Tomorrow - Episode 16: Matt Buchanan and John Herrman Build Bridges out of iPhones

Episode Date: July 26, 2015

Tomorrow really lives up to its title this week as John Herrman and Matt Buchanan (co-editors of The Awl) sit down with Josh to discuss the present and future of news reporting, social media, and technology — especially in the context of recent developments involving Uber and Gawker. Buckle up and grab your doxxing stick — because this ride makes The Fast and Furious look positively sluggish and tepid. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hey, and welcome to Tomorrow on your host, Josh with Topolski. With me today are two very special people. The co-aditors of the all on the internet website that covers all sorts of things. Map you can in John Herman. Hello. Hi. Thank you for being here.

This is a very somber, something like a very serious intro. Very NPR-ish. Yes. Like we're going to talk about something very somber something like a very serious intro very NPR-ish Yes, like we're gonna talk about something very somber and serious very warm out. It's not that warm out. I thought today is quite beautiful Anyhow, let me tell you a little bit about Matt and John before we get into this Conversation you may not know them you probably do though. You should because they're great before working at the all as co-editors They worked together at Buzzfeed doing something called forward FWD Which was their tech is is it still is the is Buzzfeed's tech thing still caught forward? No that they killed that Yeah, boy is dead. Yeah, I think it's still the Twitter handle

But then now it's like a whole it's kind of a different operation now. It's run out of San Francisco They paused they paused it. It's like a newswire They hit pause. No, they hit fast forward Because it's like yeah I heard a whole bunch of new people. Yeah, Matt Hone is a Forland is adding the whole thing out of that. Yeah, Matt Hone. He's great. It's great. I gotta get him on here He's another Twitter dad. I could be talking to about dad related issues That only you can express on Twitter and then before, you both worked at Gizmodo.

Yes. Together. Indeed. Do you think you'll ever work anywhere apart? We did. We tried it. And where are the straight U.S. and New Yorkers? Matt was at the New Yorker. And where were you? I was at BuzzFeed still. Okay. But I also, I was a freelancer for a while and worked at popular mechanics. Did you feel that your powers were weakened when you were split? Clearly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, in a house, so that's your background. And we have a lot, I do want to talk a little bit about your gizmodo years because we were actually, we were just talking about a little bit before we started. And it was when they worked at gizmodo,

I worked in Engaget. So it was like the heyday of gadget blogging, of like real gadget blogging, right? That was an intern when you took over at Engaget. I was sitting in, in Bliant, Bliant, Jesus. Bliant. Bliant. That's a person. Brian Lam, we used to work out at his house in,

in San Francisco and the news came down, I guess you'd say that you were taking over and I remember sitting around in his living room thinking like, huh, Josh, we're going to go. What's that? What are this is going to go? What are how's it going to go? No, what do you knew? How will this tall Jewish guy do? It's exactly what we're that's why we're one. He's very tall and he's doing Brian was like, what's his religion? Junja pace. How was he raised? That's the first thing. Yeah. I like to get all the details.

I know he operates. Yeah. Anyhow, so but now you're together with the all and the all is everybody talking about the all you just had a big feature done on you at by the verge. My former thing. And it was like a big like you have photos. There were photos lengthy. You guys were quoted. My hair was like the. Yeah. I've got to cut. I've got to cut. I guys were quoted. My hair was like they had a cut.

I have some keen maybe a little bit shorter than me. Why'd you get a cut? It's too hot. I mean, like, my- You really, this heat is really bothering you. Well, I've been having a haircut to Lemma. Well, there's, well, I've been having a haircut to Lemma because like the, my haircut for the last two years,

which is sort of, I guess you can call it high in tight, or like, I wouldn't call it that, I find that offensive. Well, there's the hittler youth, it's even more offensive, actually, weirdly. But so, like, what's the haircut after that? Like, because it's become very... What do you mean, what's the haircut after that? Well, what hair is the one I've bought?

You're like, when you go shorter? Well, my hair is the only thing I have. I have like no other redeeming quality. I don't think that's true. I think you have a very nice looking face. You have a beautiful body. You're very stylish. Your brain seems to be functioning well.

Your hair is a great feature. Let's talk about it actually because you're both redheads, right? Do you consider John, do you consider a redhead? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Do you consider yourself? Anyhow, you're both redheads. Do you think that that is helpful in this union,

in this, in this, does that, in some way give you a connection that other people wouldn't have? It makes it easy to reduce us to like one word. Yeah, it makes it easy for people to write stories about you. Refer to us. Yeah. Or just like emails around the office.

Oh, really? Like every, I think this is maybe the third time now that there's been an email that goes to both of us called genders. I think there was one. Is that offensive? No, it seems a little offensive. No, it's fine, are you sure?

I think it's only offensive in like the UK, but like who cares? Right, UK, you can watch. Let's talk about real countries. Okay, like America. Anyhow, so it's been a busy week in media. Busy couple weeks in media. Too busy.

Too busy. I think the business is just gonna keep accelerating until it stops. Well, I mean, you guys actually do, I mean, you do a lot of, you specifically do a lot of media criticism, some might say. So that's sort of, it's really like,

I think I'm still at heart a tech reporter and so almost all this stuff that is called media coverage is basically tech coverage. Well, isn't like, I feel like, for instance, Farhad Manjoo was tweeting with some people today about the difficulty of placing links into New York Times stories. Right. So he was complaining like, how come they didn't link to this or that, which the Times doesn't do? the difficulty of placing links into New York time stories. So it was complaining like, how come they didn't link to this or that, which the time doesn't do?

I don't know for sure, but I think for editorial reasons, not for technical reasons, but there was a whole thread about people talking about how hard it was to put links into a time story for stories like technically. But I do think a lot of our media stories end up being about technology now because there is no media

without technology and basically like delivery systems and advertising systems and systems of information exchange or sort of the backbone of what media is. And the Lincoln conversation is funny to have now because it's like you're fighting over these tiny scraps. You know, like a New York Times link three or four years ago or five or six years ago would have meant like you would have been like, well, why did we get a bunch of traffic on the story? And then you have to go back

and look and be like, oh, the Times link to us. And I got to put on the front page. Now it shows up in your chart beat. It's like 11 people. No one, no one's going to click anywhere. Yeah, it's just like, it's scared about professional courtesy. So every time a station's like that, there's like, there's still drives a lot of traffic. Yeah, surprisingly, in a way that I can't fully understand, drugs still very powerful force.

That'll be a, it'll be a weird day when I'm, Yahoo, Yahoo, very powerful in driving traffic. I was looking at them the other day, they, I remember they had hired a bunch of people to do new sections, but then I looked at the sections and a lot of them were syndicated stuff. Remember the tech thing? Oh yeah, of course.

I think it's still a little tech. Yeah, it's just a tech going. I don't want to mock it, but that is a joke, and it was a joke. And it was introduced at CES with David Poglis. He's still drawing a paycheck. Oh yeah, I'm sure he's taking money. I think it's really hard to launch a section of anything now.

I know, I agree. I actually was talking to somebody who I worked with who had gotten a job offer from Yahoo Tech. And I was like, here's the thing. Even if it's a great offer and a great position and really good money, people are never gonna fall in love with something called Yahoo Tech.

Like they're just not. And like you gotta find it. The they're just not. And like the audience. The audience is just gonna be always very limited to like whoever happened to pass by the front page of Yahoo and there was like a tech story on the front page of Yahoo that is being linked to. But even that, I feel like that isn't as much about Yahoo as it is about the way people read stuff.

Like. No, it is. It's not Yahoo's fault. So you can compare Yahoo to something that's much more, it got much more of a coherent identity that is meant to be loved, even then, it's like you can make a favorable comparison. It's very hard to make a case for a publication that people are going to become really loyal to now. It's a very hard sell, yeah. I disagree. No one's raising money to do it. Well, I think we have a problem of like

we're creating like mega brands. I wrote about this a little bit recently, but I think we're creating like mega brands that do everything and they're sort of like the Yahoo's and AOLs of Yesteryear. And I don't, who do you think those are? A Buzzfeed. I think Vox is a potential to become.

But yeah, nobody goes direct, like not that many people go directly to Buzzfeed, right? I mean, some people do. I mean, tons of people do. I mean, tons of people do. I mean, tons of people do. I'm not saying people read it. I'm not saying I'm not calling them portals though.

I'm saying they're just like the everything brand. But those brands, like AOL and Yahoo became everything brands because they had space to fill. Yeah. They were like, we've got all these people. We got to, we have all this like space that we're letting other people fill. They had a similar dilemma to the ones that all the big social networks have now,

but it was like tidier, because it was like, they just have a website that people go to all the time. And their emails there. It was also when search was up for grabs and it was like, where are you gonna find stuff? You literally had a couple of reasons. I think people opened up their computers

and it was like, here I am on Hotmail. That literally had a couple of reasons. I think, right. People opened up their computers and they said, and it was like, here I am on Hotmail. No, that's why they continued to thrive in many ways. That's why they still have huge footprints because people still have those home pages. Right. I mean, my father, I think my father's computer, I don't think it does anymore,

but for a time he had a computer that opened up to MSN that was like his home pay. Every time he opened the browser, it was like MSN. And so he actually ended up reading and sharing a lot of legs from MSN because there it is. Well, yeah. So let me ask you a question.

Is house media do house media and journalism doing nowadays? Good or bad? Oh. What do you think? I mean, we're all in the field of, we're all journalists. We're all in the field of media for lack of a better term,

or journalism. Doing and what sense. How are things going? How are things in what sense? Because there are a lot of people who are always wanting to take that question. Is it doing good work? Do you mean is it going to survive?

Like is it... Is it a living we should encourage other people to go into? Okay, so I would say... I actually think it's very lucrative right now if you're good at it. I think it's kind of a seller's mark if there are a lot of people,

there are a lot of media companies hiring a lot of people to make things. So I actually feel like it's kind of a good period for that. I think it's, I mean, I was looking at this gocker stuff and you know, Max Reed, Quitt, and who else, Quitt? Tommy Crags. But we know of. That we know of.

We'll talk about gochering a minute But but I was thinking like I was actually gonna tweet least great time to be freelance because I think it is Like I think there's more publications that it's a good time to be looking for a job I don't think it's a great time to be freelance. I mean, okay Maybe freelance the wrong if you can freelance at a certain level or if you can get like times magazine Slot if you can get like business week assignments if you can get like if you're able to like such a tiny pool, it's like it's super small. It's like it doesn't exist.

Yeah, I might have a skewed perspective. It's possible. It's possible my perspective is imperfect. No, but I do think like, but I do think it's a seller's market right now. I think the people are desperate for good. Yeah, there's a lot of money. There's a lot of money going into a lot of places and there are a lot of people trying new things. I think when people talk about like the media and how things seem to be in turmoil,

I think they're referring to the coherent, capital-M media composed of the newspapers and the magazines and the TV stations. And the newspapers and the magazines still rule? Is that your perception? No, they rule in some ways. They certainly provide, like, again, the most coherent image of a media. They talk about, like, they talk about themselves

in terms of mission and beat and subject and like, you know, there isn't really that same sort of sense of reputation and self-image in new media yet because everyone's changing so fast and everyone's so new. But anything that has been around for more than a few years, I think, is entering or in the middle of a period of like very, very serious change. Dark bad change. I mean, mostly, like I think...

Sisters is explain gocker. I think it explains, yeah, it explains basically every weird thing that's happening in media now. Gocker is a network of very successful blogs, basically. And the blogs disrupted a lot of things. They came in and newspapers looked at them and they were like, this is weird and they're aggregating too much. And then they sort of watched that image fill out into something that contained reporting and had

more of an identity of its own and became bigger than most newspapers as an organization. And as a business, the period of the web sort of eating everyone's lunch, taking advantage of it's not having a print product and all this. That is actually tapering down a little bit because something newer is here. That's only 20 years. What's the newer thing? The intermediate new thing is sites that are organizations that are web based but really savvy at social stuff.

Like Buzzfeed being the biggest example obviously, but there are plenty of other people who watched Buzzfeed and did a similar thing. Which I mean, to explain the shift you're talking about, it's like part of it is rather than producing stuff for the web, it's like you're putting it directly on Facebook or on Snapchat. That's where the eventual thing goes. So you have like, you have about sites who are

an eventual, I've considered to be momentary. The direct distribution. I mean, yeah, because I know everybody's talking about distribution today, but like an aggregation and all this bullshit. But I mean, the reality is, there are about a thousand things you can't do on Facebook that you can do when you own, like, your publishing. Yeah, but with a much smaller audience.

Yeah, but I know I get that. I get that. But at a tight time magazine, I have four million subscribers. Right. You know, I mean, like the idea that the audience should be a hundred million, and two or two hundred million or a billion. Part of it is fucking crazy. But part of it is by revenue.

It's because time magazine could like, like their revenue per user, if you wanna use today, is that right? It was like crazy high. It's crazy high, right. And because the early add dollars, I mean, this is something I've been thinking about a lot, as I've been thinking about media and like what I want to do next or could do next,

I think like, you look at the advertising models for digital media. It's like based on the early part of digital like news and publishing, which is bad, really bad. And they're like, your users are worth way less than our, you know, we don't have subscribers, and your users aren't really worth that much. So in order to like reach 10 million really valuable people, we need 100 million impressions or whatever.

You know what I mean? Like the scale of advertising versus like, I mean, the scale is so crazy. Well, but that was something that like, you know, more and more people are getting online, more and more people were reading news on websites. Those numbers were the hope was that eventually, if that had stayed stable enough for a long enough time, that you'd get more accurate measurement, the true value of a reader would

be better established, they'd be targeted better, whatever. Right. But the reality is, like a subscriber to your magazine is always going to be more valuable than a hundred million Ran and eyeballs that found your story somewhere. Well sort of. I mean I certainly one-to-one like the person who and who intends to read your thing and then Picks it up and physically handles it and looks at it for it. You can you can Glean a lot from that. Well, I mean just think about the act of buying a five-dollar magazine versus the active Reading some five five dollar magazine. So I don't know how much they are.

I think so. Here I was like eight or nine. Is it more? No, but that must be so. I'm like, Max and I think Max would be giving five dollars. I have no idea. I don't know. Anyhow, but the point is like the circulation is not going to ever be a hundred million.

No one's ever getting a hundred million people won't pay six dollars. But the problem is you suddenly, it is possible to reach 100 million people with a relatively new property. And that is really interesting and weird and exciting. And everyone's like, this is a huge opportunity. Right. There are people who are like, this is a huge opportunity. We're going to figure out how to like get in there, become a part of that, and then like

stake our claim. Then there are the people who are like, okay, we have a website and we have maybe we have a paper, we have all these employees and we have all this apparatus. We suddenly have the ability to get access to all these people by doing a number of things that we never would have done before. They do them, they get an audience, they don't leave those people on the table because they don't have a choice.

Like they're gonna take shitty ad rates for 50 million new visitors that they didn't have a year ago that month. That's gonna have such a profoundly distorting effect on their business. That when it changes, they're not gonna be equipped to deal with it. And that's what's happening now is you have all like everyone's traffic for the last few years was amazing. Part of that was that they're just more people looking for news online. A bigger part of that was because these platforms that had become so big, like big on a scale that a publication could never dream of. Facebook, Facebook basically, but also Twitter also Pinterest is huge. Right. Is Facebook permanent? Is it forever?

Of course not. I mean, I'm just curious. Like, do you think that like it can't, is it Google for social? I mean, Microsoft was forever and now it's like, what's Microsoft forever? Oh, absolutely. You think so? Yeah, right. I mean, we thought we needed the government to break it up. It was so permanent. Didn't we?

Yeah. Did that help? We followed through. How's it going for Microsoft? Fine, but you know, it's not, no one thinks about them in the same way. Well, so I don't understand. So where's the government?

Where's the government intervention for Facebook? It's all too fast and no one knows what to do. They have way more users than Microsoft. No, I guess, no, I guess. I mean, there's a, like, Microsoft had like, they're comparable. 50% of the population of the planet was used in a Microsoft product. The computer using public, yeah. But like, Facebook is more than that.

It was like 98% actually. But Facebook is like, truly enormous. Like they are comparable. Right. And scale. Right. Especially as they move it in the developing world, like if you look at, like what they're doing with, like, internet there, where they're coming,

preloaded on phones, that they're subducing the internet on. Which is super, which is super, super crazy thing, you know, where it's like, internet is free to use, it's like free to use the Facebook stuff and the other stuff costs you money and like, developing nations. Yeah. So Facebook is the internet for this group of people, which is insane. Yeah. But I, yeah, I do think that's kind of what's coming. And so to get back to this first question about how the media is doing, anyone who's willing to play that game and who's gonna be a part of that is getting in on something that will be at least temporarily big and fast and weird and unpredictable.

Is that just saying? Anyone who's not ready to do that now needs to like figure out what they're gonna do. This is interesting. Ready to do that now needs to like figure out what they're gonna do This is interesting. So you're saying anybody who's willing to like I'm gonna publish my stories on Facebook Yeah, basically they're good to go But I was not for the first short time well just but anybody who's like I'm not I'm not going to relent I'm not going to put my stories on that platform Is is is basically dooms what you're saying. No, I just think they would need to have... They have been a bit set of pressures.

Yeah, they would need to have a different way to make money than, you know, display advertising or like... But I guess what I wonder is, does the user differentiate that much between content they can get on Facebook and content they leave Facebook for? No, I think that's part of why the Facebook thing will work. The authority's getting most of stuff in Facebook anyway.

And I see it like anecdotally, like more and more of my friends who aren't in media, like back home in Georgia, like putting way and way more stuff on Facebook like in the last six months to a year. And like, that's just like where they're getting all their news. So like, why would they come back off of it if it's all like right there? Yeah, and like, I think you can just look at what happened

with video really quickly. It was like on Facebook, you could upload videos, but no one really did. And then suddenly the ice bucket thing happened. And like that was a complicated thing, but it was enormous. And then Facebook started like thinking more seriously about hosting video. And it's had from what I've heard, a pretty serious effect on YouTube's outside traffic. Like Facebook was an enormous source of traffic for YouTube.

The way they, they're, I mean, there was this great comment thread, like I can't remember where it was now, it was somewhere deep in Meta Filter, it was some, some X Google engineers talking about how they couldn't believe it the first time they saw a YouTube video streaming in newsfeed embedded with their ads in it.

They were like, this doesn't make any sense. Like how long is this gonna be allowed to happen? And the answer was pretty long time. And then now Facebook's like, we have a video product, it's better for our users because it starts playing instantly. We, like the controls are there, it loads with the app. You don't have to like call some outside site. And they're like, think of it from their perspective.

It's the most obvious thing in the world. They haven't put ads over it yet. Like they haven't figured out how to do that yet. How do you run pre-roll on a muted video? Right, but though, you know, that's, this is now their wonderful problem to have that they can figure out. No, right, but it is unbelievably sticky. but this difference between inside outside with YouTube, it was

even smaller. It was like, you could literally embed them in the feed for a while. And still it was like a total like that little time difference, that behavioral difference, the way that feels different is really matters a lot when people are scrolling by you in like one second. I mean, yeah, except you have to admit, is not just Facebook going like what's best for our users in this situation? Well, no, that's not that. That's not for the users.

It's like what's going to get people to use Facebook more? Right. What's going to get people to use Facebook more? And admittedly, a video that starts playing when you don't do anything and doesn't have sound so it's not annoying and like might make you stop and your feed and watch it for a few seconds or a few minutes, which is what happens, which is the incredible thing about Facebook video now is that you're scrolling through your feed and you see something like basically playing

and you're like, I'll stop and look at this. And because a lot of the stuff is subtitled, maybe all of it, I don't know at this point, it seems like a lot of it. You kind of like just stop. Yeah. Who's that subtit subtitles would be? Who's that subtitles would be something

that people really want it? Yeah. You think about the massive people. You know, most people don't like subtitles. I love subtitles. I'm pretty good. This is like a big fight with my girlfriend. It's not a big fight.

I think a thing that's like, I mean, you put subtitles on movies. You put them on games. Yeah. I hate that. Yeah. Have them on. Let's suck yourself out of the experience. I have them on with Arkham City.

I like it's been. Arkham Night. Arkham Night, yeah. We gotta talk about that. Actually, let's take a break, because there's an ad that I have to do. We'll be right back. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Hello. Today's sponsor is Casper mattresses, obsessively engineered American made mattresses at a shockingly fair price. And now you can get $50 towards any mattress purchase by going to Casper.com slash Joshua and using code Joshua. So you spend about a third of your life sleeping. You probably want to make sure you're doing it on a good mattress. Casper brings together two comfy technologies for better nights and brighter days, latex foam

and memory foam. So, they've got just the right sink, just the right bounce, no matter how you sleep. They've got a risk free trial and return policy. They'll deliver it straight to you. You can try the bed for 100 days and if you're not happy, they'll pick it back up. At the store, maybe you'll get a minute to try their mattresses with Casper, you'll actually get to sleep on it mattresses with Casper, you'll actually get to sleep on it for a hundred days, which is a long time to be asleep if you

ask me, but you know what? Different strokes for different folks. It's $500 for a twin-size mattress and $950 for a king-size mattress. Compare that to industry averages, it's a pretty crazy price point. So get your $50 towards any mattress purchased by going to Casper.com slash Joshua and using code Joshua, terms and conditions. Call me crazy for saying this. Feel free to tell me that this sounds crazy. Doesn't feel like we went faster than we should have on technology, like on like mobile technology? It was like when the first iPhone had Edge

and everybody was like, what the, why? Like the blackjack has 3G, like why does this have Edge? And then Apple brought out like the 3GS or the 3G and then the 3GS. But didn't it feel like we were at that point, it was clear that Apple knew something that maybe we didn't and like now looking back on it, I'm like, oh, I get it.

Like, we'd move way faster than we should have. I mean, it felt like it was going to take forever to get like, forgy together. Like, I remember when LTE was like a cool thing, and we had to like, wait for it, and I explain like, oh man, this is fucking going to take forever. I don't know, it's going to be so slow. Yeah, but LTE compared to Wi-Fi, for instance. Yeah. And like, Wi-Fi here compared to Wi-Fi in other countries, when you make the comparison, it's fucked up.

Like, you mean like LTE or like, I mean like like, like, like, broadband service or whatever. You mean the market hasn't provided like, exactly? I mean, that in America, we don't have any cohesive system to provide like, upgrades to the overall network that makes sense for after you- I know, I was, that in America, we don't have any cohesive system to provide upgrades to the overall network that makes sense for after-

I know, I was making a kind of like, I think people have been talking about Uber stuff lately in sort of it, funding with cities has been like, well, the market will provide and dictate. It's like, well, the market hasn't provided the fast broadband. No, one of the great free market, I mean, this is the great free market argument that always, at least in America, seems to break down in really fundamental and important ways. I mean, I think it's like, the rapid expansion is amazing, but we don't have infrastructure in place to actually handle what it is we're made.

I mean, we don't even have an infrastructure to handle bridges. So like to get 80% of all bridges in America need repair work. It's some crazy things like that. And's bridges and roads have been around forever. And bridge for a few of my iPhone upgraded really fast. It's not actually in a way. Well, you can build a bridge out of iPhone if you have enough of them. No, actually, they don't need 3G at all to operate as a bridge. But the thing is, like, but the thing is it's like, you do, I do think we, we've moved so quickly.

And so like blindly into, I'm not knocking it, this is what happens, you have this explosion of technology. But web pages have a bunch of shit on them. They're like, oh, I think they're just... There's a lot with software, it'll sort of software becomes sufficiently, given a certain amount of resources or a certain amount of CPU speed software will become as bloated as hardware allows it to be. I'm looking at the same thing with bandwidth. Yeah, but look at OS X, the new versions of OS X, or the newest version of iOS, or Apple

music. People are talking about this today. It's so bad. It's just slow. Talk about things moving too fast. iOS on an iPhone is starting to feel like an old platform. Right. Like, this is what's implicit about the Apple Watch is that Apple's like mindful of making

sure that something else doesn't come next because it knows that like there's something really fundamentally broken about the way iOS works now that will be obvious once someone figures out how to fix it, which is that you open it up. And there's still the same grid that there was in 2007. Yeah, well, there's more in it. There's more stuff to do.

You're a man, right, fun. Still though, you open it up and you have some widgets. I don't know, it is, it is actually, it is actually like that's the thing that was so interesting about what Google now is doing and what Apple's trying to do with their new thing. What is it called? Like, it's the deep app stuff. It's like, about what Google now is doing and what Apple's trying to do with their new thing. What is it called? It's the deep app stuff. It's like, I figured the name, it was a bad name.

That's bad though, we'd not have a stupid big of the name. It's like this predictive, it'll know what you want to do before you do it, it knows what app you want to use. That kind of stuff, suddenly you're going to start, I mean, we think about these things, I mean, we still think about things, it's like these segmented squares on a screen, you go into this one, into that one, into that one, and like none of them know what you're

doing and none of them talk to each other. Well, there is a big, I feel like there was a big pundit explosion six months ago where we were just talking about all the notifications or like the new home screen. I mean, I didn't use an Android phone for the last couple of months and I actually, or last month or so. And what I found is really an interesting difference between using an Android phone now and using an iPhone is that I like live out of the notifications. I've made this observation before,

but like the notifications become the place where like you're going between apps and you're like replying to things and you're like making decisions on what you wanna do versus like going to dig down and say, I'm opening this, now I'm gonna do something. Yeah, I think Android is a smarter system at this point. The problem, the reason I stick with an iPhone

is the apps are still better, but like, it's crazy. It's crazy how. It's crazy how stupid and bad and broken notifications are and iOS. They're fucked up. Well, I actually got my iPhone out today and it was like, I'm gonna switch back because I messages drive me crazy.

Because basically everybody I know has an iPhone. And if you're not part of I message, like when you, so many sends a video, you get like some sort of weird 3GP video that's like, it's like two pixels tall and it looks like, and my daughter looks like a distorted mutant in it. And I'm like, this is the worst thing in the world. Well, there's still some like basic problems with,

like, when I was using an Android phone for a while, recently, I was just not getting group messages. But this is because again, but again, because all my friends are running messages. This goes back to the argument that group messaging is based on some technology, MMS and SMS, are like from the dark ages of technology. They're like from 1986 or something.

That's when those were invented, 1981. I don't know when they were invented, but like that whole idea, there's a character limit on SMS. You're sending these little packets of data through the cellular network. And I don't know. Well, because they're like tucked inside of other data, like it's basically, that's why when people were charging like absurd amounts for it, it was crazy because it's like, this data is carried anyway. Right. Right. No, that was sort of what kick started a lot of the big messaging apps. I'm not even, I'm not sure if WhatsApp was one of them, but there were all these apps for years

that were like give us a book or give us like, buy this app and we'll do unlimited messages for free. And they got, it's, it's, it's, it got to be huge just because that's a mess with fuck right? Right. I mean, I mean, I message us WhatsApp for Apple products essentially. Like it's basically like a better, but here's, well, actually we should, we could talk,

we could do a whole episode about this and maybe we will, but that's actually really interesting because we, it's like we are moving away from having like identifiers that are universal, like an email address is universal, like you send an email, it goes to an inbox somewhere, you send from your inbox to something, like it's completely agnostic. You can have like a million different apps that manage your inbox, but they're all totally, like Boxer is an email app. You can have her inbox or Gmail or Apple Mail or any of these things.

And they all work differently. They all display your shit differently. They have different actions and whatever. Everything is ruined. Like there's no recovery. No, I know that but emails universal, like a phone number is universal. It's not anymore though.

Like yeah, the addresses. No, it used to be, but I'm saying, but now number is universal. It's not anymore though, like, yeah, the addresses. No, it used to be, but I'm saying, but now we're going into a situation where you've got like these like, oh, you're on WhatsApp or you're on group me, or you're on Slack, or you're on whatever you think. Yeah, I was Google, hang out. And they're all like super,

it's like if you're not on the platform with the other people with your unique identifier on that platform, then you're in no man's land. Well, the thing I got caught between is when I started a conversation with somebody on one thing, like I message and it's like, oh wait, did I talk to you on I message? Or was it hangouts?

You know, Paul actually had a really good, I had to say this bit like WebOS, had this idea that it would link together all of your communications. And I think Windows Phone kind of did this a little bit. But it basically be like, oh, you're on G chat or you're SMSing with somebody, or you're on this Skype or whatever.

And it would basically put it to you in a feed. And you'd see all of your communications with that person. Like their phone number would be their identifier. But that's like, I think that was too obvious of a play on anyone's part to like own it. No, I think the problem is that people wanna own your attention. Just the same way as the platform was. Yeah, Microsoft figured that out or whatever.

And then everyone's in there at one point, they're just, I mean, this is the dynamic that rules everything in my mind. So it's probably, I'm probably like, diluted at this point about this. I'm like, fixated on this idea. But like Microsoft, if they can manage to contain every notification

for your texting and your calls and your emails and thread them together effectively, then they would create something that they should very clearly own. If that worked and everyone started using it, they'd be like, oh, well, actually, let's replace this with Microsoft. Unless they were interested in the user. Well, they are to the extent. Who would be able to do that with Hangouts?

Or they went from Jabber, like, open source, where you can't use it anywhere to, like, now Hangouts is proprietary. But I'm saying no, but the way to do it would be to say, like open source, but you can't use it anywhere to like now hang out as proprietary. But I'm saying no, but the way to do it would be to say like, okay, everything that can be a message or like any communication between you or me, whether it's like a video or a photo or a text message or whatever it is, like I can do all those things

in 20 different apps, but like you're still you and I'm still me, right? Like we're still communicating on that. Yeah, and hypothetically you could thread that together. What I think John's right there, whoever was doing the threading would eventually be like, well, we should have our own. Right, which is user aggressive and sucks for like the consumer

and makes her worse communicate. It's the worst community I've ever done. For anyone doing that to make. But it's like saying you can only call sprint customers if you have a sprint phone. I mean, that's sort of what you, there was service to service free minutes for a long time. Yeah, there was. And then there wasn't.

But I'm saying that companies don't act in the best centers of their users after they act in the best centers of them as companies. So that's how they survive. That's capitalism. Well, I mean, because ultimately, it's also how they fail. Well, if you think about it, they're ultimate. I've figured it was reading this, but really, the real end user for this thing is the shareholder.

It's not like that's who the company's ultimately answering to. It's not their users, it's their shareholders. They can't answer to shareholders if they piss their users off. And so there's gotta be a point where you, anyhow, okay, let's talk about two things really quickly, because I feel like we spent a lot of time talking about two things that are not in the news, and there are two things in the news.

One, I know a lot about, one, I don't know a lot about, because I've been, you know, I'm not working right now. I want to talk about Gokker a little bit. I know it's a sensitive subject, because you're both former Gokker. He's a conflicted subject. He's literally like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like,

they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, I actually wanted to, I actually want to talk about like this in the context of what we were just discussing, which is like, so I'll just quickly give an overview of, and by the way, correct me if I'm wrong, because I probably haven't followed this to close those other people. Well, nobody's written, literally nobody's written anything

that's been 100% correct about this. So here's my understanding, just as an outside observer, with a little bit of inside information. Last week, was it last week? Yeah. God, it seems like it was a long time ago now. Last week, Gogger published a story about a dude who is the CFO kind of NAS who was like

going to pay for sex with a dude and he's married and has three kids. He had a text message exchange with this guy and the guy ended up kind of trying to blackmail him because he was having some housing problems. And it got, it spiraled out of control. The rendezvous never happened. And this guy instead went to gocherns and said, hey, I have all these text messages from this guy from Kondanast,

who is like trying to have gay sex with somebody. Is that right so far? Yeah, more or less. More or less. It's like, it's hard to, yeah, I think it was, the way it seemed as like the guy started making this arrangement and then got a sense that like, it was, it could go bad in the way that it did and like pulled back.

Right. Right. Because the, well, or who knows, you don't know, you know, everything was fine. Like the arrangement was fine, but then the, the escort found out who his client was. Yeah. And that he was, he was Tim Geithner's brother. Right. And so he I don't want to expose him any further, but that's fine. We'll just believe that. I mean, that's the person could use his influence to. Right. He thought that because he was Tim Geithner's brother, he could use Tim Geithner's influence in the government to get something that he needed. Yes.

And then so at that point, it was like a board. Right. Right. So then then I'll go back to a story about it. Yes. And then we could sit here in debate in where I'm sure we could debate like whether or not they should have run the story. I'll be honest with you.

I'll just say how I feel. I don't think they should have run the story. My take on it is like the CFO kind of asks while being interesting to gocker because gocker is a media organization and condin is a media organization is not a newsworthy media subject and did probably like I'm I I labor to find the justification for like first off like outing a guy who we don't know what his status is at all like. Yeah, he's like, he's like, he's on between the two. He's like, cool with it.

Like, he's seriously relationships are fucked up and screwy now. Like, everybody's doing their own thing. Like, it's not like some normal nuclear, no, but like the nuclear family has been blown up. Revealed as a sham. It is a sham and like, people live in all sorts of different ways. Like, we don't know the circumstances of this guy's life, but we do know he has like three kids who are old enough to read the internet and certainly old enough to hear

from their friends about this. And like, when you think about the news value versus like this human being and his family, it's like hard to fucking see how it's going. Yeah, the thing that's like the lens is very old Gaucker, right? Which like 2005 Gaucker would have been very interested in anything about a conny and asked executive because that was like one of its primary subjects. Right. And it was a smaller work like that, that universe of Gokka and Kahn day was like much smaller in the sense that like

The people who were on the internet reading about Anything in 2005 for other people in media. Yeah, it all sort of like like the whole world It matches the contours of Of a Gokka story the kind that would like that would make you feel kind of gross But that you would read and that was sort of like part it was like a, you know, a gossip story like a or like a national choir story. The, the, the thing is pre Twitter and pre Facebook. It matches the contours, but, but the argument is that it doesn't meet like the various thresholds, it would have to pass as a story about someone in a certain industry with

certain family with certain doing a certain thing. Like none of the thresholds were sufficiently met for like the newsworthiness. Like that sort of. Like it did hit gockers like watermarked. Like the word cloud of stuff, but then like you instantiate it. It's like not quite yet.

I don't know, the right tag cloud. At any rate, so that happened and it was a shit storm. Everybody went crazy and I get it. I get why they would. But then there's this other side of it, which basically like the post got pulled. And it got pulled based on Nick Denton and the board of Gokker deciding to pull it

versus the editorial team deciding to pull it. Is that am I understanding that, cracklin? Yeah, more or less. That's like the gist of it. There's like a committee of people. Right, yeah. But so I don't want to go into the details of that because I think it's been talked about

like a to a ridiculous degree on the internet, especially in media circles. But the question actually goes back to our earlier conversation, which is like, isn't all of this like kind of born out of like a desperate attempt to like get more people, like get more people reading Gokka

and also like to please advertisers. I mean, it's pulled because like this part of it, this like it seems like it's pulled because advertisers were talking about or thinking about backing out. Like that's the story that I got. But it also is like produced because like the space for like eyeballs and trying to get maximum amount of eyeballs seems like to be hyper competitive. Like because of Buzz feed, particularly, I mean, a lot of other publications, it seems like there's like a desperation almost. But I don't think that's necessarily true in this case because like I think Gaucker would have done it

Like I like that was not a story done strictly for like a large number of eyeballs like that's Wow, it has but it does have the shades of a Gaucker story that has been historically the like the really crazy performing Gaucker stories Where it's like sort of what I mean? They're really crazy like Gokka performing stories like that are like, you know, they have the Tom Cruise Scientology video And that was like a million hits or like, right, but there it's like a much cleaner thing because it's here's someone who is powerful The church is like already known to be corrupt and like Right, but they need more of that is what I'm saying like you can't anyway. Yeah I can't be under it I see what you're getting up. It's not like there is a directive to get a whole

much more traffic and by getting huge scoops or something like that, I think what is reflected is like a general anxiety about, you know, other news organizations, the whole internet has changed a lot in the last couple of years and it has made the future really uncertain for like, you know, the web media, Gawker included. And they're sort of like an early and very visible example. So like there's a lot of indirect relationship, there's an indirect relationship, I think, between like these pressures and this uncertainty about like what any websites are anymore and like what what they're gonna be in a few years. I mean, the reason the Post has pulled was because,

before it went up, I think, Nick Dent was vaguely aware of it and was sort of ambivalent or whatever. He's supportive, maybe. No, I don't even think about it. I think he just said that. No, he wasn't really involved because I talked to him like as he was going up

and we had sort of like Conversation about sort of the politics of outing now, but it was a very sort of like Like it was very distanced from like that Because that's a whole other conversation about that like the whole outing Yeah, I think that's changed a lot anyway But yeah, when up and then it was like just roundly condemned if you like this is horrible and then he Was like oh this like this is horrible, and then he was like, oh, this is bad. Which is completely bizarre for Nick Den.

Like, I can't remember any time ever that he's apologized for anything. No, but he's always cared a lot about what people say about his sights and stuff like that. You know they get to ad-driven that there's business. I mean, that's part of it, but I think it also seems genuine that Nick is having some reconsideration of what goggers should be doing. I mean,

that part seems real. It's not entirely business driven. Right. But it's just like he incentivized people to do increasingly, to do stories like this, basically, the whole system was designed to encourage that to do absolutely anything to post-first worry later. That's the design of the system. So the much less important but still very visible controversy now is about you have someone who created a media organization to do things like this and then turned and said not anymore. Right. I just feel like there's like, what are the guidelines there? Like, there have to be some, I don't know that if go, I don't know what gocker does internally,

I have no idea. But like, do they have a rulebook for these are the kinds of stories and these are the things you have to track out? No, it's just like, people sort of come in and they they look at it, look back at what has been there and they're like, we're going to do more of that. And like, it's like, it's like an institutional thing passed on. Right. Like anywhere, you sort of, like, we're gonna do more of that. It's like an institutional thing passed on, like anywhere. You have an idea of what a story is. Well, some people have books, right? I mean, I'm saying, some organizations have like, this is our...

There is a Gauk or Brand Book now, as we learned. Well, anyway. But that's a big, it's an ugly thing. It's an ugly story and then an ugly internal story. And the context of websites and the web media being sort of beleaguered or not, I mean, a lot of places are still really successful now, but the context of publications like that facing down a very uncertain future is important.

Right. Okay, one other thing before we go. Oh, oh yeah. Oh, oh. Sorry, Magnus reminded me that we should mention the aftermath of this, which is that a bunch of people, well, a couple of people have quit Gokker. Now Max Reed, the editor-in-chief and Tommy Craigs,

who is, what was his, executive editor? executive editor. And, you know, maybe there will be more to follow. And I just want to say like, we're actually, it's like really upsetting about the story is that, and they basically quit over the idea

that editorial didn't make a decision to pull the post that it was made by, business, by business. And which I totally understand although they're like this, of like of all the stories for it to like, to for you, the Hill to die on like, this is a shitty Hill to die on like,

for Max or anybody else, only because like, it's hard, it's hard to defend the story itself. But I think you can agree that the post is bad and also agree that the reason it was pulled were bad. Yes, I think you, well not the reason that was pulled, but like the process. Sorry, yeah, the process. The process, the process. It's very hard to hold the two things in mind.

Like, here's, there's an organizational breakdown, and then there's this thing that I hate. What's had me thinking over the last few days is like, there's no one's really been too eager to like change this into a conversation about like publishers and editorial and, you know, the firewall between them and like that's everyone's that the The issue preceding that is so passionate that no one wants this is like such a bad time to have that conversation toxic Like it's all like I mean, but that conversation is about to get really weird because it also exposes like the how permeable that wall is Between business and editorial because of like the crazy pressures and totally new reality that advertisers have put on this medium.

Well, but there are realities on older one. There's this like, we have an editorial team. You could say it's very similar to somewhere like the times where it's like, you have people who worry more about revenue, who actually sell the ads, who talk to advertisers. You have people who make the content. You have people who divide them.

And yeah, these things are always somehow permeable, but each side has leverage on the other. The ad people are like, listen, without us, you don't have jobs. Right. But the ad people are like, without us, you don't have anything to sell. You don't have jobs. And what's getting to be really interesting about this, and which is really not relevant to any of this stuff, is that part of seeding your business responsibilities is a publisher, part of saying that you're no longer

the company that sells ads against your content, or part of saying that we're gonna publish directly to a platform that sells ads for us, is changing that relationship and getting rid of the leverage on one side. But other publishers are changing that relationship and getting rid of the leverage on one side. But other publishers are changing the relationship. Oh yeah, I mean, you use it because,

because for instance, the BuzzFeed model like permits so much that would be questionable to like a publicate, I mean, even a publication like Gokker. Just like, you mean sponsored content? I mean, just like, no, they run sponsored content. Everyone, like the times run sponsored content. But yeah, but you lose this between like what is and is not content and how it's defined and how it's created. No, I think they have, they and almost everyone now has a pretty, still

pretty traditional view on the separation of church and state. And it's not until you've really seen people try the distributed content thing, the direct posting thing. I don't think you can really understand how that relationship changes until you've seen it. I think it's going to be pretty serious. If the business side, the fear business side that's going to mess with your stories is a different company entirely that has a lot of control over not just your distribution, but your ad sales. Like, there's no negotiation. A gocker doesn't exist in that world.

Well, I mean, maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. I don't mean gocker themselves. I mean, the creation of something as brazen as gocker doesn't exist in that world. Maybe it doesn't. Because Facebook won't tolerate it. Because they have like guidelines that are essentially puritanical.

Right. And so you have in that situation the problem of appealing a decision to a platform and being, and they're like, well, no, this doesn't fit with our guidelines. We don't like this. Like this story. You can't sell against it. This story contains proprietary information

about a company or whatever. I mean, like they're telling us. And story contains proprietary information about a company or whatever. And they're telling us. And this is why the platform thing is so dangerous. But think about YouTube, like telling artists to pull their own songs down, like that type of situation, like you can see that happen a lot. Right, and this is, I think the stuff is kind of like

more easily workable when you're talking about entertainment. It's probably much less compatible with like the edge cases. It's probably much less compatible with like the edge cases. It's probably much less compatible with things that end up being like really important news too. But also things that, so what's like the, this, the Gawker story muddies this because people are like,

I hate like this is bad. This man should have been out of it. And this is the public opinion on this. And so that is not a, it's not like the ideal mindset. Oh, you just have about. This is not the place on this. And so that is not a, it's not like the ideal mindset to have about- Oh, you just did not- This is not the place to have the conversation. I mean, that story is not the place to have the conversation around.

Because like, it muddies it. I mean, I think that's what you're saying. But it muddies the conversation about the real thing that's happening about this line between- Yeah, the internal freak out is like, the business side is now meddling with the editorial side. And the reason that seems insane is because both sides have or had leverage, the reason that a lot of institutions would freak out if something like that happened

is because they felt like there was some sort, they'd come to some sort of at least like tense partnership where they could affect one another. But if you're one of a thousand publications providing content for a platform and the platform's like, hey, this isn't just something quite work for us, or this crosses a line that we have for our reasons. Right. You don't have anything, like they don't care. You don't have any leverage.

You're not giving them anything that they absolutely need or that couldn't be replaced. Right. Unless you reach some very high tier of partnership that, but that's like a farther in the future. Yes, sort of flying cars future. All right, well, we have to wrap up. Unfortunately, there's a lot more that we could talk about. The fact we didn't get to the second thing, which is Uber, which I really wanted to talk about

because I actually haven't followed the Uber story, but you and you came in here, you said that Uber defeated DeBlasio, and I don't understand the full ramifications that because I have a vague sense. I've been not working for the last three days, so that has been not, that's like me not really reading all the news.

I mean, so DeBlasio proposed. Can you do this in two minutes? Yes, in two minutes, okay. Very good. DeBlasio administration proposed that Uber should be capped at 1% growth in new drivers over the next year while at studies congestion. Uber mounted this huge campaign.

They read these videos about how it's disenfranchising like nurses who want to commute to the Bronx it's who in the morning and and also like out of our neighborhoods. And the Disuge PR campaign, and today they had celebrities tweeting, Neil Patrick Harris and Kate Optin were both tweeting about this. And so, and as like hour is after these tweets went out, like the Bosnian administration announced

that they were not gonna cap Uber growth and the study would only be four months. So it was like complete habituation. Yeah. So this is like Taylor Swift and Apple. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I really, yeah. Yeah, so this is like Taylor Swift and Apple. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I know. Yeah, but you haven't even written about that yet.

No, the Taylor Swift thing was like, it would be a hot day tomorrow. The Taylor Swift thing was like, you know, there was self-interest. It was like, oh, here's someone wielding her power against a partner and it was like, kind of interesting in that way. These are just celebrities who maybe were paid.

It's hard to tell, probably got like, you know, I mean, I've suffered for life for seven years. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like, why did they need you as the most transparent? Like tell probably got like, you know, I mean, I've so you're for life or something. Yeah, exactly It's like they need to do the most transparent like It's like the Harry Harris using Uber There was a C and B C journalist like tweeting like one of the Uber pre-digested pre-digested lines like on Twitter It was like really incredible. Yes. I mean, listen, I actually I like Uber a lot I think it's great. I think they have like totally

revolutionized like a system that is completely broken and old and not working. Yeah, I think they're gonna absolutely win every fight They have like this and companies like them are gonna win fights like this. It's like I don't think any I don't think the political apparatus Anywhere is like prepared for what's about to happen to them But then in like 10 years once, once it's like the sharing economy people are sort of in charge of a lot of industries, then everyone's gonna be like, oh, like we actually just, like yeah. Something was just like,

we just went through like an enormous deregulation and we're sort of starting from scratch. But now it's actually because that time will coincide with a lot of the stuff is automated. Like it'll be like, you're gonna have, you know, Uber wants to be driverless by 2030, right? And so like all these people that they're all these jobs are talking about creating right now have like a 15 year shelf life, maybe.

Yeah, it's like it's a huge 2030. No, actually, let me tell you how long it is. I'll have a 15 year old daughter in 2030. That's how long you this. Do you want to drive it? Do you want to drive it? Definitely not. Certainly not in Westchester.

I can tell you that. Part of the insane thing about a community is like the inability to hold to ideas. It's like you can be like pro a lot of what Uber's done, but also think maybe we should have some regulation about some of this. It turns out that like critical thought about big ideas, about big things that are like facing us

right now require more than just like a single black and white opinion. I do think like we live in a country where black and white opinions are the easiest and most accessible and most frankly enjoyable for people to have. It's like we have two parties, Republican or Democrat.

One is four a bunch of stuff. The other one is against they rarely agree on things. It's like really kind of childish, very cute. I love the idea of like the Republican party sort of trying to adopt Uber. And they seem kind of uneasy about it. They're like, I don't know if we would need this. Is Uber, does Uber seem like a Republican thing

or a down-track thing? Yeah, but kind of, it's kind of an amazing time story that tied up like how much presidential candidates were using Uber. Like, and Republicans, Republicans by far. Jeb Bush is taking one all around to a stand-up stop. Yeah, I'm super him and him and who is this celebrity? Neopadric Harris.

But you love Uber. The political dimensions of the Uber thing are like really complicated. There's it's a story it's a story about like local politics and corruption and the taxi industry, but it's also a much bigger story about like labor and job classification. Right. And transit and generally public transit. It's like it's such a. And also like yeah, it's also a debate about the way cities

are designed and how we are actually gonna build cities for the future. I mean, it's actually also a, like, there is, there should be a congestion study done. I mean, it should actually be a good one. I don't know what they're gonna do. But like, we do have a problem. Like, the city is not built for the future.

It's built like to collapse essentially. Well, it's gonna be under water in 50 years anyway. It's like a wildfire. Yeah, but 20 years prior to that, we'll have driverless cars of the streets of Manhattan. It's gonna be poor so much. And like, stuff like Uber's gonna be a huge part of it. And then to like, to like, city to the microphone.

And, and so now to see this whole process like, like distilled to some celebrity tweets saying like, De Blasio, don't ruin our city by banning Uber. And then to have De Blasio and like taxa union people sort of, I mean, taxa industry people sort of aligns in like this weird thing about congestion. It's like, this is, you're fighting this shitty little political fight. It's like the first time I've seen a recent tech company carry out, like something really big and purely political terms.

It's like all obsessed with shitty optics. It's like watching a presidential campaign. Do you think I was anything to do with the fact that they're head of comms? Oh, yeah. They would flew flew in. It was like, he oh, what's up. There's so far ahead of everyone else on waging this kind of fight because like if you had it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it's probably a bad single example. What's up? There's so far ahead of everyone else on waging this kind of fight. Because like if you had,

TaskRab, it's probably a bad single example, but if you had a company that really had a monopoly on huge amounts of like freelance labor and that if their decisions and the way they ran things had a huge effect on the way people worked. If like suddenly there were a whole bunch more unemployed people who needed to do work through services like that, like that's gonna become a big national labor. Why is Google and Amazon are both going into it now?

Why isn't there an Uber for like plumbers? There is. There are like five. What's it called? Amazon is on the Uber. Google just announced they're going into on-demand services too. So it's like,

No, but honestly, can I just say something as a person who has needed plumbers and electricians and all kinds of shit, like on a regular basis, trying to find somebody who's good and will get the job done in a reasonable amount of time, it's impossible. Seriously, no, I were like, should we use Angie's list? I don't know what to do. Like, how do you find a plumber in the same room? No, but that's why this is such a big deal because these things are so ripe for,

yeah, there's such huge opportunities. It's like Uber for freelancers. Right, but then the result is that, the resulting like the Uber outcome at least, is that you have one company managing a huge workforce that it doesn't consider a workforce that instead of plumbers being like, these thousands of separate businesses that,

that's are still like. Instead of them being like independent, they are on a platform. So I understand what you're saying to me. Right. But like the, I mean, life is an independent platform. Independent platform. Incredibly hard. And like, you have to worry about your own health care

and your small business owner and all this stuff. If it works out, you have some autonomy. If it doesn't, it's terrifying, you know, it's terrifying, whatever. And, but it's still different from being one of the thousand uber plimmers. Because you are then part of the, you're no longer part of the economy in a very direct way.

You are now part of this like managed subset of the economy. You're not way, you are now part of this managed subset of the economy. You're not an employee, so you don't get the benefits of that, you're not a freelancer, so you don't get whatever less tangible benefits of that. You are just like this, you're part of a system with probably a little bit more, like a little bit less room to breathe,

like a more efficient managed system servings. This is Or goal. I think this might be the great question of our time, which is like can independence exist? Sure it's in a connected world. Just in this immediate future scenario, it will be very important to navigate these questions, especially with regards to labor.

And Uber as the first example is like, really something to watch. I think we just need to properly and regulate the crap out of everything. Well, you can't regulate this. This is the whole thing. Like they we just have to plop around. We just have to regulate the crap out of everything. You can't regulate it. This is the whole thing. Like they were like part of the federal regulations.

Yeah. Well, ha ha ha ha. Hey, work for Microsoft. OK, we got to wrap it up. Didn't it work for Microsoft? I don't know. Didn't work for Microsoft. No.

Sorry. Well, that's our show. John and Matt, thank you for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time. We're recording. This was, yeah. We've been recording. This is very, this is a very interesting episode. I don't know if people enjoy it, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. I mean, because we got kind of like nerdy inside baseball, for like, we didn't even talk about video games. And we didn't talk about video game, well, we did for like a second talk about our income. Well, we did for like a second talk about our come and immediately quit recording

that Arkham night. Um, which is a game that we're both playing apparently. All right. Well, I'll have you. I'll have you next time. We'll just like a video game. What do you play? Are you playing a video game right now?

I'm playing that game on the iPhone where you try to design a disease. What is that? Oh, plaguing. Oh, that sounds cool. It's fun. It's like kind of it's weirdly relaxing. I mean, you design a disease. Well, you pick your symptoms.

All right. We can't I got you. I tried to kill everybody on the planet. It's the. It's like kind of it's weirdly relaxing. You like design a disease. Like you pick your symptoms. We can't I got a ride. I can't have everybody on the planet. It's the only way to win. Oh, that sounds like fun. That is the only way to win. Then we don't have to worry about what platform you're on. Okay. Well, that's podcast. We'll be back next week with more. And as always, I wish you and your family the very best. Although I understand the disease is being designed, you're just going to wipe them out. you