's smart home device (which is just an iPad), the AI scaling slowdown, and a new twist in the delivery wars. In the lightning round, it's all about disclosures, wireless carriers, and the sad end of Freevee. Further reading: Twitter’s succession: all the news about alternative social media platforms  One million people have joined Bluesky in the past week. Bluesky adds 700,000 new users in a week The Guardian is quitting X. Remember the TikTok ban? Apple’s rumored six-inch ‘AI wall tablet’ could control your smart home by March 2025 Apple is reportedly working on an Apple Home security camera  Anthropic co-founder Darius Amodei said we’ll have artificial general intelligence “in 2026 or 2027.” Just Eat is selling Grubhub to Marc Lore’s Wonder for $650M Boost Mobile says it’s a real wireless carrier now Amazon is shutting down Freevee Trump says Elon Musk will lead ‘DOGE’ office to cut ‘wasteful’ government spending Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's going to happen, David. Sure. Listen, if it'll make you shut up about your garage door, I'll take it. Oh, no, there's going to be some garage door talk on this show. Hi, I'm your friend, Eli. David Pierce is here. Hello. A little later, Kylie Robinson is going to join.

this. We're going to talk about whether or not AI is real, whether it's just a fake idea. The Vergecast. There's a lot of news to talk about this week. It is week negative eight of the Trump administration. So is that how they count? That's how George Washington. Yeah, that seems right. That's in the Constitution. As he was in a boat, he was like, this is week negative six. And then it, yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. Elon is already doing stuff. There's a fake Department of Government of Efficiency that we should talk about for as much as we need to talk about it. There's a fake wireless carrier called Boost Mobile that we should talk about that I'm excited to talk about.

It's a real carrier, Deli. There are rumors that Apple's going to make a wall tablet, so we've got to talk about garage droperners, as promised. But let's start with what's happening on social media. We've talked a lot about the Fediverse on this show, about the idea of the open social web, that maybe you weren't going to be locked into one platform that you can move around. That's Mastodon. There's a protocol called like, Pub that we've talked about a lot.

Threads from Meta is using Activity Pub. They very slowly inched their way to support. People have a lot of issues with threads overall because of its moderation. And then this week, after the election, after Elon has basically turned the X algorithm to being a pure flood of propaganda for himself. Not even, I would say, conservative ideas. Just for Elon Musk. People are fleeing X.

They're out of there. Huge drop in users. and they are not going to threads or maced. They're going to Blue Sky, which is a different federated social platform that uses a different protocol called at protocol, AT protocol. I've talked to Blue Sky's CEO, Jay Graber,

on Dakota, we can get into the weeds of it, but it seems like that is the winner in social media this week. David, what do you think is going on here? Is it the winner? This is such an interesting question. This week? This week, yes.

It is the vibes winner in a very real way. And I think the thing that we've discovered over the two years, since Elon Musk bought Twitter is that the vibe shift really matters. And I think your diagnosis is exactly right, right? Like, Threads was the thing.

Threads probably still is the thing, and we should talk about it, but Threads has 275 million users. That's what Mark Zuckerberg announced. They're signing up a million people a day. Like that thing is growing like a weed. There's been some news that Threads is going to turn on ads next year, which means it's going to be a big, scale business.

All anyone wants to talk about, right? now is blue sky and i think blue sky has hit something like mainstream critical mass uh which i think is a really exciting be really annoying in some ways that we should talk about and see really surprising i think if i'm being completely honest i kind of left blue sky for dead a while ago it had its first spike people were really excited i think blue sky has done a lot of things really right in how to build this kind of thing. It was very smart about how to think about identity. It was very smart in thinking about discovery. They built products like list and messages. And like as a as a platform, Blue Sky is dramatically better than any of the other competitors right now. But it was weird. And it was like

all the people who went to Blue Sky at the beginning went to be weird on purpose. And that is like fine and good as far as it goes. Right. And so my thinking was there's going to be this subset of people like the Twitter shit posters who were going to be very happy on. Blue Sky and we're just going to sort of hang out with each other over there. And it got out of that this week. We're now in a moment where people who don't want any part of that are coming onto Blue Sky. People are coming back to Blue Sky. AOC came back to Blue Sky and caused like a mini uproar when she started posting there again. Everybody's trying to make Skeeting happen again instead of calling it posting. Like Blue Sky is, I think, by far like an order of magnitude out of the actual competitor

to Threads world right now. But in terms of like who has the juice, I think Blue Sky legitimately has the juice at this point. Yeah. Two things about this that I think are really important. One, Threads is an algorithmic platform, and so is X now. Yeah.

You open X. I open my X account, and it is just the algorithm feeding me whatever Elon Musk wants me to see, which is mostly himself. Yeah. Weird. And I think people are just reacting to that and reacting to that poison.

It is a right-wing echo chamber. It is impossible to participate there unless you say exactly what that audience wants to hear. That's bad. Like, that's algorithmic collapse is real. I don't think anybody wants to be in an echo chamber that powerful in any way, shape, or form. Some people do.

I mean, to be blunt, some people do. And that's fine, right? But it is, like, the distance between X and, like, truth, social and rumble is smaller and smaller every day. Yeah. And there is a community of people who is well served by that.

Great. But it is like, that platform has run away from anything like mainstream appeal, like actively running away from it. Yeah. And we should talk about the extreme hypocrisy of Elon Musk in general, who is like, I'm a free speech warrior and then slowly closed the boundary of speech on X to be exactly what he wants. Yeah. The point I'm making is Threads is also an algorithmic platform. You open it and you just see a fire hose of whatever meta wants you to see, which is the most inane engagement bait. that has ever been produced in the time. Yes. Right? And so it's like not a, you opening,

you're like, what is happening here? What am I seeing? And yes, there's a reverse cron feed that you can like slide over to, but it's not the default. Even if you do set it,

they'll drop you back into the algorithm feed at a moment's notice. And really, you just get to a place where they're not platforms that replace Twitter. Like they don't serve the same role.

They're not doing the same job. Threads, I think, intentionally, they've talked about how they don't want it to be that. X, I think, intentionally in another way, which is he just broke it, you know, he just like took the thing and used it for his own purposes. Super successfully, by the way. Like, just to briefly give credit where credit is due.

Like, I got a bunch of crap from people after the election because we've said many times how stupid a purchasing decision Twitter was, which I would also remind you. Elon Musk also agrees with that fact. He tried very hard to not purchase it. But in a certain way of thinking about it, boy was buying Twitter a good move for Elon Musk, who is now just the shadow president of the United States. I totally think that's debatable. I think you spent a lot of money and he got a bunch of votes and he did a bunch of rallies and he gave away a million dollars to sign people to a petition that may or may not have been in constitutional. Who knows? I'm going to make the X algorithm just do whatever I want.

debatable. I think, I don't know that the average swing voter got swayed by the amount of garbage on X. No, but he's now the second most powerful person in America. Right, but did X make him that? Fair. Or did his money spent, like literally handing novelty checks out on saving. Like, I don't know the answer to that question. Yeah. But the point, the broader point of making, the second part is these are now creator platforms.

That's what they are. They're closed. insanely closed. X will derank your post if you put links in them. So will threads. Because they're algorithmic, they're designed to promote engagement

on the platform themselves. So they are just very closed. They're little walled gardens that you're supposed to be in. And even if threads finishes its activity pub integration, even if it all works out the way that I would very much want it to work out,

it's still closed. It's designed to be a closed ecosystem. And I think, Crucially, that thing has kind of calcified since really the last time we talked about this, right? Like, Threads has now been telling us what Threads is for long enough that the smart thing to do is just believe it, right? Everybody is out here being like, Adam Masseri, please, dear God, let me just see the reverse cron of all the people I follow. If Adam Masseri and Mark Zuckerberg and the Threads team wanted to do that, they would have. Right?

Like, this is where we are. The thing you're describing is what Threads is going to be for the, for, for, seeable future. And I think to me, that is what is underlying a lot of this, is there is this sense of like threads was new and it was early and we weren't sure what it was going to be and they seem to have these big, interesting, ambitious goals. None of that counts in its favor anymore. Like threads is threads now. And we should take the thing for what it is. And it's going to grow however it grows, right? It is growing at some rate. But it is very much meant to be a creator platform. And I think that's how they're going to think about it. Blue sky, for whatever it will become,

is way smaller, as you noted, David. It's 15 million users just today, as we're talking. But it's designed to be an open platform. Links are not suppressed in the algorithm. It is leading you towards RevCron feeds by default. There are algorithms you can get that sort the fire hose in different ways. That's a part of their monetization strategy is actually to sell you algorithms, which is, like, fascinating.

Yes. The moderation is, quote, composable. So you can tell it how you want to moderate the feeds. The protocol, I think, is wonkier. Right. Like, there isn't another blue sky server yet. Right. So everything is happening on one server.

You can kind of set your own domain name so you can, like, make it feel a little bit different. But eventually, when there is one, the idea of following someone from another server is not as political as it is on Mastodon. Like, you're not getting at these, like, server-wide block lists. Like, it's just not how it works. Right. All the Federation is at the user level. So if you're like, I don't like this blue sky server that I'm on, I can tell. take my whole account and take it to another server because that's the, the element that is

moderated is the user account. Whereas on Activity Pub and Massadon and whatever else, the thing that is federated is the servers. Right? So, like, if the verge.mastodon existed, that would be the thing that is federated. And you can be like, I hate you, Neelai. I'm like, leave and go to mastodon.com or whatever. On Blue Sky, it's your account is the thing that moves around. Right. And you can take that from server to server it will, kind of. Yeah, and I think that's the thing. Blue Sky, like I said, got a lot right, but I think that is the thing it got most right. And I think is the thing that is proving to be the hardest about the Fediverse and this kind of whole universe is nobody can figure out who you are.

Like in a sort of meaningful way, like, what is my username and identity and profile is actually like a crucially important part of this entire system? and it is the most complicated thing going in activity pub and Massadon. And Blue Sky, it is like central. And they've done a bunch of really smart stuff. And like your username is also just a URL. You can just type your username into a bar and it will load up your profile. Like that stuff is powerful. And I think is a big win.

Like you said, Blue Sky desperately needs a second thing because it is, it is currently it is exactly as open as Facebook. It has a bunch of big ideas about being over. open and it just isn't right now. And they've got to build the next thing. But a big part of this, honestly, is I believe blue sky is telling the truth much more than I believe Threads is telling the truth about where they want to go. Yeah.

And Adam Aseri, again, very direct. We don't want to do news. It's more trouble than it's worth. Yeah. Okay. Well, you have an ex-in this election, you had an ex-platform that was explicitly showcasing one view of America. explicitly in the tank for one candidate.

And then the alternative was nothing. Right? The alternative platform in that style of social media was, we don't want this here. And that's a weird imbalance, right? So all the people who were leaving X were going to a platform where that stuff was not there, the way that it was on the other platform,

certainly not as overt. And I think now what you're getting is, okay, that didn't work either. And I think now what you're getting is a bunch of people saying, well, this didn't feel right. Let's go to a platform where we can make it what we want.

Right. And Blue Sky literally has the tools built into it to make it what you want. The APIs are there. The availability of just a fire hose of posts is there, and people can build tools. There's already deck blue, I think it's called, is the tweet deck for Blue Sky. It already exists. There it is. You can just use it.

So there's something really interesting happening here where you have kind of like a VHS beta situation inside a federated social media, open social media. But a lot of this far and people that I talk. talk to you are like, this isn't going to matter at the end of the day because there's software that bridges between all of these things. And actually the best outcome is for Mastodon and blue sky and threads and whatever else part of the Fediverse ghost to all just be able to talk to each other and the protocols shouldn't matter as much. I don't know if we'll get there. I think that's a long way away. I think people are still trying to make their specific protocols work and you got to make technology bets. So you got to start with something. But I can see a future where, yeah, actually,

everything does work together way better. And if what you want to do is pick the creator platform, you can go pick the creator platform. But if what you want is the more open, here's where we share a bunch of links and talk about them platform, that is also available to you. Yeah, I think the outcome you're describing,

I think is pretty clearly the best version of this story. And it was always going to take a long time, right? Like, we've been talking a lot about the Fedaverse and Activity Pub for the last couple of years. And I've reached a point where I'm, I'm sort of itchy that it hasn't happened yet. And it's like, okay, maybe this just isn't going to happen. And then it's like, okay, every time I talk to people, they're like,

everyone who works on this has been working on this longer than you realize and is aware of the fact that this is going to take a long time. Right. So it's like none of this gets built in a day. I also think these things are in some ways getting further apart. And that's the part that gets problematic, right? Like everyday threads doesn't build out really strong. activity pub integration, it gets harder to build really strong activity pub integration.

And everyday threads gets more successful. Building that stuff well becomes less and less compelling, right? Like threads as a powerful, closed creator platform could be very successful. It is already very successful. It's just like there comes a time when being a good steward of an open ecosystem is not as exciting as it once was when you were teeny tiny and kind of needed that ecosystem. I still believe the people who work there are serious when they say they want to do that, but that doesn't get you very far. Let me make the defense of the Threads team, not of meta, but specifically the challenge facing the Threads team.

Sure. Because I think they've done something here that is smart, interesting at least, but potentially smart. If you look at Blue Sky, they built all their features, and they have struggled to scale them to even 15 million users, which is why they had invites at the beginning, which is why they had the thing called the Hell Thread. were like, all you could see was one insane thread that was going crazy every day. But they built the complete product and they scaled it. And that is, and that's how most people build things. The Threads team is taking a projectivity pub where they're adding one piece of federation at scale immediately. Right.

So they're like, okay, you can now see who follows you in the Fediverse. All 275 million of you can see this at scale. It works. Okay, now we're going to let you see who liked it. we're not going to let you reply yet. Now we're going to let the next thing happen. And they're adding sort of like one piece of the stack at the scale of the whole platform,

which is just a different way of going about it. But the fact that the loops haven't closed yet, I think is what's driving everybody crazy. Right. And I agree with you. If someone replies to you from the Fedverse, and you can't write back to them, it's like what is the point of this? Right. That's actually like an actively bad experience.

Yeah. If you're someone who is paying attention to protocol development, that is like exciting. But the thing where somebody replies to me, this is what I mean, right? But it's like what it actually looks like as a user is I see a thing that asks me periodically if I want to keep sharing to the Fediverse that I have to figure out what that means and decide. And then I get a bunch of people who are like concerned trolling me into sharing to the Fediverse. And then people reply to me, but I can't reply to them.

And if I like what they reply to, they don't see it. Like it's bad product until it works. And I think the longer it goes being bad product, the less compelling. it becomes kind of to everybody involved. I'm still very hopeful, and I do still think it's the right answer. But I worry increasingly, like, the reason I think this blue sky thing has been such good news is I think threads really didn't seem like it was going to have meaningful competition there for a while. And I think the idea that blue sky, even if it doesn't, like, federate in the way that we want,

even if it doesn't become this sort of big, beautiful open thing, like competition is good. and the idea that threads was just going to sort of walk away with this because we all wanted some other place to post text was bad and so i'm like i'm all for competition even if the right answer is like what did jay call it in your interview it's like competition and cooperation co-opetition yeah it's good that that's what we should root for all right we should take a break we'll be right back support for the show comes from framer Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder, used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS, with everything you need for great SEO, not to mention advanced analytics that include integrated AB testing, your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your dot-com from day one. So whether you want to launch a new site, test a few landing pages, or migrate your full.com, Framer has programs for startups, scale-ups, and large enterprises to make going from idea to live site as easy and fast as possible.

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I would be like, we're starting a server, and you can follow our feeds. Like, I'm just going to post all day on my server and we'll have some ads on it or whatever. And if you want to follow my posts, you can follow them.

But we're going to own this, and we're going to curate a bunch of stuff from these other places using activity pubs. So if you want to see the best of what we're looking at, you can see it here. You can already see what we're doing with QuickPost. We've talked about federating our site quite a bit. Like you can add all these ideas together, right?

Right. Your Vergecast listeners, you're smart. You can see what I'm trying to do here. Yeah. It's harder when you have a giant website with 13 years of archives and static site CSS features that animate and blow up your phone when you scroll, to be honest. Yeah. Some of our old ones were, look, the technology was not ready yet.

We have a big archive that we got to deal with. But if I was starting one today, I would be like the thing to do is lean in to federated distribution and to actually own your own distribution, not be like, I'm going to start a website and make SEO content for the Google robot, or I'm going to start a YouTube channel and eventually get buffeted around by this algorithm until I have to make a video about how mad I am at YouTube, which that everyone does. That's when you get your wings. It's actually lean into the next phase of what the internet looks like. And that's why it's like, which of these protocols is going to win. Because I think there's a bunch of businesses that are sort of like

waiting to start once it's clear, like, how to do it. But nobody knows yet. Like there's just a bunch of this foundational work that is still just inching towards a finish line. Yeah. Well, and it's weird because I think we're at a moment now where at a protocol level, activity pub is way ahead, right? Just in terms of sort of adoption and belief, it is the one that everybody who is making bets is betting on. at this moment. But in terms of actual places people are, blue sky is winning. Like, I think it is going to keep growing like this

because it made the bet that what people want is Twitter minus the mess. And I think truthfully, one of the things that I have come to feel over the last couple of years is, like, Twitter was a disaster of a company run poorly in so many ways and also was kind of like a magical thing

that really accomplished a lot of goals that are hard to accomplish in one place. And we're seeing that now, right? Like what all of these companies are doing is sort of pulling pieces apart of Twitter and doing one or two of those things well. No one is trying to do full Twitter. And frankly, you probably shouldn't,

was Twitter good for the world? Who knows? But the thing where it was like a place to hang out with your Twitter? friends and also a place to discover creators, but also a place to get like government information at incredible speed is like Twitter was central in our culture in a way that I think we still kind of underrate now. And nothing out there is even close to getting to that. But to be clear, this is what I'm saying. It would be better if that was reconstructed, but actually the government

agencies owned their own servers. So the next time a billionaire shows up and breaks it, we're not like, where do I get earthquake information from? Right. Like, that's a real thing that has occurred in the past several years. Yeah. Right? The next time someone shows up and breaks it, we're not like, where will independent creators post their apologies?

Which is a real question that was asked this week. It's just a lot of that that's like, oh, we should actually just own our own tools. Like, in a meaningful way, we should own our own tools. And I know I'm always ranting and raving about this because we have our online. website and it's the last website on Earth and all. But I'm, you look at the who gets to control speech in America and it's like three guys. Yeah. Like at the end of the day. Yeah. It's not the government. That's bad. It's like three guys. And they can come and go. Like very clearly they can come and go. I think one of the miracles of Twitter and people can, you are free to disagree with me

about this, but by and large, they got the balance of moderation correct. Yeah, I agree with that. That platform was lively. Everybody was mad. It like sort of exactly the right volume. Jack Dorsey was bizarrely the sort of right personality to go sit in front of Congress and just accept blame. With a beard in his kitchen. Yeah. He was just like, yeah.

He was like, I suck. I want to be clear. I agree with you that I suck. Like I don't, I'm sad that I did this. The Mark Zuckerberg quote about Twitter is it was a clown car that fell into a gold mine. and they've dismantled all that and they've turned the knobs of moderation and algorithms

and you can just see, okay, this is a thing that can happen. Right. In America, at least for the next eight weeks, we have a First Amendment that prevents the government from passing content moderation rules

that let the government level set. So what you need is competition. I'm actually, we should not talk about Trump too much at all, but I'm confident the next chairman of the FCC is going to be Brendan Carr. Brennan Card does not think the First Amendment should keep the FCC out of content moderation. It's like a real thing that he's talked about.

Yeah. And if he becomes a chairman, we will talk about him a lot. So I'll set that aside. But up until now, who gets to make the rules about what you see is guys. Mostly just guys. It's just dudes. And Sherry Redstone. Yeah.

And I'm hopeful that this moment where people are like, screw it, we'll go to blue sky. That's fun here. points to a future where, if not the protocols, push people towards a better outcome. The fact that everybody can still vote with their attention points to the better outcome. Yeah, I agree. Like, Twitter isn't...

Like, Elon's mistake with Twitter has always been believing its monopoly. And I think right now, you can just look at the numbers. People are leaving Twitter to join Blue Sky. And, like, that means it's not monopoly. Yeah, I tend to think... all of this is going to be a blip in the direction of something else. And it's like what we've learned so far is that leaving Twitter is harder for a lot of people than we think.

Everybody who goes to a new platform loves to talk about the new platform. And then once the novelty of the thing dies down, it's very hard to know what to do. Right? Like I feel like to some extent we had the same feelings about Mastodon in the early days. And it was like, maybe this is the thing. It has different values. I want to be clear, I never had that feeling. No? 1,000% never had that feeling of the Massonon.

Then why do you have it about Blue Sky? I think, you know that Steve Jobs quote about Microsoft and Taste? I hope listeners know what I'm talking about. There's just very famous Steve Jobs city. It's like young Steve Jobs. And it's in his wilderness period. After he got fired from Apple, he was at next. And he was a little more bombastic and usual

because he was constantly trying to sell the next thing and prove himself. whatever. I'm just contextualizing a quote. They asked about Microsoft, and he said, the problem of Microsoft is that they have no taste. And he looked very pleased with himself. And he said, I don't mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way.

Right? They just, the company doesn't have taste. It doesn't have a sense of what it is doing or how it should feel. Yeah. And I've always felt that Macedon lacks that particular kind of taste. Like, it is software. Threads has no taste in a big way.

I like the people who are making threads. I've talked to them. They've shown up at verge parties. We threw a funeral for Twitter. The science team was there. It was great. They're cool. As a company, Medaad does not have taste.

There's a reason Mark Zuckerberg is like wearing in Roman fonts on his shirts and signing deals with Rayban. Because they need to buy taste. They need to demonstrate taste because it does not exist in their products. They've also decided several times that having taste is dangerous. Yep. And the only way to get. as big as meta has gotten is to not have taste. Like, they made a business decision to not have any taste.

I challenge anyone to open the Facebook app and be like, I sense taste here. Right. Blue Sky largely is a clone of Twitter. So, like, I'm not imputing taste onto that. Twitter had, like, Twitter had famous designers. Like, important parts of culture came out of the user base of Twitter, filtered through Twitter's designers and product people and then out into the world, right? the at mention, the hashtag.

Like, all this stuff is stuff Twitter took from its community, productized, put design around, and then gave to the world. Pull to refresh was a third-party Twitter app mechanic that Twitter bought, and they signed a patent pledge so that anybody could use it. So they have the patent on it, but they won't use it. But that is, like, part of the culture now. Like, pull to refresh is like an app mechanic. Yeah.

It is like, actually, if you like spend a lot of time thinking about it, has led to an entire culture. Blue Sky's design is a lot of copies, but you can see it and the people who are making it, they have taste. They have a very clear sense about what the product should be and how it should make people feel. And that is why they talk about composal moderation. That's why Jay's go-to response when you ask her about, what does that mean is, I have a custom feed that just shows me moss, like kinds of moss that I like. Like, they're weirdos and posters. And I think that's why they attracted a bunch of weirdos and posters. I think that's why they've leaned into being

weirdos and posters and like having that community there. I think that's why a culture has been built, like, slowly in the way that cultures on platforms get built. I don't know if any of it will be successful. But when you ask you, like, what's the difference? I just think about that quote. It's like, oh, they don't have taste, and I mean that in a big way. Yeah. No, I agree with that in large ways. I think the challenge there is like, do you know the 991 rule? This is, I don't know where it came from, but it's now like a truism of all sort of social posting platforms that 90% of people are the audience, right? They never post. They never do anything. They're just there to look. 9% of people are kind of light interactors. They might post a little bit. They like things. They

reply to things, whatever. But they're sort of around and making their presence known. And then 1% of people do the vast majority of the things that the other 99% of people are there for. The problem I think we have right now is that blue sky is doing a really good job of appealing to that 1%. Like the people, or maybe it's the 9%, I don't know, the people who like live to post love Blue Sky. And Blue Sky is built for those people and it is fun and it is exciting and the vibes are good and you want to participate. But that is a small percentage of the thing. The 90% is who meta builds for better than any other company on planet Earth. Right. Like, that is what has made Instagram successful. It is what has made Facebook successful.

The meta builds platforms that you come to and do nothing, but you come to them over and over and over and over again. And so you look at ads. And so meta makes a ton of money. But that's why meta has to go to weird algorithmic feeds where you open Instagram and none of your friends are there anymore. And it's just creators bootlegging video clips of 80s movies. Right. But so this is the thing, right? Can you build a place that is both fun to post and full of good stuff every time. you open the app, I'm honestly not sure that it is. And I think, again, we go back to like the magic of Twitter. Twitter at its peak did both of those things. You could have a Twitter experience that felt like lively and real time and interactive and exciting. And you could also show up and see what the Rock was talking about. Like we've, none of these things that we have now do both of those things. None of them. All right. Let me point a few things out just because I know the Vergecast

listeners are screaming in their cars right now, weaving all over the road. One, any, criticism of Elon's handling of Twitter is not praise for the previous administration, who by and large is a bad job. Clown car gold mine. Right. So there's a green word. Two, they never made any money, even though they had whatever success you're describing. And three, the service at its peak was like 300 some million users.

Yeah, but it was the single most cable news was people reading tweets. Like, yeah. It just was. Like, there was a decade in our culture that was mediated by Twitter. a very real way, that if you wanted to share information with a lot of people, no matter who you were, a famous person, a government, a company, you went on Twitter. You just did. And it's still true because the vestiges of that are still so powerful. And nothing coming up now looks like it has a chance to replace that. Yeah. And I don't think it should. I'm just going to keep

coming back to that. I think it would be better if we all owned our own distribution or we built a distribution network that allowed people to come and go more freely. That's what the web is, until Google's search became this hegemon that sort of made the web look exactly how it's going to look. Like, that's the web. That's RSS. I think we're on the customer doing it. It's a podcast. By and large, that is... Listen, we've made it this far and I haven't brought up Google Reader yet, and so I won't. All right, we got to get off this. Wait, can I just read you some user numbers before we go? I went and pulled the user numbers for all of these platforms, and I just found them fascinating. And I just want to read them all

out loud because it's useful context for everything we've talked about. So threads, as we mentioned, as of October 30th, when meta reported earnings, has 275 million active users. What that means is always hard to know how companies measure these things is different across the board in all ways. But that's the number they reported and they're getting a million signups a day. Blue Sky, today, Wednesday, as we're recording this, passed 15 million total users. And yesterday, on Tuesday the 12th, had 798,142 unique posters, which is people who actually posted a thing, which I love as a metric, and I think everyone should do it. And 990,464 unique Lakers. So that's a decent, like, balance of who's here and who's doing stuff.

Mastodon, this is the one that really surprised me and why I wanted to do this, has 9,034,753 total users as of today. 886,711 active. Like, Massadon, and you go look at this, a lot of this stuff comes from like open APIs that these things have. They just ping every day.

You can see how they go. Macedon had that big bump, real momentum after the Twitter thing happened with Elon Musk and it was, it had a moment and it just lost all of that momentum. And it has settled back slightly higher than it was before. It went from like a half a million active users every day to 886,000 active users every day, which is not nothing, but like that's also not momentum. Two years later, like Macedon just kind of lost it. And I feel like right now we got a ton of people who are asking us like, oh, where should I go? And I feel like the only two answers I

would even think about at this moment are blue sky and threads. And I would tell you like, go to blue sky as more fun, and threads is easier, I guess, the place I'd land. I don't even know if it's easier. The Blue Sky app is the number one app in the app store today, mostly because, speaking of cable news, Chris Hayes brought it up on MSNBC last night and said, I really like Blue Sky. And they had a bump. The Blue Sky devs were pointing out that this made the line go up. So it's the number one app in the store today.

People are leaving. The thing on Blue Sky is it right now is it self-contained. There isn't another app protocol server. It's on Blue Sky. And I feel like the Massa number is a little bit confusing, because all those people on Massadon have the ability to see content from threads. Right, true.

Because that is the promise of federation. So it kind of doesn't matter if that number stagnates, as long as the threads number goes up, because you're still being able to follow threads users, depending on your mass on server, and this is the complexity, it's all weird. But if your MassDun server interoperates with threads, as long as threads numbers keep going up,

you have the ability to follow and interact with all those people, or you will over time. So there's some promise of federation here that I think excuse these numbers. But the one thing that is clear is that a smaller number of bad people are interacting higher rates on Twitter.

Yes. X. It's weird. It's a weird time, but I think the shake-up is going to be good. I think it is time to think about distribution on the internet in way different ways, particularly as the creator platforms just shove creators and influencers around.

and like start adding, I opened my Instagram yesterday, and it was like, do you want to make an AI of yourself to talk to your fans? And I, you know, you super did it. I was like, yeah, sure do. Ask them for money. Make sure they pay me money. That is a response to creators feeling burned out. That's why that button is there.

It's because creators have complained about it for so long. They're burned out doing all the things that too. And the platforms are just going to be more extractive. and if just some handful of, I know, creators, publications, whatever mixture of things is like we're actually going to make this a little more open. I think we'll be a much better place. I agree. Also, the verges on Blue Sky now.

Go follow us on Blue Sky. We are, and we have to start a pack. We got the whole thing. Yeah. Open distribution. All right, we got to take a break. We're going to come back. In a new segment, we call Show Intel.

We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns. Because let's be honest, you didn't get into tech to babysit a broken database. You got into it to actually build something. MongoDB lets you do that.

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It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now, since maybe COVID. Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus, and yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning, and we assess that individual. They are doing well.

Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, explain, drops every weekday afternoon. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think, I think that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a different? And is there a different? between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people.

So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary. Third, like that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America Actually. Let's begin. All right, we're back.

Kylie Robinson's here. Hi, Collie. Hello. Welcome to the Veritcast. Have we been on the show together yet? No, I don't think so. Well. Spooky.

There was a reason. I don't know. That's so rude. You're here. We're going to do a new segment. We're calling show and tell. Are we actually calling it show and tell, David? We're calling it that until someone calls or emails with a better name.

We've had very good luck in the past letting smarter people than us name things for us. So please, if you have a better idea, call the hotline, send us an email, name this segment for us. Okay, so here's what we're going to do during the presumptively named show and tell. All of us are going to bring one story to the table. table. We're going to say what it is, and then we're going to talk about it. But it has to be good. Oh, God. So we're putting David on the spot first. David, what's your story this week? I feel like we have to talk about the square iPad. You mentioned it briefly at the top, but this is the only thing I can think about. So we have to talk about this now. So we've been hearing

rumors and reporting for a long time that Apple was really interested in getting into the smart home. Mark German at Bloomberg, who is better at reporting what Apple is going to do than everybody, had a big story this week about what this thing is going to be. Apple is essentially building a smart home controller that is going to live inside of your house. Can I just read you several sentences from this article? And I would like you to tell me what device it sounds like I am describing. For a statement called Show and Tell, I feel like this is a little backwards and that you're reading and then I'm describing what I think you've shown me.

But let's go ahead. It's a tell and show. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Other people are going to name this for us. So Mark Herman says, it's about the size of two iPhones side by side with a thick edge around the display.

There's also a camera at the top front or rechargeable built-in battery and internal speakers. Apple plans to offer it in silver and black options. If you're already thinking, gosh, I know what David is describing. I have more for you. The product has a touch interface.

The company expects most people to use their voice to interact the device, relying on the Siri digital assistant in Apple Intelligence. The product will be marketed as a way to control home appliances, chat with Siri, and hold intercom sessions with FaceTime. It will also be loaded with Apple apps, including ones for web browsing, listening to news updates, and playing music. Users will be able to access their notes and calendar information, and the device can turn

into a slideshow display for their photos. Do you know what device I'm describing? Is it a $3.290 iPad? It's an iPad. Apple is going to make an iPad, and they're going to sell it to you to use in your house. Let me read you the thing that is actually new and is actually interesting. If you just imagine an iPad, Mark German writes this in his story. He says Apple has designed different attachments for the device,

including ones that have fixed the screens onto walls like a classic home security panel. There will be bases with additional speakers that can be placed in the kitchen, on a nightstand, or on a desk. Apple imagines the FaceTime feature being used while cooking or for video conferencing during work meetings. A, still just an iPad. It honestly, it sounds very much like the thing Apple is going to make is a bad iPad. that it wants to sell you lots of for your house. B, an accessory ecosystem of cool, new things that you can add to your iPad

just by docking it on these different docks around your house is a kick-ass idea that Apple should totally do. Just not with a stupid six-inch bad iPad. I'm like losing my mind about this thing. I just want to say out loud. I've said this many times before. Apple is horrible accessory ecosystems, actually. It's just a thing.

It's just reality. how many smart keyboard covers are there for the iPad today? Oh, I agree. Zero. Belkin has become like the official Apple accessory maker because Apple either can't or won't do it itself. Well, Balkan is owned by Foxcon. So you get the idea that every now and again an Apple designer goes in the Foxcon factory and it's like, I have a number of ideas. There's something real there, fine.

But great. And a third-party ecosystem of like weird docs and adapters. Everybody wants this to exist for every Apple product, and I just don't. Sure. But like, I just have to keep reading. The newly designed operating system will also include a customizable home screen where users can run widgets for checking stock tickers, the weather, and appointments. That's an iPad. Or they can configure the screen to highlight key home controls.

iPad. There will also be a doc for quickly launching favorite apps and an screen grid of software icons. It's an iPad. Look, in all fairness, they did iPad again. Bloomberg is a very traditional news organization, and Carmen has to hit a word count. also none of this is this is all very good reporting from german the fact that this is all saying this is very good reporting it's just Apple is just going to make an iPad again and they're going to try to sell it to you as a new thing because it can dock on a speaker yeah that's nothing make the iPad better they're going to cut down the the interface right to make it more smart homey you're going to let people talk to you know the presumably smarter Siri that's a thing that could happen during development Apple discusses launching an app store as part of the device, but it recently decided to exclude this feature, at least in the initial version.

It's an iPad without the app store, so it's just worse. I'm just going to point out that a couple weeks ago, we had Joanna Stern on the show, and we talked about garage door openers for five hours, and Apple's dreams of making a smart home product are going to run head first into the reality of smart home products. Yes. That's what's going to happen. Which is? There, it's impossible.

Fascinating. That's the whole answer. That really is the whole answer. Very smart people get tripped up at whether the smart part of the light bulb should be in the light bulb or the switch. And there are religious arguments for both. There are good reasons to do. In my own home, I have both. Yeah.

I have smart light bulbs and I have smart switches. And no one in my family that literally I'm trying to illuminate knows why or how any of it works. Yeah. And so you put the thing on the wall and you're like, now your house is smart. you end up having to tell a bunch of consumers where a bunch of other computers and their houses have to go. Yeah.

And that just falls, it just falls flat immediately. So would you guys not do this, though? This is not something. Because all I'm thinking, as you say this, is don't hate the player, hate the game. There's going to be a dozen people in this office who buy this. It feels like it's just going to happen.

Sure. But if you're Apple, you have this tablet lineup that is very mature and full of identity crises. And what if instead you just took the thing and said, now here's a doc that makes it have an always on screen. And thus you can control all the things you can still control from your iPad. Like, it's just, it's such a tiny leap from an iPad to this. I think the reason you don't do it if your Apple is because you can sell a bad iPad

a lot cheaper than you can sell a good iPad. Yeah. And so they're going to make a bad iPad and stick it to your wall. Fine. There's also, German has been reporting that the next version of it is going to have a robotic arm and cost $1,000. Like, sure, that's all fine and good. But I think there is a really interesting case to be made that you could turn an iPad,

which is already for most people, kind of statistically speaking, like a homebound device. It is a thing that lives on your bedside table or on your couch or on your coffee table. Like, it's not as portable a thing as it maybe is presumed to be in a lot of ways. you could just turn that up a little bit and turn it into something really cool and powerful with this accessory ecosystem. But instead, Apple is going to reinvent the entire wheel in a way that just feels ridiculous to me.

I'm excited for you to buy an iPad that you stick to your wall, David. I think you're going to love it. You're going to love talking to Siri and be like, Siri do this automation, and then Siri's not going to work. And you're like, what is the answer? Then you're going to Google it. And the answer, for some reason, is going to be restarting your iPhone, which is 100% the Apple Home story.

A big part of this feels like what you do when you build all of this other AI stuff, like the app intense stuff that Apple is working on with Siri, this new Siri, all the Apple intelligence stuff. And you go, hmm, what does any of this actually useful for? This is the same thing, by the way, that Google did with Google Assistant and Amazon did with Alexa. And you realize, oh, it's just you can turn off two sets of lights at once instead of one set of lights.

And that Apple is running directly towards that and nowhere else. I do want to call it the number of listeners who responded to our Joanna conversation on garage door openers in which she said Craig Federidi uses Siri to open his garage door by pointing out that there is zero percent chance that Craig Federigi has an Apple home home and instead definitely has a custom Crestron home automation system. Yeah. Oh, agreed. The emails we got that were like, you all.

understand that there's a custom that this man has a cross tron sister. Anyhow, all right, you've shown, you've told, do I give you a score? Seven. I'm going for seven points. I'm leaving now. It's the meanest thing you've ever said to me. Jesus. It's a new segment. We're figuring out how it works. All right, Kylie, what do you have? Oh my God. It's going to be hard to top. A seven? No, bad iPad. Well, now I'm talking about scaling laws, which are really interesting.

Everyone's reporting this week that scaling laws are failing. So what that is is just put more compute and more data into an LLM and it will get bigger, better, smarter. And everyone has the same training data, which is the internet, the entire internet in all of our work. So they have all that. They're all building sort of the same thing. And they are all finding Google OpenAI Anthropic that it is not working anymore, that they are not getting better than their last generation of models. And they're all pissing their pants about it. That's the story this week.

Yeah. I think this is, I keep thinking about that tweet, which is like, you know, the haters said, I couldn't do it. And they were right. Great call from the haters. I think all of them. I think all of the AI skeptics are like, yeah, we told you. We told you that this wasn't something you could scale infinitely. So, yeah, I don't think it's like doomsday.

Like, it's over for AI. But still, it's interesting that they're all sort of frustrated, that they can't make that giant next leap. And it costs so much money. So if people, if they want to release something that costs so much money for people to use, it's got to be way better. And it's just not. So the idea here is, okay, we made an MGPT4,

by training on the entire internet. We'll get more data, which I was always confusing to be where the more data would come from. Yes, synthetic data. So we'll make some fake AI data. We'll train an even bigger model and that one will necessarily be smarter. Yes. And that just hasn't worked out. And it hasn't worked out.

It does not appear that any of them are going to be more capable than the last. So that means, you know, for instance, I believe I was reported that 01 was helping train the next generation of OpenAI's GPT models. but that has become a problem because then, you know, it just gets confused by synthetic data. It's not high quality data. So, yeah, they're all running into that same issue. And that means that there's going to be

there's going to have to be some like research breakthrough that gets them to that next step that they don't currently have. And there's just tons of money writing on this for them to figure it out. So I think they're all, again, pissing their pants over it. As one of the haters, I definitely feel like I should say I told you said.

So exposes to be something, Kylie, that you've been saying to us and on the Vergecast forever, which is there has been this ongoing line from all of these AI companies that it's like, we're going to do a model, and we're going to do another model, and we're going to do another model, and we're going to do another model, and then it's God. And it's like, well, what is it going to be on the way? And they're like, don't worry about it. God. None of this shit matters because God.

We're going to make God. And then you're going to feel dumb for not giving us money. And what happens now is they're going to get to the point where they're like, okay, you've built this thing. It's actually very cool. It's very capable. It can do lots of things. What's it for?

What are people going to do with it? And all of these companies are like, emails. We're going to write some bomb emails. Yes. And we're like, we are going to be stuck in this, what can you do with this phase for a lot longer than any of these companies would like you to believe. Well, there's that. But there's just also this week. Right.

Dario Amode from Anthropic is telling Lex Friedman that we'll have AGI in like two years. Yes. Sam Altman, I think in the past couple weeks, has said on current hardware we can have AGI. Which, by the way, it means the tech industry should stop. Like, if you can make God on Nvidia's current hardware, we should stop.

Yeah. Yeah, we did it. We're good. We did. We're done. Let God build the next version of the GPU. Like, it'll be here soon. Totally.

The God processing unit. If you're like, if I just put enough H-100s in a room, I can have God. Like, we should, NVIDIA should just slow the fuck down. Sure. Right? And there's something very incompatible with, in two years we'll have AGI. I can build AGI and current hardware. And the bigger models we just trained aren't more capable than the previous models.

Yes. Is that what's going on? I've been asked on Vergecast, or sorry, I think it was Decoder, should we trust them? And I mean, I as a journalist, am just very skeptical. So Dario's saying, you know, we're going to get AGIs, could do all these beautiful things. And I mean, they just have to sell products at the end of the day. The Reddit AMA that Sam Altman did recently, where he said, oh, it's really hard to release these things in parallel. We have, like, such limited compute and it's hard to work on all these things. But the next big thing, I think, is going to be agents. It just feels like they're pivoting. They're like. Don't look at this. Don't look at this right here. We haven't figured it out. Just don't think about agents on current hardware, current models. Look at that. Please give us money. Don't look at how we are failing to make the next big model. And I don't think we need a next bigger model. I think we really enjoyed these companies really enjoyed making these huge leaps from model to model. And if they're

capable enough now of achieving some good emails, then fine. They think that, you know, that they can combine the GBT series with the O reasoning series and perhaps get AGI. Again, I think all of this is to sell more products and get more money. That has always been my position. So yeah. I just want to read you the quote from Darya. If you believe the straight line extrapolation will have artificial general intelligence in 2026 or 2027.

Right. If line go up forever, I will make God. Have you guys seen the tweet from the guy, I'm sorry, I don't remember who it is. We'll find it and put in the show notes who was like, he has two pictures of him with his newborn baby and then his baby who's now three months old. He's like, wild, guys, my baby has doubled in weight in three months. At this rate, by his 10th birthday, he'll be seven trillion pounds. I think about that every single time somebody talks about one of these things. Like, it's really, and people talk about the stuff as if it is

guaranteed. Like, you look at Moore's law, right? And this thing that has like governed technological progress for so long, we now take it as truth that everything that grows grows the same way and forever, and it just doesn't. Like, there is no guarantee that any of this will work like that just because the way we make semiconductors works like that. It's just not how it works. Okay, to add to this too, you know how Sam Altman was going across the world trying to get these trillion dollar data centers built somewhere.

Someone give me the money to build these data centers so I can power digital God. there was a story in the information today that a competitor flew like a crop plane over XAI's data center to figure out how he was cooling those chips because they're so scared about liquid cooling and it's so confusing and I thought that's crazy

that we're getting to a point where people are just flying, you know, little planes over Elon's data center to figure out how the fuck they can build digital god in the same way. It's just such a funny thing. The next Mission Impossible movie is just Tom Cruise.

cruise breaking into a data center to figure out how they power all this stuff. I think that was the last mission. It was really? David, what was? And it was underwater. It was that. Oh, my God. They did that.

Fass and various in space, man. By the way, if you look on all the streaming services, they've taken part one off of that movie. Because it ends on such a garbage cliffhanger that people are mad. Yeah, they're like, never mind. We're just doing a different one now. It's just a full movie. I don't know, man. All right, Kyle, you've shown, you've told.

Yes. David, I think you have to score this one. Two and a half. But that's out of three, to be clear. Sorry, you're so jealous. We didn't say what our scoring metric was. We actually didn't say that we were scoring. Niela gave me a seven out of ten.

I'm giving you a two and a half out of three. Perfect. And then we'll see. Actually, you get like the Netflix one thumb up, but not the two thumbs up. It's like a like it but not a love it kind of thing. You know what I mean? Okay. your score. Digital God, David. We can do it on current hardware. I want to say this as directly as I can. If you believe we can build AGI and current hardware, the tech industry should stop. We should just stop doing everything and focus on that one goal so that digital God can design the next iPhone. But I don't think that's true. Right. That claim just implies you should stop working and let, you know, AGI do it for you. Please, I beg you, let AGI write a

about Donald Trump for the next four years. It'll be, everyone can take a break. All right, here's mine. Just the series of words is so silly. Just Eat is selling Grubhub to wonder. What? None of those words make any sense.

So Grubhub is, you know, is the delivery service. It's like the one that you are most familiar with. They bought Seamless a while ago, so it's all the same app. That was such a New Yorker thing to say, by the way. Grubhubhub is the one is such a New York centric thing to say. What is? None of these words were in the Bible. I don't know what's going on. Yeah.

I don't know what's going on. It's like in L.A. It's just postmates, but nowhere else. S.F. is, I think, probably still like a Dordash town. Doordash, yeah. This is like, when you live in New York, it was like, oh, just seamless it. And it's like, what, that's nothing. That doesn't, that's not a word to exist.

When we move to New York from Chicago, anyway, it doesn't matter. These are all nonsense words in failing businesses that are just selling each other in different configurations. What I want to get to is they're selling it to a. company called Wonder, which is owned by a part owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves and a former Walmart VP. And Wonder's business model is bananas. Perfect. He licenses recipes from famous chefs.

So you're like, yes. So Wonder is like a high-end food hall. And it's a ghost kitchen with like famous restaurants logos on the front. So you go in there and you're like, here's all these like famous local restaurants or like, Restaurants I've heard of that, like, celebrities go to. So Wonder licenses recipes from famous chefs. So you open Wonder, and there's Bobby Flay steak. There's Streetbird by Marcus Samuelson.

There is Detroit Brick Pizza. There's all the stuff. DeFarra Pizza, which is, like, a famous New York pizza place is in there. But they don't actually make the food. They license the recipes. And they have one big commissary kitchen that, like, pre-makes. the food. So good. And then it goes to the food hall where they, with like, steam baths and microwaves reheat the food and assemble it and then deliver it to you or serve it in the food

hall. So they've like commoditize the famous chef's recipe at industrial scale. And now they're going to buy Grubhub and they're going to bring that model to an even bigger delivery system. And it's like, oh, this is wild. Wow. Like the reason that the chefs are famous is because you think Jose Andres is going to make you the food. Yeah. And now he's just licensed a recipe so someone else can steam bath the food to you and send it to you. And we don't know how much they're making off these licenses. That hasn't leaked.

Wow. And it's also just be clear, some of it's very expensive because it's famous chefs. So you're buying. But it's not famous chefs. This is like a knockoff version of eating dinner in a Vegas casino. Right. Where it's like a bunch of restaurants that all claim to be, you know, run by famous people. people, but it just has their name on it.

It's like getting, this is the equivalent of getting room service from a Bobby Flay restaurant in a Vegas casino. Well, Gordon Ramsey Burger is delicious. Let's be clear. Look, I'm sure some of this stuff is good. It's just, it also isn't the point of going to Gordon Ramsey burger places the, like, vibe. Like getting take out Gordon Ramsey seems just wrong. No, that's gross.

Well, I mean, you want to be screamed at in the face by Gordon. Exactly. To some extent, the Vegas version of the chain restaurants, like the Vegas carbone, some people think is the best carbone because it just like moves the most business and there's the most dumb money flowing through it. Sure. Fine. This is very much like we're going to half make the famous pizza, send it to a food hall,

and then a steam oven will finish the famous pizza. Right. And then we will put that on Grubhub. And you're just like, oh, this is the end point of a very particular, business model that started with cloud kitchens, right, where you like open the delivery app. Right. And it's actually Chuckie cheese. And then people are like, what if you didn't even have the Chuckie cheese?

And they're like, but then you still, you can't just have like Wings.com or whatever was in the. So now you need Bobby Flaze name next to it. And you're just kind of like, oh, this is this circle is getting real weird. But it's all of that, but it ends at like a golden corral buffet is essentially the end point of this whole system. Donald Trump's America, every restaurant is carbon. Have you seen people joking about how they don't want DoorDash coming in like a Nissan Ultima? They want it in an Uber black. Like this is that same thing.

Are you serious? It's just like it's like sending an Uber black to a commissary to get your food. Like what is the point anymore? I feel like we've just reached a new level of consumerism that is absolutely absurd. And I'm purebush. It's not absurd enough yet. I would like every part of this process to feel fancy but actually not be fancy at all. Right.

Exactly. I want to think it's expensive, even though it sucks. I just like the idea that you would order any steak from a delivery app has always seemed odd to me. Like, it's just, that's not a great environment for steak to be in, like, in the back of an Nissan alternate for a while. I feel the same way about delivery sushi. Like, yeah, not about it. Sorry, I can't really. Like, you know why Meryl Streep was angry in the Devil Wars Prada?

Because she was having delivery steak for lunch every day. That's such a good point. All right, that's it. I've shown, I've told. Wait, can I add one more thing to this? Yeah. So four years ago, when there was some other stuff going on in the world, just eat, which was then called Just Eat Takeaway, because sure, bought Grubhub for $7.3 billion and is now selling it to wonder for $650 million. I don't know enough about this world to, like, really process why that is, but that is a giant.

loss in four years. Yeah, I don't remember the last time I used Grubhub, maybe 2020. I mean, it might have been. So it makes sense to me. Well, and Just Eat Takeaway was for a minute, they were like, it was called Just Eat Takeaway because that was the combination of two businesses. And it was supposed to be the like giant delivery conglomerate that was going to eat everything.

And that just has not panned out for anybody. I mean, the margins can't be good, right? I know nothing about this world, but it's... I'm guessing the margins on selling microcontractors. of Gordon Ramsey is. I don't think that's probably better than... I may not say Gordon Ramsey name. I'm sure the margin on selling microwave Bobby Fly is like very good.

That's probably a better business idea than people enslaved to McDonald's on motorcycles. Well, and all of these companies have said for years in like Uber and DoorDash among them that shipping food and stuff is a much higher margin business around a city than people, right? Like giving humans rides is not nearly as good a business as moving stake around for a huge profit. So like you can see it. There was just going to be this time when all of these companies were competing and whoever won was going to be a giant and it was going to be epic and they were going to be the biggest company in the world. And what actually seems to have happened is it's a bunch of like reasonably successful but fairly low margin businesses. Yeah.

that works well in some places and not in others. The VC dollars are not able to buy monopolies and then raise the prices, which is the business model for, in particular, Uber for a long time. Yep. But look, again, the words I'm using, Just Eat has sold Grubhub to Wonder is a sentence that you now understand. I don't want to understand it. I want to go back.

Give me a score. Three Michelin stars. Very good. Wow. That means I'm now a raging asshole and I can't be stopped. The maid man. No, I'm going to put you in the ring with Bobby Clay and then we'll figure it out from there. Yes, chef.

Yes, chef. We got to stop. That's it. That was show and tell. We have to take a break. Thank you, Kylie. We'll be right back. This week on Net Worth and Chill, we're diving into another edition of Am I the Asshole, Finance Edition?

And trust me, these money dilemmas will have you questioning everything. I'm breaking down real stories from real people who are navigating financial situations that range from mildly awkward to absolutely. absolutely unhinged, and I'm giving you my unfiltered take on who's in the right and who needs a serious reality check. Because let's be real, when it comes to mixing relationships and finances, someone's always asking if they're the asshole. Learn how to set boundaries, protect your wealth, and avoid becoming the villain in your own financial story. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash you are rich BFF. We're back with the lightning round. I have news. It's not today, but I'm told the lightning round is sponsored. It's very excited.

Big money. We're going to be doing this podcast from a yacht starting sometime soon. It was sponsored by a boat show. If you run a boat show and you'd like to sponsor the line here, please let me know. Talk about a sponsor integration, which we are ethically not allowed to do. I have been trying to come up with a reason to go to the Monaco Yacht Show for journalism for approximately my entire journalism career. I've always said that the main thing I want to do is figure out a reason to expense drugs.

figure out a journalistically real reason to go to the Monaco Yacht show is now number one on my list. You've mellowed in your old age. Yeah, I just want to be on a boat now. I just sober on a boat. It seems great. It's very good. All right, lightning round. What do you think?

You have selected three things in the lightning round, which is the least lightning round thing I could imagine. So why don't you go first and do one? Okay, so my first one, which I just want to talk about very quickly, is something a bunch of people have asked me about this week and it's ethics and disclosure so talk about this for as much as anybody wants me to talk about it and we'll move on to

more fun lightning around ones but this week Marquez Brownlee made a video as a sponsored video and the video is speeding his car people got all mad about it we wrote about it because Marquez is a huge character in tech we write about other creators all the time we think our audience wants to know and keep up with the thing so we wrote about it

here's what's happening if you read the story it's pretty straight it's on the website here's some stuff that happened. Here's the coverage of it. Marquez, we wrote about his wallpaper app recently, too. There's whatever controversy. I don't want to dwell on the video or what happened in the video or any of that stuff. What people are asking about is that I think it's way for him, right?

Marquez's podcast. At the end of it or at the beginning of it, they say this is part of Vox Media Podcast Network. And so people are asking, do we need to disclose this? Should we disclose this in the story? Should we talk about now? As I think Vurchas listeners know, I got no problems with disclosures. Disclosures all night and all day. I think we should be as transparent as possible about potential sources of conflicts.

I think we should earn people's trust as just transparently as we can. We talk about the making of journalism more than any other traditional journalists that I can think of. We certainly do more disclosures than any traditional media or any influencers do all the whole time. I have literally no problem with this. I'm happy to disclose it. The thing that we're running into right now is like when and why do we disclose things. And so in this case, the Vox Media Podcasts, network is an ad sales network, right? If you are, if you start a podcast and you just like go

onto YouTube or you go into Spotify's platform or whatever, you're kind of, unless you have big scale, you're kind of stuck with programmatic advertising, whatever the platforms will give to you. And if you want better advertising, you want more money, you need scale. So you join a podcast network that has a lot of inventory across a lot of shows. And then our sellers go out and sell that inventory and then you make more money or whatever. I actually don't know because that's the other side of the house. Right. So the conflict. here doesn't exist. Like, our sales team is selling ads, which they do on our own website that we don't

know about, that they do on the show, that we basically don't know about. As many of you have heard, sometimes we just run the same ad 500 times. Right. Like, there's a wall between us and sales, and we are very, very, very protective of that wall. Our coverage often loses them money because various companies are mad at our coverage, and they walk away with the deals. I've personally cost this company a bunch of money.

But that's the whole point of the wall, right? It's to keep our newsroom away from any of those considerations so that we can just write about what's happening and have editorial independence and freedom. And we can, if it's like the first line of our ethics policy is like is the editorial independence that allows us to cover companies critically without fear of favor or whatever. That's the thing that's the most important.

That's the truly the heart of this whole operation is the independence. So what we disclose is where there's a plausible connection to some conflict in our newsroom. So Comcast, NBCUniversal is an investor in our company. They're on our board of directors. They can want to fire me. Right. They can. They don't like me a lot.

They might. Right. Like they can have a board meeting and say, we should fire this guy. That is a plausible imposition on our newsroom. It has never happened. You know, we've been running this thing for 13 years. But that's plausible. I think you can fairly look at our company and say, they're at the top of it.

The Verge is talking about Comcast. Maybe they'll get them fired. Maybe he's shading the coverage. Fine. So we disclose it. I made a Netflix show. That's just like an open conflict of interest, right? Like every time I talk about Netflix, I should point out that I made a Netflix show.

I think it paid for it because the company made it. But, you know, whatever. I still made the show. Great. Like, I think that's fine. That's a totally rational conflict of interest. There's a plausible connection to the thing and the conflict. There's a million of these.

We disclose them all the time. This one, there isn't a plausible conflict. Actually, more plausible conflict is that David and I know most of the people on Wayform, and we like them. Yeah. So I will disclose to you. I've known Marquez for a long time. David has known Marquez for a long time. We know a bunch of folks over there.

We're friendly with them. We generally wish them success. When we cover them, I think we do it as straight as we can. But the actual business conflict is. it's not there. And if we open the door to disclosing what our sales side is doing, I think we actually threaten

our editorial independence because then I have to tell the newsroom every single thing they have to disclose. And I have to make the newsroom aware of all of the company's commercial and corporate interactions in a way that I actually don't want them to know. That's the whole purpose of the wall is that they're just going to do their jobs.

So there's a line here, and I'm not saying we always get it 100% right. But in this case, that I know what that arrangement is. Like, I know what the Box Media Podcast Network is. We have a bunch of these deals. Like all of Scott Galloway's Prof G shows, we don't own them. We don't make them. But they're in the network.

We sell the ads. There are other ones as well. There's all kinds of arrangements. We'll disclose the ones where it's our company. But in this case, it's just a little to remove from our newsroom. In the same way that we run a programmatic ad tech stack called Concert that is on tons of publishers. Every time you see a concert logo on a web ad,

That's, the Vox Media is serving that one. And we just cannot disclose every partner at concert. It would bring our newsroom to a halt. And more importantly, it would force me to make every reporter in the newsroom aware of the company's business deals, which is the most important thing. Right. That's the key, right? Like the not knowing on that side is important, right?

Like, there is a thing. We talk about this with creators and stuff all the time that one of the challenges is knowing what something you do will do to your business. And because of who is advertising and who wants to sponsor your videos and all this stuff, that is a thing you have to reckon with. And a big part of what we're trying to do is not even give people the chance to think about that. Because it just changes things. And I firmly believe that this is getting confusing and muddled and most people do not understand this. And that's on us. We have to constantly explain it, which is why I'm happy to talk about it whenever anyone asks. That is not how most

of the media that most people consume works anymore. Most creators and influencers have absolutely blurred the lines between advertising, between sales, they have investments, their commercial relationships are in the front of their content. I'm not even calling out any creator. This is the reality of the business on those platforms. If you want to make enough money to eat, this is how you have to play the game. Yep, but that's not us, right? Like, it just isn't us. And so I'm happy to disclose everything. I'm happy to talk about it. I just, there are times from I'm like, no, that one doesn't make any sense. And what I'm really talking about is if I extend the rule that much, we're actually going to defeat the purpose of the rule. Right. We're going to defeat the independence

of the newsroom in a way that that's, that is the product we sell here, is the independence of the newsroom. Let me just, I'll give this example. We disclose Comcast NBC all the time because everybody knows about it. There are other investors in our company that they're there. And if I extend the rule so far. Like, I kind of end up in a place where every single morning I'm just telling the newsroom who they should be worried of me. Right. Here's a list of problems. Yeah, here's a list of considerations for every story. And it's like I, I really think that undercuts the promise of what we do here. So like I said, we'll take the feedback. I will talk about it whenever we want. In this case, there's not a plausible connection to the company's commercial activities in our newsroom. I just assure you

that there isn't one to the point where until people mentioned it to us, I didn't even thought about it. And so we'll keep going to keep doing disclosures. My ask of you, do you want to yell at me about this, take 20% of the energy and point it at other media outlets and other creators and influencers. Because I would rather be in a world where the audience is that demanding of everyone, and I'll do my best to live up to it because that's the thing that's going to rebuild trust and whatever kind of journalism exists. And that we do it, so we get it a lot, right? It's an expectation that we have created with all of you,

and I'm happy about that. We receive the expectation. But if you think we're failing, take just 20% of the energy and point at everybody else. Like, it'll make everything a little bit better. All right, David, what's your letting me? Mine's going to be much quicker because I really don't want to talk about it.

Like, we went from something that we like talking about, too. I don't, under any circumstances, want to talk about this, but we have to. And it is that president-elect Donald Trump has said that Elon Musk is going to be leading a thing called the Department of Government Efficiency that is going to do some stuff cut wasteful government spending. There's apparently going to be a leaderboard on X of all the dumbest ways the government spends money. The only reason I want to talk about this is because I think if I have a bit on this show, it is the question, is this anything? It's the meme of a person holding a, like, their hand at a butterfly and going, is this anything? This is nothing.

This is nothing. Can I just say it's, it was announced. And it's Elon and Vivek Ramoswami are going to run it. And it's amazing that the efficiency department has two leaders. Like, you're just coming out the gate with co-CEOs, like Blackberry style? Like, what are we doing? What could possibly go on? That's very good.

You can't just do a department. You can't just do it. Like in life? I declare department is not a. thing the president can do. Oh, you mean it like in the government? Yeah.

You and I could make a department of, I just, the department of David's pillows. Like, that exists. I did it. We're here. I feel like your wife might have something to say this department.

I'm the president. I did it. It's my weird pillow room. But the, the government cannot just create a department out of thin air because someone says so. That's not how this works. I'm going to say what?

Yeah. an act of Congress. Yeah. So whatever. The only other thing I'll add to this. Because this is going to be fake when we're not to talk about it. And this is pure, by the way,

Decoder bait, and we'll definitely talk about a decoder. Can you make a fake department in the government? Also, by the way, leaderboards of wasteful government spending. They've been doing that shit since the 80s. Like, some of these ideas,

we're just inventing trains again, like the classic Elon Musk. Yeah. Anyway, all this is to say, there is a New York MAG article today about the scene at Mara Lago and just like the frenzy of corruption that this has happened.

happening there. And every time Elon Musk walks into dinner, Donald Trump pulls out his iPad and plays Space Oddity by David Bowie. Oh, I don't like that at all. I feel like David Bowie be very mad, but I also think it's very funny they pick SpaceOid. Yeah, it's like not exactly the compliment you might think it is. It's not. Yeah, but that's enough. We've talked about that enough. What's your next one, Eli? Well, I'll come back to it around. All right. I want to check in on our nation's fourth wireless carrier, which you will recall is a product of Trump one. when T-Mobile wanted to buy Sprint, and instead of saying no,

which is the exact process by which T-Mobile was created. If you recall, AT&T wanted to buy T-Mobile, the government said no, and then T-Mobile had to go out. They took a bunch of money in the breakup fee, but then they became T-Mobile. They hired a new CEO.

They did business. We're going to try hard. Yeah. We didn't do that with Sprint. The court literally said Sprint sucks so much. No one can fix it. T-Mobbles can have it. And to get around this problem, McCann, Delrahme,

who was the head of antitrust of the time, brokered personally a deal by which T-Mobile would get a bunch of Sprint, and a bunch of Sprint Spectrum would go to DISH Network, America's favorite satellite TV service, and they would create a fourth wireless network which it has been one billion years

and which does not meaningfully exist. There was a pilot network called Project Gen. 5Sys, which offered people NFTs if they signed up for service on the Motorola Edge. That didn't work. Mostly there's been an NVNNFINFIS, So they resell AT&T and T-Mobile service. A historically successful plan to compete with AT&T and T-Mobile,

which is buying their service and reselling it for a fee. That really hasn't quaking in their boots. They have lit up some towers in some cities. They've decided they're going to let go of all the Gen Fives of stuff. They're just going to call it Boost Mobile, which is a brand that they acquired in the thing. And now they say, they say, they have earned the title. of mobile network operator.

That's their announcement. Congrats. Rather than MV&O, which is mobile virtual network operator, which is what you have to call yourself when you're just reselling other people's service. They have earned the title of mobile network operator. They're a real network now. By the end of the year, it needs to reach 80% of the people.

They said, we are well on the way to meeting this goal. They have lit up more than 20,000 of the 24,000 cell sites it's a promise to deploy by June 2025. But has anybody seen it? Has anybody running ads? Yeah, like, do you have any friends who are on boost? Like, is that... I mean, people are friends are on boost,

but they're just reusing AT&T service. You go on the subredits of Genesis or boost. It's not pretty. And in the meantime, by the way, all of the other three carriers, all they've done is raise their prices. Yep. Yeah, all of the stuff that I... competition in this market. All the stuff that I saw on Project Janice are basically like if I stand right here, I get the carrier that I think that I have. And if I am literally anywhere else on planet Earth, it's just AT&T.

It's like, great. You just got like a slightly worse AT&T phone. Congratulations. It's a motor old edge. You're killing it. We'll see. You know, as always, something will happen. Time will relentlessly go back. I mean, and you mentioned T-Mobile, but it is possible to do interesting things in this space. Like, there was a time when T-Mobile did the whole uncarrier bit and everything got purple and John Lager was running around doing crazy stuff. Like, there are interesting moves you can make in this market and there haven't been any in a very long time. Nope. And I think it's like, I am hopeful for boost. I would say I have precisely zero actual expectations. if this going anywhere.

And I would just point out that all they had to do was not let Team Mobile Viceprint. And so they brokered this complicated deal. Why? Is T-Mobile cheaper? Certainly isn't. And by the way, T-Mobile promised that it wouldn't cut any jobs, immediately cut thousands of jobs.

Yeah. We're entering a period now where there will be more mergers. The Lena Con era is over, right? All that's going to get turned over. Already streaming, like David Zazlov is like, like mergers are back. Yeah. Like the net neutrality is going to go away.

You can just see the, hey, should Verizon buy Paramount and bundle it into its service and throttle Disney is like there's accounts that just on their boats, just staring off into the sunset, dreaming up ways to raise prices. And it's not going to result in faster service or more reliable service. Almost a guarantee. You want to know what the rich has is going to be about in the next four years. It's just me ranting about cell carriers. Oh, so it's the same.

as always. That's good. It's nice to know that some things don't change even in these trying times. Three Michelin stars. Yeah, exactly. All right, one more than we get it up. All right, I just very briefly want to pour one out for everyone's 11th favorite streaming service, free V, which was, I believe, once called IMDB FreeDive, I think, and then it was IMDB TV, and then it was FreeV, and then it was free V, and now it is dying, and just everything is being bundled into Prime. video. This is not going to be sad for very many people. I don't think. Freeview is actually like a sneakily pretty good, pretty light app. So I'm sad to not be able to use it anymore. Doesn't they do jury duty? They did do jury duty, which was wonderful. And I actually think jury duty is sort of funny because

there's all these. We've talked a lot about the fast channels and the sort of rise of ad supported streaming. And jury duty is kind of the only giant breakout hit to ever come out of one of these. services. Like, you look at the the Roku channel has had a few. They had the Weird Al Yankovic movie that was like kind of around. Tubby is doing stuff. Pluto is doing stuff like this fast universe is growing really

quickly, but the huge sort of mainstream content has not really happened. And I think if you look at Amazon, Amazon is all in on ads. And I think this is the thing that is really starting to happen is the ad business in streaming is turning really fast

now. Netflix, is now two years into it and it's growing pretty quickly. Uh, Hulu is doing really well. And so Disney and ESPN is starting to catch up. Like the ad supported streaming universe is here in a big way. And I think Amazon was it earlier this year turned on the thing where now it's ads by default unless you pay more. And now it's bringing all this free stuff in to give people more stuff to watch with those ads inside a prime video.

Like this is the future. And we're going to go back to big. giant libraries, mostly stuff you don't want to watch because they're just trying to turn at inventory. And I think it's going to change streaming in some really interesting ways. But I am sad freebie's gone. This is the dumbest name, and I will miss it terribly. The second they named it.

I'm sorry. They also had like a Bosch legacy or something. It was like a Bosch spin-off that apparently some people watched. I don't know. I've never felt less connected to pop culture than reading about Bosch legacy when FreeV died. But I did watch jury. duty and it was great.

Charity duty, they should just make one of those every week. I agree. It was very good. All right, we're way over. Thank you to Kylie for being on. Let us know what you think of show and tell. Let us know if you have better name. Yes, please. Or if we should actually have scores. The idea, just so everybody knows, is that we

all just sort of bring stories and surprise each other with them. We're going to teach each other new things and all have thoughts about it on the show. So name that whatever you want. And please let us know what the scoring The scoring mechanism. We don't know.

All right, that's it. That's our chest. Rock and roll. And that's it for the Vergecast this week. Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866, Verge11. The Vergecast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Liam James, Will Pore, and Eric Gomez.

And that's it. We'll see you next week.