The Vergecast - The Supreme Court hears Section 230 arguments, Sam Bankman-Fried's latest woes

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, T.C. Sottek, and Adi Robertson discuss the Supreme Court cases that could reshape the future of the internet. Later, Verge policy reporter Makena Kelly joins the show to discuss new charges against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Further reading: The Supreme Court hears arguments for two cases that could reshape the future of the internet Thomas starts talking about pagers for some reason Google: it’s not helpful when states make their own decisions that affect us A Signal group is at the center of Bankman-Fried’s latest woes Spotify’s new AI-powered DJ builds and commentates on custom playlists Microsoft recruited Nintendo and Nvidia to help fight Sony over the Activision deal   Tesla announces new engineering headquarters in California Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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 the Verstcast, the flagship podcast of Supreme Court Argument Interpretation. I love that.

It's good. Yeah. It's not what people expect of us, but it's what we deliver week after week for some reason. Here for you. I'm your friend Eli. Alex Trans is here. I'm here for all of your judicial needs. Am I allowed to say that?

That sounds like you do filing. You're like, you do, you like service a process. Like you show up. You've been served. No, no. I want to do like the law stuff. But like, I don't, I don't, don't actually ask me to do it. I don't have a bar card.

It'll be fine. T.C. Sotic is here. Yes, I'm here as the unwilling subject of human experimentation on putting bloggers in Supreme Court for six hours for two days. Yeah, it's good. And Addie Robertson is here. Hey. So there's a lot of news this week. This has been a strange episode of the Rochester.

I'm here for the first part. Yeah, and then I'm kicking you out. Then Alex is kicking me out and taking over. I've got to go do our podcast conference, Hopod Summit, which we'll talk about next week. Very cool. Very excited about that. But I wanted to make sure I was on the first segment here, especially with T.C. and Addy, because there were Supreme Court arguments this week on two cases that, honestly, depending on how this goes, it would be the story of the year. Yeah. Story of the decade. This could be like the week the internet changed forever because of how the Supreme Court might decide in these two cases. One is Gonzalez v. Google, which is, Addie, correct me from him. That's the one that is the boundary of 230 where Google might be liable. for the YouTube recommendation system in a very narrow way.

And the other one is Twitter v. Tamne, where Twitter allowing terrorists to use Twitter might make it liable under the Anti-Terrorism Act. Right, aiding and abetting terrorism. Right. Yeah. And any terrorism act is like the nexus

of both lawsuits, but 230 immunity is being implicated in Gonzalez v. Google. And in Twitter versus Tamne, It's just, they're just looking at whether they ate it in a bed of terrorists. But it's about free speech on the internet, basically. It's about what you are, you can and cannot say. No.

No? Not? It's about like the algorithms? It's a, yeah. So these are very strange cases. I think at a very fundamental level. Uh-huh. And I think Adi has written about this.

Sarah Jong slacked me a couple days ago and just asked me this out of the blue. I have found myself just like staring into the night sky wondering this. No one knows why the Supreme Court took up these cases. They are not great examples of the problem with big services. And particularly the Google case around 230, the law is like pretty settled, right? That this recommendation system does not make Google liable for the contents of the. And then the facts of this case, Adi, are particularly weird.

Go through the Gonzalez case really quickly just so people understand what happened here and why Google found itself in front of the Supreme Court. So both these cases are about there were Islamic State attacks. and someone died in that attack, and the families sued a whole sort of host of services. There's meta, YouTube, Twitter, saying that they aided and invented terrorism. And with Gonzalez, the claim is YouTube is not necessarily responsible for just the fact that terrorists were on the platform, but their recommendations served up terrorist videos and ended up then promoting the, their claim is promoting this and actually creating content

instead of just hosting third-party content, which they maybe wouldn't be liable for under Section 230. So that 230 is the one that says, okay, you're in the verge comments. Yeah. And you're like, I hate Google. And Google's like, you defamed us. And they can sue you.

They can't sue us. Right. Right. So we're not liable for what you publish on our internet. But this is about like the algorithm. Also, objectively true statement. Sorry, defense against defamation. Whatever.

If Google wants to sue people, Google can sue people. That's not an invitation to Google at this point in time. I'm just saying, you post something in our comments that somebody doesn't like. Yeah. 230 is just like flat out bars you from suing us in many cases. Addie, in this case, what the distinction here is that YouTube's recommendation system, like, took a video for terrorist recruitment and showed it to someone else. And that undid the 230 protection.

Right. The claim is that they are producing their own content. I am hesitant to make any metaphors because metaphors are where everything goes to die. here. But it's more, it's sort of like if YouTube had published a separate series of videos and was like, hey, these things are all really great and we endorse them is a little bit where they're going with this. Right. So YouTube feeds your video into the recommendation system and merely by showing a video to someone, they've made some sort of choice. They've created some sort of new content. Right, because they've put content in front of you. This is a whole argument. Yeah. But as I think many Supreme Court justices have decided, as far as we can tell from the questions this week,

the way in which they are making that argument is really weird. Yes. So we'll come to that. So that's, I just want to say, that's the first case. That's the Google case with 230 in the middle of it. Yes. What's going on in the Twitter case? The Twitter case is one that was basically taken up as a sort of, if you take up Gonzales,

please, please, please take this too, which is arguing that even if two, 30 is falls here, even if 230 weren't around, Twitter is just providing a basic service and terrorists happen to have used that service. And you cannot say that somebody aided and abetted terrorism if they're just, there's somebody there that happens to be on your platform. And you weren't trying to get them there. You were opposed to them being there, but you failed to kick them off. So Twitter saying, okay, look, we know the Islamic State uses Twitter. And like you said, you know, like the facts of both cases are super weird because there's no, nobody alleged that there was like a specific video or like a specific, like that one of the attackers even used the service. That's not alleged in. So is it like super broad then? Yeah. It's basically like you contributed to the existence of ISIS as an enterprise and therefore you're responsible for. This is what I mean when I say like many smart people are like, why did these cases end up at the Supreme Court? And even the Supreme Court justices seem maybe not to fully understand what they had done.

Why they accepted the cases. The level of confusion that they expressed, which was partly the plaintiff's lawyers' fault. Confusion is often Supreme Court justices saying, wow, you suck. Yeah. Yeah. So I just want to put out the stakes here. Right. So if Google loses the Google case in the worst possible way, and the Supreme Court says,

all right, your recommendation system on a platform. is a decision you have made that creates a new content that you are responsible for. That means platforms will become liable for what their algorithms. Algorithms do. And that is insane. Like just fully, like, there's no way to make a user, maybe anything at scale without some sort of sorting algorithm in the mix. Google's counsel was actually really funny on this because she said both like simultaneously in a charitable in a very arrogant way. well, Google may will survive.

But everyone else is going to die. Yeah. Because Google got the money. They got the bag. At least they know. At least they know. But that's, these are the stakes, right? Algorithms become illegal on the internet.

Right. And like at some level, everything that happens on a computer is an exercise in sorting and prioritization. Which Elena Kagan said, which was a really great moment in this. Oh, right. I want to come to the fact that the courts seemed to understand what the stakes. were, which is very, like, all of us were worried. Yeah, on both sides, they seem to understand what the stakes are. So the Google case, algorithm's illegal, question mark, right?

Those are the stakes? Or what are the limits of an algorithmic, any sort of algorithmic system that makes reliable of them? And you get the sense that, like, these cases are out of the Supreme Court because there's ISIS. And so, like, everyone can agree ISIS is bad. Yeah. Right?

And you kind of, like, start from there. And that's, like, maybe the only thing in America. left that we can all agree is bad. Right? Like you, if you were like, there's tweets about the Russian war in Ukraine, like some percentage of Americans,

be like, I don't know, that's fine, right? ISIS is the one. We're like, yep, bad. Across the board, bad. No one likes it.

So that's a goo is. Maybe this is clear to everyone, but on a technical level, it's also that there are basically sanctions against ISIS. Right. That is, this is the rare example

where there is a group where it is literally illegal to deal with them. Yeah. And that brings me to the Twitter case where the stakes are do you have to be perfect in offering your at-scale internet service? Yeah.

Well, interestingly, even in Gonzalez versus Google, the justices seem to, I think, by way of understanding what the stakes were, maybe some of them suddenly understanding what the stakes are, it seemed like they were trying to give themselves a little bit of an escape hatch in Justice Barrett. At some point, suggested they might not have to decide the Google case at all, because if the Tamna case fails. That means there's 230 as moot, the immunity, what would the immunity even apply to?

Because there's no liability for the terrorism stuff. So they could just say, sorry. They could just say we don't want to deal with this since then, you know, after they've discovered now that they've opened up a big world. So they really can't just be like, never mind. Well, so we'll see.

I just wanted, I wanted to start here with these very basic stakes. Here are the facts of the case. Here's what happened. here's why we're in front of Supreme Court. Yeah. And then what happens if things go wrong? And what happens if things go wrong are basically every platform has to stop operating because there's just no way to open up a user account sign up form and guarantee that ISIS won't use it.

Right? Like you can't. Are you an ISIS check? You have to do some work. And most platforms, it's illegal to deal with them. So they do do some work to make sure that platforms aren't being used in this way. Yeah. But if the Supreme Court is like anything, like they sign up for Twitter and now Twitter is liable for an act of terrorism down the line.

Like that just changes the entire way that user accounts work on the area. Well, they can choose to get really stupid with it and be like, you cannot create thumbnails of videos anymore because they may lead to terrorist content while still like having other things. things be functional. So I just want to, those are the stakes. Yeah. Right. One is you have to be perfect in validating all the users in your platform. And the other one is your algorithm, your recommendation algorithms make you liable for the content of the video. Even if there's no, and I, this is true, right? There was no direct evidence that showing anyone any videos on YouTube led to terrorist acts. So I have a question about that particular case. And I would love for you guys to help my brain understand that. So they're saying like basically the potential stakes here are any algorithm that does recommendations is gone, which would mean like SEO, Google searching goes away.

So this is Google's argument. Right. This was not, Adi, this was not supposed to be the plaintiff's argument, right? Like the- Because theoretically I'd be like, okay, if I'm watching YouTube and YouTube's algorithm is like, here's an ISIS video and I go and join ISIS. Now we're just going to talk about how bad these. The case you seem to go and how surprisingly, this is, T. mentioned this, how surprisingly intelligence

the Supreme Court seemed about the stakes in what they were ruling on. So what you would want, just in an abstract way, you're a lawyer in front of the Supreme Court, you're arguing your position, you're kind of dancing into, I want the narrowest interpretation of this thing, because that is the most likely outcome. Yeah.

Right? Like, every Supreme Court opinion is like, literally increasingly. Like, this is a narrow, like, they pat themselves in the back. They're like, we threaded the needle, we did it. Once again, the Supreme Court has saved the day in America, right? Here, the dude blew it, right, Addy? They were like, here's a narrow interpretation of this.

He's like, I don't know, maybe Google search would be legal. Yes. People, like, Justice has just kept asking him things. And they were just clearly, like, trying to get him to draw any level of lines that would not just blow up the internet. Like, okay, well, what if, you know, thumbnails, what if they, instead of thumbnails you post a screenshot, they say, yeah, yeah, I mean, maybe. there's a Google search question that I think this was Kagan again who was talking about

okay well there's search you're clearly if you have a top result maybe you're saying this is really good and he just would not say would not draw any of those lines I love this yeah he was really incapable of like defining even fundamental things

about how these systems work which makes it hard to then figure out how to was that like that was his point though right like to just well no because the whole point is trying to define how the service works. If your goal is show that the search provider or YouTube or something is creating speech, right?

Like, that's the whole point is if you're, or the attack on 230 is if you're recommending something to someone or you're like putting in a box or selecting a thumbnail, you're making some kind of judgment or pushing someone in front of people. I should also clarify on the thumbnail thing. It is so much weirder than it sounds. As anyone who has made a YouTube video knows, YouTube does not. choose a thumbnail for you. I have made enough thumbnail selections to know that's not true. And so the way that he's defining thumbnail is basically the entire box that shows up when Google or when YouTube recommends something, which is the actual image people call a thumbnail. And then the URL. The idea that URLs are creating a specific to new kind of content is a thing that has been a running argument in the Gonzalez case.

And it is just hard to overstate how disruptive that would be. That if you generated, in theory, like if you generated a link shortener to something or you just generated any kind of web address, then suddenly you are the provider of and speaker of that content, which is just a wild way to organize the web. When I say that I stare into the night sky wondering why the Supreme Court took this case, it's this stuff. Yeah. Right? Where it's like, oh, maybe you've got a fact pattern, right, which is ISIS exists. They used your service to recruit. Some people saw the videos, and they went off and did terrorism.

Right. And like in America in 2023, that might be the only fact pattern where everyone agrees, that's bad. Yeah. And it's especially tragic because there have been so many other good cases that have, you know, well, none that have reached the Supreme Court for 230, but like Snap got sued because they did that thing where they created a function that showed you how fast you were going. and some kids got killed because they were trying to go as fast as they could because of the thing that snapcrated.

That wasn't something that kids did. The one that I always think about is a Herrick fee grinder, right, Addy? Is that the caption? The harassment grinder, yeah. Yeah, where grinders being used to harass someone and they got sued not on 230 grants, but on product liability grounds. Your product is helping this harassment occur. Yeah.

And they lost because of 230. But the Google thing is. But like what we're saying is like those cases, like those things, they're like rich fact patterns where you can say, okay, we can dive into the difference between speech and conduct.

Right. We can say the design of this product has choices embedded in it that lead to these outcomes. They just never made it here. Instead, this goofball set of facts made it here. Where there's not even

direct connection. Like, there's not a specific video. It was, yeah, it wasn't this terrorist saw this video and went and did this act of terrorism. Because that would be clear.

Because generally people have used this platform. Some of them were terrorists. And some of them maybe are the ones who did the terrorists. There's not a direct connection there. Yeah, because then like, if this one goes through, then everyone who's ever lost someone to QAnon can go and sue Google. Oh, yeah, that's another consequence. They don't have to have.

They can't. Yeah. Oh, they can't. So just to be clear, this is not any extremist group that uses YouTube could suddenly produce this host of lawsuits. ISIS and their other specific foreign terrorist groups. Think of it like the equivalent of sanctioning a country. Okay.

So that's what makes this illegal speech. It's this is really sort of, it is a narrow subset, even though it does introduce all of these big liability questions. And this is all, all this stuff we've been talking about is what Tamne hinges on a lot, which is, do you have to have an actual connection to a specific act of terrorism? Or is the enough that you are providing a megaphone that lets ISIS, recruit. Okay. So this is all, at least someone unsettled. Yeah. And like the speech arena, it's even weirder because with the foreign terrorist organizations, it's not about, it's not

really the speech itself that's illegal. It's the person who's saying it, like, because they've banned these organizations from. Well, I'm just saying in the United States, there is vanishing little speech that is illegal. Mm-hmm. And ISIS is some of that speech. Right. And that, and that, but it opens the door to, okay, we have now said YouTube's recommendation system, gets rid of 230 because it is YouTube making some sort of direct editorial choice that exposes them to liability. And the thing they have chosen to do is promote the illegal speech of ISIS. Yeah. If you can get there, there's no reason you can't replace the illegal speech of ISIS with this illegal defamatory speech about my company.

Yeah. Right? And then maybe you'll win and maybe you won't. But that door right now is slam shut. And this just cracks it open. It just cracks it open to say the recommendations are create liability for YouTube for the content of the speech. Okay. Even if the speech is like a bunch of thumbnails in a URL.

Yeah. And you just see like, oh, this is not. I wouldn't for the record like to make the shocked face thumbnails illegal speech. So again, we're kind of still, you can see like these cases are just weird. Yeah. But we're still just talking about like. Justice Barrett also raised the question of Section 230 also protects users. So if you hit thumbs up on a YouTube video, is that you then trying to promote and repeat the speech too?

Oh, that's great. This is what I want to get to. We've mostly been talking about how weird the cases are. But you two actually listen to the arguments for six hours. And at this point from Justice Barrett, surprisingly cogent. Vince is an understanding about YouTube works, which I feel like most people who have phones have encountered YouTube. But you cannot take for granted our court system's ability to understand internet platforms. But it seemed like, at least in the Google case, there was.

an understanding and not only the stakes, but what questions they should ask and what the answers at least should be, which I found surprising. I was surprised and relieved. Okay. What stood out to you? I think that they just went through and asked a bunch of the questions we have been asking at just the broadest level that Clarence Thomas opens up with, okay, so is there an actual YouTube algorithm that promotes terrorism, or is there just a single large recommendation

algorithm that happens to give you what you want, and maybe some of that is terrorism. His example used Bryce Pilaf. But I think that there are all these questions that are actually digging into, first of all, how the services work and not just taking it for granted that there is something called the algorithm that is evil. They recognize computers have to sort information somehow, and so you're trying to make these very fine green distinctions. Second of all, there's a real understanding that There are a bunch of services that do rely on these things and these services have become enmeshed in our lives and any decision is going to affect them greatly. Brick Kavanaugh made a really big deal out of, okay, what are the economic implications of this? Is this going to tear down a huge section of the internet while we're trying to figure out what the law is?

The third part is just that there were these weird little moments where they actually recognize things that I think just many average people wouldn't, which is things like AI text generation and images that they were talking about. algorithms and can algorithms produce content? Justice Gorsuch says, okay, yeah, well, there are these tools that can make images and text. So clearly the algorithms can generate things, and that opens up this whole other can of worms. It was just, it was smart. None of which means they'll rule in a way that I like, but it was just a far cry from a bunch of the really bizarre sweeping, clearly politically motivated rulings on opinions that we have gotten from a lot of courts, including the Supreme Court. sometimes. Well, in particular, there has been right-wing sort of animus towards big tech and the algorithm in free speech and censorship. We have seen Clarence Thomas right in dissent. We should

reevaluate 230. We should make these platforms common carriers. None of that appeared to come up in this argument. Yeah, there was also surprisingly little, and by which I think I mean almost none of the sort of this is big tech. Clearly, we must stop protecting big tech. Yeah, but that's also coming up later this year with the net choice suits. With the moderation suits in Texas in Florida. Which haven't been taken up yet. Yeah. But the common carrier stuff is insanely argued in I think at least the Texas one.

And that's... And those are both in state courts. Those are like states trying to... No, no. Those are in federal courts? They're in federal? I'm sorry. Yeah. The net choice cases went through appeals courts and then the Supreme Court asked for the

Biden administration to submit its opinion on them basically. And so it seems very likely they're going to get taken up, but they're not currently in. play. Okay. But and those are just like kind of like dead ahead first amendment cases. Yeah. Like it's should this government make speech regulations. Yeah. The, the answer should be no, but like we live in a topsy-turvy time in America. We, you never know what, what should actually be killed because somebody really wants it to be killed. All right. So we talked about the argument in the Gonzalez case, which is how does a recommendation algorithm work? Are you liable for these thumbnails? What was

the argument in the Twitter case like? Much more metaphor heavy, which is one of my least favorite types of Supreme Court hearing. There's just a huge amount of it turns on, okay, so there is this test that defines what aiding and abetting is for specifically civil cases like the kinds of lawsuits that are getting brought here. And part of it hinges on, all right, well, what does it mean for Twitter to have known? Does Twitter have to have known that there was this really specific act that was being planned and that ISIS was planning it and that there were these specific ISIS accounts that they had to

and to stop recruiting? Or did it just have to vaguely know that there were terrorists on the platform? And then there's also, all right, how much of a specific relationship do they have with these terrorists? Is this like going into a bank? Is it like selling them a gun? What other, is it like stealing sheep? There are just a million different metaphors in play. Stealing the sheep? Yes, this was one of the metaphors. Who's the farmer on the court? On the bench? The opening metaphor in the case was, is this more like if you have a friend who's a murderer and a thief and you give them a gun, but you just happen to not know exactly when they'll use the gun? Or is it you doing something like opening a gate? And then it turns out that the person you're opening the gate for is trying to steal sheep.

So that's like the level of argumentation we're talking about. Wait, actually, someone trying to steal your sheep and all you have is a gun is fairly close to the act. average Twitter day, right? It's like, I don't know. I've got to protect this situation. Everyone's panicking. There's a sheep thief. I'm just firing indiscriminately. Stealing your neighbor's eggs would have been the better manner. Tuesday on there's 30 to 40 feral pigs. The best thing that I've heard on this from Blake Reed from University of Colorado Boulder is that this is an example of how hard things are going to get if 2.30 isn't around that you have all these really super fine lines about what counts is aiding

in a betting, what counts as something that's really valuable to Twitter or really valuable to terrorists, what does it mean to actually know what's happening on your platform? That right now, Section 230 means you don't really have to deal with these things. If it goes away suddenly you're making these long, long lists of metaphors and long lists of determinations about what is and is not supporting terrorism. And to be clear, this is like one of the classic example of they're doing the right thing and getting no credit for it. Like, Twitter does not want ISIS on its platform.

It actively, or at least until. As far as we know, Twitter does not want. Until least the recent changes. Who knows now? Between about 2015 and 2022, Twitter did not. Yeah, right? Like, Twitter probably had a Department of ISIS prevention. They're gone now.

They got laid off. Like, who knows what is happening in Twitter now? But during the relevant time of this lawsuit, Twitter was taking steps, like active, engage steps to remove these accounts. They just weren't perfect. Did that come up at all? They spent a lot of time both days talking about the extent of, first of all, what is even knowledge?

How much knowledge did Twitter have of, you know, Twitter or Google, who's on, who's using their service, what kind of content is on the service? And there's kind of a weird paradox here, because the more that you know about what's on your platform, arguably, the more. responsibility you have to deal with it. Whereas the less you know, the more you can kind of plausibly say, I had no relationship with these people who used the service because I didn't know they were there. Yeah. This sort of like strategic ignorance actually comes up with platforms a lot. Like this is the argument they will all make to you. Right. Like if you make us run a

copyright enforcement system, then we will know and we will take more stuff down and more people will be at. Or it could be a free-for-all. I think, I think a lot of people, though, do maybe assume that the platforms know more than what they actually know about the content that's actually on the platform. I think they assume that because they do have all the data, right? Like Twitter and Google have all the data. Theoretically, the system, the computers know that ISIS is on the platform, but that doesn't mean a human knows.

Right now, a lot of these cases hinge on the idea that there were government officials or there was media coverage, that when you say they know often what they mean is the BBC said, hey, there are all these terrorists on your platform or that somebody in the U.S. government pointed this out to them and that they didn't take an. enough action often to sort of play the game of whack-a-mole of keeping people off once they knew. Yeah. Okay. Well, and there's also just like the inherent nature of data.

Mm-hmm. And like this comes up with YouTube and YouTubers in particular all the time, where the YouTubers know what is happening on the platform well before YouTube executives can see it. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about it there a bunch on this show. We were talking about in the context of Susan stepping down to see of YouTube. Right. Like their view of YouTube is like echoes through data that is.

weeks or months behind the front line of actual YouTube. Yeah. So you assume they know, but that might not actually be what's happening. And in particular, the data that they need to see, if you train some automated system against it, the system will have an error rate. And you need to calibrate what is your acceptable error rate. So if I sign up for a Twitter account, it's like, do you remember when Verizon had a payment service called ISIS?

Isis was a very popular day for a very long time. For one minute, it was like, we're going to have a wallet called ISIS, and everyone's to use ISIS on their phones. And they're like, wait, just ignore our whole plan. My bad. We'll come back to you with a new payment system. And then they just didn't. I think all the ISIS people at Verizon were like, we don't, we don't even want to explain

what happened. No putting lipstick on that. But like, if you start up a Twitter account, it's like, Verizon Isis lover. And like, the system just like rejects you because of straight keyword filtering. Right. That is actually not a correct error. Or if I tweet, remember when Verizon had a payment system called ISIS, didn't we all love ISIS? Yeah.

And it's like strict keyword filtering. Like that's an unacceptable error. Yeah, because there was archer, there was Archer, the main like spy organization. Not bringing up Archer and you wouldn't. Wow. I did it. But they called it ISIS. There's like a character in D.C. colleagues, like ISIS is a very common thing that people would talk about when they're not talking about terrorism.

Yeah. There's also the speech, the nuance. the nuance that there is terrorist speech, but there is actually a lot of speech about terrorism that is not terrorist speech. Right. That posting a video of someone of a terrorist speaking can also just be a thing that CNN does. So you also can't automatically necessarily filter by names or by video clips even. And the justice has brought this up, right?

They like struggled with this very basic. And I think the answer is, well, the First Amendment would cover that, which is that was the part when I was reading the live blog where I was like, oh, they got there. They got it. They arrived at the first. Finally, they have arrived at the First Amendment. But they did talk about Pagers first. There is a really interesting nuance also to the knowing question that I wish they would

have had 12 hours to explore, which is like, what do the recommendation algorithms even know? A lot of these systems don't evaluate stuff from the same criteria. They might know what a certain type of person wants to see and what other people that they have liked things have seen, but they might not know the actual content that they're surfacing to something. Right. Because they're not humans. They're not perceiving.

They're perceiving data. And that's it. And depending on what that data is, like, the worst thing we can ever do is assume the AI is in any way things like human processes. No, it has one. It thinks like a human in one specific way, which is if you make it mad. Yeah. It will be super mad at you. The one way that they think like humans.

It will be weird and defensive. If you ask it to do something, it doesn't want to do. Doesn't think like a human, except for like in the worst way. It's like a human. It's like, I've been a good thing. I don't know about you. I am actually honestly waiting for the moment where somebody asks an AI how it works and tries to bring that up in court as an explanation of how the AI works.

Somebody's going to try it. It's going to be weird. I'm so excited. It's going to be weird. Okay. So these are the arguments. The justices seem like they get it. They understand they're playing with fire in terms of the stakes.

What do you think happens now? Are they going to horse trade between the two cases like you were suggesting T.C.? and throw them all out? No one knows. but they did seem to be proposing subtly that they have an escape hatch. So they might just say, forget this. We're going to wait for the really fun one,

which is dealing with Texas and Florida and making websites host things that we want them to host. Yeah, Adi, what do you think? I really don't want to make predictions, but yes, it seems possible they're just going to rule in the narrowest, least 230 precedent-making possible way. And I don't know that they necessarily seem that likely to say that Twitter is in the clear,

but it seems like they could pretty clearly just say this was, actually the most unsatisfying result that I have heard described is that they just say, hey, you changed your argument way too much, Gonzalez lawyers. We're throwing this out for now. Well, there's like an extremely funny C plot to all of this, which is that the big tech companies

who hired so many lobbyists and lawyers that the plaintiffs were not able to, hire a good lawyer. Aw. And they ended up with this like, gentlemen who did a bad job. They've found plenty of good lawyers for other things like copyright infringement. Well, right.

But it's just, Big Tech has hired so many of the lawyers in D.C. Yeah. That they were all conflicted out of arguing this case for the plaintiffs in both cases. Yeah. So both Tamne and Gonzalez had the same lawyer and he, I would not, he was what was left. I don't know how else to say it.

He was doing his best. He was the guy. He was there. So is the same guy both days? Yeah. Oh, that's like, that's a week. Yeah, he had a. I hope you have a drink, sir. Yeah. So we'll see. I mean, I do think that particularly with the Gonzalez case, I think, we, the Supreme Court rule that Google is illegal does not seem like a likely outcome. I think with a Twitter case, the, we think you should do a better job of making sure

the terrorists don't you. Like, that's a safe ruling. Yeah. Even though it might have some consequences. like verification or whatever. I also think it's the guy who owns Twitter right now. He's not want to hear that. He doesn't want to hear it, but he's also,

I mean, like the politics has come into place somehow, right? Like he's, he has a different ideological reputation than the other guy. Which is when they took on the case? Yeah. Okay. They took it on when it was still.

Yeah. When they were still hanging out shirts, it said stay woke. Yeah. But I have one. It's a little tight. You got to work on it. But it's like,

that's just a swirl. around the Twitter case, I think, is different than the swirl around the Google case, which is, boy, this is a stretch and why are you here. Yeah. Which is not what I expected to hear. So we'll see. But it's, we're expecting decisions at the end of this term, which is like quite some time away. Right, Abby?

Yeah, I believe the next term starts in October. So, yeah, we probably a month. Yeah. Okay. But I would say that the general valence from the lawyers in the world is, whoa, that could have got a lot worse. Well, that's good, right? Yeah. We'll see.

Yeah, the thing I've heard is, clearly they could rule really bad ways down the line. And there are specific subtle ways that we have not talked about here that they could do that, even as part of Gonzalez. But we came out of this much more reassured than we thought it would be. For sure. All right. Thank you, at E&C. We got to take a break. You got to go to Hot Pod.

Yeah. You got to get in a car. Yeah. Tootoo. I've been to Brooklyn in years. It's going to be great. Oh, wow. I used to live there.

I want to go to my old haunts. I'm going to post one of those TikToks. It's like, I'm back in the city. Alex is going to talk about some stuff after this. Who knows what it'll be? It's going to be super fun. Stay tuned. We'll get back.

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He's going to go work on some gross podcast you don't need to worry about. He's overdoing hot pod. He's having a great time. But I've got better people with me today. No, that's mean to Addy and T.C. Who are lovely. Neelai's fine. Anyway, Richard Lawler is here.

Hey, Richard. Hey, what's happening? And our good friend McKenna Kelly is here. Hi, everyone. And we are going to talk about some kind of breaking news. It happened today. our good friend SBF, how's he doing, McKinna? Well, four more charges against him.

We had eight when he was first charged. One, two, three, four, twelve. Additional bank fraud and money laundering. And then, of course, they modified the campaign finance charges by adding, you know, a little bit more information that included a lot of the signal chat that we've kind of heard about, their use of signal, but they, you know, cite some messages in there that were, I was very surprised. Yeah, let's talk about that. There were bank fraud charges left that he hadn't already been charged with?

Like, there are other kinds? I guess there's so many. How many bank charges can one man? He's just an achiever. He's just an overachiever. He wants to get it all done. So, yeah, they had a signal group, and it was called very, I mean, it's very easy for prosecutors here because it's called donation processing. Great. Go in there for the campaign finance stuff. And then you go in there and it is Bankman Freed, two unnamed co-conspirators who we can basically say were, you know, folks who have been reported before, their names are escaping me right now. But the guy who made the Democrat donations and the guy who made the Republican donations. And they're in there. And there's instances of them agreeing to make donations that McMahon Fried wanted to make. But he had superseded right the limits of campaign.

You can only donate to an individual campaign or a pack so much money every year. Right. And so he had already spent all of the money and needed other people to spend his money for him in order. Because you can look at everyone's donations on the FEC, FEC.com. And yeah, so they did that. And they found evidence of that being coordinated. It's very funny. I love.

You were like really excited about it. No, I just love these indictments from the Justice Department because they're kind of silly to read. Yeah. Because it's like encrypted messaging app signal, right? Like it feels like so suspicious where it's like something we all use every day. Yeah. But yeah. So they saw that you look at this one thing.

There was one instance where Bankman Freed, SBF, asked who's assumingly like the Democratic spender, you know, for his name to make at least like a $1 million donation to a pro-LGBPack. Okay. And it was so ridiculous because apparently there was like a political like, I know, consultant or something in there. and told that guy, like, in general, you being the center-left face of our spending will mean you giving a lot of woke-s curse word to... You can say shit. Okay. I can say shit. Yeah, you can say shit on their verge cast.

I'm quoting someone else. I'm not cursing. I would never. Never. No, that's wrong. So, yeah, in general, you being the center-left face of our spending will mean you giving a lot of woke shit for transactional purposes, which is, like, so blatantly. Like, I don't know. It's not what SBF was ever paying.

as you know so he was always like you know the boy wonder who's going to change the world he wears shorts and he's like a little weird but you know he has good ideas and he wants the world to be great and it's like this woke shit does he have good ideas well that's what do you know were you following him before all this happened like everyone was like this guy's going to change the world he's so great look at richard's face i know you didn't believe it richard when were you like i don't know about this SBF guy. The very first moment I saw him. I mean, like, the instant I heard of him and looked him up and saw him.

I said, that guy is not trustworthy. I would not give him a billion dollars. I just wouldn't. Did you know that he was going to get 12 now indictments against him when you first saw him? No, I was not predicting that. I didn't know that he was that kind of achiever. I mean, like that is just going above and beyond really. Like what this guy is doing and what he has achieved, it's admirable in a way.

in a way what is that way Richard I mean if you're going to go for it go big that's true like why like why stop it

just a little bit of fraud yeah right yeah I mean before you start like peeling the layers off of this right

when you're just like all of these major companies and you know whatever these people investors putting money and it's like

ha ha that is funny get screwed and then it's like oh these people these people were just they thought it was a good spending opportunity

and then I get sad Yeah. Which just sucks. But speaking of the people who were affected of this, you look at this in the new indictment that we saw today, it mentions that the money making these political donations was coming from an Alameda bank account. Okay. So this was, it's very much like if this is proven in court, it's saying that customer funds were definitely used. Wow. And there was, I think what was the number 300 political contributions made in the last midterms worth tens of millions of dollars.

So he like probably affected the election let in the midterms. That's the nuts money. That's the nuts thing about this because you can't, you know, you do a straw donor scheme because you don't want. And then of course, you don't want to mask. You want to mask who you are, how much money you're spending. You have all these other people that you're doing that with. But then like the Republican donations, he called them.

There was an interview with Tiffany Fong a couple months ago who I think she's just like a freelance journalist who reports on crypto. And she had interviewed SBF. And he was like, oh, all my Republican donations were dark. So dark is like a very weird word. It gets thrown around in a lot of ways. But in some instances, like you can just say dark money goes to nonprofits, which then make that money. But then spend that money in politics.

But, you know, it's very unclear how that happened. If he's just talking about a dark money scheme of like getting his coworkers or friends involved or if this really was like some weird nonprofit. Yeah. But then again, it's like really hard unless they have some kind of, you. you know, evidentiary, you know, response, like some kind of evidence produced throughout the hearing to, like, really figure out where all that money went. And seeing that they have, like, some of the documents with a lot of transactions and things and have, like, such a large look at all of the, you know, everything with money and stuff at FTCX, they have like a very, they have balance sheets and stuff. It would be interesting

to see where it all is going to. And that's why I was really interested in today's indictment, because it shows us a little bit more direction there. Right. And so, so we saw today, he donated money. they're asking all of people to return the money too, right? They're asking all the politicians to, like, give it back. Yeah. So once this SBF guy was indicted, I automatically was like, oh, God, what happens to the money? Because for the most part, when you're a political campaign, you're spending that. Yeah, you are getting that out the door.

You have a deadline, and that's election day and you want to win, right? So, like, that money, gone. Yeah. And so you look at, I think it was like the Democratic National Committee, their Senate arm, you know, in a congressional house arm said that they were going to be returning the money. The process is very, you know, weird, where they have to, like, wait through certain processes for clawback or whatever, but they said, you know, together they're going to return a million dollars. Could this bankrupt any PACs who have to, like, return money? That would be nuts. Because I'm remembering, what was it? I had just recently

watched that made-off documentary, like, going through all of that and, like, trying to claw back that money. Yeah. And a lot of times, like, that was, it was money for, for, for, you know, you know, just people who were saving for retirement or whatever. There was also like large investors and people like that. And even then, you know, in a case so public-facing like that, that really affected the entire, you know. Right. Just the entire financial system. Calling back money from that was ridiculously hard.

So I don't think it would bankrupt anyone. But I do think that in many ways the new FTX management wants to make customers whole as much as they can. But like when it comes to political spending, that's already good. gone, you know, that's already gone through so many hands. Right. From, you know, SBF to his co-conspirator to the PAC, the campaign, and the campaign to an advertising company, payroll maybe, all kinds of things like that. So it's very hard to figure out, you know, what exactly.

Have we seen this kind of stuff happen before where there was like a big fraud like that? And then they have to like, be like, hey, everybody give the money back. In political finance? Yeah. I think there was one instance of it, but it's always, I forget who the candidate was. and for what race it was. So this is very hard. But what happened? It's like an organizing between people on the campaign and campaign staffers. So like a candidate or someone on the campaign tells a certain staffer directs that to get the money there. It's never as I've never seen

something where it's like an outside third party. Yeah. So this is like this is this is big and a big deal. Not just because he went for broke. He got his 12 indictments. But also because that's a lot of money in the in the campaign finance world that now is being asked for back and probably isn't going to come back. Yeah. I mean, I think what was it? Something. I think the FTCS folks wanted, what was, oh my gosh. That was the funny thing is that they were sending confidential messages to the campaigns being like, hey, can we have this money back?

Like before they got indicted? That was just earlier this year. Oh, yeah, no. So this was like recently like the government was like, yo, can you Venmo me? Yeah, well, yeah. Or was that, the new CEO of FTCX? It's the new CEO. It's like the new FtX.

Jay, I can't remember Jay Jonah Ray or something like that. John Ray. Yeah. John Ray. Yes. So he's like, not Spider-Man's. He's out there like on his own signal chat to campaign. I guess.

Being like, can I get that back? Hey, can you get that back to me? Because what it is, it's like, it says, I'm looking at the CNN article. It says, and other recipients, so the PACs and everything, to clawback assets, to repay the company's estimated 1 million creditors. So maybe this, yeah, just creditors. Oh, wow. And this is what happens to you in these big cases.

Because if you look at the made-off case as well, a lot of that money ended up going to, you know, creditors and large investors instead of like those people who maybe just had like. The people who were just really passionate. Yeah. About the FTX mission and everything's SBF was saying. If only they'd had Richard as their financial advisor. Well, no, you would have put all, what crypto would you have put it all into instead?

My own, obviously. Our JCC coin is minting soon. And, you know, if you message me, I can get you in early for the pre-pre-min and then the post-min. That's the only way you can win is to mint your own corn. Yeah. I love this for you, Richard. You got this. Oh, my gosh.

2023 is my big crypto year. Who are you? Who's going to be like your brand ambassador? You know, I haven't decided all the F1 teams are out on crypto now. All the NBA teams are out on crypto. You're in late. You get Tom, Brady, Brady needs, he needs some extra money now. Well, you know, he's got a divorce to pay for.

I think, I think he's had enough. We'll find someone else. We'll find some NFL quarterback who's out of a job. What's Johnny Mansell doing? You know what I love? Did you hear about Shaquille O'Neal? Like, he was not going to, he's in all the commercials. Like, he's in the general.

Like, that man is on everything. Yeah. He was like, I'm not going to do crypto. I don't understand that works. It sounds like a scam. I love that for Shaq. Like the one ad. I wish more people hit.

done that said, I don't know how this works. It means I probably shouldn't get involved. Right. Oh my gosh. Shack was on to something. Yeah. Everyone listened to Shaq. You should actually. I think one of the things in here that kind of jumped out to me, what exactly was he hoping to get back, get out of all these donations and making these donations donations secretly? Like, was he just like, I really want these people to be elected? Did he think that he could get favors back once they were in? Or is there any kind of clear, clear word on that? So I, this would have been, oh my gosh, at least six months ago, but I think I interviewed someone at, you know, his spending arm or something. I forget what the organization was called.

And he was pretty open about the spending this money. Oh, yeah. Well, he was very open about the Democratic spending. Yeah, not the Republican spending. And he was, I guess we didn't really know, you know what I mean? We had like certain numbers. I think at the time it was like, I don't know. It wasn't an illegal amount.

And now tens of millions of dollars, I can't even say it. Spent, that is definitely illegal. Especially. So he did not want to be seen on the Republican stuff. He wanted to be looking at like this progressive, cool guy who, you know, just had the best. Just care. Wait, what was it? He wanted, it was pandemic preparedness is what he said it was.

But if you look at the people, the candidates who he supported, they're very, like, friendly to crypto. Yeah. Representative Maxwell Frost, who is the junior congressman. from Florida now. Like, he's the first Gen Z congressman. He took some money. His campaign took money. I don't want to say he did because it wasn't, like, their hands exchanging it,

which maybe would have- Thank you for this money. I'm going to go use it to boost crypto. I'm going to raise eyebrows probably earlier. Could you imagine, like, doing like an unlawful campaign finance exchange, like, on the street? Just on the street. Just what in Miami? Is that where it was?

I know. I don't know. Somewhere in Florida. I love the idea of, like, a person in a trench. coat, like, being like, here's some money for digital ads. Just opening it? Right. He's got all the digital ads, like, right here.

A whole ad exchange in your coat. I'm taking it to Google. Google will buy it for $5. That's the competition Google is talking about when it comes to, like, the ads case that they're being sued by the DOJ. It's like, it's the guy on the street, like your little mom-and-pop ad seller. Yeah. That definitely exists.

Okay, so back to the point, SBF, right? So he wanted to be seen as a Democratic spender. But if you look at the candidates, they're all very pro-crypto. So there are folks who at least now are voicing a little bit of skepticism, but they're like, but crypto, we need to keep it around. It's the future. So that's where a lot of the PACs spending, so he would send money to PACs that then supported, you know, certain candidates.

Because the limit to send directly to candidates is fairly small, right? Right. It's like $1,700 or something. Yeah. That's a lot of money for a lot of people, but fairly small for someone like SBF who was just blowing through tens of millions of dollars of other people's money. Right. So he would go. He'd take this money. He'd take it to the PACs. And then he would talk with his two, his Republican guy and his Democrat guy.

And they would like, then see the money go from the PACs elsewhere. Right. So it's very easy when you can like people, this is like so hard for people who don't cover this or like pay it very close. Explain it to me. So there are PACs, political action groups, political action committees. And what they do is they're very public about who they endorse. Right. And the candidates they like to endorse. So if you want to get money to a PAC, which can receive much larger amount of money than a campaign can,

you find the people who have endorsed the folks that you like. So this PAC, they didn't name it in the indictment, had supported a candidate that SBF liked. So he gives a bunch of money through this unnamed co-conspirator to the PAC, which then will probably, what does a PAC do? A PAC runs ads. A PAC does, you know, whatever they want to do to help support, you know, legislative candidates that they want. So that's how that would get there.

They would also donate directly to campaigns. But of course, that is always going to be a smaller amount of money. Okay. At least when it's tied back to an individual person. What we, I mean, if we're looking at, they named two co-conspirators. I don't know if there were more. It sounded like there was, the indictment said SBF was in this group chat to the unnamed co-conspirators and others. And others.

So I don't know who the others are. Are we going to get more of the signal chat? Could you imagine a slow leak before trial? God, that would be. That's what, look at Richard's face. Richard wants that more than anything in the world. I want to read those messages. If I was a prosecutor, prosecuting, what is this?

This case is supposed to come up later this year, right, Richard? That is the idea, I think, yes. Yeah, it's supposed to come up later this year. And could you imagine, like, the slow leak? Oh, my God, I'm already thinking about it. Richard's like pre-writing blogs right now are in anticipation. Some reporter gets like a little

like a screenshot of the signal and everyone's like how awful. It's going to be great. Yeah. And oh my gosh, that's going to happen. Verge prediction. Verge McKinacelly prediction here. I'm very excited for the slow leak of signal messages.

And I think that's something that, you know, maybe people should be aware of. Look, maybe you aren't running an international fraud worth billions of dollars. But if you are sending and receiving signal messages, especially if you're in your group chat, the messages are encrypted end-to-in, so they can't be intercepted and decrypted on the way. However, if someone like the FBI gets a hold of your friend's phone,

they can just see what's in the chat. You set up those disappearing ones. Like even Instagram now is like, do you want to disappear this message? And I'm like, I do. No one needs to know how stupid I was at 2 a.m. Right. You don't need to write everything down. You can just talk with your voices.

perhaps and not into microphones like these that we're talking to right now. Tips to avoid indictments with Richard. RJCC coin is satire just for any agents listening. Oh my gosh. Don't speak into a live microphone when committing crimes. Don't go and talk to, what was it, the New York Times? He talked to everyone. He talked to everyone.

Sam Begman Free was on a media tour, the likes of which we've never seen before. I love it. Did that come up in the United States? indictment? What were the other, was there any other big news that came out of this indictment? Let me think. I, well, I think one of the, one of the things I was looking at that I thought was really interesting was kind of how they broke down how the customer deposits came in and he was, he really, he was using like personal bank accounts because his business couldn't get a bank account. It's all so messy. And he was like getting bank accounts under different names of different companies that he was

like making up. Seems legit. Yeah, that's exactly what you do. Oh my gosh, that's my favorite thing. It's my least favorite thing. I say my favorite thing, but it's actually my least favorite thing. It's like when you make a company and then you like get it, you start it and you register it in Wyoming and then you re-register it in Delaware. And it's like, where's, where's this company? What does it do? What does it do? It exists to launder finance money. Or just can't look at anything. Or if you don't want to know who is running the company, it's just a name. This is like one of the things that I have learned to do recently is to like go through those business registration things. And it's so nuts how those work.

But yeah, there's so many ways to hide so many things, whether it's like a business thing and money, whatever. And SBF didn't use any of them. No. None of them. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, McKenna and Richard are going to stick around. We're going to have a lightning round.

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MongoDB. It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. Okay, we're back. It's a lightning round. There's actually a fair amount of news. It was kind of a short week. President's Day was on Monday.

So it was a little quiet, except for Chris Welch breaking big Sonos news. We're going to have a really great episode of the Vergecast that goes super deep dive into that. So we're not going to be talking about that today in the lightning round. We are, however, going to be talking about Spotify's new AI powered DJ. Richard, do you have thoughts? I don't trust it. As we've said before, I'm anti-AI. Pro-Crypto anti-AI.

I get it. You got to pick your battles. But so Spotify, they will create a custom playlist and then they will have someone talk over it because that's what you wanted to hear was a computer generated voice talking over your music. Like unless it's deaf punk, then no. Yeah. That's not what I wanted. Was this something that people were asking for? Well, McKinna, you were talking before the show about how like this is a thing on TikTok already.

Well, okay, so no. Now I'm actually kind of disturbed by hearing that there was an A, because I was like, what is the difference between an AI playlist and like? like an algorithm, you know, something that learns your interest. I was like, that sounds stupid. What are they doing? Are they just, like, hopping on, like, the brand train or, like, the branding train to be like, we have AI. But no, I did not know that there was a voice.

Can you imagine if they sold voice packs or something? 100% that's coming. You're going to get a Joe Rogan voice pack. Well, maybe not because I think they're trying to separate. Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing is the Spotify playlists are very well-beloved and well-hated. from musicians, especially like smaller musicians. Because like if you get on a Spotify or an Apple playlist, like that's crazy.

Like your song's going to do numbers. People just go to these things. But at the same time, it's like, it's hard to find any other reach. Yeah. Besides these playlists and like going viral online. And so something that was very interesting going on is like on TikTok, there's people who are, I forget her name, but there's a person who makes, curates like Spotify playlists and went viral on like just putting all these playlists out there for different

moods, for different things. And of course, like, it's something that people want it, people seeking new music, new things, just somebody to curate it for them. Yeah. And, I mean, it's nice that you actually had a person editorializing that. And then having, I guess, like, the off, you know, they would explain it in a TikTok video. But like the idea of having a DJ in the middle of it. An AI DJ. So it's pretending to be a person that picks out music for you, but it is not actually a person.

Is it just going to be like Siri? Or like, what does the voice going to sound like? They've got like script writers. They're really trying to create a whole set, probably more than one vibe that it can take. And then the AI generated voice can say whatever the writers decide you might want to hear. So the voice will be based on Xavier X, Jernigan. And I cannot knock the name X because that's what I was known as in college. It was a dumb and I can't explain it.

But anyway, so X is going to be their DJ voice. And apparently they're already working on, they're hosting some podcasts and stuff already for Spotify. So like... It's a familiar voice in a way. Theoretically, it'll be a familiar voice for Spotify listeners who also listen to the Get Up, which is Spotify's podcast. In a way, this kind of reminds me, there are drivers. And I think like a lot of drivers who are either Uber drivers, Lyft drivers, every single time I'm in there. Because that's the only instance that I'm really in a car.

Yeah. And I don't really have friends who have cars in New York. So when you're in there, a lot of the time they play those radios, like those DJ stations, right? where there's a DJ who is like blending things in, doing callouts and stuff. That's the only thing I can think of where people actually listen to music on the radio still. Yeah. And if that's the only, you know, if they're trying to take that on, I don't know, that seems like a kind of silly thing. But once they have this voice, they can have it, you know, obviously they can start reading stuff off the artist's WikiPage as the song starts or maybe where they're playing or maybe a concert nearby where you can buy a ticket or something or just a kind of basic advertisement.

But this is just interesting. You remember when Apple Music launched and they suddenly paid a bunch of real DJs, a lot of money to come on and, like, curate playlists and record shows and things. Spotify decided, no, we gave Joe Rogan a trillion dollars, so we have no money left for DJs,

so we'll have a computer to it. We're going to give the AI, the DJ's job. Oh. Great job. Does the title do some of that, too? Or am I just making that up? No one knows. No, no one listens to title.

My fiancé. use his title? We found him. We have a title user at the verge. I will keep their identity confidential. I really respect you for that. But I want to know who it is. It's Niela, isn't it?

Neely just, he's got to have that, like, that flack quality, lossless audio while he's driving up and down in his giant truck. All right. So some other news that happened this week, Microsoft went to Brussels. Tom Warren was also in Brussels. He's not on the show today because he's recovering from going to Brussels.

He just messaged me one day. I was like, I have to go to Brussels. And I was like, why am I learning about? Why do I need to know this? Oh, it's for work. Okay. So Microsoft went to Brussels because they're trying to defend their right to acquire Activision. And a lot of people are upset with that.

Notably, Sony does not want them to acquire it because then they'll be like, well, we won't get all the games. You're going to cut us out. And so Microsoft goes to Brussels to defend, and they brought some people with them. They also had a bunch of big timely announcements at the same time, including with NVIDIA where they said, okay, we signed a deal. All of our games are going to be coming to Nvidia, G-Force Now's cloud streaming. It's going to be really great. It's going to be super exciting. And also, Call of Duty, day and date on Nintendo products.

So the Switch? That sounds a little bit odd that you would be playing Call of Duda on the Switch. But if they release a Switch 2, it makes a little bit more sense. Yes. Yeah, because I can't even play Scarlet Violet on my Nintendo Switch. without running into frame issue. It struggles. It's awful, and it gets hot.

Yeah. I mean, people play Call the Duty on their phones, right? You can play like Warzone or whatever on your phone. But this is going to be those like the ones that are meant for the PC, the one that's coming for the Xbox Series X and stuff like that. I was really surprised that we didn't actually hear Game Passes coming to the Nintendo Switch, which would have made sense, right? Like have cloud gaming on the Switch.

Huge, great for Microsoft, but I guess that was probably would not have been great for Nintendo. Who wants to sell games? Wants to sell games. And then also, what GamePass work on the Switch does it is right now? If you stream the games, I guess. Okay. Because some games do stream on the Switch, right? Like, there are some kind of like high performance games to stream,

plus like all the emulated games, I think, like the Nintendo Online stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that all like streams. And, you know, I use my Steam Deck for streaming all the time. And it works. And it really helps to like I get way more battery life when I stream than when I try to actually play. the game directly on the steam deck. Then it just sounds like it's on fire.

Just that those fans were very loudly. So, yeah, this was kind of some surprising news from Microsoft. It is unclear if, you know, kind of regulatory groups like UK's competition and markets authority are going to allow this to go through right now. Richard, how do you feel? Do you think it's going to happen? I am a bit skeptical just because there are so many hurdles. I think that there's an issue where the regulators who are trying to stop this deal,

maybe the case they have isn't so strong, but there's so many of them. Yeah. There's a lot of... This deal is so big. And all of Sony is there saying no. And Sony's argument right now is that the arguments for this are very, very funny because Sony's argument is you're going to get all the games and then you're not going to give us the games. Or you'll give us the games for 10 years and then you're going to charge us way more money in 10 years.

Which, yes, that's what will happen. Eventually. Meanwhile, Microsoft's explanation is, yeah, well, we suck. And Sony doesn't suck. So we should be allowed to buy it because we suck more than Sony. And that's just the wildest, like, argument on the planet for this. Watching game companies insist that they are small and have no market share is incredible. Yeah. These two absolutely massive giants worldwide. And Microsoft is like, yo, but I mean, we have no, we have no share in Europe, though. And Sony is, well, I mean, but we have, we have no share in Europe, though. And Sony is, well, I mean, but we. We have. You own so many studios. You have this. You're Microsoft, of course. It's just, it's like watching two people just compliment each other in listening to try and prove that the other one is actually the better one. Doesn't Microsoft bring up the IP stuff with Sony, too? Like, Sony's just huge when it comes to, you know, just IP.

I think they're Spider-Man, right? I'm like, yeah, they got Spider-Man. They notably have all of the naughty dog game. So the Last of Us, which is, you know, doing that music. Like Sony music, the company there. Like Sony's big, but this is very narrowly focused on the gaming. And for the gaming, it's Microsoft saying they suck even though they own all of the game studios now. And soon, hopefully, for them, Activision.

And Sony's saying, we actually kind of suck because, yeah, we have all of the market share, but we won't have call of duty. And everyone plays call of duty. And like, that's basically the argument. It's a fight over call of duty. 10 years ago me would be like very into this fight too. Like call of duty was my life. Well, and I think that's one of the other things to consider is that especially when it comes to call duty because they've got the other aspects of it, the mobile gaming. There are all these other things that Activision owns.

Activision is such a massive company. Yeah. But when you look at like Call of Duty kind of specifically, how long is that going to be relevant in that way? Do you expect it has been relevant for a long time? We can go back to what, the mid-aughts? They're running out of like armed conflicts to base the game. games on? They're now like... They're just repeating the ones they already did. They're like, what if we do the Cold War? Now what if we do it in space? Oh my goodness. Well, what is like

Call it, like, Callow Duty's like Twitch streaming numbers now compared to maybe like even five years ago? Has it gone down? Because like the only FPS, I don't play FPS. Call of Duty is still massive. Like Warzone is still a really, really big game. It's, you know, I know there's some Apex Legends fans here right now, Richard Hill. In other. But Call of Duty is still really, really, really. And it's not, I mean, it isn't just Call of Duty, right? Like, Activision owns a lot of these other games. And so it makes sense that Sony is going to be like, no.

Right. That's like a half of our catalog. But you can play Call of Duty on your Switch. Yeah. I think the idea is like, if you go with Sony, if Activision gets successfully bought by Microsoft, Sony is then becomes the new Nintendo where they're like, we can only have, like, we're just Notty Dog games and Spider-Man forever. And then one day we'll try it.

1893, 1883? 1886. Yes. 1886, there we go. That 1886 game, they're going to keep trying to bring that back and make that happen. And stray. And stray. I didn't like stray.

Did you play stray? I did not play it, but... People really like it. I just got a gaming PC. I only had a switch. I just got a gaming PC for the first time like a couple weeks ago. Do you just play a world war? That was your response to Stadia going away?

Yes. Okay. So Stadia was literally the only thing keeping me from getting a PC. Yeah. Really. Because I was using it for Elder Scrolls online. I really, really like MMOs. Something about it.

I can't play. I have to play like one game. Yeah. With a lot of things in it. Yeah. You know that I can do. And so Stadia was allowing me to do that. Stadia goes away.

There are, there's nothing on the switch. So you just built a PC? It didn't build one. You bought a gaming PC. I bought a laptop. There we go. That's great. But it works really good because I went back on my MacBook and I was somehow playing World of Warcraft at like it was running at 8 FPS or like 11 tops.

So you just died a lot. Yeah. And I was wondering why I was so bad because I was reading and I thought I was really good and I thought I knew everything front and back. But no, my frame rate like my fiance's friend came over and he looked at my computer. making me sick. How are you doing? This is making me ill. And I guess like I was never used to what it should look like. And now I'm like doing stuff on my, I have like the ACE's Zephyrus G14. Yeah. I love it. Monica loves that laptop. That's why I got it. Shout out Monica. I read her review on the site. And I got it and it works amazing. I'm getting like 60 FPS. I don't even know what that looks like.

And now I'm, now it's just so fluid. And I don't know. Anyways, this is McKenna Discover's computer. a tech reporter McKenna discovers computers. It's great. McKenna's Gaming Corner needs to be a segment. Yeah, new segment, McKinna's Gaming Quarter. Where I learn about the games. Where you're like 60 FPS, this is cool. I love it.

Have you guys ever seen anything like this before? They're so smooth. So other big news? Do you have anything you want to talk about? Richard, we got some other news. Well, there was the Tesla announced a new engineering headquarters in California this week, which I found really interesting because they just moved their headquarters

out of California. Right, they went to Texas, right? Yeah. But now they have another headquarters in California still. But just engineering. It's just engineering. I find it interesting

that it seems like Elon is moving his manufacturing to the location in Texas, which coincidentally might be a bit closer to the plants in Mexico that make the parts for the cars. Yeah. Just seems like a weird coincidence that, you know,

he says that he's moving it because of the taxes or this or that. But I think there's a really practical reason for why these things are suddenly being set up that way and why he would keep his engineering there in California where there's plenty of people to hire. Had he successfully moved everybody from California before this? Like, had everybody relocated or was people, there's still holdouts, engineering holdouts specifically in California? That is a good question. I wonder, although they've also had layoffs, they've had so many things it does.

It's really hard to say. And they had his weird demand to come into the office that everyone must be in the office all the time because he's in their office and he sleeps in the office and he doesn't live anywhere else except for when he's at Twitter where he also lives in the office there. He needs a house. Someone get that man a house. In fact, Elon, get a house. I'm sure they built a really nice couple of bedrooms in the new engineering HQ. Yeah, just for him. All right, McKenna, any fun news for you you want to talk about today?

Any fun news that I want to talk about? What's going on? There was SCOTUS. We talked about SCOTUS. Okay, well, rest in peace. No. You don't want to talk about the PCB boards? What is that?

Learning. I'm learning. God damn it. McKinnest Tech Corner. No, gaming corner. No, there is one story I do want to shout out. It's from Chris Person who is hanging out with us for a while. He just revealed that if you want to make your own keyboard and you want it to look exactly how you want it to look,

You can just like pay someone and they'll print it. And you can put little fun designs and stuff on it. And just like print the board yourself. You do have to know soldering and a whole lot of other words and programming. I was learning a lot of this. I feel like I could be an engineer working at Tesla reading this curse person's story. Just in the corner building keyboards. Like nobody, nobody asked me to do actual engineering word.

My soldering is dope. It is not dope. I do really bad soldering. But maybe I'll do better with buying a keyboard. and then putting like, you can put anything on it. Like any image you just want to put in like black and white, you can do on a keyboard PCB, which I think is really cool. I love the images here.

I would never do any of this myself. Yeah. You're like, absolutely not. I'm glad that someone else is doing. There you go. There you go. All right. Well, that is it for the show.

We have had a very, very busy one. It has been a very fun one. And we are going to be back next week. There's a new episode of our miniseries solo act. That's going to be on Monday. It is going to be absolutely delicious. Yes, because it's about McRibbs. I've never had one.

But after listening to this episode, you're going to want one. It's really unfortunate because you can't get them anywhere. And then on Wednesday, we're going to have another great episode of the show. And we'll be back on Friday. So stay classy until then. 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.