The Vergecast - Elon Musk's first week at Twitter / Matter's newest smart home devices

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, Alex Cranz, and Alex Heath discuss what has happened with Twitter since Elon Musk has taken over the company. Then, Nilay, David and Alex discuss the first Matter-compatible devices since the launch of the smart home standard. Further reading: Elon Musk wastes no time changing Twitter  Why Elon Musk is so desperate for Twitter to make money Elon Musk could enable Twitter's edit button for everyone  Elon Musk could cut half of Twitter’s workforce  Over 190 smart home devices are now Matter certified and here’s what’s coming next We’re getting our first look at Matter devices today, and here’s what’s coming next Level locks had a secret Thread radio this whole time Amazon announces a phased rollout of Matter to its Alexa smart home platform Eve’s sensors and smart plugs will be among the first Matter-compatible devices Nanoleaf announces the first Matter-over-Thread light bulbs Philips Hue Bridge is getting updated to Matter early next year Aqara’s Matter transition begins in December with free hub update Amazon Music’s library of songs and podcasts is now free for Prime subscribers  Apple TV 4K (2022) review: unmatched power, unrealized potential Netflix’s new cheaper plan with ads doesn’t work on Apple TV at launch Netflix’s $6.99 per month ad tier is now live PlayStation VR2 launches on February 22nd for $549.99 Comcast’s big rival to Roku and the smart TV is called… Xumo  Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we'd love to hear from you. We are conducting a short audience survey to help plan for our future and hear from you. To participate, head to vox.com/podsurvey, and thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Vergecast, Alex Heath joins us to break down all the drama going on at Twitter this week. Amazon Prime Music releases a new plan that surprises but mostly annoys existing users. And of course, we'll get into all the gadget news from this week. That's coming up right after this. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog.

That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud

with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom.

And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of free speech. And weed. With exceptions. Both things.

All right, so we have a weed update, a studio weed update. Alex and I are in the studio. today. I'm your friend of you know I. Alex Cranes is here. Hello. David Pierce is here. Hi. Alex Heath is joining us for the first segment to talk about obviously Elon Musk. Hi, Alex. Hi. All right. Before we, but we have a we have a studio weed up there. Much more important update than Elon. Okay. We have, I don't know that we've ruled out Kara Swisher is the weed in the studio culprit. I want to keep that. I mean, is we ruled out that Elon Musk is the weed in the studio? Like is that I mean. He could be. It seems possible. It's very possible. We're wearing his head. I'll tell you that much.

We, so I'm not saying we it's conclusively not Kara. But I will say that. I will say that. I will say we walked in today, Kara has not been in the studio. I don't even know if Kara was in the street last time. But I know I've been in the office all day. I've not seen her. Yeah. I think she lives in D.C. So she's not here.

Not here often. Case still open. Yeah. Still a suspect of interest. Right. We haven't ruled her out. But it smells like weed again. It does.

Smells a lot like wheat. Having a great time. And today we are informed that we share an air duct with another team at the company. I will not say who the team is. I think the listener should try to guess. Please send us. Yes. It is very obvious.

It will land. It will click. Which group? And not even accusing them. We don't know for sure. We don't know. It could be recode. Yeah.

Just think about it. What? It's the Packers blog. They're dealing with a lot right now. Even alone. That's just more of a booze situation. That's a brown liquor problem. That's not a weed problem.

All right. There's a lot going on in the world. Elon. It's his first week at Twitter. It has been absolutely. chaotic. On the other happier side of tech news, it's Matter's launch day. Speaking of Weed,

Matter, the Smart Home Standard is launching currently in Amsterdam, our own times their place. They are just turning lights on and off, just stoned out of their mind. From all corners the earth, Jen Toey and Thomas Ricker are actually, Thomas lives in Amsterdam, Jen flew over there. We've got lots of news, the matter event

we should talk about. It's pretty exciting. I've got a bunch of gadgets talk about. Let's start, though, with Elon. Speaking of Brown Liquor, let's start with Elon. Take a shot. Alex, it's been his first week. It's been chaotic. You kind of blew up the world over the weekend by reporting that Twitter blue would cost $20. Our friend Casey Newton had reported it would cost four and then it landed at eight. It sounds like layoffs are happening maybe as soon as tomorrow for half the workforce. What's the latest? Yeah, so layoffs will most likely have started by the time this podcast drops. If not, I would expect soon after. Yeah, it's been to sum it up, you know, just chaotic inside Twitter. I would say, The current vibe is perfectly encapsulated by the fact that Elon Musk has almost 90 direct reports inside Twitter's internal directory, which, you know, I think speaks to just the fact that he's fired everyone that would be below him. That's super funny.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, it started with me having to Google Ligma on Friday, which was very unfortunate. I don't recommend that. And then throughout the weekend, it became apparent that Musk's first. big project was going to be rehauling verification on Twitter. And I'd heard that he was making people stay in the office over the weekend to get a demo together to show him of this new idea. And I really do think that the price, the team building the feature found out that the

final price was going to be $8 by him tweeting it. To Stephen King. I don't like that's, well, so yes, I think Stephen King props to Mike Isaac for pointing this out who also testified in the big, that was at the Simon & Schuster merger trial. Yeah, Penguin Random House. Yeah, Penguin Random House. You know, Stephen King said, you know, basically, fuck this. Like, I'm not going to pay $20 after we reported that Twitter was planning on making it $20. And then Elon responded and was like, how about eight? And then the next day said eight. So Stephen King had a product at Twitter. Congrats.

Yeah. Wonderful move. It's actually, it's just remarkable. Like people, employees are literally just looking to Musk's Twitter account to see what their next directive is going to be and how their product is actually going to work, which is just an amazing time we live in. Meanwhile, they're all sprinting to get this new Twitter blue subscription product out the door by this coming Monday, November 7th, or else they're all going to be fired. And they all may be fired or half them fired anyway by Saturday or Friday when this comes out since he's about to cut estimated around half of the company, almost 4,000 people on Friday. So, yeah, That's the lay of the land.

Is this push to get it all like Twitter Blue completely redone by the seventh? Is this like, is the intent to make people so miserable they quit so he doesn't have to lay them off? Is the intent to make them fail so that he can be like, that's why you're fired? Like, is that kind of the calculus there before the layoffs? You know, Alex, only Elon can see it to the mind of Elon. Has he tweeted anything on this time? If you're just like a Twitter engineer, you got like a, engineering brain.

Yeah. Just a little game theory. Yeah. You cannot be miserable enough to quit at this moment in time. There's no amount of misery that would make you walk away from a severance that's coming if you get back. Yeah. I mean, this is already super sadistic this whole process. I think it's more to send a message, right?

Like I reported that literally the first day he took over, he was like redirect, logged out homepage to explore and had that pushed through the code freeze. It's just kind of like a, I'm here and we're going to start changing things that we thought we would never change. That was a hugely political thing before. I talked about it in a story over the weekend anyway. And I think the same thing with Blue. It's more to just show, A, we can do stuff fast if we're forced to, like on point. And B, I'm showing you where my priorities lie.

So this is the big project that everyone's working on. The lead PM of this literally tweeted that she was sleeping on the floor in the conference room the other day. Hashtag sleep where you work. And so I think it's just to say this is a new company. I mean, Twitter is a company that has had a monthly day of rest for the last two years, which Musk also got rid of. And it's just like the opposite of a Musk company. Like this is the most dramatic cultural reset of a company that I've ever witnessed. And it's happening in real time in less than a week.

And that's probably also why he fired the entire executive team is he's just saying like, we're not, we're changing things. Yeah. That to me is really one of the more sort of instructive. parts of all of this is this is also in keeping with how Elon Musk does business. Like any of the people who have come over to Twitter from Tesla, I guarantee you this is not phasing them. This is just how it works. He says insane things that are probably impossible, pushes everybody like crazy to make it work. And if it doesn't, there's hell to pay. And or he just tweets a new crazy thing and then everybody chases that. This is just like, this is the price of doing business with Elon Musk.

And it's in a strange way. Like, part of it is, it's incredible how quickly he has pulled this off. Like the sheer force of personality to just roll into the building and be like, what's up, everything is different. Ready go is like deeply messed up, but also in a certain way, like kind of impressive. I will say that I've had several Twitter employees compare this to like the Trump White House and the transition team there. And I think that's a very apt analogy. I mean, the guy that Musk is leaning on to help him come up with the layoff plan, his last name is Sacks. I mean, you couldn't write this as a Hollywood square. any better. And to what David was saying before, there are dozens of people from Tesla,

the boring company, Neuralink, including Musk's own cousin, other aides, other advisors, VCs in the building that, you know, are helping Musk do all this. And that's been very jarring for Twitter employees, too, is to be like, wait, my fate is going to be dictated by the All-In podcast. Yeah. So there's two things there. One, to David's point, how many times we've seen at a company get a new CEO. How many times are we talked to new leadership at companies? Even when we have done new things, like, what's the first thing that happens? Like, the leader is like, I need to listen to everybody.

Everyone needs to feel hurt. I just need to go make everyone comfortable and then we'll start doing changes. And then we will destroy you. I swear to God there's a new CEO playbook that's like the first, here's what you are the first month. You just tell everyone you're listening. Even if you're not. Yeah. You just say loudly, like, first I need to listen to everyone.

Yeah. It's literally called the listening tour. You do the listening to her. It's what you do. You're like, walk around. You're like, I'm listening to you. And in the back of every CEO's head, it's like to see if I'll fire you. But you do it.

There's no listening to Elon, right? Like he's been paying attention. He's addicted to Twitter. The thing I keep saying is like, it's like someone addicted to cigarettes was given a cigarette factory. And they don't realize that no one else is addicted to cigarettes the way that they are addicted to cigarettes. And they're like, I have been having thoughts about cigarettes for a long time. And we're going to do them. mall.

All of them, this week. It's just something that's hilarious. And then the second part of that is this like kitchen cabinet of his, which is mostly comprised of investors, not people who do things. And yes, we know there's a bunch of engineers and people from his other companies, but the public face of the decisions is a bunch of finance people. Yeah. And it's just very, it's like someone finally allowed them to play with the Legos and they're like,

all right, here's what you do. You make a huge tower with a skinny base. I've been thinking about these Legos for a long time. And they have no idea what they're doing because they're just the money. Yeah. And that to me is like the funniest part of this whole thing is all these VCs are like, we need a team, we need a product, we need founders, we need people who know the product. And they themselves are not taking their own cliche advice.

Money is important because Musk has a, I think he's on the hook for about a billion a year. in interest payments alone on this Twitter deal. And interestingly, the rumor I keep hearing is that internally there's a push to cost save about a billion a year in OPEX between all the cuts that are about to come. And they're scrutinizing every vendor contract or cloud spend everything to cut costs. So yeah, it is like a, it is a thing of financial engineering. That is the Twitter problem on day one. And then the product stuff will happen. And he wants to obviously move quickly on the product stuff, but he's got to first make it work financially. So $8 a month.

Currently there's, currently there's, what, 400,000 verified users so we can tell. And that number comes from the number of people that the at verified account follows on Twitter. Which is automatic and is everyone who's verified. I've confirmed that. Okay. I think I have it. So I'm really, I want to know what you guys think about this verification thing.

And if everyone's going to pay, I mean, of course we are. But like, if you, if you. No, no. That's the cigarette factory talk. You don't have to smoke cigarettes, Alex. You don't have to do it. You can quit. Get a patch. I get all of the blowback to this. And, you know, when I published the first, you know, that they were contemplating 20, it just was like people freaked out. Blue Check Twitter went on red mode. I think people are underestimating the incentives to buy into this.

Because it's not just that you have a checkmark. The way that Twitter verification has worked, and I don't think people get this, is that if you're verified, you're actually, it's. It's a quality signal in Twitter's algorithms. So you're boosted more in the timeline. You're boosted in replies. There's that verified filter that we have if we're checkmarked where we can see verified responses. And the next update, that verified tab is going to become the first tab in the notifications tray. So basically he's going to just bifurcate the audience. Yeah.

And I think people are going to be so pressured to pay for this because they're going to realize that, oh, I am in the cheap seats all of a sudden, not just in terms of like what I'm paying, but in terms of my reach and in terms of like my quality of like what I can. can see. And so I think that's why a lot of people, because it's also a network effect thing, will buy into this. And I actually, I actually think this will be like something that millions of people do. I think it's the exact opposite. I think the blue check mark is about to be the mark that you're a weirdo who uses Twitter so much. You're willing to pay $8 a month for it. And I think it's going to be a point like where people say, oh, you have a blue check. Ew. You really pay for

this? And maybe that won't happen. But I genuinely think that this is going to be like a big moment for this company and for social media and all, right? Like social media that generally the thing is we are going to mine the crap out of your data and in return, you get all of this free access to communicate with other people. And now he's saying we're going to mine the crap out of your data. And if you want a better experience, you have to pay $8 a month. And if you don't like that, you can use the shitty version or you can walk.

And I'm like, are people really going to pay that $8? many for people who already say they hate the site and they use it anyway, are those people really going to be like, yeah, buy this pack of cigarettes? Or are they going to be like, actually? I'm very happy that I can go get the filterless enroll them myself. That's Mastodon, I assume. That's Texas coming through. That's what bad.

I saw someone this week who was like, yeah, I rolled my own cigarettes. And I'm like, in 2022? Yeah. Did you meet someone else who smoked cloves? Let's get into it. Tumblr is clothes in this situation, by the way. Okay, so I, my prediction is that the reality of this is going to be far more boring. And it's going to mean nothing.

Yeah. The best comp is TSA precheck, which is neither a status symbol nor a thing that people love. It's just what you do if you just want to be degraded slightly more by the government of the United States. Right? Like, you can have a better experience if you pay for it this much. I keep my shoes on. It's not clear. You know, the seat doesn't lay back all the way.

You just get to keep your shoes on. And that, like, I already pay for Twitter. I'm already paying for it. It's $4 a month. They're doubling the price to add a checkmark and take away the ad free experience on some publisher websites. No, but the thing is nobody who follows you on Twitter knows that you pay for Twitter. Sure. Which I think is really important, right?

Where, like, think about all the people you see in your timeline. And when you're in the precheck line, everyone knows that you pay for precheck. It doesn't mean anyone thinks you're cool. They're just like, wow, you pay for pre-church. You're not thirsting for retweets in the pre-check line. Like, I don't think that analogy. works at all, if I'm being honest. If you're like, if there's like a thirst trap camera when you get in the TSA pre-check line,

then I'd be into it. I'm absolutely going to start doing thirst traps in the pre-check line. I think it's more like when you play a video game and you get like a cool little, like World Warcraft, you get a cool little pet, right? And if you go and you do all these really cool events, you get a cool pet. And so people will be like, this is my pet. And that was like the blue check mark. And then other people would be like, I spent $5 at Subway.

And I also have a cool pet. And you'd see those pets and you'd be like, well, you're lame because you spent $5 at subway for that pet. I mean, if I was going to be wild, he would introduce tiered pricing. Yeah. There would be gold check marks and purple check marks. Like, just go all the way. That could happen. That could happen.

I mean, I think we're undervaluing the algorithmic boosting aspect of this. And we're also undervaluing a unique aspect of Twitter as a social network, which is that a very, very small percent of the user base produces the vast majority of the content. And if you fall into that bucket, which is all of us, everyone in media, celebrities, the Scott Galloways of the world, etc., you're absolutely going to pay for this because otherwise your reach is going to be on day one reduced. So it's not even that you're in a separate line. It's that you're in another line where you keep getting pushed to the back of the line. The regular line. I don't know if you've ever been to the air for you. Well, at least you move forward in that line.

I have pre-check. I have pre-check. I see your analogy, but it's almost like, you know, I have pre-check. And I see your analogy, but it's almost like if you're in the other line, you just keep getting pushed back. It's not even that you're in another line. So I do think the people who produce the most content on Twitter will pay for this. But the part of this that makes me agree with crayons is I would be more inclined to pay if it were divorced from the blue check. Yeah. Because now what the blue check becomes, there's a certain world in which the blue check becomes like a symbol of your thirstiness that says, not only do I care about Twitter, I care so much about you reading my sick-ass tweets that I'm going to pay me.

money to get in front of you. That's exactly what it becomes. All the people who made fun of Ben Smith for his ridiculous promoted tweets promoting semaphore, like this is now that at scale. It's you promoting your own tweets and that's what it's going to look like. Yeah, sure, but like this is what verification at Twitter was originally designed to be. Like what Musk is doing is actually how Twitter has always wanted verification to work, which is that it's actually just to say you are who you say you are. And now it's linked to a credit card. So obviously people can fake. that and that will happen. It's not.

I'm just saying like this is what that I mean, yes, that is what it is. It's like we have an identity layer. Because it is now requiring like I know I saw one guy who's like a journalist in Africa and he was saying I need this because I am regularly arrested for my tweets. I'm regularly like stocked for this stuff. I can't afford the $8 a month or whatever it's going to be in my country. So now I'm screwed. And like those people are still going to be affected by this.

and are they going to stay? I don't think they're going to. But I think like this is not just pay to be verified. This is pay to be verified, get all of this stuff, and pay for everybody in the world to know that you pay for this. And I think that's really silly. Like, I want that check to go away as soon as possible. I don't want a single person to think that I pay for Twitter.com.

No one has invented a way to actually identify users on social media at scale in a way that works yet. I think credit card linking to accounts is. the best thing that we, that anyone could do in the given, like, right now. I'm sure something will be invented that's better than that. And I hear you on the paid thing, I've heard that blue is so rushed that it's only going to be in English and only in like a few markets when it comes out, which is a huge fail, right? That's a huge fail for the kind of people that you just talked about. And hopefully over time must let journalists and people who work in nonprofits and activists be able to have it for free. I think that would be a good thing. I'm sure they're

considering it. I'm just saying as an identity layer, That is actually what verification was supposed to be. Twitter has just been so inept at actually enforcing this over the last decade that it's become this like elite class. Like you have to have a social media manager contact at Twitter to be able to get it. That was never what it was intended to be. So it's actually returning verification to what it originally was supposed to be, which is just I am who I say I am.

But like in the worst way possible. Sure. Under the Musque way. Yeah. Like it's a terrible way to do it. Well, so I just want to be. very clear about one thing. Criticism of the Musk administration of Twitter is in no way the same as praise for any other previous management of Twitter. Yeah. I'm so glad you said that.

Deeply mismanaged company for a decade or more. Right. Terribly managed. You can hold two things as truth. You cannot like the way Musk is doing things. And you can also acknowledge that Twitter has been a spectacularly mismanaged company. And everyone at the company will privately acknowledge that. Like, it's wild that it's taken this long to figure out the verification thing for years. Everybody's like, how do we do it? And it's like, I mean, they put the program on pause for years where they were just like, screw it. We're not going to verify anyone else because this is such a mess and we don't even know how to like implement this at scale. And then they would still sneak people in like if a Twitter employee had a contact and everyone would get mad.

I mean, it's a disaster. So here's a question. I don't pay enough attention, but I think I know the answer. No one's mad at the blue checks on Instagram, right? Right. No one's mad at the, like YouTube has effectively blue checks. No one's mad at them. Right.

No one's mad at the blue checks on TikTok. Right. It's just Twitter. Because we're all deeply insecure cynics on Twitter. I think it's more because Twitter had like, I think we want to be cautious and remember that a lot of this blue checks like anger came from right wing people who were upset that Trump was being deplatformed and felt that he was he and other right wing commentators were being deplatformed. at the, like, just prop up the blue checks and that these other people should be up there. But the reason they were deplatformed was because they were sharing misinformation and saying, like, AIDS gives you COVID. Yeah.

Like, that's the big, like, that's the big part of this. That's like an undercurrent of this entire thing that I think a lot of people are really mindful of. And they know that, like, the blue check discourse always came from this really disgusting place. It's a standing for the mainstream media. Yeah. In a way. Because that's what it literally has been. So if you actually think...

Excuse me. We are the renegade media, sir. This podcast exists on the fringes of American democracy. That's right. You can't silence us. And if you try, we'll come for you somehow. With weed. Laser bong.

I'm just saying, like, Alex, if you... I agree with you that that's how, obviously, how checkmarks have been viewed. If it becomes something that isn't regulated to a certain class by proxy of who you know, but something literally anyone can just pay for. Or is that not actually a good thing for what the checkmark represents long term? I think that's good. I think like making it accessible and more understandable and comprehensible is great. I think tying that to money and is dumb.

I think you can have Twitter blue, great service. You want to pay for that? Great. Verification should be independent of that because verification should never be about whether or not you're paying for the service. So what you're – I think there's a little bit of a heated agreement going on. Yeah. We're furiously agreeing with each other. But about like two different things.

Alex said, there's two Alexes. You got to go Cranes and Heath. God damn it. Okay. Heath said verification is a quality signal for Twitter. Yeah. That's the important part. I think this is the thing that maybe Elon and David Sacks and Jason Calcanis and

these people are working on. Like forget they're lost in the poison of the blue check mind. Yeah. Which is it's good for the Twitter community to know that LeBron James is LeBron James on Twitter. Right. Like that's his account. It's really him.

They've done something to verify that it's him. And that blue check means it's him and not a fraud. Right. And across the Twitter ecosystem, that is good. Yes. You know that the president's the president. You know the White House is the White House. You know that Chuck Todd is Chuck Todd.

I was just on Chuck Todd podcast. So he's on my mind. Hey Chuck. That you shouldn't charge the people for that. That's a value you're providing to the end user of Twitter. Right. To say these people are who they say they are, you can trust this information. Yes.

adding capitalism to that does not necessarily accomplish that goal in the way that you need that goal to be accomplished. And he's already said, we're going to start giving politicians and other, quote, public figures, an additional label that they already have to serve that purpose. A blue check. Maybe it'll be pink. It's a blue check. Right. And I think they just like hate the gold check. They just like hate the media and they're like, the media should pay us. The flip side of that is, as he pointed out, we make all the content on. Twitter. Like the people, not we the media, like the people, the users of Twitter make all this stuff. And I cannot

think of another social platform that charges its users to have good experiences in that way. Like, YouTube is not out there being like, hey, Marquez Brownlee. We'd like to pay us a little bit more money to have a not garbage experience on YouTube. They're much

more like, hey, we found additional ways for you to make money. Like YouTube shorts now has an ad split that is more lucrative for you than TikTok because we need to keep you here and not have you go to TikTok, which only has a creator fund. Right. And TikTok immediately responded to that by saying we're going to roll out better monetization

than this creator fund because that is the competition that you need for users. You need to pay them more money. Yeah. You need to pay your creators more money. Elon has said that this $8 a month fee will somehow create a fund to pay creators. The math on it is horrible. At $8 a month you get all $4 a month, you get all $4. 400,000 people, which you won't get.

But assuming you get all 400,000 people, it's like, what, $35, $32 million a year? It's nothing. I think it's going to be dramatically more than the current 400,000 that opt into this because of the network effects of people realizing that they're getting gated in the algorithm because of it. And because of like a simple thing, like default tab placement matters a lot in these experiences. And the verified notifications experience is literally going to be first when you open notifications on Twitter. Why do you think they're going to do that? and not just leave the platform for one that doesn't charge them $8. Where are they going to go?

I mean, I've always like, I mean, everyone's always writing and saying like when a platform goes through a moment like this, oh, people are going to go. And right now it's masked it on, whatever. These network effects are really hard to rebuild. Twitter's had over a decade of this. And I just don't see the current creator class of Twitter, which is that, you know, I mean, we saw it with Tumblr. Like, Tumblr, I think is our best example.

I know I bring it up a lot, but it is our best example here. They said, we're going to get rid of boobies. I mean, they really said, we're going to get rid of nudity. We don't want any nudity on the website. And that included... Verizon says no boobs. And that included no female presenting nipples. That was a really big one that was in like their announcement on it.

And they lost over a third of their people. Like over a third of their audience just said, okay, I'm out. And some of them went to Twitter and some of them went to TikTok and a lot of them went to Discord. And some of them went to pillow fort. But they did say, I don't want to be a part of this. And I think we're going to see that on Twitter, too. And maybe those people will go to Mastodon, hysterical. Maybe they'll go to Tumblr, not likely.

But I think they are going to go and look at other avenues because it's like, well, why should I stay here and be charged for this experience that oftentimes I hate when I can go to TikTok for free, when I can go to Mastodon and have 12 people talk to me, but for free. And then TikTok will happily serve me good tweets of people. just on a green screen in front of a good tweet. Yeah, he's saying, look, this is good. I hear you, Cranes. I don't think there's anything that replaces Twitter for the people who are addicted to it. There's nothing that has the same network effects,

the same potential reach that you can have a tweet that can get 15 million impressions in three days or a two million because, you know, like you just, you can't get that. TikTok, yeah, if you like videos, if you make videos. But for text and for news, there's nothing. that can replace Twitter, that it currently exists.

Yeah, I'm with Heath here. And I think the reality of Twitter is that Twitter costing $8 will not be in like the 10 worst things about Twitter. And like, yeah. And we're all still here, right? Like it's, it's, there was a minute where it was like, you're going to be able to pay to make it better. And now it's you're going to be able to pay it and not make it worse. And I think that is a really odd way of thinking about the platform. But like, I do think it's going to work.

The precheck line. Look, let's say they 10. my shoes on. Again, just the math here is so, the math is so revealing. Let's say they get 10x the users they have for the current verified products. So 400,000, it's 4 million people decide to pay $8 a month for Twitter. They will make $384 million a year. Twitter makes a billion dollars a quarter.

Like, Nilai, he doesn't care about the economics. He has to, right? Like, he has to pay down a billion dollars a year. Yeah, but I don't think Blanche. is about making money, I think it's the identity problem. It's how do we somehow verify the identity of people? And the only way, again, I come back to that people have decided is to do a credit card. And I think there's a plenty of like fair criticism of what happens to people who are trying to anonymously speak out, get information out. A lot of the ways that Twitter really took off, say, in the Arab Spring,

how does that happen in an environment like this where you need to have a proven real identity tied to a credit card? It doesn't, or it's regulated to that. bottom half of the service, right, that's not getting the same level of reach. And it's up to the checkmarks to go down, find it, and bring it up into the checkmarked environment, which is just like futilist and horrible. But I think, I do think there's going to be, you know, at least that identity layer that is not about making money, but it's just about making Twitter a place where you know who you're seeing. If you pay for it. And I don't think he really cares about it being, if you pay for it. And I don't think he cares about it being, I think he thinks advertising is going to remain the big. biggest part of the company's revenue, even though advertisers are leaving. Well, let's talk about that advertising. Oh, my God. Are we ready for this?

Let's talk about the thesis of welcome to hell, Elon. How's that going for him? So there's a good piece in Rolling Stone that went up just before we started taping. Like, the right wingers are already starting to turn on Elon because he had a meeting with CMOs. He, like, had an open letter to advertisers. So it's not going to become a hellscape. he had a meeting with a bunch of civil society groups,

promised them that he wouldn't change the rules before the new terms. A little listening to her. A little listening to her. And, you know, his new right-wing fans who are, quote-unquote, you know, for free speech people, which is really just like, the N-word club is here, you know? Like, they're pissed at him already, you know? And there's just a variety of figures who are saying, we were promised free speech.

And now you're talking to, you know, the Anti-Defamation League. And why would you do that? That has nothing to do with free speech. And I think he's caught in this place. where Alex, I think you've talked to some advertisers. I have talked to some advertising folks. There's just a lot of skepticism that this will remain a good platform for advertising. And what I mean by that specifically is they don't want to be near bad content.

They never have. They care a lot about quote-unquote brand safety. This is why YouTube has adpocalypse over the years. Yeah. Right? YouTube gets a little out of control. The moderation gets a little haywire. The community goes a little haywire and the advertisers all walk away.

And this is a cycle that plays out on YouTube kind of over and over again. This is a cycle that's playing out on Twitter kind of for the first time in this way. Where the average of the average of the same, like the IPG, which is one of the biggest holding companies of ad agencies, is saying, we recommend that you pause. GM has paused its spend. I think partially to tweak Tesla, like maybe more than partially to tweet Tesla. Like all those car companies. There's a legitimate concern that he literally has dozens of Tesla employees inside Twitter right now. why would I put my brand campaigns and my spending and all that stuff on a platform that you have access to and you run Tesla.

I don't think there's going to be any auto dealers on Twitter for a while. I mean, that part's really funny. Tesla has historically never done any marketing. He has no idea how advertising works. Yeah. Twitter. Twitter is Tesla's marketing. Like, that's the thing.

Like, he bought his marketing work. Right. It's just funny. Like, that's what it is. He now has a customer. Like, the marketers are Twitter's customers. That's where your billion dollars a quarter comes from. Yeah.

Is ad agencies and CMOs. And he is, I think, enlisted Jason Calacanis, who started Weblogs Inc. And Engadgett, like, love Jason, very sincere guy. But he's the face of the advertising organization now for these marketers. That's a lot. Like, he's a new person. They don't trust him. He doesn't have a title.

I don't know if you've seen the text to Elon. They think that he's going to do what Elon tells him to do. Maybe there's evidence for that, and maybe there's not. fall in a growing day. Jason's one who sent the Get Your Blades Out Boys text to Elon in regards to sharpen your blades. Yeah. That's the, it's just this cast of characters.

And if you think that marketing is stupid and Tesla doesn't need to do it and you go to the CMO of a GM or the CMO of a Ford and you're like, give me some money. So you can compete on my platform against my own tweets. They're like, yeah, we don't trust you. And if you go to Proctor and Gamble and they want to sell. tied or whatever they want to sell and you're like and also we've decided to let 10%

more racism back on the platform they're just like no right and so he's got this poll out that's like should advertisers support free speech or political correctness and it's like dude it's their money they can pay for whatever they want that's the free speech

it's just utter like that piece of it it's like such a blind spot for him that he's got customers now. And unlike Twitter's users, those customers have a million places to go. Like, if you want to advertise on social platforms, your options are, are limitless. And there are a bunch of companies out there who will very happily take the money that you're taking away from Twitter right now. So I think like all the network. Facebook would love some incremental ad dollars. They would be very happy to make a little bit more money than they've been making. Snapchat's still a thing. They have ads.

Definitely what I've heard is that people, you know, the advertiser class thinks Twitter is fun. It's like it's like the most live environment. So if you do the thing, you make the launch. It's where everyone goes to see if you got any traction. But they're like, we don't need it. It's like the smallest part of a lot of these big agencies spend when it comes to social media. This is like at the very bottom of their thing. And they're like, oh, yeah, okay, we'll throw 100K to a quick campaign, do some promoted tweets.

So I'm really, really curious to see how much this like. I'm going to be focused on, on blue and solving this identity problem is going to, at the cost of like, I'm going to make all of these advertisers feel comfortable so I can get their billions of dollars, so I can make my billion dollar marketing. I just think the idea that Elon has already pissed off some of his most vocal, hard right, ultra-conservative influencer supporters because he has to promise the advertisers and, like, civil groups. Yeah. That he can't change the rules too much is, that.

Like, he's got to pull that band-aid right after the midterms and be like, here are the new rules. And I'm really curious also how much, how much of Twitter's ad money was coming from car companies. Because, like, car companies are a big advertising market, right? Like, they spend a lot of money. Yeah. My understanding is the top spenders are the streamers or the HBO's, the Disney's, the companies that are doing big brand campaigns around stuff like that. And we saw this week that they're also thinking, like, they're very conscious of, like, Not Iger.

Bob Chapick, the new CEO of Disney, has been making rounds with all of the conservative, like, senators and congressmen, assuming that the midterms is going to go their way so that he doesn't get hurt in whatever comes next so that Disney doesn't, once again, become at the focal point of, like, what's happening in the world. You guys suck. So it's going to be really, really interesting to see what happens with that, plus with Twitter, like this, the whole brand safety thing is you're now having two very different concepts of what brand safety is. I do look forward to a. conception of freedom of speech in America where the government forces Disney to buy ads on Twitter next to racist content.

Yeah. Like you can just, there's a bill coming. Like, Ted Cruz is like, I got to work this out. Like, I'm going in the lab. Yeah. Here's my new freedom of speech bill. Disney is required to buy ads on Twitter. And it's going to be like, what?

Supreme Court's going to do it. And then we're going to just have the same conversation in four years. By the way, everyone should read Addie's piece about free speech in 230. That's our like big midterm story. Yeah. It's great. I would be curious to hear you guys. react to this. So something Elon talked about internally on his first week at Twitter is Starlink

and the potential of using Starlink to deliver Twitter to countries where I believe the readout of the meeting was something like they discussed how they would literally need to shoot down satellites and that's the only way that. Did he not talk to Zuck who had this exact same plan like six years ago? No, Zuck had a plane. Google had balloons. Yeah. And I just, I'm curious about that and what you guys think about that because obviously Musk is heavily compromised in China. You know, Twitter employees are already wondering, is he going to build a localized Chinese Twitter that has, you know, he says he's going to have free speech, but also abide by local laws. What does that look like in a place like China? It looks like Doyen, the sister app to TikTok.

It looks very different. But also like Starlink. What if he just like starts trying to like beam Twitter to countries that do not have anything near the U.S. Constitution. a Starlink. I mean, he can and he can't, right? I mean, right now, he won't let Starlink do that. Like, when you install a Starlink receiver in a country where it's not supported, it's just GPS is out. And that's why they had to enable it in Ukraine and all these other places. So he's got to change that decision. I think that decision is hard to change because he needs like Space X to be able to be somewhat neutral because it flies over every country.

And then he's got to ship Tesla's everywhere. You're right that he's compromised in China. what he's compromised in China by is that he needs to sell a lot of Tesla's there, and he makes Tesla's there. So if he's beaming Twitter to Chinese consumers using Starlink, they're just going to shut down his Tesla factory the way they... They're just going to take those Teslas, and now there'll be a lot of cool cop cars in China with the Tesla logo. Yeah. But at the same time, I absolutely believe he will try this. Like, with 100% certainty, this will be a thing that happens. because what we've been watching since this started in April is Elon Musk, like, speed running the history of social media.

And one of the steps along the way is trying to bring your app to other people who can't otherwise get it through weird means of the internet. Like, it's just a thing you're required to do. Google tried it. Facebook tried it. It didn't work. But it's like it's one of the steps you have to fail on before you get to, like, building a payments network. And he'll eventually land on, like, vertical video and turning Twitter into a music app like everybody else does. But like, this is the path.

It's going to be delivering groceries. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing because, like, Mark Zuckerberg, it took him almost three years to meet with, like, the ADL and, like, all of these, like, activist groups and human rights groups. And, like, Musk did it, like, two days ago, right? He's, like, a week into the company and he's already, like, doing the Zuck, like, I'm going to clean this up tour. Zuck, by the way, I wish he would have actually answered my question when I asked him for advice for Musk. because he would have probably said, like, don't do this.

Trust me. Welcome to hell, right? But, yeah, I think the next shoot-a-drop is who he actually installs permanently in some of these key roles. Because all these people we've been talking about David Sacks, Jason Calacanis, they're temporary. They're not going to be working there full-time. So who are the people that he either elevates internally, brings in from other companies, etc.? I think that's the next change of drop. Is there any sense of who the, like, leading?

candidate for that would be so far? Like, who's the betting favorite? Well, Kvon, the former head of product who Parag fired in May has been in the building for the last week. So there's rumors he may come back. The optics are really... He tweeted that he's not actively involved. He replied to someone and said, but who knows?

Well, the optics are rough. Because if you used to work at Twitter under the former regime and you come in now, as Elon has kind of brutally fired the current regime, how does that work with people who have? feel certain ways about that, right? Like, it's just, it's a tough thing to be like a former person and come in. That said, there are like 16 former heads of product of Twitter. So I'm sure one of them is up for the job. The problem is, is you've got to find someone who, like, A, wants to work at a private company that's like Musk's fourth company, doesn't want to work in big tech or wants to leave, and also wants to deal with cleaning up and fixing Twitter. It's just, and working for

Musk. Like, that's a short list, I think, right now. I can't imagine he pays, like, like really well for this role either. I feel like he's the kind of guy who's like, you know what? You're working for Musk. Well, so at Tesla he pays really well because he pays in Tesla stock. And he doesn't have that anymore. I don't want that Twitter stuff. They actually switched to cash grants recently, too, for a lot of people because of the economy. He started paying out cash awards, cashed out. So I do think like, hey, if he's like, hey, I mean, he's told investors, I know this that he wants to take Twitter public again in like three to five years. So if that's the pitch, come in, fix this. take it back out with me. You'll have whatever, half a percent of the company when it goes out. We're going to make it a $100 billion company. I'm Elon Musk. Let's go. There may be some people who would buy to that. I think he has a lot of supporters, obviously. So I just, I'm not sure who it's going to be right now. Like I said, he has almost 90 direct reports right now.

That's amazing. I mean, honestly, there's parts of this like where you just have to give it to him. Doesn't he have 20 direct reports at Tesla? Yeah. I mean, something like that. What does his phone look like right now? I can't imagine. Does he just set on fire? Like, does he keep it, like, in ice at all times so you can use it? Like, it's just the Twitter icon just on the homeschool. I mean, I talked to a lot of CEOs and like, what's your structure?

What's your writing decision? I definitely know his CEO is like, how does he get it all done? I think he literally just, like, barely sleeps. I think he sleeps like three to four hours a night. Like, he was tweeting at, like, 5 a.m. the other day. And, like, like, how bananas this all is is, like, Twitter employees are glued to, like, the Elon Jet Twitter account to like that tracks where his jet takes off

and lands to like see is he coming to the our office next like it's just it's just an insane I mean who knows he like Rawligma may come in and be running wow that's enough See ya it was good to see you Alex All right sorry guys I gotta go I gotta go check in with my husband and wife see you guys

I'll see you brother all right that's that's how you know it's over We gotta take a break we're right back about the smart home. We're right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really scary, too.

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All right, we're back. That's enough. We're just going to put that aside for it. We're going to talk about what really matters. There you go. I'm tired. There you go. We're going to talk about gadgets and standards and parties in Amsterdam.

weren't just doors are locking and unlocking left and right. It's matter launch day. This is a big deal. Yeah. Wait, I'm sorry. Can I just pause real fast? Alex, I just want to acknowledge the matter pun that you just made that I think, Neal, I completely missed. No, I didn't miss it. I just want you to know, it was very good. Thank you. It was very good. I liked it very much, and I just want you to know that I see you. Oh, I like, I feel like I need to have a limit on how many times I can do that pun in this, in this next 45 minutes. It's one, and you did it. Okay. Congratulations. You used it successfully. You have to call me out if I do it again. I'm going to try really, really hard not to. My strategy with puns is that you just ignore the bullies that go away.

And puns are verbal bullies. That's what I got for you. No, Matter launch day. It did. What's going on? Okay. So Matter launched over 190 smart home devices are now certified by Matter. But I think the big thing was that we also heard a lot about what's coming next for Matter.

And we're starting to see a lot of these other products say, hey, yeah, now we're going to be on Matter. Nanoleaf was one of the big ones that just announced that they're going to finally put out a bunch of matter products. They'd not done it before this. They'd had some thread light bulbs. I have one. It's lovely. But it doesn't have matter. And so now it's going to have, if you go and buy the new ones, they will have thread and matter in them.

Another one was Eve's. Eve is like a big company really works closely with Apple HomeKit. And it's finally getting matter. Yeah. That's really exciting. I was noticing a lot of these products were ones that were like, like kind of exclusively home kit before this. Yeah.

And now they're going to be everywhere. And that's exciting because home kit, smart gadgets, I feel, are better. Yes, I agree. So, I mean, the interesting underlying piece of matter is that it is basically home kit. Yeah. So Apple, you know, there's a real experience with all this where you just, it's like you just wish everyone would cut to the end. Yeah. Like two years before the end.

And so, you know, Amazon had its own ecosystem and Google had its own ecosystem and Apple had its own ecosystem. And you're like, why don't you all just make a thing that works together? And they're like, no, because we would like to fully dominate your life in every way possible. Yeah, we want to destroy your credit card. And then like five years later, here they are. They're very proud of their new standard that they all made together because they realize this was stupid. Yeah. So I don't want to take them very happy.

They did it. Matters great. It took a long time. It took a long time. It shouldn't have taken this long. It kept getting delayed. I was supposed to come out what in like 20, 21, I think. Yeah.

Like it kept getting delayed. It was kind of obnoxious that it took this. long, especially because a lot of this stuff could already work together. You could go and get HomeBridge. You could go and get these other software products and just make this shit work all together and be friends. And the companies were like, no, no, no, no, no. Wait, we're going to get thread and then we're going to have our new standard. And it took a long time. But the reason it's HomeKit devices first is because to Apple's credit, a lot of what matter is, is HomeKit. Yeah. Like Apple basically gave away the store on the HomeKit standard and said, here you, you,

use everyone use HomeKit. It's secure. It's good. It's what we will approve. Apple, to make a smart home device, you want to be on the iPhone. You want to be in the control panel on the iPhone. So, Apple saying we're going to let it be HomeKit because that's what we will approve. Big step for Apple.

Huge step for Apple. Imagine they like. They don't play nice. Yeah. Like whoever at Apple got back to their house, they close. They were like, I hope I did the right thing. You know, like that kind of move for them. So, you're, you know, Eve is like a big home kit company.

People are like their stuff. Nanaleaf. Nanoleaf. They were... They do the cool, like, light panels that you always see in every single battle station photo on Reddit. Yeah. Every guy's like, yeah, I got my new, my new computer setup. All the streamers have nanoleefs.

That's great. But, like, Nanoleaf lights are great because they have been on thread for a while. So if you had like a home pod mini and a nanoleaf light... It just works. It just works. And it's like instantaneous in a way that the best Wi-Fi setups are not instantaneous. I think one of the big ones here for me was Phillips Hugh Bray. is going to have a software update to support matter.

That's really, really nice because Phillips Hugh Bridge, I think, is probably one of the ones that the majority of people, if you do smart home, you dip your toe in. That's like one of the first things you do. You go and you buy the cool lights. You spend $40 per light bulb and you feel really proud about it until somebody asked you how much you spent for light bulb and you do the math in your head. That one is kind of funny to me because, like, in theory, what matter does is obviate the need for things like the Hugh Bridge.

Yeah. Like, the whole reason for matter is so that we don't have to plug in a million Hugh bridges to our homes. And to me, that's like a perfect example, right? Like, in the best possible world, Phillips would come out and say all of our lights now support matter. Control them however you want. Happy days are here again. But instead, this is like, this is the launch of matter, but it's actually like one step in the right direction instead of like a solved problem. Right.

Well, because they don't have a lot of those light bulbs. They don't have the, like, they don't have the hardware in them to support that. They have to go through it. Right, because the bridge is, the bridge does all of the actual work. The bridge does all the work. So I'm really excited to never use the Phillips Hugh Light app ever again. Just a terrifically terrible app. That app is trash.

And I'm really excited. And every couple of years they're like, we redid it. And it's the same, but a slightly different color. This is why I end up, this is why I have a raspberry pie. Yeah. Just, yeah, Homebridge makes everything. It's so, this, I'm excited for matter just to get, I mean, I love this. It's like a tomogachi that runs my thermostat.

Yeah. Like, I have to feed and care for it. And I'm like, if I don't like check it every day, it'll die. It's my little Linux pet. And I know if it's working or not because we can check. We can set the thermostat on our phones without using the nest app. It's the whole game. Yeah.

I'm excited to, I mean, I'm like, I'm sad. It's like bittersweet. Like I might send it off to college. And now we're going to have matter instead. But it's that thing. where because I have a nest thermostat, I need to have middleware in my house. Extremely brittle, self-installed middleware in my house to just make it convenient. And that's what the hulites have been for so long.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's like more bits and bobs here that need to come out. Like, I'm just hesitant to say on this podcast of all podcasts, the words thread border router. And this is like, this is where it belongs. That's where that vocabulary belongs. Yeah. Yes.

And like what needs to happen is every router, every Wi-Fi router needs to have a thread radio in it. So that they're all thread border routers. Is this when we should litigate the difference between Matter over Wi-Fi and Matter over-thread and how they're actually different things and Matter is actually an umbrella term that describes several different things? Yes. I think this is the I said I was hesitant and it's like, I don't want to. David just a collate man into the room to be like matter is an umbrella term. You did it.

I would like to leave. I hate this. I'm sorry. Yeah, matter is the control standard. It's the how everything talks to each other standard. But it uses a bunch of different technologies. They can operate. And the big move is that it uses IP instead of some other.

I mean, this stuff is so wonky. They've been talking about it for years. Yeah. And it's like, so you guys, after five years of argument, you decided to use IP packets instead of some other weirdo riff. And they're like, yes. It was just shocking. Just shocking. we are going to see some other new technology coming to matter.

They're going to start supporting garage door controllers, which could be fun, electronic gates. That's all just doors. Yeah, it's just like two different kinds of doors. They're just doing doors. They're doing doors. Big doors that open. They're going to do doors.

You're going to soon be able to open and close your door without having to have home bridge installed, which is really exciting. That's my garage are up in her as home kid already. But I think the one that's kind of like interesting is the ambient motion. The tiniest doors I'm looking around now And I'm like, what if I just never had to open a door again? What if all my doors were just magically open?

You just clap and they open. It's great. I could carry two beverages at the same time. The matter door committee is like, all right, next, we're doing big doors. And after that, I don't want to hear it, Tom. We're not doing medium doors. We're going straight to small doors. Tiny, the tiny, like the little fairy doors.

Medium doors. They suck it. All right. Ambience. But I think the big one is going to be the ambient motion. and presence sensing because that's a weird technology that like matter itself is a whole bunch of different standards spread all around, right? Yeah.

Like, Lynxus has, we're going to bounce the Wi-Fi off of you to know exactly where you are in your house at all times, which is both awesome and terrifying. Yeah. And then you also have like the weird ultrasound sensing and the motion detecting and cameras and stuff. So all of that is going to soon come into matter. Soon. I say soon.

It is still matter. It still could be like four years from now. when we finally get this. But the dream here is that you can buy all these different kinds of devices. Yeah. And it doesn't matter if you're a Google home person or a home kid person. Doesn't matter at all. Oh, my God, Alex.

I'm trying so hard here. I gave you one, Alex. This is why it was delayed. Like, they just kept getting sidetracked by their own wordplay. They're like, these puns are so good. We got to get back to work. Someone in the back, I was like, none of this matters. Do you think they have like a big sign?

And it's like absolutely no puns beyond this point. Just no. Like instant termination. It's work time. Start writing that spec. The problem with that is all the, like, you can make it taken by motion sensors from any company and door locks from any company and like cobble together your own security system. But what people want to buy is like complete integrated products. So like, is Ring going to fully participate or are they going to hold back some features for their proprietary?

with, right? I mean, probably, yeah. But isn't the goal of matter to make that a false dichotomy that, like, what we have now is an integrated ecosystem no matter what you buy? That, like, in theory, what should happen now is I can control. I have all of my controllers work. And all I have to do is attach something to my network once. And it talks to all of my devices through all of my devices.

And that's so, like, the thing ring has done, which is, like, build itself a beautiful little wall of garden. in theory eventually becomes like redundant and unnecessary. And to me, what's super exciting about that is you get to a future where the bar for building this stuff is super, super, super, super low. Because right now, if you want to build like an actually competitive smart home thing, even if it's just like a dumb little like water sensor, it's so much work. And you have to build so much new software every single time.

And a lot of them choose Alexa because Alexa has made that development easier than most. But then you only get one slither of the market. And then if you want to do home kit, that's a whole separate thing. So a lot of companies are just giving up because it's not worth the development work to get into this ecosystem. But if you can say, like, build it once and it will work for everywhere, it's like, it's like building a web app and you can just like people can have it. That becomes kind of amazing. And I don't know, like matter is not going to be there in the first iteration, but like that's got to be where this is headed and is supposed to be where this is headed. I think Neil, I was saying that like a web app, what if the web app gives you way different features than the app that you install on your opponent?

Yeah, like ring wants you to open their app. they can sell you more ring cameras. Like, I have ring. It says, like, you have an order? You open it. And then you, like, go to the home screen. It's like, have you thought about buying more cameras? Right.

Like, they want, they do want you in their apps in some way. Yeah, but now I don't have to open Rings app. This is the beauty of matter. The beauty of matters. I don't ever have to use the Phillips app or the ring app ever again as long as I think. But that desire is not going to go away. Right. Like, the business model for these companies cannot be, you sell a water sensor once and you walk away.

I think I think the example is, so the Phillips Hugh app, terrible garbage, hate it, the worst thing in the world. But what it does really cool that I can't do on the Apple Home app is make all my lights mimic candlelight. Like I want to sit at and read a book and pretend like I have a roaring fire in my home. I love when all my lights flicker all the time. It's great. I play a little jazz, have a little cocktail. It's a nice moment.

Alice is hammered. It'd be like, make him flicker. Flicker faster. It's great. But you can't do that with the home app. And I don't see them changing that anytime soon. And so if I want to do that, I have to go there and get through all those ads for other hue lights that I don't need. Yeah, I think that this is watching this play out is going to be what features do these companies hold back for their weirdo riffs?

Yes. And what features are the commodity features? And we have no idea. But you can see it play out across every other standard. Like AirPods are technically Bluetooth. Technically. But, yeah. But Apple is special Bluetooth.

It's better than the Bluetooth everybody else gets. So not as we see negative. It's rare that we see a new standard launch. Well, it's going to go. There's an optimistic side to this. And I think David was touching on that earlier in that you're still, if you just want to go and buy a cheap sensor and plug it into your house and you don't need fancy features, now you can just go do that.

You want to go buy a cheap light and you don't care if it's, does candlelight, great. You can just go do that. So those premium ones are still going to be there to say, hey, give me extra money and use my annoying app and you get cooler new features. But for the vast majority of people, they can just opt out of that and just be like, I just want lights that turn on when I get home. Yeah.

I don't want to think of my house as an ecosystem of hardware and software. My house is just my house. When I need a light, I would like to buy a light. And we've ended up in this place. where it's like every time, like the, the, I always joke with my wife that like, anytime she changes anything, it inevitably spirals into changing everything, right? It's like, we get a new rug, and then it's like, oh, well, now the bedspread doesn't work, and then we paint the walls, and now I'm tearing down the bathroom,

and it's all because we got a new fucking rug. And that's what the smart home is like now. It's like you find one thing that is cool, and you suddenly have to rip every wire out of your walls and replace it just so it all works with your old stuff, and matter. In theory, obviates that for regular people like me. who do not want to deal with it. So I've been thinking about this a lot in the context of maybe we'll move. Maybe we're going to have a different house.

I'm like, the only way to ethically sell my home is to just run away. To not even tell people that there is a smart home stuff in it. Because if you start, you have to be like, all right, here's the first thing you need to do. There's 500 things in this house that think the Wi-Fi is named, whatever the Wi-Fi is named. So you've got to just, you're going to need a 40-foot ladder and there's a floodlight on the roof and you've got to go press a tiny button on the side of it while holding your phone. It's like, no, actually what I should do is just bail. If you're like if you're interested in that floodlight, just like every other home in America, you're going to discover what happened to the floodlight on your own. You're going to have a fun adventure.

I can't be putting on this. Like, you can't put this amount of responsibility in someone else. There's a tiny Tomogachi in the utility room that makes the thermostat. work. If you don't feed it, the house will burn down. You can't give this responsibility to someone. All you can do is like pack your bags and just walk off into the night and be like, lose my number. Realtor calls, just hang up. So maybe matter makes this better because all this stuff will just like still work together.

Yeah. And it won't be like, here's a collection of apps that runs the garage door. I hope you're okay with this. Well, you're going to have to wait because that's not coming yet. It won't be supported by matter. Mental Matter supports garage tours. Yeah. Ethically.

It's going to be great. We're going to keep living in the woods. Last one, just on matter, which is really cool. Level Lux are really cool, the company level. They've had a secret thread radio in them. That's the coolest thing in the world. Yeah. I love when somebody's like, secretly, we've been planning for this all along.

Surprise. And you're just like, oh. What was the one Google Smart Home thing where secretly had a microphone all the time? and that was the wrong thing to do. Do you remember this? It was like one of the Google security system things. And they were like, it's had a microphone the whole time. And everyone was like, no, that's the wrong choice for you to make.

Nest Home Security. Yes, the Nest Home Security Hub had a microphone in it. And Google was like, surprise. And everyone was like, bad surprise. More surprise. Take it out. Nobody wants that. But we've had a secret thread radio that makes her locks more compatible with more things.

Great. Yeah. And level, actually, those locks look like real locks. Yeah. Which would probably be nice because part of the problem with most smart locks is super hackable, actually. You have a cool little hacking tool. You can just like say hello. I'm in your house now.

So it's really nice. I got to go to my house. I'll see you guys later. Do that have fun with the third segment. All right. You have to race Alex. I know. I'm going to be like, surprise, Nilai.

Hello. I found the tomagotchi. Taking it out of the wall. Enjoy your thermostat. Can you go push that button on the roof that changes the Wi-Fi network for the floodlight? We'll have much more matter news. By the way, if I could be anywhere, it would be in Amsterdam with Jen and Thomas while they play with smart home gadgets. It just sounds like a dream situation.

Wonderful time. Two of the coolest people on our team. Super jealous. And they are just turning lights on and off in Amsterdam. Like at the fastest rate possible. They're living the life we all want to live. And they're both which is the biggest smart home rent. So we'll have lots from them on the site.

check it out. Okay, we'll take a break, quick tour through some gadgets. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Whatnot. Whether you're selling online or out of a storefront, you already know the challenge. You're simply hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in.

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Claude.aI. slash vergecast. Okay, we're back. Should we talk about the Apple TV and what's going on with that? Or should we start talking about Amazon music? Let's do Amazon first because this was like the sneaky, big story of the week to me. And I'm still surprised at what a thing is going to be. Yeah.

Yeah. People really like to read about Amazon music. And really hate the new Amazon music. Really, really hate it. Not all of them, but some of them. I mean, they basically turned Amazon music into Pandora. Well, like a combo of Pandora and Spotify's free tier. Like much more Spotify's free tier than Pandora.

So we had C Boom, who's the VP of Amazon Music on Decoder, they had a big announcement. Amazon, the bundle of Amazon music that came free with Prime, which is not free at all. It's just the language we have all chosen to use together. Yes, this expensive thing came with a thing that is not free. But it came with the thing. You pay for this already. Yeah. It's funny how they're like, this comes free with Prime.

And it's like, it's nothing about this is free. So Amazon Music, the music service. that is included in your Amazon Prime subscription, used to have only two million tracks. Yeah. But it basically worked like any other premium music service. Like you could put songs, you can make a playlist, you could, whatever. Just the way that you thought Apple Music or Spotify Premium worked.

They have now changed it so that it has 100 million tracks, which is effectively the major label catalogs, like all of the popular music in America. Yeah. And you can pick, you can ask for one song at a time. you can like play this one Taylor Swift song to Alexa. I don't play that song. No, not even. So this is where it kind of falls apart. So the way it works basically is you're just in shuffle mode all the time. Like Pandora. If you go to Midnights by Taylor Swift and you hit play, whatever song you click on, it will just shuffle songs from that album. It won't

start with the one that you picked. Maybe it will by accident, but it won't. It'll just shuffle through the album. If you pick an artist, it'll shuffle through the artist. If you pick a playlist, it'll shuffle through the playlist. My favorite thing that has happened so far is, like, people release singles and they look on these services like albums with one song. You go to that album. I thought this is going to be like a loophole. I was like, oh, it'll shuffle the album, but there's only one song.

So I win. You click on it, and it just plays a completely different song. It's super jarring. And this is the thing is like it does functionally work like Pandora or in a lot of ways, like Spotify is frees here. You get a limited number of skips. you're mostly designed to be using it as sort of background music. It's very much like a put it on at the beginning of the party and don't touch it for six hours kind of music experience.

Can you blacklist songs? Like if I want to listen to Cats and be like, I don't want to hear Mr. Mistophiles. I just, I want everything else from Cats. First of all, Skimbled Shanks, the Railway Cat is the only good song from Cats. But we don't need a song like. What is happening to my show right? Not memories? I need this to stop.

All right. We did puns. We've made weed jokes. Alex said Ligma twice. Other Alex. This is over. Okay, fair enough. I'm putting my foot down.

And the funny thing about this is this, like, as a music streaming strategy, perfectly valid, right? This is like a thing a lot of folks do. It's just how some systems work. I think as far as I can understand, it is basically cheaper to run a service like this where you can't play the song you choose. You just sort of get music as opposed to giving people like, true on-demand, click the song and play the song music. Makes perfect sense. The problem is it's a total 180 in how it works from what Amazon music used to be,

which like Neil and I said is smaller library, but basically total access. And I should say the new Amazon music has a set of playlists that it calls all access playlists and those you can interact with however you want. And those are like, you know, big hits and some stuff like that. So it's both confusing and a total change from what people who are using this are used So my guess would be if you've never used Apple Music before and you open it up and you're like, oh, tight, all the music is here. I'm going to like throw on a drive playlist while I'm on my commute this morning. Like that's a great experience.

But for people who have like curated their own playlists in Apple Music that now don't work the way they expected or can't go listen to the music they had found there or what some people are saying they've bought music that Amazon has now put behind the paywall and won't give them that kind of on demand access to. Like, I can see why you'd be pissed. They basically just like upended the whole experience for you for something that I think a lot of people weren't really asking for. Two things. One, you said Apple music there twice when you meant Amazon music. But I think the listeners will forgive us. Didn't mean Amazon music. I'm sorry.

That's fine. We'll get over it. Or will we? It's the one that doesn't have Zane Lowe. That's all I know. Yeah. Two, in talking to Steve Boom, you know, that Amazon music has been really targeted at the bottom 80% of music consumers. Yeah.

Which is fascinating, right? Like they're like, this is the thing when you ask Alexa for a song. It just needs to play the song. And most people don't spend a lot of money on music. So we're going to go here. We're going to find the 80% of people who don't spend a lot of money in music and make the product for them. And it's going to be bundled with Primes. They just use it.

Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was really interesting that he said to you that there's like a giant subset of people who will never spend $10 a month on music. Because my impression was always that like all these companies assumed eventually everyone would do it. That it is like such a demonstrably good deal for people who listen to music that eventually it would get everybody. But he's like, no, there is. clearly a maximum of people who will do that and work after everybody else. I just thought that was really interesting.

Oh, I'm one of those 80%. I have Apple music, and that's just because I get it through one of my, like, I think my phone plan. Otherwise, I was like, I'm not going to pay for music. I'll just pirate it. I mean, I'll just listen on YouTube. Fire up the Plex server. Let's do this thing.

Yeah, I mean, that, I think if you make that assumption, you're like, these people don't care very much. Yeah. Right. And so we can just, like, change the terms of the deal. and like people I think there's an assumption that people are just like wandering out me like play some music Alexa

and Alexa's like here's some stuff and that's the end of it and the reality is that some people were actually very particular about their use of this service inside of 2 million tracks and now that has changed and they're mad do they get that back if they pay more

they do right? Because there's the premium service yeah and I think they're equally mad about being upsold. Yeah. So we'll see. It's Twitter blue all over again. Everything is Twitter blue.

It all goes back. You get a blue checkmark if you pay for non-shruffle playing Amazon music. Chris Welch review, the Apple TV 4K. It's great. It's an Apple TV. They took up the fan. It's a little lighter. The chip is really fast.

It's not necessarily fast. The expensive one has thread. I just am bringing it up because there's a new TV feature that is going to make me upgrade my TVs. Between Matter and QMS VRR on TVs, it's like, I got to upgrade it. I got to get new locks. I get new lights. You got to get the TV that supports VRR.

Yeah. It's called, it's not out yet. So the new Apple TV supports something called QMSVR. I don't know what the QMS stands for and I refuse to Google it. No, that's not true. I was like, I'm Googling it. Quick media switching. So there's a, the new Apple TV has something called QMSVR, which is quick media switching variable refresh rate.

So variable refresh rate, as you know, can just like promotion on your phone. The TVs can swing from 24 hertz to 120. It's always going to give you what looks nicest to your eye. Yep. It's going to match the content dynamically. It's not going to blink out to black. and then QMS is quick media switching. So I think you just sent the thing you're playing

can send a flag and it can switch the VRR really fast. So the Apple TV supports it. There are no TVs that support it yet, which is hilarious because there are tons of TVs that support VRR. This seems like it should be but a software update away, but the TV manufacturers continue to be TV manufacturers.

Oh, they're going to make you buy a new TV. I literally don't think you could have described a feature that sounds less interesting and worth upgrading my TV. I'm going to upgrade my TV to this so fast. Okay. So you know how when you're watching TV. I do not want the TV to blink out to black.

I don't want it to happen. You could wait. You could also go and if your TV already supports VRR, somebody will absolutely find a hack and hack QMS on there. And I'm saying the community of Twitter followers that I have built up is like, crap, I've got to upgrade my TV. So you're my people. But this is the reason I'm going to upgrade my Apple TV. It's the reason I'm finally going to buy a new TV. And then matters.

How many times a day would you say? the refresh rate changes on your television. Let's talk this through. It's not the refresh rate. It's the match content. So you can't run the interface in like Dolby Vision at 120 and then go watch Netflix 24 standard SDR. You can't run the interface at like Dolby Vision 120 and then open Netflix in SDR 24 Hertz without like an HTML refresh. And an HTML refresh with my.

I need to be the bearer of bad news. We got to end the show. No, no. So I am one of your. people, Neely. And I was just telling David earlier, I want to change my TV. There's a limitation to QRR.

It only works for changing refresh rates without a blank, the black screen. It does not work going from SDR to HDR or different versions of Dolby you or HDR 10 plus. I can't. I can't abide by this.

Find me to QMSVR office. We're going there right now. It's very frustrating. Is the HTML building in the shape of a giant H? Find it on Google Maps. Let's go there. Everyone look for the H on Google Maps. Well, that sucks.

Now I'm not buying any TV. You had your chance, LG. He's going to be an LG. I feel vindicated somehow. I feel like I won this fight. I still want it. I just want to buy any TV. Mine's five years old.

I'm ready. It's time. Yeah, mine sucks. I will say that reading. What is garbage TV. I've got to get to do TV. Reading Chris's review, and he keeps talking about how much unnecessary power there is inside of this box. All I can think after spending months sitting here, like, begging my

Roku TV to load the app that I'm trying to load is like, I will take unlimited power from my set top box. Like, I would like six to seven times more power than I need from my set top box, because it's just, it is the worst. Like, if my worst problem was that the screen flickered every once in a while, that'd be great. Now it's like, I open the HBO Max app and four out of six times, it's just like, ah, I'm going to crash your television. I bought a spark projector last year and like over the course of this summer, it's like, what if I didn't run Android? Yeah. Like, what if I just like is coughed and sneezed?

And it's like, here's parts of this interface. The media process. My TV is tired. My TV literally acts like it's tired. It's just like, all right, give me a minute. Like, yeah, I'll search for that for you. But like, hold on. Hey, Roku 4K sticks are 25 bucks for Black Friday.

Yeah, but then I have to plug a Roku into my Roku TV. I can't like on principle. on principle, I cannot do that. But I will buy an Apple TV that is unnecessarily powerful and expensive and plug it into my Roku TV. Like, yeah, I will do that. Can you bypass that? Because I know with Roku, it always, like, presents you the menu. Can you bypass that menu?

I have to open my Roku. Yeah, the dad I can do with like, I can do that with like great spite and anger. Like every time I open my Roku menu, I can say, no, no, Roku to my Apple TV. And then I'll feel like I've accomplished something. You know, there's a chart at Apple there. It's like, we've got this many A15s out in the world on our TVs. We're about to become a gaming. powerhouse. And then like Tim Cook is like, but I hate video games. And that's where that conversation,

the conversation is going to hit that brick wall every time. That's why the Apple TV is unnecessarily powerful because they think it's a game console. Yes. And if they can just get enough 815s on enough TVs. Nobody tell them. Nobody tell them. I want my unnecessarily powerful set top box. Yeah. I don't want Roku. Yeah. I don't want Roku. So like just nobody tells Tim Cook about this. We're all buying it for the games, Tim. It's the only reason. It's all going to happen. Speaking, last little bit of streaming news, Netflix ads plan came out today. It's $7 a month and sign up for it.

It doesn't work on the Apple TV at launch. Doesn't work on the Apple TV at launch. A surprising amount of content doesn't work. And you get a big padlock sign. And then when you click, it's like, hey, we noticed you clicked on this movie you wanted to watch. Would you like to give us money? So that's why it doesn't work on Apple TV because. No.

I mean, that's why I assume. Netflix gave a statement to 9 to 5 Mac, and they said it's coming. Okay, it's coming. Once they figure out how to get around the 30%, well, or they're just going to remove the tout to actually pay you money. Yeah. We'll see. But it doesn't worry about your launch.

You know, I'm assuming this audience. They're going to email you. They're going to email you. It'll be fine. They're going to get a big fight. But it's out now. You can read Jay wrote about what these trends is like. Jay wrote about it.

He tried it out for a few hours. And it seems to be just digital advertising. It's like Hulu and stuff where there's no right. reason to when they advertisements will pop up. So when there are those natural breaks, instead of it being there,

it's going to be like mid-sentence. I love, would you like to buy some Tidepots? It's going to be great. So there's still a lot to figure out there. They should probably look

to broadcast television because they figured out this whole advertising thing decades ago. But he seems to like it overall. He's like, yeah, if you don't want

to be paying as much. Yeah. So on the Netflix app on iOS devices, like phones, it just basically says you need an ad-free plan. It doesn't let you buy it. They'll do that on the TV.

I'm sure they just have to like get through some weird appellate. It doesn't work on older Chromecast either. Right. And it's not going to work on probably a lot of your older Roku's too, David. I'm sorry. Does it work on yours? You have to test it out. Give me like 45 minutes for the Netflix app to load and I'll tell you.

Also, the video quality is locked at 720P and there's no offline downloads. I don't know. I think are you, this strikes me as a fairly. clear way for Netflix to get people in and then try to get them to upgrade, which I guess I underestimated the extent to which it was going to be that. Like, this is not like just as good, but with ads. This is worse Netflix for less money. You can't even watch arrested development. None of a rest of development. That's what I'm saying. Like, it's, it's, it's very clear that this Netflix is looking at this like a gateway drug to a fully paid Netflix plan and not like a real swing

at advertising, right? Yeah. No, I, I was going to be really strident about that, but I've, I've in five seconds toned my opinion down. So the comparison I was going to make is if you're going to do that, then you might as well do Spotify free and actually just make it free and let the ads pay for the free show. Shuffle Netflix. Shuffle Netflix. Like, why not? What are you watching today?

You'll find out. But Spotify free is really important to Spotify. Yeah. It is the most important part of their product. It is the thing that they give away and everybody has it and it is designed to make you start to pay for Spotify. And it's the top of the funnel. So they care a lot about Spotify free. It's the thing they make.

Netflix got dragged kicking and streaming to Netflix with ads, right? Like they kind of don't want to make it. They've had to. They've reduced the price. It's still $7. So you still have to pay for it. And then you get these ads. And the ads are where the money is supposed to come from because Netflix has this

theoretically huge audience. So I think they're just kind of stuck in the middle. Like they haven't built the, let's capture everyone and get them to pay us because it's still not free. We still got to get $7 a month out of people. And they haven't. built the this is worth $7 a month and you have to watch ads. They've got a lot of contracts they have to get through too.

So JCP's noted that some of the stuff that's not available now is going to be available later. And that's just because they have to go back to these people and be like, hey, we signed a deal with you that we would just stream this movie. Now we want to put ads on it. Yeah. Can we do that without giving you more money? And I don't think they can.

I just think they should have done a free with ads tier in addition to this one. Yeah. Like if you did free with ads and that. then you did $7 with like some ads and maybe 10 AP. It's like full netflix. Free with this with this limited library. Yeah. And then $7 with the whole library and ads.

And maybe that's the plan. And so we're all going to be really delighted when that happens because it'll be an improvement from this. I wouldn't. I mean, we all paid a crap ton of money for cable subscriptions that still had a lot of ads. So like I don't know that money plus ads is all that shocking a behavior. Yeah.

But it would be interesting to see Netflix be like, okay, you can get it for free, but every hour it's going to be 30 minutes of ads. Are you ready for this? Like, here we go. I feel compelled at this time to disclose. We made a Netflix show. It's very good. It's called The Future of.

I'm hopelessly biased in favor of it. I think you should watch it no matter what your plan. Also, Comcast is an investor in the box media or parent company. I don't care what Peacock does at this time, but they exist and they run a competitive streaming service. I feel like that's a good segue to talk about. Just in general? Just in general.

No, they have their own rival to Roku speaking of. And they said a while back they announced that they and Charter were going to be partnering together and doing their own hardware ecosystem. And they finally have a name for it. And it's called Zumo. Yeah. And it's the exact same name that they already were using for a software speed. So that's kind of interesting. I don't know.

I think it's interesting mainly because of Roku and how this is really a play for that super cheap set-top box. because a lot of people have Roku TVs and these aging TVs, and they are not going to go and pay $1,000 to have QMS, VR, and instead they're just going to be like, I want a cheap set-top box to play me the things. And Charter and Comcast are like, we'll do it, and it will be called Zumo. I'm just that name.

When I moved into my current house, we signed up for Comcast, and they literally sent me a set-top box, which back then was called Flex, and I believe their Flex program is now what's turning. into Zumo for free. And I literally was like, I don't want it. I have set top boxes. I'm good.

And he was just like, ah, we'll send you one. Like, I think you're right that it's, it's, they want to be in this platform game so badly. They've been trying this for years. Like, nobody has tried more times with less success than Comcast to build a real, like, set top box empire. It's really interesting because they do have this obsession with hardware and that, that no, no other kind of companies do. They always want to own all of that hardware in your house and make you pay a leasing

few for it. Yeah, remember when the X-1 was going to be like the supercomputer of set-top boxes and then everybody was like, the X-1 costs like six times too much money, Comcast. Yeah. Please leave me alone. I do not want your cable box. Like, I think they're addicted, if anything, to that leasing revenue stream and they're trying everything, they're trying their damned us to keep a hold of it as they lose all these other elements of like cable is going away. Cabal is, you know, Everybody says 10 years from now cable is going to be dead. And where is that going to leave them with internet? And then ideally these set-top boxes that they will charge you an arm and a leg for each month.

Yeah. I mean, just like looking at the home screen on my Roku, right? Like I turn on my television and right next to all of my apps, there's just a big ass ad on the right side. And like, you know who would like to be the one selling that ad is every media company on Planet Earth? So, like, it makes a lot of sense to me that that's a really competitive space. And for Comcast, like, as it gets hard. and harder to sell people cable subscriptions, like owning the box where people look at their television is going to be a lucrative space, right? Like, Roku has continued to prove that, and it's going to keep working for any company that can actually figure out how to pull this off.

What's crazy to me is how few have actually been able to. Like, it's been a long time since there was an interesting new player in this space. And, like, I certainly don't think Zumo is going to change that. Yeah. But, like, I guess kudos to Kahncast for continuing to bang its head against this particular role. I think you guys have done an excellent job laying out the strategic case for the Comcasts to make this product. Fine. They called it Zumo with an X.

Like ZU-M-O. This is the important part. Yeah, that's the whole name. They, we live in a world where people do not really understand the difference between Roku and Hulu. It's my favorite question that I've ever gotten from like the family. What is the difference from Roku? And they're like, Zumo. on our X-class TV is running on X-Fin.

And it's like, you guys. Playing the software, because it also has software, and the software is called Zumo Play. So you've got to open the Zumo Play app on your Zumo. No, thank you. I just don't know what they're doing. Okay, wait, Nilai, can I propose something to you that I think is going to slightly blow your mind?

Yeah. This name is a tremendous improvement over the streaming box that Comcast launched last year, which was spelled, uppercase X. Lowercase I, uppercase O, lowercase N, lowercase E. No. Is it the, this is a real thing that happened. How do you say that?

Is it? And all of the headlines you will find about this thing are about how I literally don't know how to pronounce the name. It's very good. This was Comcast last try. So Zumo is, we're moving in the right direction. So does Comcast just have a room and they've got an X and they've got a whole bunch of vowels? And they're just like, throw them at the wall. That's the name.

It's like the refrigerator magnets. They just like whip them at the refrigerator magnets. traitor. I'm like, oh, there it is. The guy have the X in there. It's transforming. It's the Z1, but then they spell that with an X. I don't know, man. Oh, Z1 could be good. At the end of the day, Comcast is sad that they used to have two businesses. They sold cable television

and internet access. Yeah. And one business is going away, and it's not the internet access business. So they're like, what can we do to get back in the TV business? Give us some monies. And they're like, here's what we're going to do. Army of consultants come up with a name. And Army of consultants was like, we drank a lot of tequila. We're going with Z1. Oh, Zmo.

Let's go with Submo. It's bad. All right. There's other stuff going on in the site. We're just like way over. It's like six hours of Vergecast at this point. I mean, we love you all. Yeah.

But honestly, I can't think about Elon Musk anymore. I just can't. I can't do it. The site is great. Lots of coverage on the site. We had like a really fun day on the site just today between Elon, the amount of short posts. Thomas and Janet the matter thing. We had the big decoder investigation and what's going on in the FCC, which was

real fun. Versus is back. Oh, Verses is back. Yeah, V did her first versus. It's great. On smartwatches, it's great. Just kind of like an incredible week on the old verge.com. So go check it out. You know, tweeted us. I'm at Reckless. I mean, while you can. We got to add comments

to quick posts as like as fast as we can. But tweet us by again. I'm at Reckless. Alex is Alexex Trans. David is at Pierce on Twitter, the platform that we once loved. Well, actually no one. Pay $8 a month and you can tweet mean things to Jordan Eli as much as long. And he's obligated to read them.

One last shout out to Addie's big piece on the First Amendment this week, which I think is really important. Maybe one of the most important things we ever published. Please go read that. Back on Wednesday, McKenna and Addy are going to talk about that piece. That's going to be a good one. Indeed. And then you can call us. 866, Vervege 11.

866, 837, 431. David will listen to everything that you say. For $8 a month. For $8. But I'll pay you $8 a month. I will say that I stole this from Elon anytime anyone criticized. me on Twitter now, I'm just like $8. It's great.

I encourage you to try your friends and family. I think I have to give you $8 a month and then you get to yell at me on the Vergecast hotline. I think that's how that works. Yeah. Yeah. David will pay $8. $8.6.000 if you call this number.

Please call this number. 866, Verge $1. David will give you $8.00. That's it. That's a Ritchcast record. And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, subscribe in the podcast app of your choice or tell a friend.

You can send us feedback at Vergecast at the verge.com. This show is produced by me. Liam James and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. This episode was edited and mixed by Amanda Rose Smith. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters, and our executive producer is Eleanor Donovan. The Verge cast is a production of The Verge and Box Media Podcast Network. And that's it. We'll see you next week.