The Vergecast - We can’t quit electric cars — or robotaxis

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Robotaxis: in. EVs: Out? The Verge's Andy Hawkins joins the show to talk about the goings-on in the transportation industry, including the reasons car makers are slowing down on EV production (but not giving up entirely) and why suddenly everyone's back in on robotaxis. Then, The Social Web Foundation's Evan Prodromou tells us what's new with the fediverse. We talk about Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, and the increasingly ambitious plans for the ActivityPub protocol. Finally, we talk through some feedback on last week's episode about the pricing of the iPhone 16E, and how the way you buy your phone changes the way you feel about its price. Further reading: EV truck maker Nikola goes bust Senate Republicans introduce bills to make EVs more expensive Volkswagen claims it’s actually making that $20,000 EV and will show it next month Ford lost $5 billion on EVs in 2024, teases new models Lyft eyes robotaxi launch in 2026 Uber to Austin: get ready for Waymo The fediverse, explained: Mastodon, Threads, and the open future of social networking Flipboard’s Surf app is a feed reader for the fediverse Tumblr’s fediverse integration might finally happen soon. The Social Web Foundation Apple launches the iPhone 16E Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Intra Protocol Competition. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am once again attempting to learn how to do a Rubik's Cube. So during the pandemic, the two sort of weirdest days I had were the day that I woke up and decided to learn how to juggle, which I successfully did. I'm not going to do it for you now, but I'm like a reasonably good juggler now. And then there was the day that I woke up and decided I was going to learn how to solve a Rubik's Cube and just utterly failed. And so now I have this Rubik Cube that just sits here on my desk and I sort of fiddle. it with it during meetings. I like it for that, but mostly it just taunts me because it is unsolved and I don't know how to solve it. So I have a bunch of YouTube videos. I have a web

page that is just step-by-step instructions. I'm realizing this is less like a creative endeavor and more just sort of memorizing an algorithm, but I kind of like that. I'm ready for that. I'm going to try it. It's going to be great. I'll update you next week to see if I actually pull this off. That is not what we're here to do on the show today. We're going to do two things today. First, we're going to talk to Andy Hawkins about what's going on in the car world. Because right now, It seems like EVs are kind of going away, and robotaxies are suddenly back. So we're going to talk about both those things. Then we're going to talk to Evan Prodromo, who is one of the people overseeing the activity pub protocol.

We're going to talk about blue sky and threads and Mastodon and the whole world of social networking right now and where we're headed this year. We also have a really fun hotline question about the iPhone 16E with some of the thoughts that we've heard from all of you since we talked about it on Friday. lots to do, lots to talk about. But the first step in my Rubik's cube, as I understand it, is to get one side solved. So I'm going to go do that, and we will be right back. This is the Vergecast. See in a sec.

Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. build custom internal tools just by describing what you need.

Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and 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. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion? If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients. And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restrained. by the FDA since 1938.

This week on Explained it to me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. I managed to get six out of nine blue things in the right place during the break. I don't think that's very good, but it feels like a start. I will solve this thing if it kills me. Anyway, let's just get into it. First up, we're going to talk to Andy Hawkins, because following the transportation news the last few weeks,

there's this strange momentum shift happening. On the one hand, electric vehicles, which I think have been not on the decline, but kind of out of fashion for the last little while, feel like they're falling further and further out of fashion really quickly, and that seems odd to me. Then on the flip side, you have companies like Uber and Lyft making a big deal out of robo taxis again, like it's a decade ago and we're all pretending that robotaxies are going to be a thing. The momentum shift here is just very odd to me, and Andy's been covering it a lot. So I think it's just time to get into it. Let's just call up Andy, see how we're doing. Andy Hawkins, welcome back to the show. Hi, thanks for having me.

It's been a minute. I feel like there is both, there's like so much car news that there's never a good moment to be like, let's just take a break and talk about car news. It just keeps happening. It does. It never stops. So, okay, so I brought you here, I think,

for like two and a half reasons. And the half we're going to do as quickly and painlessly as possible, and that is we have to talk about Elon Musk and Tesla. Oh, God. All right. But we're going to do that so fast and at the end. Okay. I promised at the top of this show

that the Tuesday Vergecast is going to be a safe place from now on, and I intend to live up to that as best we can. The two things I really want to talk about are sort of this moment in the EV revolution, because we're sort of an odd moment in the EV landscape, and I just want to feel that out a little bit. And then I want to talk about Robo Taxis, which are both like closer than ever

and still seem like a total pipe dream and I just need you to make sense of those things to me. Does that all sound good? I'm happy to do that for you. Okay, good. Let's start with the EV stuff. And I think this is particularly on my mind

because Nicola, this EV truck maker that I think has been somewhere between mostly a fraud and entirely a fraud for a pretty long time now, finally declared bankruptcy. And it just feels like we're at this moment, and we've talked about this a few times on the show, where EV is,

were going to be the thing, and everybody decided that EVs were going to be the thing. And this revolution in electric vehicles just keeps shooting itself in the foot every imaginable way. So where are we right now in early 2025 in kind of the EV universe? Yeah, so I think you could say that even the biggest supporters and boosters of electric vehicles will admit that sales have kind of flatlined. and this is, you know, both in the U.S. and in Europe, but also in China as well. In China is sort of like the kind of the big X-factor hanging over all this, and we can get to them in a minute. But yeah, it's sort of a, it's a weird place because we're coming off of four years of an extremely EV-friendly administration in the White House to whatever the opposite of that is now.

The most hostile administration that we've ever seen towards electric vehicles to the point where a lot of, of these policy decisions seem to be being made just out of spite, is how I would describe it. And so on top of all of that, you also have a lot of these kind of like mid to low tier startups that came into prominence over the last decade or so on the promise of electrifying, you know, certain segments of the car market. So for Nicholas case, it was going to be heavy-duty trucks. And they were going to be battery power. There were going to be some hydrogen-powered trucks.

in the mix, and this was going to be sort of a major push to get all the pollution out of the heavy trucking industry. But this is a company that had a lot of problems even before Trump came into office. I mean, like you mentioned, there was allegations of fraud. There was a real kind of, like, dramatic report from this short-selling group called Hindenburg that accused Nicola of staging a lot of its sort of hype videos showing its trucks driving out. You know, the desert, one of the videos apparently was shown the truck was just being rolled downhill. It was even operational. And so-

It's kind of amazing, honestly. I know. It's like, it's really, it's like not even technically a lie. They're like, we didn't say the car was on. Like, it's just a truck was moving. It was really, it's just beautiful. You just put it in neutral and shoved it down a hill. Just if you assumed that it was driving, that's, you know, that's on you, not on us.

You know, amongst a lot of other things that they had promised, you know, that they had said that they were. going to be, this is going to be a billion dollar, you know, multi-billions of dollars this company was going to eventually pull in. And so, yes, they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. And this came, I want to say maybe about seven or eight months after the original founder and first CEO of the company, Trevor Milton, was convicted of these frauds and jailed. He's currently in jail. I believe his sentence was for around four years. And so the company was under different leadership at the time. And I think that they had, sold around like 600.

They eventually got to make it, got around to actually making the trucks, and they sold around 600 of them. But the environment and the, sort of the market environment right now for EVs is just so upended that some of these smaller companies that were kind of like hanging on by a thread already and had sort of other various problems are just going to, you know, it's going to be tough for those companies to hang on and to survive given sort of these market and policy forces that are sort of weighing down on the industry. And is the lesson in all of this that this really has just been driven by politics and policy

in both directions, that the reason everybody got excited about it was because we had a government that got excited about it. And then the reason is falling apart is because we have a government that wants it to fall apart, that actually if you just let the market decide maybe there hasn't really been the EV market, everyone sort of assumed was coming. I think that that plays a big role. But I think that there's also a lot of responsibility that's on the companies. the automakers themselves, who were the ones that were out there out front saying that they were

going to be, that electrification was the future and that they were going to be fully electric companies like companies like GM, which, you know, is a huge global automaker makes Cadillac and Chevy and Buick and all of these major brands. And they said that they were going to be zero emission by 2030, that there was, you know, there was no equivocating about this decision. And all of the other automakers basically said something similar. Ford said that it was going to be zero emission in EV only in Europe by 2030. Mercedes said it, BMW, all of these major companies coming out and saying, you know, gas is the past and electric is the future. And they were fully convinced that they were going to be able to be selling these cars hand over fist.

And that customers were just going to eat it up, that they were going to love the experience of driving EVs, that they were going to love the ownership experience. the only problem is that the prices didn't really match what the expectations were, that they were selling a lot of cars that were in the luxury segment at first, and then you got into like the heavy trucks, like your Hummers, and your Ford F-150 Lightning's, and your Chevy Silveradoes, and these are giant heavy vehicles with big, heavy batteries that, yeah, they have some pretty decent range over 300 miles, but the expense associated with getting these batteries and these vehicles

was just so much that customers just sort of balked at the prices that they were, that they were seen. You know, you could buy a gas powered F-150 for around $30,000, at the base model. Why would you spend $70,000, on an electric version of that? Yeah. And when you start towing stuff and doing truck stuff with it, all of a sudden that range, that precious range starts to drop precipitously. So it was, I think, a misstep on the part of the industry to prioritize the luxury. and the heavy EV, heavy truck and SUV, assuming that customer preferences in the gas market were going to carry over to the electric market.

And then you had all of these sort of EV favorable policies from the Biden administration that, you know, were instrumental in getting all these factories spun up and getting a lot of regionalization companies bringing the production to the U.S. from overseas. It had a big effort in that. And also, you know, funding the EV charging pitcher, which is another thing altogether.

But seeing now how quickly all of that kind of stuff can be unwound and unspooled by the president administration, I think is giving a lot of these companies pause about sort of like banking too much on this certain technology when perhaps the customers aren't there and then the government help is not going to be there as well. Yeah, you wrote this great story a couple of weeks ago about Ford that had, and I don't think I told you this at the time,

but it had my favorite verge headline of like the last 12 months that I feel like also like perfectly summed up the EV market. The headline is Ford lost $5 billion on EVs in 2024, comma, teases new models. Which just to me, it just perfectly sums up the whole thing. And then there was news, I think, around the same time as that, that VW was like, no, no, we're actually going to do the $20,000 EV that we've been promising that everybody holds up as this like mythical thing that someday when somebody does that, it'll change everything. these companies at some point should just look at themselves and be like, never mind, this didn't work.

Maybe it'll work someday. We'll leave a team working on it over there. Can they just not help themselves at this point? Like, why can't these companies quit EVs given that right now, if you're just being pragmatic, like if you're in pure shareholder value mode, it seems like the clear obvious thing to do is spend a lot less time thinking about electric cars? I think fear is playing a big role in sort of why it is that they are not just giving up entirely. I think there is like an aspect of it that a lot of them do still believe that EVs are the future in that this is the right technology to be betting all of the money in the companies on. That, you know, eventually we'll get to a point where we can bring battery costs down and EV charging infrastructure will get up to speed and will become something that you can actually rely on. that the prices will get right and the form factor will be spot on. And obviously, you can have your cake you needed too because this will be an environmentally, more environmentally friendly technology to bet on zero emission.

If you can find a way to recycle the batteries and get this sort of supply chain built up that will encourage people that this is actually the technology of the future, that they will actually get there. And then there's the fear aspect, which is fear of China. And Chinese EVs. And we're already sort of starting to see the effect less so in the U.S., but definitely in Europe, where, you know, Germany, this, you know, country that is, has this storied auto sector with, you know, Mercedes and BMW and Audi and Volkswagen and all of these, you know, sort of major legacy brands are just, you know, in a free fall at the moment because of a competition from China. the Chinese companies like BYD and Neo and Gili and others are just flooding the market with these cheap, affordable, and honestly, pretty fucking cool EVs that, like, everyone that I've read sources that I trust that have driven these cars and seen them up close and been to China and tour the factories and tested the vehicles have said, they crack the code. Like, you know, say what you will about government subsidies and, you know, the Chinese government has got its thumb on the scale and is potentially, you know, cheating a little bit in terms of like how much money they're pouring into the industry. But it's certainly, you know, it's not coming at the expense of like good, fun cars to drive and decent technology. So, you know, there's certain vehicles that are, you know, in the $12,000 range that if you had a vehicle like that available here in the U.S., like it would just

eat Ford and GM's lunch. Like, there's just no question. And Ford's CEO, Jim Farley, has, you know, he had a, a Xiaomi EV last year that he drove around for like a couple months, I think. And he saw, like, the demise of his own company, like, basically in the future while driving this vehicle, that it was just such an impressive experience

that he's like, we have to catch up to these guys because they have beat us. They've been at this for much longer than we have, and they have figured out a way to bring all the costs in line and come up with these cars that are just so technologically and design-wise above the rest. So I think that the rest of the industry, the Europeans and the big three here in the U.S., have really no choice. If they don't continue to pursue it, and like it may be like, you know, the Trump administration puts in some policies in place that will like actively make it like detrimental

to their business to produce CVs, which I could see happening, they will have really not. no choice to just keep pursuing and keep trying to, like, you know, throw everything that they've got at this problem because otherwise it's literally their own futures that are at stake. Interesting. Okay, I think the China piece of it, I think I have been underrating in all of this because I keep looking at this thinking, okay, the first mover advantage of this already happened, right? Like Tesla did that and I think has pretty much ridden out its entire advantage on that front by being so far out in front of everybody else. Now we're at a point where it's like, okay, if this isn't going mainstream tomorrow,

what's actually the harm in waiting? And the harm in waiting is that when it goes mainstream, China will have already won. That we will be so far behind at that point that it will just, like China, it seems like, is just sitting there waiting to flood the market the minute the market is ready for it to do so. And that's pretty scary if you're a Volkswagen.

Yeah, it was crazy. So I was in Brazil visiting some friends last year. And, you know, at first, you know, know, I saw like a lot of like Pujo and Renault and like a lot of these like European brands out on the road. And then eventually I started to notice that like most of the cars that I saw and we were taking Ubers and, you know, ride share and all that kind of stuff. And they were all Chinese EVs. They were BYD. They were Neo. And it was just like it was incredible how just like overnight apparently like had come in and just like dominated, you know, these markets like

like Brazil and others. And I think like, yeah, I think it's like, it's certainly the case that you can slap tariffs on every single one. And Biden has done that. And now Trump's talking about doing the same or one-uping and trying to make it sort of financially prohibitive for these Chinese companies. But if the cars are so inexpensive and so cheap, that they literally can absorb the cost of a tariff and still come into the market. Like, I don't see how you can eventually stop that. And that's something that I think a lot of these companies are in the U.S. are deeply afraid of. Yeah, I mean, a $12,000 car plus a 25% tariff is still going to win the price worse in a lot of these cases. Yeah, absolutely.

That's really interesting. Okay. And so on the other hand, as we talk about, you know, things happening sort of slowly and all at once and maybe not and going back and forth a million times, Robotaxis. Which kind of seemed to be having another moment. I think Joanna Stern on the show at the end of last year predicted that this was going to be kind of the year of Waymo. Seems like that might be kind of coming true, but also like Lyft and Uber are back in this game. Like it's like it's 2016 all over again in the Robo Taxi world.

What is happening here? Yeah, it's a weird situation because I think what you've seen is that the major automakers, you know, like a good seven, eight years ago were like, oh, we need to be all in on on autonomous vehicles, just the same way that they, you know, missed the boat on EVs. It was going to be by 2020.

They were all like, by 2020, we'll be robo-taxying everywhere. It was always by 2020, and I seemed to recall 2020 being kind of a different year. Yeah, I had a real different experience. I didn't take other taxis very much in 2020, so I guess that's something.

Yeah, people were buying a lot of e-bikes and scooters and not so much robo taxis. But yeah, so they were all in on automation. They were like, this is going to be us. We're going to be the future of the auto industry is going to be full autonomy. And now they are like, oh, this is just taking too long and it's really expensive, actually. And our business is really precarious at this moment.

So we cannot be so deeply invested in the sort of like long-term, like hyper-expensive science experiments. So yeah, just recently you had GM completely divesting itself from Cruz. And that was after, you know, Cruz having a pretty rough year, rough couple of years because of some of you know, its cars were blocking traffic and we're getting on people's nerves in San Francisco and then, you know, a lady got ran over and that was bad. On that one, by the way, do you read the whole cruise thing as GM wanting out of the robotaxy business and deciding that that whole idea was just not what it wanted? Or is that like a specific cruise problem? Oh, no, yeah. It's the, I would say it's a little bit of both.

It was a specific cruise problem. Cruise was known to be sort of pushing the envelope. and going a bit too aggressive. Yeah. As compared to like Waymo and others, they were trying to like get, you know, up to speed and, and compete.

And they were sort of, you know, not being as buttoned up and safe, which is like with a autonomous vehicle operation, you really have to be as cautious and conservative as you possibly can. And that just wasn't the ethos at Cruz. They were really trying to just, they were pushing the envelope.

Yeah, real, like, move fast and break things, which is not a good idea in robo taxis. The move fast and break thing ethos was just, yeah, it was at odds with the safety element. And they really kind of screwed themselves over with that one. But then also, yeah, that was sort of like the big message when GM said that they were going to be getting out of Cruz was that, you know, this was not part of our core business, which is hilarious because, you know, seven, eight years ago, GM said its core business was going to be zero, zero deaths, zero emissions, all those.

this stuff that they were, they were sort of like betting the company on the future of being, you know, sort of like no more car crashes, no more traffic fatalities and also no more emissions. So autonomy and electrification. And now actually GM's doing pretty good with EVs. But GM, just like working backwards from a cool slogan was an interesting move there. So, yeah, so they divested and Cruz is dead now. They absorb some of the engineers into their super cruise division, which is like their partial automation, their hands off driving, feature. And a lot of these companies now are going all in on like this sort of level three, like hands off, eyes off driving on highways or in like traffic situations. And that's,

you know, a huge bag of worms. I mean, like there's been so many safety assessments that show that that kind of stuff is extremely dangerous. So I don't want to say that like there's, you know, there's a whole raft of liability concerns that are going to be coming up, I think, in smashing into these companies. No pun intended with that. But there is a lot of potential there as well. Obviously, short-term revenue, like, you can sell options to customers that you have. So really, that kind of just leaves Waymo all alone in the robo-taxie space. And they're light years ahead of all the rest of the competition.

Like Zooks is still just sort of in beta phase in, like, Las Vegas and some others, that's Amazon's Robotaxy Company. And there's obviously some Chinese Robotaxy companies that are operating Bidu and others. in their country. So it seems like really Waymo is way ahead of the rest of the competition, and they've got operations in San Francisco and Phoenix and Los Angeles. And this year they're launching in Austin and Atlanta. And the interesting thing about those launches is that they're going to be done exclusively with Uber.

So instead of using the Waymo app where you've done in previous markets, you'll open up your Uber and potentially you'll get paired with a human driver or maybe a robot Waymo car will be the one to come and pick you up in those two cities. So I think that that's why you hear, you've been hearing a lot about robo taxis, but also it's interesting because, you know, you have now Uber that is very much a part of the conversation. Lyft as well, but Uber obviously is the one that's really trying to make itself like the, like the agnostic platform that will take anybody's autonomous vehicles. So whether it's Waymo or some of these other companies like AV Ride and

some of the other ones that are putting out like sidewalk robots for Uber Eats deliveries and others. Uber just wants to be like the like the neutral party that is just like, we'll take anyone's robot. You got a robot, put it on our platform. We'll take your robot. We'll send it out to a customer and we'll see how it works. Which strikes me as a real lesson learned from the last time around, right? Like the first time everybody thought robotaxies were right around the corner, all these companies were spending money they didn't have to own the technology themselves, Right. Travis Kalanick being like, we are fundamentally going to be a self-driving company. It was like that was the- Well, it was like an existential thing for him. He was like, we won't exist if we don't design the technology ourselves. And then they did that and they killed somebody. And they were like, oh, wait, no. We changed our minds.

We want to be a different thing. And I think, I mean, it's just been interesting to me, especially like you said, watching Uber and Lyft get back into this because those companies were so wrong a decade ago. were so badly burned by how wrong they were and invested incorrectly so heavily in those directions for so long that I think it really set them back. And so to see them now come back and it was like, it was Lyft saying again, like, Lyft is a pretty careful company at this point. And so for Lyft to come out and be like, Robotaxies, y'all, like, we're ready. We're doing it. It was just so interesting to me. This company is like finally making money for the first time in its history. And they're like, so Robotaxis? It's like, there must be something here. I think it's a couple things.

So I think for one, it's that Uber and Lyft are now sort of like newly profitable. Uber is profitable. Lyft has just had it's like its first profitable year. They're cash flow positive. They finally, after like over a decade and a half, have figured out how to make money off of ride share. And so they've got like, you know, they're kind of like they're feeling themselves a little bit, I think, in one respect. And then the other respect is, I think, is the market in investors. are really kind of pushing them towards this.

Because every time Waymo makes some sort of, you know, iterative announcement about, like, going into a new market or a new city, like, we're going to be in Miami or we're going to be in this city, you see that reflected in Uber's share price. Like Uber's stock starts to go down a little bit. So Uber feels a little bit like pressure to pair up with these companies as a way to keep them close to them so that they can be part of this conversation. They can be part of sort of how this technology rolls out. If they're the ones that are sort of like at the front line of being in between the customer and the robotaxie, they see that as like a benefit to them.

That they get like sort of like the positive vibe, you know, sort of like ricochet off of, you know, the experience of writing in a Waymo. Like, oh, this is so fun. I get to, you know, control my music and there's nobody in the front seat. And it's, it's so unique and different. Wow. And, you know, maybe you associate that all 100% with Waymo, but maybe you get like, you know, a little bit, a little nudge to Uber. as well. And so Uber gets something out of that. So Waymo is really like the, the boogeyman of this whole industry. Like everybody who's doing any of this is just watching Waymo essentially have unlimited time

and money and resources to do this. And I assume anyone else working on any part of this is petrified of what's going on at Waymo. And yet they, like, operate at a fraction of a fraction of the levels that Uber does. Like Waymo has got like less than a thousand cars on the road today. Oh, interesting. And Uber is doing, like, just recently did, like, it's like one millionth concurrent ride. Like, it's like all over the world. Yeah. It's taken in taxi cabs now. It's, you know, it's like fully eaten the ride share and like the vehicle transportation market.

And Uber is just like so small. It's like, it boggles my mind somewhat too because like it's got like, it's got great, you know, sort of like brand value in the terms of like, yeah, people like associate are. started to, like, you know, like fully associate, like, a Waymo has become, like, the Xerox or, like, the Kleenex of, like, robotaxies. And that, that, there's, there is certainly value involved in that. But, yeah, given how, like, how few cities they're actually not, and how slowly and conservatively, which they have to. They have to do that because they don't want to fall into the same pitfalls as crews or as Uber did.

They can also afford to, importantly. And they, I mean, maybe. I mean, like, if you see. that certainly has the money. I know, but if you've seen like the other bets and stuff like that, like, you know, where they list like the losses there. Like, it's not, it's not looking good. Like, they're still losing hundreds of millions of dollars on this project. Right. But they're, there, I suppose, at risk of running out of corporate patients. Yes. But they're not at risk of running out of money. That's a very different situation than Cruz with GM, where GM was just like, our margins are so incredibly tight that we just cannot continue to fund this thing.

Whereas Alphabet's like, sure, five more billion dollars for the next five years. Sure. Eight minutes of running Google. Like, it's fine. Yeah. So, yeah, it is. And I think, like, one could see the same with Amazon, too, right? Like, Amazon can continue to fund, like, money losing operation like Zooks for us, which, like, Zooks is an interesting player because we just had a piece that ran, where our freelancer

Abigail Bassett rode in one in Las Vegas during CES. They're taking a different tack. They're like, it's actually purpose-built vehicles. It's these vehicles that look kind of like weird toaster-shaped things, and they don't have, they don't have pedals and they don't have steering wheels and you sort of like sit on these bench seats facing each other. It's like the foursome seat on a train that faces each other made into a vehicle. Which are always the worst seats on the train.

Nobody ever wants to like when your knees bump up against the other person's knees and it's like, uh, everybody wants that. I hate this. Perfect. Yeah, so that's what Zook is going for. And that was interestingly what Cruz was also going for at first until everything fell apart for them. So it's interesting because, you know, and Waymo's got, you know, its future platform

They've got a deal with Gile to make these Zika vehicles, but that could get seriously compromised by the Chinese tariffs. They've got deals with Hyundai to use Hyundai's Ionic 5 as a vehicle. So everyone's got, you know, is putting, they're placing their bets. And I think interestingly, Waymo, being the one so far out ahead on the technology, is still like we need regular cars that we can just retrofit. We're not ready to go like the purpose built direction quite yet, which I think is quite telling.

Got it. All right, before I let you go, let's do 90 seconds on Tesla because I think a lot of this, like a lot of everything we've talked about is Tesla is wrapped up in. But the company's in an odd place, right? The last quarter was fine, but not great. Sales are down year over the year for the first time in forever, maybe ever. Was it ever? I think it's like an over a decade, basically. Okay.

It's definitely since they've been profitable. Yeah, it's the first time. Yeah. And I think also Tesla's have. have been sort of political statements in a variety of ways for a long time now, but that has really escalated. Like, what, what's your read on sort of the market vibes around Tesla right now? How, what's going on inside that company? So, yeah, I mean, like, stock price wise, it's not doing too great. It's definitely down, I think, this year, year of year. And yeah, as you mentioned,

sales, sales are down, uh, and the vibes are off, you could say. I mean, you know, I feel like I've been, like, writing the same story for like five, six years now about the vibes being off at Tesla. Now the vibes are seriously off. And that's obviously due entirely to Elon Musk and his new found prominence as, you know, as Trump's hatchet guy. So it's, yeah, it's like, you know, you once had, it was a brand that was once associated with, like, California liberals and as a sort of like a statement about like what you thought about like the environment and climate change and the future and technology. And now it's like fully like a MAGA brand. But it's not, though, because MAGA people. will not buy Teslas and they're not interested in buy a Tesla's. They still like their trucks and

their SUVs. So it's in a very, leave sort of Tesla, the company in like a very weird limbo space right now where, you know, it's sort of like unsure of what's going to, what it's going to take in order to sort of like reset the narrative, I guess. And I think one of the things is the cyber cab, which came out last year. And Musk has said that it's going to, you know, sort of start doing Robotaxy rides in Austin starting the summer. Right. Big year for Austin and Robotaxies. Yeah, it seems that way. But, you know, Tesla's approach to autonomy, very different than Waymo. You know, they have been, it's a camera-only system. You know, it relies on its full self-driving

hardware and software. And there's a lot of concerns about sort of like the safety of that technology. Tesla famously, a company that does not like to accept liability for crashes that occur with its vehicles, that's going to be a really interesting thing to watch going forward as they start to take drivers out from behind the steering wheel and offer rides to people as part of like a fleet service, very different business for them. It'll be really interesting to see how they navigate that. And then you've got like this promise for this next gen platform

or this more mass market vehicle. You know, there's been talk about, you know, a model two. Now it seems like that's being replaced by something called the Model Q. It's unclear exactly what that's going to look like if it's just like a model three or a model Y that's like a little bit cheaper and a little bit more less less kind of like technologically advanced. A little more car-ish. Yeah, than like the current models.

Yeah. So it's really unclear and like the company is only sort of vaguely referenced, you know, keeps referencing like this new model that's going to be coming out sometime this year. So that's going to be an opportunity for them also to kind of like reset things around, you know, affordability and availability. But yeah, as long as like Musk is out there, you know, throw in his salutes and and being sort of like the very public face of like running roughshod over the government and taking people's Medicaid away from them, I'm not too convinced that like Tesla's act.

It's going to take more than just like a new vehicle or a new service to really kind of like reset the conversation around this company. enough. All right, Andy, thank you as always. You and I, this summer, are going to go to Austin and we're going to ride every Robo Taxi we can find. And we're going to build a VergeCast for it. I can't wait. It's going to be great. That's a great idea. Let's do it. I'm all about it. Thanks, buddy. Thanks, man.

All right. We've got to take a quick break, and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about social. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Murrow to move faster. With real-time

collaboration and a robust CMS with everything you need for great SEO, not to mention advanced analytics that include integrated AB testing, your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your dot com from day one. So whether you want to launch a new site, test a few landing pages, or migrate your full.com, Framer has programs for startups, scaleups, and large enterprises to make going from idea to live site as easy and fast as possible. Learn how you can get more out of your dot com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com slash verge for 30% off of Framer pro annual plan. That's Framer.com slash verge for 30% off. Framer.com slash verge. Rules and restrictions may apply. Support for the show comes from Grammarly. You don't need reminding that the world moves fast.

But work today requires clear communication, and when every message counts, sounding rushed or generic can be getting lost in the shuffle. Gramerly gives you one place to think, write, and finish your work where you already write, while giving you access to agents that help you sound natural and engaging. No matter what kind of writing you're doing, Gramerly helps you get ideas done faster and move from draft to done with less friction. You can use Gramerly's AI chat to brainstorm ideas, outline a solid. a draft, then refine it with context-aware suggestions that fit what you're working on. See why 90% of professionals say Grammarly has saved them time writing and editing their work. 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. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire can. counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring

Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire.

started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. Now I want to talk about activity pub because I cannot help myself from talking about the Fedaverse and the open social web and all of the different ways that we might interact with each other. Evan Prodromo is a person I've talked to before about this stuff because he is one of the people actually in charge of maintaining the activity pub protocol that underpins.

Mastodon and Flipboard Surf and a lot of this Fediverse stuff that we've been talking about for the last couple of years. They're not quite the same, the Fediverse and Activity Pub, but a lot of what's happening on the Fediverse is happening because of Activity Pub. It's what Threads is invested in. It's what Medium has been working on. It's what Tumblr and WordPress are going to. This is kind of the protocol, the underlying infrastructure that might make all of this work.

And Evan is not only in charge of helping make sure that the protocol work, He's trying to convince the world to use it. So I figured it would be a fun time to catch up with him, see how all of it's going, and see where this is headed. Let's get into it. I think the place I want to start is sort of in the deep tech of activity hub. And we're going to sort of build out from the base of the technology out into taking over the world. Oh, boy.

One of the things that you spend your time on is thinking about what this protocol is and how it's supposed to work and what is going on. What is new with Activity Pub? How is the protocol work going at like the deepest level these days? Well, there is a lot that's new happening with Activity Pub. So just to like, you know, pull back for a second, Activity Pub is the protocol that lets the network of independent, heterogeneous social platforms that we call the Fediverse talk to each other. So it is the streams of activities and contents that go from one social platform to the other. And when it was initially developed, it was developed for kind of a very straightforward idea of social networking, right?

I create an image or some text. You reply to it, maybe like it or share it. we had a fairly limited number of interesting objects and activities that you could share across this network. So actually, can I pause you on that really fast? Go ahead. This is a thing I've always wondered about activity pub and have never asked somebody, and you're the perfect person to ask this question. That focus, the idea that this thing should be essentially about social networking in a sort of Twitter posts kind of way.

Yeah. Was that intentional? Like was there a meeting at the very beginning that was like, let's keep this thing simple and focused and straightforward? Because now it's like you can look at activity pub and sort of make it anything. And I think there are people who kind of want to make it anything. And I want to talk about that. But like, how deliberate was the idea that it's like, let's keep this in a sort of box that we understand on the internet? I think there's two sides to it, right?

I think we wanted to at least be able to cover that very simple idea of like, you know, I post a lot of tweets. and people can reply and like them. But we wanted to also make it extensible so we could cover different kinds of social interactions. Okay. Right. And things that have changed, you know, in the time since Activity Pub was created,

are things like stories that we see in Snap or Instagram or Facebook or other kinds of interactions, geosocial interactions like Swarm, or 4Square is another one being able to do check-ins. And so there are new kinds of interactions that we send over that wire now, but it's the same wire and it's the same kind of packets. We've just like made an extensibility mechanism that makes it possible to define new kinds of packets.

Okay. And in theory, as long as you can do one of those things well and reliably across that wire, building new ones shouldn't be as hard. Like, you don't have to reinvent every wheel every time. Exactly. Absolutely, yeah. So the idea is that you should be like 95% of the way there. And if you want to start defining new kinds of interactions, you don't have to start

from the ground up. You can start at this very high level of like social interactions. Got it. Okay, that's a good answer. So I derailed you from talking about what's been going on recently. Yeah. So there are quite a few interesting things going on. recently. I realize that these can be exciting for me, not necessarily exciting for everyone in the

world. One of the ones that's, that was recently announced is that Massadon and other services are going to be supporting quote posts, right? So quote tweet like posts. Slightly controversial decision. Slightly controversial, right? A very interesting thing. And one of the things that, you know, the like Fediverse can be kind of Amish in the way that it approaches technology sometimes, right? Where it's like, hey, we're considering this new type of interaction. Is this actually good for our community, for our social benefits? So there were some concern about quote posts, whether they would be primarily for like dunking and holding people up to ridicule. And I think that we've kind of coalesced around some ideas about quote posts that would give the quoted person some control in how that they are talked about.

Interesting. Okay. And so I think that's a nice, like, kind of compromise that's come up there. So that's one that's really interesting. Well, it's interesting because it's going to have kind of broad use. But the W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, which is the organization that established the Activity Pub standard, is working on a number of new types of interaction. So one that's very important is end-to-end encrypted messaging. End-to-end encrypted messaging has become the default for DMs across systems. So if you're used Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp or Signal, those are all end-to-end encrypted. From my phone to your phone, I can read it on my phone. you can read it on your phone. Nobody in between can read it.

And that is the type of topology that we want to see with end-to-end encrypted DMs in the Fediverse also. So that's some work that started middle of last year. We're heading into doing like first implementations and definitions around it. And that's a really exciting step because it lets people have a level of interaction and trust that they wouldn't otherwise have. Right. So people are starting off conversations on the Fediverse and moving to like a signal or a WhatsApp. And this would let them kind of have their DM interface happen right there. I mentioned geosocial work, right? That's something that has kind of like in the early 2010s was very exciting. And it was a an area of sociality that kind of fell by the wayside. You know, I think only like I still use swarm. I use it all the time, but not a lot of other folks do. We do check-ins on Facebook, but it's not as big a deal as it was, but there's some fun exploration of it going on at the W3C.

So there's a task force that's just focused on geosocial work, doing check-ins, collecting, you know, information around a geographical area. Another area that's being explored right now is groups. So it's been a little tough to do Facebook-style groups are such an important part about how people have social interactions. You know, Facebook, specifically Facebook groups. I was going to say, it's the reason everyone I know is still on Facebook. It is the single stickiest thing about the stickiest app in the world. It's wild.

It's really true. Yeah. Yeah, and people really love working with them. You get other kinds of groups, so like Reddit, Reddit subs, subredits. And the idea is to have that kind of community process that crosses different social platforms. So people from Mastodon, from threads, from Flipboard, from WordPress can all be in the same group, right, and still participating together, which is a really cool, interesting part, right? like your choice of platform doesn't necessarily dictate which groups that you can be part of. And so that work has started in December of last year, and we're starting to spec that out.

The activity pub spec actually included some group information in it, but there haven't been a lot of implementations. So getting to better definition and more implementations is kind of the big step there. Got it. Okay. That's more stuff than I thought you were going to say. I think, like, truthfully, I think one of the things I expected you to say is we are in a sort of happy, optimistic sounding maintenance mode. Like, we just have to keep hardening this thing and make it work and make sure it supports all the things that it needs to. And like, this is new and it's growing really fast. But you're out here being like, we're just attaching new stuff to this all the time. Like, it's a different kind of headspace. There is, I mean, those are some of the interesting parts of what's happening.

in terms of like new functionality, new stuff happening. I think there are other parts that are also like coming up that are challenging that we're kind of dealing with as we go. Last, you know, last year was really the year that we started incorporating threads into the Fediverse, threads being the big meta product that's, you know, shot up in terms, I think there are over 300 million people, 325, something like that. And that has put a lot of pressure on the rest of the Fedaverse to be able to encompass having such a big node. Largely, it's worked pretty well because of the way that Activity Pub is defined.

You make your subscriptions to a person, not a service. So if I follow POTUS at Threads, which was a really great idea a few months ago, is less interesting now. But like, if I follow POTUS at Threads, I'm able to get J. just that one person's posts. You don't have to digest the whole thread's database every time you want to pull for... I'm not... Yeah, exactly, which is just too much for a little Macedon server running on somebody's Raspberry Pi. So we're able to kind of make this work pretty well.

I think the other thing, and this has been more about implementation than about standards, has been the growth of blue sky, right? So Blue Sky really, after the election... in November has had this explosive growth. It is, Blue Sky is part of the Fedaverse, right? It is linked through a two-way bridge into the activity pub world. So there's a wonderful bridge

that lets you follow people on Blue Sky, like what they post, respond to them, etc. It's a very, it very much puts them on an equal footing with other parts of the Fediverse. Let's talk about that, actually. Sure. I was going to ask you about Blue Sky later,

but. No problem. But no, we can talk about it now because I think it's a really interesting part of this story because I knew you were going to say it's terrific and everybody's so happy and it's all great. But like there is a real world in which Blue Sky and the At Protocol are like a threat competitor, whatever you want to call it to what activity pub is trying to do. And I think in a sense of like open standards are better and we're trying to help everybody understand that. I get that we're in sort of a rising.

tied lifts all boats moment. But the idea that I have to build sort of brittle software on top of brittle software on top of brittle software to get all of this to work together. Yeah. Seems like not the answer anybody is looking for here. So like, and especially threads is going to continue to work, it seems. I find threads personally less interesting than I used to, but it's a booming platform. Blue Sky appears to have some real staying power in this space. is it a long-term problem for you as somebody who A cares about the space, but B believes in activity pub in particular, that Blue Sky is not directly in that world? Yeah, I will, like, I'll be straight on this one.

I don't want to be, like, too Polyanish, but, you know, they don't maintain the bridge. The bridge is maintained by a nonprofit called a new social who are great guys, Ryan Barrett, and Nuzot, and they're doing really great work, but they aren't supported by Blue Sky, right? And the Blue Sky Corporation is really focused on their own network. They're not spending a lot of time engaging with the rest of the Fediverse, and that's okay. So I find it frustrating that Blue Sky exists, that there is an AT Protto, that it is kind of set up as a competitor to Activity Pub, but in a lot of ways it's not a direct competitor. If I was going to say how I understand ATProto, it's really a way to do, say, a Facebook platform or a Twitter platform on a distributed blockchain-like storage system.

So if you're familiar with like IPFS or some of the peer-to-peer networks, right, unlike Activity Pub, which has this like connections between. different independent services that have their own internal storage, they do their own, you know, structures, UIs, et cetera. Blue Sky is really about having this kind of one big network and then you can build clients or filtering, et cetera, that works on it. So all of which is to say, like, I don't see a Tumblr moving to use AT Proto and blue sky, right? Sure.

Tumblr is an existing network that. has 100 million people on it, and they are working to implement activity pub because that gives them a chance to connect to the rest of this Fediverse and still maintain their independence, kind of Tumblr works its own way, right? And they've got that kind of maintenance. Does that make sense? I think that Blue Sky has some opportunities to pick up like third-party developers. There are some interesting apps that are being built on top of that now.

and don't want to like undercut that entirely. But at the same time, I don't think it represents the same kind of networking between independent platforms that activity PEP does. Yeah, that idea of the not needing to build a social graph just to build an app, I think is incredibly exciting. And it's the thing I hear from app developers all the time that I'm like, they're like, I don't even have to build a login system. You just come with your Mastodon account and all your friends are already here like that.

There's something really powerful in that. I assume you're one of the people running around to companies like YouTube and Facebook and others trying to get the big platforms to understand the value of this. And I think the part of me that is less optimistic about the sort of universal takeover of the Fedaverse, which I would love to be the case, thinks that there's really no compelling reason for any of these sort of sufficiently large networks to be part of this. How do you feel like it's going with the, you know, the YouTube's and LinkedIn's and Facebooks of the world? Well, like, I can say that like we've had some really great, you know, opportunities that are coming up. They're still like kind of working, working forward. I think the thing for, say, a Google, right, who are notoriously skeptical about engaging with social networks, right? They took like, they've been burned a few times.

Yeah, they've been burnt so much and they're like never again, right? No more social. Even though they run one of the biggest social platforms YouTube in the world, they really kind of think of themselves as like out of social. And being able to say like you can have a product in the social space that doesn't have to be a monopoly, doesn't have to own the whole system. Right. Another company that's like famous for this is Apple, who have made like a few tentative. efforts in the social space and kind of, again, got burnt. Apple is great at, you know, deploying cloud services in ICloud, providing great interfaces that are easy for people to use and like owning the devices and user operating systems where they can be incorporated. So like, that is an opportunity, the Fedaverse is an opportunity for Apple to get involved in social networks without necessarily having to be like the one and only social network in the world. Right. or trying to build Facebook from scratch, which turns out to be pretty hard to do.

Yeah, yeah. You don't have to build for like 1.2 billion people. You can build for like one person and they can engage with all those billions of people, you know, across the Fediverse. And that's the really great part. You can start having value really early on. Totally.

How, what are you hearing in the, in the startup world? I feel like I've been waiting for a while for there to be kind of the thing that turns everybody on to the Fedaverse, and it was like it was going to be Mastodon, and it was going to be threads, and I think it still might be threads,

but threads is going kind of slowly, and I don't want to say haphazardly, but let's just say slowly. And I was going to say it, but I think the lesson of Blue Sky is that actually there's something about the simplicity of that that has been really productive for Blue Sky,

right? Like, Blue Sky explains itself much, much faster than the Federer does in a way that I think has been really helpful for Blue Sky. Like, maybe in the course of time, that becomes a limiting factor. But it's also like, you could just sign up and type in a username and start using Blue Sky in a way that I think in, that's the reason to me to have a killer app in the first place. It's just to have the thing that gets you in the door goes a long way.

And I don't, maybe that doesn't matter in 20 years, but as somebody who would love everybody just like start using it right now, I feel like I want that to exist. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that's one of the things that Blue Sky has done so well. Like if you are a Twitter refugee, right, and you're washing up on the blue sky shores, like, it looks very familiar. You know what you're doing, you know, limitations like on the number of characters or things like that are like, like, yeah, I love this. This is just what I know from Twitter, right? But, you know, I think that if you are a startup who is working on making, you know, the next four square or the next Tinder or whatever it is, and you want to be a startup. and you want to build on top of a network

where you already know that there are millions of people already participating, I think it's harder to build that on top of an AT proto than it is on top of an activity pub, right? Yeah, that makes sense. There's just more room to, like, innovate and build interesting things. How are the business conversations going

on all sides of this? Because one of the things, I mean, you talk about the interesting feelings of people on Mastodon is that any time you talk about money on the Fedaverse, people get squirrely. And I think it's because there is something that feels pure about this thing that is being built, and people have seen us

go through that before, and then it became corrupted by money, and they're desperate for it not to be corrupted by money. But at some point for this thing to work, there has to be money in it. And I think to some extent, there are obvious ways people make money, right? Like, you can do lots of things on top of these services. You sell ads, like, whatever.

But to me, the biggest challenge is just going to be the convincing everybody involved that there is a business inside of this and that that's okay strikes me as maybe one of the hardest parts of sort of evangelizing this whole space. You know, I mean, when we talk about like business models for social content, right? I think we have some pretty decent ones that have, you know, been proven through the test of time, right? Ad-supported and algorithmic feeds is like a great example that pretty much, whatever, half of tech runs off of, right? Depending on ad-supported feeds. I think another one that has been super positive for creators, for creative people, has been subscription-based business.

So, you know, whether you're a Twitch broadcaster or a substack publisher, you get to, establish these subscriptions and you're kind of maintaining a more direct relationship with your audience and developing premium content to them based on, you know, that direct relationship. And both of those are really awesome. You know, there are other business models that work, but, you know, I think that those are two that seem to work pretty well for different players in this, in the social space. I think the question that kind of comes up and that's been really hard for people who are engaged in the Fediverse to deal with is, and I'm going to be like biting the hand of some of the big networks that have

supported us so far. But, you know, when Twitter moved to an advertising-based model, they really clamp down on access to their API, right? And your ability to, say, resort the feed or filter or take parts out of the feed. Because suddenly it's their business to have you on Twitter.com. Like that's how it happens. Exactly. They only want you to see things in a certain way and a certain way of addressing it. Same with Facebook, right?

So they very much cut back on the ability of third party clients to interact with the Facebook data because they needed to maintain a very specific, you know, way of delivering ads to the to the user. And I think that it's a lot harder to do in a Fed averse structure where, you know, I'm on Tumblr and you're on threads and threads pushes an ad into that network and Tumblr throws it away, right? Like, or my client throws it away because I don't want to see it. You don't have that same control in this kind of network. So there are other ways to deliver ads, but that idea that like one company is going to control from one end to the other, how the stream of content is delivered and make sure that ads are included,

that breaks down in the Fediverse. And I think that that means like, A, it's a little bit, you know, tough for companies that have depended on that business model so far. But B, there's a lot of great opportunities to build new kinds of ad networks in the, you know, that space, right? If you want to, like, that is something that can happen. And, and I think that, you know, I think that there's some real interesting opportunities there. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's very funny. The, like, user in me looks at that and it's like, well, tough nois, everybody. Now you have to compete on building great products, not on locking me into your social network. Oh, no, how awful. But then the part of me that is like, okay, these companies are full of business people,

business decisions worries that they just won't try because they know it might lead that way and they'll have to like actually compete and try hard and do good work forever in order to keep winning and boy I hope they all sign up to do that but I forever worry about how many are just going to run away from that opportunity because they're like it's we're everybody loves a wall garden right now this is this is the thing we've built but like you know there was a moment in I'm showing my age here, but like in the mid-90s where, you know, it was a question of like, oh, is MSN going to join the internet? Is AOL going to join the internet?

And then at some point, it became a tipping point. And it was like, why would you have any kind of online service that wasn't on the internet? It's meaningless. It doesn't make sense. And I think that will hit that kind of tipping point with the Fediverse too and social networks. That's a good comparison. I like that. Oh, thank you.

And speaking of that, I'm going to let you go here. But this will be, let's see, it's 2025, so this will be the third, maybe fourth year in a row that I have spent trying to convince people that this is the year of the Fediverse. Basically since like, since 2020, it was 22, right? When, you know, Musk started buying Twitter, I was like, all right, this is it. It's Macedon. It's activity pub. It's the Fediverse. And I feel like what we've gotten instead is like slow and steady momentum, but not yet the year of the Fediverse.

So Evan, I ask you, is 2025 the year of the Fediverse? Is this it? 2025 is it? Yeah. And let me tell you what I really want to see happen this year, right? Two big things. One thing is seeing increased volume from threads, right? Threads has been kind of taking baby steps into the Fediverse,

and I think we're going to see like full-blown two-way interaction from threads. And I think that changes the game. That would be huge. And then, you know, I don't know who it's going to be. I don't have any inside information, but I think we're going to see another like multi-hundred million person network joining the Fediverse this year. And I think as we start seeing those bigger players come in,

it really changes the, changes the possibilities for the Fediverse. So those are my two predictions. Let me kind of put those in. Those are good. And I will like, I promise I will spend my time being like, I'm going to make sure that. that David Pierce is not wrong. I will, I will, like, dedicate myself to that.

Evan, thank you. This was really fun. I appreciate you doing this with us. David, thank you so much for having me. I love talking about the Fediverse. All right. We've got to take one more break, and then we're going to come back

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

You got into it to actually build something. MongoDB lets you do that. It's flexible, developer first, acid-compliant, enterprise-ready, and built for the AI era. Say goodbye to bottlenecks and legacy code. Start innovating with MongoDB. There's a reason it's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500. And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB. It's a great freaking database.

Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner.

helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to short-listing candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language.

Nearly 60% of hirers find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply.

Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise. That you think, I think, that the world can be much better,

that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people. So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary, third. Like that doesn't, that's not a priority.

That's this week on America Actually. Let's begin. All right, we're back. Let's get into the Vergecast hotline. As always, you can call 866 Verge11. You can email Vergecast at the verge.com. We love all of your questions. It is truly the best thing hearing from everybody.

We get an email and a Slack notification Every time somebody calls in, it's the best. Cannot recommend highly enough having a bunch of strangers call and ask you tech questions. Anyway, this week, instead of questions, I want to play you some feedback that we got. We talked a bunch about the iPhone 16E last week. And in particular, I had some strong feelings about the price of the thing. I think a $600 phone and an $800 phone are not actually that different in a meaningful way when you think of how people actually buy

and use smartphones. But we got a bunch of feedback from people saying maybe I'm wrong about that. So let me just play you one voicemail that we got and then we're going to get into it. Hi, this is Galtham from India. I've been listening to the podcast

about the iPhone 16E and I think you guys have just totally missed why Apple made the iPhone 16E and it's definitely not for the U.S. market. It's definitely for the Indian market. They have been trying to penetrate into India for so long, and this is the device I think they will be doing it with.

Because usually the selling price, the best-selling iPhone at sale time is usually the older iPhones, which is like iPhone 13 or iPhone 40. which is like two, three years ago, old iPhones. So which sell for around $60,000 to $70,000 in India. This time they are releasing a new iPhone, which you can buy brand new, which is for iPhone 16E for $60,000. So imagine the sales numbers that's going to bring for you.

And when there's a sale on the iPhone 16E, it's going to come down even more. It's going to sell like hotcakes in India. Apple usually have a brand value in India, which a lot of other manufacturers don't have. So everybody wants to buy an iPhone, and bringing the price down is like the best move they can do. and I'm telling you right now, it'll be the best-selling iPhone model of the year, hands down, in India. This actually makes quite a lot of sense to me. I think I probably underrated the extent to which people around the world, especially outside of the U.S., where most of the cell phone market is much less carrier-dominated and post-paid and based on like multi-year contracts that you have with your carrier, a lot of people just buy a phone in a store and put a SIM card in and walk away. And in that case, a $200 difference is super meaningful. And obviously, in many parts of the world, the price difference can even be bigger or feel bigger.

So I think that's right. I buy that. And we heard this from a bunch of people, actually. I got an email from Mauricio in Brazil who said that here in Brazil, I can't think of one single person who chooses a phone based on carrier deals. I really don't know anyone who buys this way. Considering that Apple sells to many other countries, it feels like you missed an important part of the conversation. Totally fair. I still think the logic of why would you make it this cost and not the cost of the SE is complicated, right?

I think if Apple had found a way to even split the difference, make this thing $4.99 instead of $5.99, I think that price delta becomes really powerful. But Apple has always been happy selling to a smaller but more affluent group of phone buyers. I think maybe the thing that I'm reacting to above all else is that this is just such an unlike Apple move. if the thing that Apple is doing here is purely about price. And it seems like it's purely about price. But then again, this is the company that's also selling an M1 MacBook error in Walmart now. So maybe Apple just is a price conscious company in a way that it never really has been before and would still like you to not think that it is.

We also got an email from Marcin who said, I found some data from 2022 that shows that 44% of the cellular user population in the U.S. is on prepaid plans. I haven't checked that number, but if it's true, That's a higher number than I would have expected. I'm guessing that this group is probably more cost-conscious and price-sensitive, and for them, the iPhone 16-e makes a lot more sense. Also, I want to point out that the price difference between 16E and 16 isn't 200,

but more like 250. He's talking about things like adding in taxes and taking away some of the carrier deals that you get to make these things cheaper. Again, all true. And I think the idea that people are walking into a store, putting down a credit card or cash, and buying a phone outright, is certainly true. I think that just hasn't really been Apple's clientele for many, many years now. That is not the group of people that Apple has typically served.

Apple is typically interested in really high margins on really high prices for people who are much less price conscious. And so maybe what I need to do is just reframe my brain a little bit to think of Apple as a company interested in hitting all price points for the sake of hitting all price points. It makes perfect sense as a business move if you're Apple and you're increasingly a service's business. and actually what you want is to have your stuff in more people's hands, that's what Google has been doing forever, right? Google makes the majority of its money not when you buy an Android phone, but when you use the services on an Android phone. So Google has a huge incentive to put its phones in front of as many people as possible

across price spectrums, across demographics. It's just a volume game for Google. And if Apple is a services company, it's playing the same kind of volume game. So maybe that just is Apple now. Anyway, thank you to everybody who called in and, emailed with feedback, these are good points. And I think the price of an iPhone is more interesting and more complicated, maybe, than I even realized. Anyway, that is it for the show today. Thank you to everybody who came on. And thank you,

as always, so much for listening. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feedbacks, or Robotaxi rides you want to tell me about, if you've, like, been in a Waymo or a Zooks and had an experience, I would love to hear about it. You can always call 866 Verge 1-1, email, VIRGcast at the verge.com. Hit us up. We love hearing from you all the time. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Willpour. The Vergecast is Verge production,

part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Nelai will be back on Friday. He's back from vacation this week, by the way. Thank you to everybody who was concerned and sad that you weren't hearing from Nelai. Also, everybody thinks Nelai's like quitting his job every time he goes on vacation. He's just on vacation.

You're stuck with us forever, I think. Don't worry about it. Anyway, we'll be back. Lots of news to talk about. Lots still happening. We will have the triumphant return, I'm sure, of America's favorite segment, Brendan Carr is a dummy on this Friday show, plus lots more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.