The Vergecast - Facebook announces Libra, Section 230 threatened, and RCS in the hands of Google

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

Paul Miller explains Facebook new cryptocurrency Libra, Adi Robertson explains Senator Josh Hawley's move to amend Section 230, and Dieter explains how Google is taking charge of RCS.  Stories discussed this week: Samsung accidentally makes the case for not owning a smart TV GE accidentally makes the case for not owning smart GE bulbs A paper towel dispenser with an end-user license agreement is a special kind of hellFacebook's Calibra is a secret weapon for monetizing its new ..Facebook confirms it will launch a cryptocurrency called Libra in 2020 …Internet giants must stay unbiased to keep their biggest legal shield Both parties are mad about a proposal for federal anti-bias certification Microsoft and Kano are launching a build-your-own Windows 10 PC kitGoogle is taking charge of RCSUsing secure chat is a moral imperative, and iMessage is my bestCyberpunk 2077 doesn't look weird enough to be edgy  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. In this episode, The Vergecast, we talk about Facebook's new Libra Cryptocurrency, Senator Josh Hawley's move to amend Section 230 and what is going on with RCS. Dieter actually has a lot of emotions about that.

That's the Vergecast come up now. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Verge podcast situation. At this point, what we're trying to do with the Vergecast, by the way, is just have as many of them as possible in one week. That's my new strategy. Are we going to set a record? I think this is a record.

We had three this week. Anyway, I'm Neely. I'm your friend. Paul Miller is here. Hello. Deeter is here. I wish that there was a top-level domain that was hoopla, so we could say that we're the flagship podcast at the verge.

Hoopla. I feel like your dream can come true. You just got to start a country whose acronym is. Perfect. Addy Robertson is here. Hi, Adi. Hi. There's a lot going on this week.

A lot of heavy stuff. Some Section 230 things going on. Someone's saying us a song. This is a true story. Someone sang me a Section 230 song on Twitter. So we'll play that later. Look out for that. Facebook launched a cryptocurrency.

I'm going to just tell the listener of this. Paul won't tell us what he thinks, but he just keeps laughing and saying, just you wait. So I'm very eager to find out what is in Paul's brain. I saw some tweets. But two things I want to point out. One, we published a gigantic story this week from Casey Newton about Facebook moderators at a contracting facility in Tampa, Florida. you might have seen in the feed, Casey and I did an entire episode about that story.

So listen to that. We're not going to talk about it here because we've, Casey, we already had Casey on the show. We talked about it at length. And then we also ran Casey's interview of Adam Masary from Instagram and Andrew Ballsworth from Facebook at Code earlier this week. So we've already had two episodes. This is the third one. Let me know if that's too many. I didn't want to not give people the show they expect on Tuesday with the interview and we'd already promised it.

So we did it. And then the Casey story hit and I thought that was really important. and I wanted to give it some space. Like I said, we're trying more things. Let me know how you feel about it. But that Casey story is really important. I encourage you to read it. Three moderators actually went on the record with us,

and they allowed us to shoot video them, talking about what it's like to moderate Facebook. So please watch that. That's on our YouTube channel. Listen to that podcast, read the story. It's all there. Okay. That's that stuff.

But now we've got to talk about Calibra and Libra from Facebook. We had to talk about Josh Holly's bill to do something. Something. Eddie made a face. We're going to talk about that. We have a lot of stuff talking about. But I want to start with something much sillier, some gadget news in its way, which is that we as a society have decided that we should put computers and everything. Yes. And then now everything has computer problems, like classic 90s computer problems. And so I just want to start with Samsung tweeting this week

that everyone with a Samsung smart TV should periodically dig through the menus and launched the virus scanner on their television. Yeah. Now, I didn't know, this is true, by the way. They tweeted this with a video, like a how-to video, like, your TV is a computer too. Make sure you periodically check it for viruses and then like click through the menus and show the thing. It was hilarious.

The whole internet laughed at it. We wrote about it. And then they deleted the tweet. Yeah. Which implies that maybe looking for viruses on your TV is perhaps not more important than dealing with the shame of tweeting. about it. You'd rather have your customers suffer viruses than get dunked on Twitter. Yeah. Okay. If you have a virus scanner on your computer, presumably you believe that it itself won't get

infected. And so when it runs occasionally, it will be able to properly look for viruses. Who watches the watchman is what you say. So why not just like run it? Like when the TV is off, it's probably still getting power. All these smart TVs do. Why not just as soon as someone like turns off the TV at night, just like wait 10 minutes, make sure they're not coming back, and then just do it for them. And then tell us if there's a problem, but otherwise just do it. Why not just do it? Why don't borrow the Microsoft model?

What if you're in like a really good last third of a TV show you're really enjoying? And then it like exits full screen and runs it. How about that? Yeah, I mean, look, Samsung TVs will happily, you know, update the advertising that they show. They'll do random app updates. I mean, they're computers. Why not run the virus scanner? You get the feeling that they added the virus scanner.

They thought it'd be fun. And then someone's like, we should tell people out this fire scanner. Because I don't, like, there's a lot of ties in TVs out there. Samsung sells a lot of TVs. I just don't think like- You think it was fun? I just don't think the people. Like, can you imagine like the cool cyber criminal hangout?

And they're like, all right, you, iOS, big target, got to find some zero days. You know, Windows 10, got to stay ahead of Microsoft. It's a huge attack surface. You go in the basement and write the Tysen virus. Look, I would like to say that literally the CIA thought this was important enough to do. That's true. They did, right? They did a thing where they could attack it and turn the microphones on.

Yeah, there was an exploit. But didn't you have to be local? Yes. Right. So if the CIA has been in your house, this is very important. The CIA has been in your home, run the virus scanner. That must have been when they wrote the virus scanner. Yeah, probably.

It would make sense. Anyway, just deeply funny. I just think that the tradeoff of this was embarrassing, so we did the tweet, and now people may not know about the virus scanner that we think they should run, is that's a lot. Anyway. Yeah. I mean, it's no end user license agreement on a paper towel dispenser. James Vincent wrote this story. There's a paper towel dispenser in the world that is only licensed to use torque, T-O-R-K branded paper towels, and it will spit out a little receipt that tells you so because it has terms of service.

That's too much. You should just go look at that picture and think about where we are as a human civilization. Yeah. Deider, do you want to talk about the light bulbs? This is like the third silly one this week of these. GE felt like it needed to make smart light bulbs, so it did. And everything that has a computer needs to be able to be factory reset, right? Because you just you want that. And they made a method for it. And then they like, wait, this method is stupid. Let's make a different method for it. And they made it just as stupid. And their method was you like turn it off. and then turn it on for two seconds, and then turn it off for eight seconds, then turn it on, and then turn it off. And you repeat that some number of times. But instead of just describing this process to you and say repeat it three times, they have you watch a YouTube video because that's how all how to content has to be delivered now. That's the law where they just, they like tell you to do it.

So like the idea is you're going to be sitting there with your phone watching it and they're like, turn it on, turn it off. But watching it out of that context, it's just the most. dystopian thing ever. It's just a silent video with some, you know, tinkling music in the background and a person saying, turn it on. So there's 11 steps of this, right? Turn it on. We could go through all of them.

It would take too long and be painful. Turn it off. There's 11 steps which implies that 10 or fewer of these steps were possible that they could happen randomly. Yeah. They didn't want false positives. Uh-oh. Those dumb

kids always flipping the likes. This is exactly what Dan Seferts said is kids will just flip lights, switches all the time, and they didn't want that to happen. That's his theory. No, no, it's totally, I believe that theory completely. But my suggestion to all future smart home gadget makers is you have a checklist. All right, is there Wi-Fi? Do we need it? Yeah, okay. Is there Bluetooth? Yeah, is there thread? Nobody uses it. We don't need that.

But go down the list, and at the end of the list is, how is it factory reset? And then ask yourself what kind of YouTube video you're going to have to make for the factory reset. Can I just clarify the change? The old firmware had you turn it on and off 13 times. The new firmware has you do it 11 times. And you had to sit there and count it because they didn't just tell

you. It's pretty good. Yeah, they should just have a button, I think is the answer. Buttons are good. Yeah. Catch a pattern. Shave and a haircut, two bits. Oh, there's that eight seconds? Doesn't have to be eight seconds. You just need to need some kind of pattern. Oh, well, you flip the switch. I get it.

That's pretty good. What if you're kids are like extremely rhythmic. Then that's good. It's a reward. It's a reward. My children are a barbershop quartet. You do a shave of a haircut. All right. Let's, Paul.

Yeah. That's enough fun stuff. Let's talk about how Mark Zuckerberg is going to completely upend the global financial system. So this has been public for a long time. Facebook had a huge reorg and Kevin Wheel who's in charge of product, Instagram, moved over to start a blockchain division of Facebook. So they're clearly going to do something.

something. On Tuesday, they announced what that something is, which is a cryptocurrency called Libra. It is controlled by a 27-member consortium located in Switzerland. A cabal. It's a cabal. That includes like Visa and Mastercard and Stripe, like a bunch of companies. No banks, notably, no banks are involved in this. That will be, Facebook insists, like, we're just one voting member of this, even though they're the ones who built it. And Facebook is building a wallet. for its currency called Calibra. That will be, that's the Facebook product. And presumably be able to pay for stuff around Facebook with it.

And that's a subsidiary of Facebook and also a voting member. So I think Facebook ends up with two votes. See? See? See? In the cabal. Marks not worth it. It's two out of like 22.

And they hope to, they claim to hope to have a hundred in the Libra Association by launch. So I'm, Paul, I hate to keep people from hearing what you have to. I'm dying. to hear what you have to say. But just to finish it out, a thing that is true is that Facebook announced this thing. It was a big deal. They said a bunch of stuff about how they want to work with governments and regulators. And then literally politicians around the world were like, wait, no, don't do that. Right. So like Maxine Waters, who's like the House Banking Committee, she was like, I want a moratorium on this product until I can hold hearings. The finance minister of

France was like, this seems like another sovereign currency. No, we can't have. that and a big distinction between your bitcoins and this Facebook product is like Bitcoins are not classed as a currency because there's no one controlling it. It's like an asset, but this has this like Swiss Illuminati situation that is deciding what other currencies they'll peg it to. So it's a big thing and so I was tweeting that like it seems like Facebook was unprepared for this massive regulatory backlash and there's a debate and I've heard from some smart folks that Facebook was anticipating this backlash.

And effectively, they left avenues of attack open that they think they can depend. And you have to really believe Facebook is playing 4D chess with the world financial system, which is, I think, very interesting. So they made this big announcement, and there's already this immediate sort of like global, we don't want Facebook control our currency backlash. Yeah, I don't know about like 40 chess, but there is definitely, and throughout all of their language and in their quote unquote white paper and stuff. Like they very much talk about how willing they are to work with regulators.

And obviously, as opposed to something like Bitcoin, which is not controlled by any one person, it has a vector for control by regulators. So this is a currency. I don't really think of it as a cryptocurrency. Also, very interestingly, the actual data structure underlying it is not a blockchain. Because as something that, and full disclosure on my part, I'm a huge Bitcoin fan. So you should just know that about me. something that Bitcoin people point out a lot is that most uses of the blockchain,

if it's a centrally controlled thing, blockchain is an inefficiency, really. And so what you really want is just a high-speed, high-access database, because it's centrally controlled. And so in this case, they issue a currency, this Libra Association issues this currency, and it's backed by a basket of assets. And so ideally, there'll be some sort of,

of one-to-one peg where when you pay in 10 U.S. dollars to get 10 Libra, they add 10 U.S. something like, something equivalent to 10 U.S. dollars to that basket of assets to back the Libra that you've purchased. But of course, if you're holding a basket of assets, it's obviously centralized because you're not going to have like a whole, like you can't globally distribute that or decentralized the holding of money in that way. Wait, so, Paul, let me see if I understand that. I'm going to try to say it to see if I understand it.

You can tell me if I'm wrong. So with a regular currency or a bank, you centralize it and you can move things around faster because you own the database, and then all the trust is in the bank. Like you, as the person holding the currency, trust the government of the bank, that it's going to be there.

With Bitcoin, it's trustless, right? So there's this blockchain that anybody can read. And so the inefficiency is that you don't need trust in a single entity, right? Right, right. I'm just making sure I have this right. So you're saying Facebook is like the Libra Foundation is the thing that you trust. And so they've built it on that model.

Yeah. Like one way to think about it is like how long does it take like a few people to like if let's pick a random word out of the dictionary and get a few people to agree which, which word you picked. You know, so like I picked elephant. Okay, five people. We all, it's very easy for us to communicate. amongst ourselves and decide that. But if you're in a huge room with like a thousand people,

how quickly can you get that information everybody in that room to all agree to that same thing, other than just going on stage and announcing it over the loudspeaker, which is centralization. So if you want high throughput shared decision making, you either want centralization or you're screwed. And so what's interesting is, I don't know, Bitcoin people are so stoked on Libra. And I couldn't even quite figure it out myself. And I don't really know, but it's sort of like Facebook spent billions of dollars probably. I don't know how much money in time they've spent developing this. They develop something I don't think is as good as Bitcoin on technical merits. And it doesn't have most of the good properties that people go to Bitcoin for other than like

being a stable coin if that's what you want. But it also has this aspect where it makes any like a lot of the alternatives to Bitcoin look really silly because they are centralized and they're using blockchain as like a window dressing. They're saying, hey, look at us. We're a decentralized cryptocurrency, but really they actually are just as centralized as something like Libra. And then also simultaneously, Facebook is going as like a full-on challenge against like central banks.

So they're saying, we want to be a privately held global central. bank that issues its own currency. You see what I'm saying. Meanwhile, Bitcoin can sit back, well, we're not trying to do that. We're not trying to be that. And, but at the same time, you know, Libra kind of makes central banks look silly because as far as I know, they actually, you know, Libra's currency is actually backed by something. It's backed by Fiat currencies, but at least it's backed by.

That makes no sense. Libra is backed by more imaginary ideas. Of course. That's all anything is. back by. We agree that this is a unit of exchange. So does the Libra Association control who can process currency through this, the way that, say, credit card processing companies can refuse to deal with organizations? As far as I know, they have full control over what is written to the database or the non-block chain blockchain of Libra. So to join the association, it's $10 million,

and that allows you to run a validating node, which is like something like I run my own Bitcoin note. I just have like a random server I bought off of New Egg for like $200 and I, I validate the Bitcoin blockchain myself at home. But to do that with the Facebook model, and I think partly to keep high throughput, but also for their trust model and to be able to accommodate the wishes of regulators and to basically have a blockchain or have a database that they can change the records of, they have a very small set of people running these notes. So here's my like big question. If it's not a blockchain, what is it? It's a Byzantine fault-tolerant data structure.

I don't know. It's hard to describe. Doesn't that literally describe blockchain? No, it's very different. Blockchain is also a Byzantine fault-tolerant data structure. I mean, so here's one way to put it. Google.com is a crypto website because it's backed by a distributed database. You know what I mean?

It's like, yeah. Like when I go to Google.com, I use all sorts of cryptography and a consensus algorithms and stuff like that. But what is interesting about Bitcoin is that it's also permissionless, which this does not have the aspect of being permissionless. Right. And they say they can switch it over to be permissionless, right? They hope to. One of the things is so there's this concept of proof of stake. This is something that Ethereum has been trying to do for a long time. So Bitcoin is famously backed by proof of work, which is a very energy intensive, high computation. Some would say wasteful. Computers are working very hard to verify the Bitcoin blockchain through proof of work.

Proof of stake just is more like I'm betting that this blockchain hasn't been hacked. And so because I don't really understand proof of stake. And partly the problem is nobody's actually solved proof of stake and has it like working. in a big, important cryptocurrency. So Ethereum's working towards it, and so I think similarly, the Libra Association claims to be working on proof of stake, and then they hope to maybe move Libra to permissionless eventually. That is a very big pie in the sky claim. They're basically hoping to invent technology and then also get rid of all of their selfish

interests that are currently involved in this current, so that they can really – to the community. When I think of solving problems that have never been solved before, I think of 27 company consortiums in Switzerland. Truly, that's the way to go. Do you think this, we've talked a lot about Bitcoin compared to Ethereum? Well, so Ethereum has the whole concept of smart contracts. It has a

whole computer language and you can run more complicated applications on it and you can make more elaborate ICOs and which are not really doing very well right now. So there is a smart contracting language for Libra. Bitcoin also has a smart contracting language. It's just not typically called that, and it's very simple and minimal. So Libra has something called Move, and so they wrote their currency in this language called

Move, and so theoretically, they can do more things with Move. But for now, developers don't have access to making applications with the Move language, and as far as I know, they're only doing the currency with it. So they might open up more of the sort of Ethereum-style utilities, but they haven't. But all that said, like Ethereum, I think of, and this is something where, again, this is coming from a big Bitcoin believer, so take that as you will. But Ethereum has some problems with centralization. And so I do think, and also, was it, TRO, or no, EOS, yeah, EOS,

also is another smart contractee blockchain type thing that also has a lot of has something closer to this Libra model of having sort of a consortium of validating nodes. And those could feel the heat if Libra does what they do

and it does it better and the centralization is the same. If I'm correct about the centralization being the same, then that could be a problem for those blockchains. So I think the technical details here are really interesting

and deeply, fascinating and the sort of like regulators are mad because you've created a new global bank that issues currency, which again, most governments don't like it when you do that to them. So we'll just like see how that goes. But on the consumer side of things, like Facebook has Messenger, they have WhatsApp, they have Instagram, private messages. They're just going to light it up and say, now you can pay your friends, right? And you have to do it in like Disney dollars or whatever instead of real money. And that's just going to, is that just going to, like the problem with all the other stuff,

There's no killer app for Bitcoin, right? Like, people aren't really, except for that one family, Vox wrote about them this week. There's like one family that sold all their assets and now travels around the world on Bitcoin or alone. Like, there's like that, there's those folks. But this is just going to be a transactional platform for Facebook, an instant scale. Right. Well, so Bitcoin talks a lot about the unbanked. Some of their examples are like remittance is a big thing.

So there is an aspect that even though we have these centralized banks that theoretically could be running on. really streamlined fast and secure databases because they are centralized, they're really bad and slow. And so there's a lot, like banks could either get better or they will, I think, be disrupted by either Bitcoin or something like Libra. So like, you know, like Western Union or like payday loans, like I think that's something that Facebook sees itself competing with. And I think they could actually compete pretty effectively with. And then they also talk a lot about like people who do not have. have access to traditional banking for whatever reasons banking has not come to them. And so if Libra works better for those people, I think that's, I mean, I think that's great. I think that's

some of the cool stuff that's, you know, that's happened also with Bitcoin. Like a lot of people, if they, if they're in a country and their currency is going bad, they want to, they really kind of want to get on US dollars. But maybe their government makes that hard, or maybe the US government it makes that hard for them to be on U.S. dollars. If it's easier on Libra or it's easier on Bitcoin, I think they will go to those. I just feel like there's something inherently scary about. I'm in a country, you know, the government's topsy-turvy, the money's going bad. I'm going to put all my assets against my Facebook password just feels just riskier than I want it to, right?

Of course it's risky. It's not ideal. But I think, you know, if that, if you don't have any alternatives, if Facebook makes it easier to buy Libra, than it is for you to buy U.S. dollars or Bitcoin, then I think Facebook wins in that situation. Yeah. There's just a part of this where it's such a moment for Facebook to not have the trust it needs to do something like this,

and they're barreling ahead with it. And like that is, I think it's shared Brown in Congress was like Facebook is already too powerful. Why would we give them our money? And like that's just, that's going to set up a series of hearings and inquisitions that they're going to have to deal with. Well, it also seems like

the big thing is going to be out, it's going to be in all the companies that are the countries that use Facebook for internet. It's like the U.S. it has implications, but it seems like it's really scary when you get to places that already where Facebook is the internet and now Facebook's also your money. Right. And those are, what is it Facebook internet? Internet? Internet. Internet.com. Yeah. Like, Facebook runs a non-neutral internet for people. Right. Facebook services are free and everything else costs money. Like at some point, Facebook is most of your government, right? This is what I'm saying.

Eventually there'll be one company and then we'll merge it with the government. And that will be great. And their Bitcoin will take it out. But then Facebook also wants an external Supreme Court so then they're going to set up a government to run Facebook. A shadow. Well, they've already set up the Libra consort. So then the real government in the world is called Libra. I mean, this is already a YAA novel.

Like, I don't know what we're doing sitting here talking about this when we can be writing our YA novel and making this money right now. It's right there for you. It is real life. By the way, Paul, your point about energy consumption. Mary Beth, Greg's our science editor wrote a piece. It does appear that Facebook system will be more energy efficient than Bitcoin. Does Bitcoin is notoriously power hungry? Right.

The counter argument from the Bitcoin perspective is that Bitcoin harnesses what is, in a sense, sort of like waste energy. It's energy that is sort of geographically locked in a certain location. Bitcoin, you have to use the cheapest electricity to mine competitively. Typically, the cheapest electricity is electricity that is not usable for power and homes in that sense. So while Bitcoin uses a ton of energy, it's not necessarily competing for like the high premium difficult to get energy. Yeah, that makes sense. But as far as how much electricity the two systems use, Facebook's uses way less. Yeah. And I think the sort of growing

amount of energy that Bitcoin is using because it's not like a flat amount, right? It's like a, it's curving up. So I think that that. The hash rate is actually going up faster. than the U.S. dollar value of Bitcoin. All of this seems just very much like, maybe we should turn it over to a group of bankers in Switzerland. All right. I got to say, Tom Warren wrote a piece.

The action in banking tech is very high. Apple's coming out with its card with Goldman Sachs. In case you were wondering, if you really want to trustworthy bank, that Goldman Sachs, that's the one. But Apple's coming out of the card. Obviously, the Apple's card coming out of Goldman Sachs. People are very excited about it.

A bunch of British banks are showing up in the U.S. Tom Warren just wrote a piece about how British banks are far ahead of the curve in many places. There is a lot of action and just sort of payments. And I think this is a reflection of, once again, how big these companies are. They're looking for more ways to just, like, capture you. And obviously your financial, like, transaction history is, like, deeply important. I will say Facebook, you know, their white paper is like, we'll never use this data for anything. And it's like Facebook, you, no one believes you.

Well, also, they have this, they do this whole rigmarole. You can have synonymous accounts, right? So you can have multiple accounts on Libra and they don't have to be tied to your identity, right? But to sign up for those accounts, you have to use your identity because of KYC law, like know your customer and anti-money laundering laws. So you, so while your accounts aren't tied to your identity, they are also tied to your identity. and therefore always everything you ever do with Libra will be exactly traceable to a specific identity. Okay.

Well, Libra's not coming out for a while. We'll see, I mean, and by the way, that $10 million buy-in, a bunch of these companies in the consortium have not even put the money forward yet. Like, they're conditional. So like many steps to go. There are undoubtedly going to be, I would say, very entertaining government hearings where the United States Congress is going to pretend to know what blockchains are. Just like, get ready for that. that's going to be great. So we're going to cover it closely, but I think we've done enough here. So we're going to take a break and we're going to come back and we're talking about whatever is going on with Josh Hawley in Section 230.

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In a world of generic AI, you don't have to sound like everyone else. With Gramerly, you never will. Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com. That's Grammarly.com. Okay, we're back. Addy. McKenna Kelly wrote a story for us about Senator Hawley's new bill that would drastically change Section 230, which we talk about constantly on the show, it's the law that provides immunity of platform

companies from the things that users post. So once again, I will provide this example. When you look at a verge web page, everything that we publish, we're liable for if we get it wrong, and everything in the comments, we are not, because that's user-generated content. So Section 230 is the law that keeps us from being responsible for user-generated content. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, they're all user-generated content, so they're not liable for what their users' posts. But they have 230 gives them the opportunity to moderate that content and take down the bad stuff. At will, right? They just want to lay this out. That's what 230 says.

And encourages them to do it. And it was written so that they would do it. Anyway, there was a writer from Vox, Jane Koston, who tweeted about 230 last night, and I retweeted it and I said, sing it with me. And a Verge reader sang it for me? Can we just play that right now? So show me platforms are not required to be neutral by law. There is no publisher platform.

distinction by law. I love you, Jackson Hayes. Just keep that. That's in your heart, right? You've heard the song. Play it one more time. Social media platforms are not required to be neutral by law. There is no publisher platform distinction by law.

Okay, that's the law. You understand that's the law. Just to be clear, social media platforms are not required to be neutral by law. Yep. There is no publisher platform distinction by law. That's the song. I had to look it up because I have a hard time hearing lyrics, but also that is a beautiful song. It was beautiful.

And again, Jackson, I appreciate you. Thank you for doing that. So that's the law as it stands now. Senator Holly put out a bill. It's called the Stop Internet Censorship Act. No, no. It's called the ending support for Internet Censorship Act. Oh, ending support for any, okay.

Unlike all the support that we have now for the Internet Censorship. So what would this bill do? So what it would do is create a class of very large companies. The intent is very large social media companies that would no longer be eligible for Section 230 protections unless they were certified by the FTC and then agreed to not take any action that would discriminate against or suppress political viewpoints. So they'd have to like file an application, presumably pay for it. Yes. Like pay a fee. And then the FTC, which regulates trade, just putting that out there, would then like vote?

Yes, I think they're trying to create a system where it isn't something that can split purely down partisan lines, but it's still something that they're going to have to vote on. So the FCC is five commissioners, typically three of the majority party and two of the minority parties. So right now it's three Republicans, two Democrats. You would submit your application and you would have to get three Republicans and one Democrat to agree that you are not biased in your moderation. Yes. And your application is a moderation policy that you're proposing? No, it's like proof that you're not doing it. How often do you have to prove it?

Every two years. Okay. And if one of your moderators does something that is politically biased, this is my favorite part. You don't lose your protection if you name that person publicly and fire them. What? Yeah. So it's like how responsible we want Facebook to be? Just responsible enough to shame its employees if they screw up.

It's employees that it doesn't directly employ. Yeah. It's a lot. Here's the first line. Paragraphs 1 and 2 of Section 230 shall not imply in the case of a covered company, and that is if you have more than $500 million in revenue or more than 300 million users or 30 million in the U.S. So you have to Twitter, Facebook, Google. The New York Times, you're saying, would it fit that threshold? Because they have comments. Because the wording they use is just the same wording as 230, which applies to newspapers like the Times. The New York Times company had more than $500 million in revenue based on their 2018 numbers, and it's an or. It doesn't say they need a certain user threshold. So I'm just not clear why the New York Times comment policy wouldn't fall under this.

Okay. So it's very broad. It says these parts of Section 230 shall not apply in the case of a covered company unless the company has in effect an immunity certification from the FTC that the company does not moderate information provided by other information by other people in a manner that is biased against a political party political candidate or viewpoint. So you have to apply it to get this like immunity from liability for what people post. And then Facebook has to repeal its rule against white supremacy. Right, because white supremacy is a political viewpoint. So basically what this bill would do is it would make Facebook illegal, right, unless they get this certification. Because

there's no way Facebook can operate or Twitter can operate or YouTube can operate. if they are liable for every single thing that's on their platform. So that's the threat. Either you do this or your business model exposes you to massive liability. They will just get sued for everything that happens on their platform and they'll go out of business. Or the legal system will go out of business and accelerate toward anarchy. And then liberal will take over. This is perfect.

No, Bitcoin. But then there's this one exception. So you have to prove that you're not motivating against any political parties review points, including white supremacy, which is a political viewpoint. In action of a provider, this is an exception, an action of a provider of an interactive computer service that disproportionately restricts access to or the availability of information from political parties, candidates,

or a few points, shall not be considered biased if the action is necessary for business. This is like the most insane carve-out of all time. Like the commerce cloth. Yeah, it's necessary of business. Or the information is not speech should be protected on their First Amendment of the Constitution. Which is definitely a thing that platforms are always equipped to handle in all of its nuance.

Again, we've been trying to write speech laws under the first one for like over 200 years. And I would not say we've done a good job. Like we've stumbled our way towards this point. Being like Facebook, you figure out what business necessity means under this. It just seems wholly unworkable. So that's the thing. There's a process. You've got to do it every two years.

You got to the FTC has to like staff up to handle these applications. applications and review cases against it. This is a lot. And it's unclear how big what, like, does Vox Media, we don't have $500 million in revenue. If you want to get, if you want to make it so that we do by just writing us checks, we'll take it. I'll solve this problem. Like, it wouldn't be us, right? We'd so good to do whatever.

But the Times might fall under it. Other, Reddit might fall under it. I'm also not clear on how it works with giant conglomerates that include something that may be this service, given that now like three media companies own everything. Yeah. Oh, so like, Warner Media might fall under this. If it has something that is an interactive service, like, which is literally anything that produces user-generated content in terms of Section 230, and I don't know why it would be different here. Yeah, so Disney would definitely, like, if there's a comment section anywhere on a Disney site.

Yeah, you have to submit your, so this is a lot. Okay. Does this apply only to online, or does it also apply to, like, Disney theme parks? and they have to make sure that they allow any political speech in a Disney theme park. It is interactive computer services. So maybe a Disney park is an interactive computer service, but I don't think it is. They are robots moving around. You interact with them.

Think about it. Think about it. So, Addy, you tweeted McKenna's story. This is where I was going to start with. Addie's tweet of McKenna's story literally was just, ah. That's all it was. Tell me why you had that reaction to this. It was not, in fact, anything that was in the bill text.

It was that when he introduced it, he introduced it with a really terrible description of what Section 230 is, which was that with Section 230, tech companies get a sweetheart deal that no other industry enjoys, complete exemption from traditional publisher liability in exchange for providing a forum free of political censorship. This has nothing to do with Section 230. Can I play the song in? to be neutral by law. There is no publisher platform Sting Shumela. So just listen to the song. That's what the law says.

Josh Hawley is not listened to the song. We can send him the song. Well, I'll burn a CD for him. But that's really the thing here, right? Is no one is really happy with how companies are moderating their platforms. I think that's just a truth.

Yeah. Right? They don't seem to be doing a job. I actually agree with Senator Holly. They're not transparent at all. It's a criticism he has that I think is very, very valid. The conflict as near as I can understand it is that I think the platform should do a better job of moderating, by which I mean more. More moderation has like a real human cost, right?

That's Casey's story. There is a massive human cost to moderating these platforms. It's destroying people. You should read that story. You should listen to that podcast. It's harmful to people to moderate these platforms. So if you want more, you got to deal with that. On the other hand, I think Senator Hawley and a bunch of conservatives want them to moderate less or moderate in a way that favors them.

And so you get bills like this that say a lot of conservative speech really overlaps the stuff you're taking down. And so we're going to take away the entire foundation of your business if you don't prove to us that you're not harming us. And I think that's just deeply in tension. Yes. And it's also framed in, again, a way that does not describe how the law currently works and does. does not describe it in a way that suggests that there is some kind of legal precedent here that Facebook is failing at. That clearly we have to write this great wrong that we promised them in the 90s when we told Facebook that... Which didn't exist.

Yes, that they could have to moderate neutrally. Like, it is a really terrible partisan framing of this law. So what's interesting about it, by the way, there is a definition of business assessee. I'm going to read it to you. And you just think about it. The term necessary for business. By the way, necessary for business, a great album name if you're starting a band. The term necessary for business refers to a lawful act that advances the growth, development, or profitability of a company, but does not include any action designed to appeal to or gain favor from persons or groups because of their political beliefs, political party membership, or support for political candidates.

See, that's just missing the, I mean, we're in a climate where politics has become so necessary for business. CNN, now owned by Warner Media, now owned by AT&T, certainly over $500 million, can CNN have comments on their website? Can Fox News have comments on their website? Or, or... Can Reddit have R. the Donald, which is definitely designed to appeal to gain favor from persons or groups because of their political beliefs. That's, like, very dangerous territory to be in.

Yeah, I really think the Reddit model is very interesting because you have, in some some sense, relatively loose moderation for the overall site, but then you have very tight moderation per subreddit because it's user-defined moderation in a sense. But under this bill, there's no carve-out for you can let your users moderate themselves. Or you could ban all political speech and that is not discriminatory. Yeah, you can just ban it all, which is like one outcome. But what if the personal is political? All right, Paul.

You just keep mining your Bitcoin or whatever you do. doing over there. So, Addy, one thing that's interesting to me is it seems like no one likes this bill. Absolutely no one. So let's cue this up. Ron Wyden, who wrote to Section 230, does not like it. That is not a surprise. We'll just move on from that one. Justin Amash, who is a Republican, also does not like it. He says the thing that is actually a pretty standard at this point, kind of libertarian, conservative point, which is that we're bringing back the fairness doctrine, basically, that we're now going to create a committee that tells companies that are private companies what they can do politically.

Yeah. So he calls it a sweetheart deal for big government. The FTC... The government always gives itself a sweetheart deal. All right. Former Republican FTC commissioner, Joshua Wright, also calls it death by bureaucratic board or the plaintiff's bar. It says it might feel good to some conservative policy.

politicians, but there will be a terrible hangover for everyday internet users. Confusingly, Gab, the less moderation-friendly. The right-wing Twitter clone. That's what it is. Guy like Twitter Reddit. Yeah, anyway. So at first it opposed it and said it was terrible. And then I think it didn't realize that this was only supposed to apply to big companies.

So then someone pointed it out and took it back and now they say they support it. Good. Good. Gab is like, we admit we will never have 300 million users for $500 million. This does line up with Gab's like stated moderation policy. Which is nothing. It's the only, you're right, nothing outside of legal free speech. Okay. And then a bunch of Democrats also think it's dumb. Yes.

But like mostly, obviously what's interesting is Holly is Republican. Republicans think it's dumb. I will say this. I'm going to give him credit for this. I do not think he wrote this bill expecting it to be taken serious. It is so over the line. Like, it is unworkable. I don't even know how the FTC. I don't even know why it's the FTC doing it.

It's like a conversation starter? Yeah, I think, I think people are angry that they don't know how the companies work. And this is a way to like move the window of we will just take 2.30 away from you, right? Like, here's a bill that would just take it away from you unless you do what we want. And might this prompt companies to start being more transparent about their policies? Might it prompt companies to be more transparent about who's doing their work? I think Casey's story, his two stories, one in February and one this week, prove the point fairly conclusively that no one knows how these companies work or who these people are, what their working conditions are like. And more transparency is desperately needed there because those people are horribly mistreated.

So like, I'll give him the credit, right? I'm being very charitable because I think this bill is ridiculous. But the most charitable reading is he doesn't expect this to be taken seriously. He expects a lot of people to start talking about how would you take away 230 or how would you demand transparency. That is the most charitable reading of this. What do you think? The weird thing is that as far as my read of the bill is, it doesn't really talk that much about transparency.

Like, it mentions the certification process, but it does not seem focused on that at all. Like, the less charitable read is that he doesn't expect it to pass, but he's trying to score points. Right. He's trying to score the conservative speeches unfairly biased against on platforms' points. Yes. I mean, they could just write a law making Twitter illegal,

which is something I would score. But, like, that's effectively where they're going is either you do what we want or we'll make your business legal. And there has the kind of means testing that's like the the punish Facebook method, which Elizabeth Warren also has in a slightly different way. Right. If you're so big, we'll break you up. Trying to create ways that we can just carve out these like three companies and make them pay. I don't oppose it. So Paul, we've talked on this show a lot about this. How do you feel about a panel of federal trade commissioners reviewing moderation policies and deciding if they're fair to speech or not.

Yeah, my litmus test for a, one of my litmus tests for a law is, does the government do more than it's doing right now or less? And it's, this sounds like a more. I would say it's substantially more. Like, one of the clauses, like, the FTC will staff appropriately for this. And that's like, well, Facebook has 15,000 moderators. I do think it's interesting. Like you said, like if it's a conversation start, like, Have you guys ever heard of the McDonald's principle?

Like, if you're with a group of friends and you can't decide where to go out to eat, you suggest McDonald's. And everybody's like, that's a terrible idea. But it sparks ideas. People have alternatives because they've, of course, they could beat McDonald's. So, wow. Maybe people, but it's an interesting. And it's also, it's bringing up this idea of this,

they're being like that in a sense, like everything is speech. And that you, when you are publishing, sorry, platforming, whatever you want to call it. When you, when you host... You want me to play the song again? I'll do it. When you host content, whether or not you created it, right? It is in a sense speech.

And I think that's interesting. I don't want to have some sort of bonkers, like legal bonanza of libel. But I do think that's... I do think it's an interesting way to think about it. But it's something that all this talk about Section 230, no matter how many times people get it wrong, Neelai, I do think it's made people think more about that concept. But obviously, the solution is a decentralized open source communication protocols. Perfect.

So, Adi, what happens next here? It seems like probably nothing. Yeah. Alternately, it seems like, yeah, maybe someone else will introduce a bill that competes with this. Maybe it will be like net neutrality or phone unlocking or a few other sort of hot tech issues where everybody just cycles through trying to find their version and then maybe eventually something passes. Yeah.

Although now it seems like nothing ever passes. That's the way it goes. You can see how Ron Wyden, who has said to us, like if they don't start doing a better job, we will figure out ways to change 230. Like, maybe he's going to be like, Josh. I'm assuming senators only call themselves with their first name. He'd be like, Josh, get in my office.

And Josh would be like, Ron. And be like, this bill is a mess, but I like where your head's at. Like, is it that or is it this is just ridiculous. Go home, Josh Hawley. I'm not sure. Because I'm not really sure how much you can work when the goal here is clearly not to find a workable version of Section 230. It is based purely on getting the outcome that you want. Yeah. So if we're taking it charitably, maybe. And if we are taking it really charitably, then we could have a version of this that is focused actually on the transparency aspect. That is about if you have this, if you're really big and you do a lot of moderation, we need to have some kind of system wherein you will tell us.

how all this stuff works. Yeah. I think the fundamental conflict is some people want the platforms to moderate more and and the other side wants them to moderate less. And this law is the focal point. What were you going to say, Paul? I think one interesting, I don't know how to make this a law and I definitely don't know how to make this a law involving less government.

But I feel like a concept that sounds fair to me is that when you make your first post on a site, there are terms and conditions for that content. And I feel like those terms and conditions should apply in perpetuity for that content. Like if they change the rules later and they've got new rule, you know, and like I feel like that's somehow the framework of at least how what seems intuitive fair, because when you when you offer content to a platform, you have some sort of, and it's obviously wrong, but you have some sort of sense that this is mine and will remain

the same. I don't know. I don't know how to articulate it. It seems like there's going to be. with in that case the fact that there are just spammers and very clear bad faith actors that are constantly trying to game the rules. And it seems like if the issue is that you can't retro, like you can't evolve these things as tech evolves and as people, you get into this game, then you're going to kind of end up being stuck with an unworkable platform.

My answer, Paul, is that the way that you solve it with less government is more competition and hence you break them up. Okay. It's true. It's a fact. But it is also true to Addie's point that Elizabeth Warren's proposal to break up these companies is literally like the same kind of, if you're this big and I have this many people, we're breaking you up. And like there's only three of those companies. I will say that hers is a little bit clearer on there literally only being three of those companies. Yeah. Because 500 million in revenue is obviously that is a very large number for any reasonable person, but that's not like Facebook levels of huge. That's true.

And it is interesting. We should ask Holly what do you think of the Times. Josh Holly, get on this show. We'll see what we made that happen. Okay, we're taking a break. We'll come back. Dieter's going to yell about RCS. It's going to be wonderful.

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That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T dot com slash sell. What-N-O-C-C-S-Sell. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns. Because let's be honest, you didn't get into tech to babysit a broken

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I just can't find the tab. How this is happening every week? Is that the name of the segment? I just can't find the tab. I wrote down a lot of notes for Libra this week, and so now I lost my notes for the segment that I do every week, which is called, now that's a smart kid. And it's about Microsoft and Kano are teaming up for like a DIY, a build your own Windows 10 PC kit. And I just really like to imagine a child build a kit. It kind of looks a little bit like an OLPC, but the screen part is a detachable, very thick tablet with touchscreen.

And in the back, you can see how it's put together. It's basically a very large raspberry pie-like thing connected to a very large battery and a speaker. I mean, the thing is that the assembly is you're plugging a speaker into this board. You're plugging a battery into this board. And then you're putting it into a case. And then you're booting it up and it already runs Windows tip. And I'm not saying that they are lying to these children. But what did you really build?

What would you have them do? I want a manual where you can write your own Windows 10 kernel from scratch and then you boot it and see if it works. And if you got it wrong, you go back to the start. But they already made like a Linux version of this thing. I bought one for my niece and nephew. That's why the segment, Eli, is called Now That's a Smart Kid. Oh, that's why it's been consistently called Now That's a Smart Kid for so long. Exactly.

I love this thing is what I've decided. It's really cute. Yes, you can build a PC. I doubt many children have access to the money required to build a great PC right now. So having a cheap version of you can build a PC, which is like how I started doing stuff, is awesome. If you are a caring and enthusiastic parent, I'd say for $300. This is great. And if you have a ton of money, get one of these too.

But if you have $300, you and your child can go on new egg.com or PC part picker. You can get a great PC for $300. And then plug it into one of those like 4K displays that's like $12 at Costco that tracks everything that you do and has viruses. Does it come with a Windows 10S license? You know, the popular operating system Windows 10S? I hope not. All right, Dieter. Yeah, RCS.

There's a bunch of like Google, Googling, I would say. Yeah, Google's just Googling all over the place last week. So RCS, rich communication services. the GSM approved spec for replacing short message service SMS has had a bad rollout. No one is using it. All the carriers are ignoring it. The carriers that aren't ignoring it, half of them are using their own proprietary version of RCS, and not something that's compatible with the quote, unquote, universal profile.

And it's been a mess. So Google, which spent the last year and presumably a year before that, trying to get everybody on board and manage to get everybody to promise they'd support it, but they never actually did it, is just going to do it. They're just going to offer RCS services to any Android user. They're going to start small in the UK and France and then they're going to roll it out to other countries. And eventually, if you have an Android phone, you can install Android messages and have Google provide your texting services instead of your carrier. I mean this is the thing everybody wants, except that it's not encrypted.

Does this mean they can make a Google RCS iPhone app and it would work because they're just running the servers anyways? So the answer to that question is probably not. currently RCS is modeled on using your phone number as your identity and that means that everything has to run through whatever your SIM card is attached to because that phone number is the key thing that identifies you. In theory, they could in the future do something like what Apple does and create a database online that associates your phone number with a Google ID and then it will be able to distribute it via that Google ID.

But they haven't announced that yet because they don't want to get sued into oblivion by the EU. And maybe they're not even thinking about doing it. I don't know. But right now, RCS works literally app to app. Like, if I want to text you, Paul, my Android Messages app sends a push notification to your phone.

And if your phone gets it and you have Android messages, Android messages will receive that push notification, just like if you got a Netflix push notification. And it'll say, oh yeah, I'm awake, I'm here. Yeah, I have RCS cool. And then we'll start talking directly to each other or RCS. If you don't have RCS, that text message,

push notification will hit your phone and just like get ignored. And then Android messages on my end, it will be like, oh, sad panda, and then send you a regular text message. All of which is to say it's a decentralized system that depends on like actual phone numbers to work, which means that you are not going to be able to have multiple devices that you can text from unless you like do wacky QR code things. Right. And that QR code stuff like fundamentally just like mirrors your phone, right?

Yeah, pretty much. That's like how WhatsApp used to work. Yep. So you said it's not encrypted. It is not end-end encrypted. It is encrypted in transit, just like, you know, going to a website. But it's not encrypted at rest on the server. So on the server where it goes through to get to the other person, like the company that owns that server can look at it.

We don't know what carrier's data retention policies are. Google's data retention policies are. We delete it as soon as we know that you've received it. And we, you know, get rid of metadata in some. short time period as well. But it might hang on to files for just a little bit longer because, you know, you might close the chat and then want to go back the next day and like re-look at that GIF or re-download that file or whatever.

Yeah. Can they turn on encryption? There is no technical reason that you could not build an encryption system on top of RCS. Doing it would mean a couple of things. You'd have to figure out what the right system is and it would be complicated. you'd have to decide whether or not you would try and do what RCS does right now, which is get everybody on board with the GSMA to agree on a standard. And last but not least, if you're Google and you're talking about encrypting every single message on every single Android phone,

the platform that owns 85% of the world market, will you be able to stand up to the pressure from, let's say, all the countries, not wanting you to do it? Countries wouldn't do that, Deter, take it back. Yeah. So this is not quite the eye messaging of Android that we have been anticipating. It is not. Although, like, it is a default way.

It's like a default way to get half-decent, pretty good text messaging that has read receipts and typing indicators and better pictures that will be universe. Does it have reactions? I don't know. Eventually. in that respect, it may become popular enough to pressure Apple to support our CS someday. And it will be an upgrade relative to SMS. But that is a pretty low bar. Where I'm at, like, I don't know what else Google could do.

My conspiracy theory is that this was their plan all along. They just couldn't execute it because people would have gotten mad. And so they just, they waited until all the carriers, like, screwed it up and didn't implement it. And then they're like, well, I guess we got to do this because everybody wants us to. fine. And that's the next step is they're going to start lighting it up in different countries and see if anybody gets mad. But yeah, like three years ago, five years ago with hangouts, you know, like what I want

to do, what I want Google to do is invent a time machine, go back in time and not screw hangouts up, right? Or go back in time and not screw G-chat up. But given where they were in 2015 is like hangouts like lost the thread and got really weird and they didn't know what they were doing, like there's no other resets available to them. They tried to reset with like a Google service that was called Allo and all of seven people used it. Allo was not end-to-end encrypted either.

I mean, like, it was if you turned on an incognito chat, but it was not default encrypted. I mean, that to me is like the, I mean, you have switched to an iPhone because this is table stakes now, right? Like, yeah, I'm just not going to use a messaging service isn't end-end encrypted. The thing that I believe is like the default should be end-to-end encrypted. And so that's why Allo wasn't like acceptable. You had to go and install an app, and then you had to switch it into incognito. You know, like, WhatsApp is great. It's ended encrypted, you know, signals even better.

That's my preferred messaging app if I can get anybody to use it. The only people that I've been able to get to use it are my wife because she loves me. And Paul, because he loves me. Because blockchain. No, it's because I love Dieter. Yeah, that's it. What happens next? What happens next is it gets lit up in the UK and France in the next week or two.

and then we see if anybody notices. Do you think they're picked the UK because they're so distracted by Brexit that like the government won't notice? Yeah, probably. They also like there's a bunch of like there's a bunch of carriers in those countries like the big ones that have already implemented RCS. And if your carrier runs RCS on its own, like Google will just let them continue to do that. It doesn't care. It doesn't. So that's like how it's proving that it's not taking business away from carriers by doing this.

But there's a bunch of like smaller carriers and MV&Os and whatever that. That, like, you know, they look at the cost it'll take to, like, rent a jibe server from Google or, like, build their own and whatever. And they're like, yeah, no, I don't want to spend that. That's stupid. I don't want to spend that money. Google, will you just handle this for us? And Google's, like, sure. Yeah.

Well, there is an aspect where the U.S. is largely I message. Yep. Everywhere else is largely WhatsApp and Telegram. China is WeChat. Like, where is RCS, like, sorely needed? Everywhere and nowhere, I guess, is how I'd put it. What's sorely needed is like replacing SMS with something that's IP based, right, with something actually good. And that's like, that's the whole thing.

It's like if all the carriers just got together and we're like we're upgrading SMS and like we're all going to do it in 2019. And by the way, Google also is supporting it on Android and we hope Apple gets on board because they're going to have to. Everyone would have been like, cool. So see if you do it. But the thing that makes this really complicated is the carriers weren't doing that. They were content to have SMS continue to suck. And Google had tried literally everything else possible in messaging. And so they wanted to do this.

And so it was Google that was pushing this. So everyone's thinking of this as a Google service. And they're like, no, it's not. But, you know, now it is because they're going to just be offering the services to people. It's such a sad story. I'm sad. I'm excited. I think they got to support it.

the phone level two, right? So like individual phones have to support it. And now that there's like some guarantee that there's an RCS server on, you know, that every person, every carrier can address, I feel like the phones will come along and that's like a good thing. Yeah. So actually, the phones don't have to support it anymore. Right now, carriers are proving it phone by phone, but in this new model, all of RCS happens in the quote unquote APK space. So it's just like, it's just an app. Huh. And it, uh, it, the app becomes your defense. Fault SMS client, and it just like listens for the push notification from other Android messages apps.

So like before this, I think there was like some security stuff where like they didn't want other, you know, things to take over SMS. But Google's just like, well, we could just do this. So we're just going to do it. Yeah. APK space sounds like a great co-working office for Android. Well, APK space. Just a free idea.

I mean, this whole story is sort of a narrative of like, I'm really at the point. What, what, my phone number is basically useless. I've got a SIM card, right? But that's like, it's almost like a like a billing convenience, you know? Like, we know which device used like four gigabytes of YouTube, you know? Like, but like I basically, I just want devices and I want them to have access to the internet. But this whole SIM card phone number, tight relationship with a phone carrier, it seems outdated and useless. It seems counterproductive at this point.

It also means that desktop, like, I use Gchat on desktop. I use chat on desktop so much, and it sounds like this is really just trying to kill that. Yeah, well, you can do it with the QR code thing. They're not trying to kill it. They don't know how to make it work because they don't, they tried it, and no one used it. So they're... Right, and they don't own all the servers like Apple does. Yeah.

I'm still hoping. You know, Paul, I wrote a piece predicting the death of the phone number in, like, 2012. It didn't, it didn't happen. Just putting that out there. All right, Deeter, one more Google thing happened this week. Oh, yeah. So apparently they had two tablets that they were working on. And Computer World and then Business Insider heard that those tablets were canceled,

that there was like a meeting with all the Google employees working on the tablets. And they're like, you don't, those are gone. You're done. Go work on something else. Go work on the pixel book. And then Google, like, confirmed it. They're just like, yeah, we're going to focus on laptops. And then like the head of hardware, Rick Osterlo, confirmed it again.

And, you know, no, we promise we're going to pay attention to, you know, Chrome OS for third parties and Android for third parties. And, you know, we're going to support the ecosystem, blah, blah, blah. But like, today Google simultaneously announced, like, admitted the existence of that, to me, that counts as announcing, and then canceled two tablets. I like this new Rick Osterlo hardware strategies. Like, yeah, yep. You know, I've got like 50,000 employees.

are doing stuff. Like, it's true. I like it. I will say that this also makes me happy because the pixel book is good. The pixel book is good, except for its Bluetooth module. It is still my favorite

laptop hardware of the past few years. It needs, like, an update to make the bezel smaller on the screen, but otherwise, like, don't touch it. Keep everything the same as far as I'm concerned, including leave the headphone jack in.

The pixel slate was a mess, a huge mess. I actually started using mine again a couple of weeks ago because it's like, this is probably better now, right? Nope. No. It's never good when you're at the launch event. You pick it up.

You're like, oh, this is very laggy. And they're like, huh. Like, you know, it's like, you guys should know. I mean, Android on tablets just has never worked. It has literally never worked. That is true. It has literally never worked. Except like maybe like the very first one with honeycomb.

You're like, oh, maybe. And then like no apps came. I liked the Nexus 7. I have a second gen Nexus 7. It is very slow now. And I do still use it, but I only use it. to run the Sonos app. And I only still have it there because I don't understand this.

Android supports multi-user on tablets, but not on phones. It does on phones. It's just 90% of OEMs turn it off. On a pixel, you can still do multi-user on a phone. No, I have a Nexus 6P, and it does not have it on there. On a pixel, you can still do it on your phone. All right, maybe I'll put, anyway, but I still use the Nexus 7 because I can have the second account that only has the Sonos app and, like, sits there.

And it's just very slow, and I feel very bad for every guest in my home. It's like, can I change the music? I'm like, some minutes from now you will. It is true. Anyhow. Why can't they get this right? It feels like Apple's like charging ahead and you'll just like nowhere. And then, you know, obviously there's Microsoft, there's Windows tablets, but they're very desktopy still.

They're very desktopy. I think that part of it, so Business Insider was like they, they like, it didn't meet their quality assurance standards. Like they QA'd these tablets and they're like, this isn't going to work. If we hand this out to reviewers, it'll just be the pixel slate all over again. So, like, two pieces of news there. One, Google started queuing its tablets, which is great. And two, I think they know that they're never going to catch up to the iPad. It's accelerating away from them.

And at Google's most ambitious, like, we can make the most amazing tablet possible, it's still going to be half as good as an iPad at best. And I think that they just, they don't want to be compared to that iPad anymore. And so they're like, nah. Yeah. And to be fair, not only the iPad, the enormous range of excellent Windows tablets that are available that do something very different than that. There's not like a middle ground. Yeah.

Right. There's like Apple's version of the future of computing and whatever is happening now that it's iPadOS, which by the way, Apple tells us like, oh, just a name change on the website. They're like, this is the biggest name change in the world. So some confusion there. But Apple's like, they've got their vision. Microsoft has an extension of its existing vision, which is like, what if desktop and a tablet, right? There's no space in between. Yeah, I'll give Microsoft a little bit more credit than that.

But, I mean, I get where you're going. With ChromeOS, they've had two years, maybe a little more trying to like nail a tablet interface. And just have it do basic things like not lag three seconds when you're trying to move a window in tablet mode. right? Not like three seconds. Like huge, huge lag and swaths of lag. And the first time you're like, what the heck? I'm like, we're working on it. But it's still going to laptop mode so you believe we can do it.

I was like, okay, sure. But the Pixel Slate, which was released last year, and I reviewed once something with very good hardware, you would try and drag a window down from the top and you'd move your finger to the left of the screen and then two seconds later the window would be there. It was ridiculous. They had two years to figure it out.

I just want to clarify before the Microsoft people yell at me. What I mean is Apple's version of this, and Dieter Trey Credit, you understood what I see what you're saying. Apple's version is like, what if we start over and like start from the beginning and like they've like iterated. And Microsoft is what if Windows but touch and they've done a good job. I'm not saying they didn't do, they did a bad job. I'm just like afraid of the tweets.

That's what's happening right now. My own speech is being chilled because the Windows people are going to be mad at me. Everyone's doing great except for Google, the end. That's what you want me to say. That's right. Also, Deli hates Linux. He thinks Linux is so funny doing this to me. This is a year for Linux on the desktop.

It's going to be awesome. Google finally made the move. By the way, speaking of laptops, virtual house listeners might know about my beloved 15-inch Macwick Pro GPU. You may have heard its fan several times throughout this episode. Apple recalled mid-2015 MacGympathes. MacBook Pros for battery issues. There's a battery replacement program now.

But the issues are apparently so severe, the instruction is stop using your laptop until the battery is replaced. Which seems very significant to know about a laptop four years after you released it that there's a battery issue of this significance. But to Apple's credit, they said it. They're replacing the batteries. You don't have to buy a new laptop. It's not some conspiracy theory to get you to buy a touch bar laptop. You can do it. This is important, however, because the 2015 Macro Pro is, it's like the one people we're still buying.

Yeah. Right? It's like, there's like a black market for these because people don't want touch part ones. So it's good, but I think I'm done. Are you going to go get your battery replaced or are you going to go get another computer? It's like, what if I get the battery replaced, but then I have this laptop. I'm still doomed with this fan noise and extremely slow discrete GPU that does nothing. I think that if you want a big screen,

I think you should look at a surface book. All right. I'll think about it. Think about it. Well, I mean, now that I love Windows so much. Yeah. Remember? You heard me say that.

All right. Dieter, you put the video game in here. Addie's here. I trust you to have a video game conversation. This is your moment. I was so excited for Cyberpunk 2077. I played a little bit of the RPG when it came out, but I mostly played Shadow Run.

And then everyone got lost their mind because some PR genius has manufactured this moment that we're having in our culture right now, that Keanu is an angel and perfect. And I'm sure he is a very nice guy. But because he was in the video game, everybody lost their minds. And that's fine. But then I watched the preview, and it was like the main character was like, I guess just like a dude bro. And I felt a little disappointed.

And then Addy, you actually played it. No, I saw there was a hands-off demo. They have the thing at E3 where they show you someone else playing the game and are like, this is only for you. Don't tell anyone. So yeah. I saw a mission. It looks like pretty like, you know, here's a crazy world. And at the end of the day, like you shoot guns and upgrade your character.

Yeah. I also know in the name of a video game. I'm so proud of myself. I watched the Death Stranding trailer and it's terrifying. It's super weird. Yeah. Yeah. I will say we're at the point in our culture where like a giant companies are like,

you've been waiting for this game. Now this trailer will play. And it's like, oh shit, I'm a baby and I'm coming out of a birth canal. Like that is a place that we are. The thing that worries me about the cyberpunk thing is that obviously a game can not, can be not representative of like E3 missions are very different from games that actually come out. But usually you try to show off your weirdest thing. Like I was going back and looking at Disholored 2's gameplay at E3 a few years ago.

and it was this crazy clockwork mansion or like this thing where you can manipulate time like everybody tries to show off the weirdest stuff and here it is like well you can open a door with your robot arms

or you can shoot somebody yeah which I mean if you're gonna make a video game about like a realistic future of what's actually gonna happen I guess yeah that's that's right that's what the robot arms are gonna do when we get them

all right Zelda I said it that's the other game I know okay Dieter has a huge note in the rundown that says we're gonna talk about video games not talking about Madden or Zelda, but I defeated it. Since Nilai has broached the subject on a scale of like most open world being Breath of the Wild and then the least open world being like one of those like, I don't know, like Final Fantasy 8 or something, you know, like a completely on rails RPG.

Like where would you, is cyberpunk like more open than Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead or like less open. So that's the weird thing is that the thing that CD Project Red does is like these giant open worlds with relationships and all that. And the thing they showed off seemed much more like an immersive sim. It was like they were trying to make DeusX or dishonored but didn't really care about any of that gameplay. I would have been much more interested if they had shown what happens if you go and like

hijack a hover car or what happens, what are your romance options? Just anything except what they showed. All right. Once it come out? April 16th, 2020, the same year as the original. tabletop RPG was set. Okay. That's great. All right. That's enough video game talk nerds.

It's like a nerdy's show in the world. All right, that's it. We're way over. We gotta wrap it up. Thank you, Addy, for being here. I always love it when you're on. Thank you. If you get Josh Hawley on this show, we're going to team up on that one. It's going to be fun. Paul. Thank you for your Bitcoin. I'm going to thank everyone individually today. I'd like to thank Paul for Bitcoin emotions.

You will? Deeter, you're just ambiently thanked. No, I just thank you. Thank him on signal. And I want to thank Jackson Hayes for writing me a song about Section 230. Play the song! So show me platforms are not required to be neutral by law. There is no publisher platform, stings shimella.

All right, that was a Vergecast. Please rate and review us. Just give us the five stars. I know we didn't earn it this week. But give us the five stars. We really appreciate it. You can listen to Why Do You Push That Button, which is a tremendous show. Ashley did a whole piece.

about Gibo, the robot that people loved, and then I was dying. You should just listen to that episode, watch Press a Button. You should read the story on the website. There's some, like, tremendous photos of people in their Gbo's in that story. Check that out. Obviously, please listen to the episode with Casey about Facebook moderators. It is very important. You can listen to Recode Decode with Kara, with Kara with Scott Galloway.

Scott Galloway, we saw my code. It's very, very funny. And you comes to Recode Media with Peter Kafka. All great. All available to you, wherever podcasts are. That's it. We'll see you next week. Rock and roll.

Paul. That's Not230.com.