Tomorrow - Episode 25: Anil Dash Takes on The Fonz

Episode Date: September 27, 2015

Josh and internet powerhouse Anil Dash sat down for a nearly two-hour interview, covering a myriad of thrilling topics. Diversity in tech, British imperialism through the lens of The Beatles, and what "Happy Days" was really about are just a small taste of topics covered in the show. Even more shocking? This podcast was a do-over from a previously recorded episode, thanks to an emotionally damaged and ultimately corrupt file. For a sprawling look at the past, present, and future of being digital, look no further. This is Tomorrow at its finest — don't sit it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to tomorrow on your host Josh Witts Polsky. Today on the podcast we discuss the Beatles, Rosa Parks, and ad blocking. But first, a word from our sponsors. This episode of Tomorrow is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a low-cost automated investment service that makes it easy to invest your money the right way. It works 24-7 to manage your portfolio, keeping it diversified, customized your risk profile, and optimizing its trading behavior to keep your tax bill low, all without ever charging commissions. Whether you've got millions or you're just starting out, Wealthfront is the

most sophisticated way to invest your money. To sign up and get your free personalized investment portfolio, go to Wealthfront.com slash tomorrow. Are you a tech professional searching for a new company to share your tech skills with? Then you should check out Hired. Hired connects town with top tech companies. On hired software engineers and designers,

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tomorrow podcast. If you're not looking for a job and know someone who is, you can refer them to hired and get $1,337 in a bonus when they accept the job. So what are you waiting for? Check out hire.com slash tomorrow podcast right now. My guest today is a man that really needs no introduction, though I am going to give him an introduction. that really needs no introduction, though I am going to give him an introduction. He's been known as, he's been called an internet icon by me previously on a podcast that you'll never hear.

My guest today is in Yield Dash. Hello, I'm so excited to be exalted to icon status. Yeah, I can't tell you. Well, you are, I mean, you're a guy who is, well, you know, we'll talk about this a little bit, but you're a guy who has been on the internet for a long time You have done a lot of things that people know about well some things people know about a lot of things that maybe some people don't know about but like amongst

The people I know and communicate with you're like You're like a guy you're like an internet original. That's very kind It's great for me because there's a sense and and I think in that cohort of like media techie people that are like, I've heard of that guy. I have no idea what he actually does or why I've heard of him, but I have heard of him. And I'm like, that's where I want to be. That's the sweet spot. I'll say, honestly, I don't know exactly what you do day to day.

I think a lot of it, at this point, I'm guessing, and this is me totally speculating, and a lot of it is you telling people things they should or shouldn't do, which to me is like a dream, is a dream, job. I like this sort of mysterious, I kind of want to, I don't want to correct any misapprehensible. Well, you're not coding every day, are you?

I was like, well, yeah, actually, I would say in most days, I spend a couple hours like committing code to our GitHub repo So there's a weird which what to make a base so okay to make a base right? I'm just I'm here. Yeah, I'm a lot of projects. Yeah, my album is dropping. No, I Let me see hold on before we get into this. Yeah, I want to I want to let the the the listeners in on a little something So a Neil and I I want to let the listeners in on a little something. So, Anil and I recorded a podcast a couple of days ago. And we recorded over Skype.

I think both trying to avoid the Pope. Yes, yes, Pope God. Literally and figuratively. So we recorded the podcast and it was, we did like a really long wheel. I think it was like almost two hours. It was a really great, deep conversation. We touched on a lot of you know big subjects small subjects. It was really fun And a Neil's audio file I

Don't know what happened. Yeah, well, it's not usable. Let's put that way. Yeah, it really got scrambled I think I just I was so emotionally revealing that my computer was like no no man. You got it. Yeah, you know, it's funny. It's funny you say that but I have a I have a theory That I've told people and they so I'm an atheist I'm just putting that out there, okay? I'm not a religious person. I'm not a spiritual person. I believe that you know I believe in science really but I have this theory that I've had for a long time Have you ever seen somebody use, they get on your computer, and within moments of being on your computer,

like your computer's doing things that it never does, like there's errors or there's, like there's some weird... Oh sure, or the reverse, right? If your car's making a sound and you take it to the garage and it just stops. Yeah, I think. I'm saying mainly, because I have this theory that computers

on some really like, not subatomic, but on some really, and I'm not saying spiritually, the computers learn their user in a way. I feel like things burn in, or rather a user learns the kind of, the little pauses, the little breaths, the little... The idiosyncrasies.

The idiosyncrasies of that particular computer with that particular software. And I do think that like when you get, when somebody else gets on that, like inevitably they, they, they like are out of sync, they're out of rhythm. Yeah, why are they having a computer? Yeah, why are they having a computer? Yeah, why are they having a computer? A lot of our systems, whether it's like our hard drives that have caching or our OS's like story information, are adapting to our behavior and adapting to our usage and

trying to keep, oh, we're going to need this data next and I'm going to keep that at hand. So I don't think it's crazy at all at a technical level to say this machine learns you and is in the same way that a carpenters hammer gets broken into their hand after years of use. That's right. My computer is like a carpenters hammer. Yes. But it's you know it's way easier to to it's way easier to use my computer than a carpenters hand. Right. And to be honest with you. And my my carpenters hammer was like don't don't put that much emotion out there. Yeah, that's what happened with this podcast. And basically your computer said no. It took an MP3 file and put took a hammer to it. It's a huge it's a huge bummer. We had a really

good conversation, but luckily you and I are both very talking to guys with lots of stuff to say. And so we're obviously doing what we're going to do again. What we're doing more to finally embarrass because I try to keep some semblance of technological credibility. Yeah, it does make you seem like kind of like a noob. Yeah, I was like, like, oh, I think I, I'm, I told Laura, I was like, yeah, he lost the file. And she's like, doesn't, I mean, a Neil must know how to record a podcast. I was like, I think he does.

I think I want to believe. I feel supported by the whole family. I said, Laura, I want to believe that a Neil can do this, the simple task of recording an audio file and do his computer. But I don't know, really. Did your child have anything hurt so much? It was like seriously? Yeah. That's good. Record the fucking, you didn't get the file right? Yeah. Yeah.

She was shocked. She actually was more too. That's probably where my son would be too. He'd be like, Ted, come on. Yeah. Basic. She did like a face palm and then went back to her game before he crossed. Oh god, this is magical. I'm embarrassed.

Anyhow, so your part of MakerBase? Yeah, yeah. Is that your, is. Anyhow, so you're part of MakerBase? Yeah, your first... Is that, like, are you the founder of... I'm the co-founder of MakerBase with Gina Trapani, who... Another internet original. Yeah, she's like, you know, a life hacker and many other things fame. I'm amazing.

And, yeah, life hacker, by the way. Like, you know how people, like, say, life hack or whatever now? Everybody says it. Yeah. Basically, she invented it. Well, yeah, and so she's incredible incredible and we've worked together for years on a bunch of different projects and and literally for five years I've been saying I had this idea of like you know Well, I like you go on Netflix and you watch a movie and Some character actors in the background of it and two seconds later you go on IMDB and you know everything they ever did

in the background of it. And two seconds later, you go on IMDB and you know everything they ever did. But we don't have that for apps and websites and geek stuff, and that's crazy. It infuriated me. And so I was like, somebody should build that. Literally, it's for five years. Somebody should build that.

It's essentially an encyclopedia, a database of who makes stuff. Yeah, yeah, who made that app and who did that stuff? And even like, I think a lot of geeks have like side projects or weekend projects that are like, all I teamed up with this person, I don't even work with, but we just hacked something together over the weekend and we built a site.

Yeah. And like all the creative people I know do that sort of stuff are like, oh, is it joke? Is it a joke? Is it a hackathon or what, we did this thing. That's how the best apps get made. Yes. Can I say something?

I found the creative people. We used to do this. I had, you know, before my life, before journalism was a producer and we had a studio. And we would all the time we'd have people come in and we'd be working on records and then like one afternoon we'd like start just messing around with something and do some kind of joke song. And everybody would be like, oh my God, that was really good. Yes, yeah, and I think that's true of every creative discipline.

You have, you know, whether it's a jam session or whatever, like you have this sort of creative environment that is a little looser that's not your day job, that you go and do these things. And it is like the opposite of what you would put on your LinkedIn profile. Right? Like, I always think of like Stuart Butterfield who's a CEO of Slack. Like, his LinkedIn profile probably says like, he worked at Luda Corp and then he worked at Yahoo.

And then he worked at TinySpec. And it's like, no, in the real world, it's like, he made Flickr and he made Slack. Right. And there's sort of this like this incredible huge disconnect between like a corporate representation of our, where we get our paycheck and our health insurance hopefully and where you like direct your creative energies and it was just that and seeing that over and over and over and finally like beginning of this year I was I had mentioned it to Hunter Walk who's like a VC now but he'd been at YouTube and and he's like a creative guy. And he wrote a post of things we would fund.

And the first one was this idea I'd talked to him about years ago, like an IMDB for apps. And I was like, I was fine with him sharing the idea because I wanted somebody to build it. And Gina was basically like, either you're going to shut the fuck up about this idea, or we're going to build it. Like those are your fork in the road.

I like those stakes, though. It's like, you know what? Stop talking about it or make it. Yeah build it. Here's your fork in the road. I like those stakes though. It's like, you know what? Stop talking about it or make it. Yeah, yeah. Ship or shut up. I think that's a good policy. Yeah, and that is that sort of like creative maker, whatever spirit, right? And so we sort of did like on Fridays, we would hack on building MakerBase.

And we did that for a couple months. And then it started to come together and we're like, there's something here. There's like, there's something here. So MakerBase actually has two, it's interesting, because it actually has two functions like from what I can tell. I mean, and by the way, I feel like you could extend this out. Maybe there's like some free, some free advice here,

which I know you want. Yes, yes, please. You could extend this out beyond and maybe you're already doing this, because I haven't really used it, but, you know, sorry. Nice, like by the way, I've never looked at your really used it, but, you know, sorry. Nice. Like, by the way, I've never looked at your product. No, but I'm here to plug my album.

I don't care that you haven't heard it yet. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's usually the case, isn't it? Right, yeah. But, you know, you could extend it out beyond developers or designers or people who make things for, like, in the digital realm or make things in the app software realm. I mean, couldn't this be, I like recorded this record? Yeah, totally. So this people on there, this people on there that have done like I wrote this

book and I'm doing whatever, we're like we're deliberately not constraining it. But it's it's right person for most for the app people. And actually, it's funny because you talk about like developers and designers. And I think, and obviously, I mean, like I've been those things and I'm like not good graded either of those, but I respect them a lot. One of the things that's interesting to me is seeing, in your life, you've probably encountered this a lot, is there are great PR people, communicators who are like, I freelance for four different companies that make 10 different apps, but I help them with their

press and their announcements, and when they want to share the word with people. And you're like, oh, this person is really great at their job. And they were key to that app succeeding or people using that website or whatever it was. And they're like, because they're a freelancer or a contractor or they have their own company, they're not listed on the about page for the company as we told the story, but they were something central that helped this thing take off. And those folks have started to show up on Make Your Bass and be like, oh, well, on this app,

I helped them create their initial marketing message. And on this app, I helped them launch their big two-point-overs or whatever. And those people are really creative, and they do great work, and they're important to the ecosystem. And there was no other way to say, oh, well, how come that one site really took off and had such a clear story and people understood it so well?

Right. And that's the thing that's like, like, that. You have to verify that, Don. I'm just curious. Oh, well, so that's actually, I know, can I just go on and say, like, yeah, you don't actually help launch Twitter as well. Totally. You can totally do that.

And actually, what's really fun, we spent a lot of time thinking about that because I'm like, people are, people are definitely going to do it. There's horrible. I mean, some of the worst liars in the world are active on the internet. Yeah, yes, you're true. I mean, there are, like, in fact, I've done, like, there are people that because I'm like, people are- A few are definitely gonna do it. There's horrible. I mean, some of the worst liars in the world are active on the internet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're true. I mean, that's the best medium. In fact, I've done like,

there are people on the internet, I'm not gonna name names, but there are people on the internet who have careers, who have like good careers, and the basis of their career, or careers is completely fabricated. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm so, even,

there's even this sort of weird, like, oh, well, there's a weird- Like me. Or me, right? Like, people are like, well, no, yeah, well, there's even this sort of weird like oh, well, there's like me or me, right? Like, like, no, but I mean there are people who like, they're people who did things like from scratch And then there are people who just made things up. This is kind of a difference. There's there's also but there's also like this Creation myth, right like this sort of like oh, well, eBay was started to trade pesdispensers like it like well, that's not true That's right. eBay was originally just for dildos. A lot of people are not that.

It's been, which at least would be noble. But they're sort of like, like, we, what's the eBay origin story that we don't know? But there's a, there's a, there's a funny thing about it, which is like, it's publicly acknowledged that the pes dispenser story is a lie. Like there's a creation, is a fiction. And yet nobody's troubled by that, right?

Like, welcome to, hey, welcome to all religion. Yeah, wow. Okay. I love this, really. And in 2000 years people are going to be at the church of eBay, they're going to be like, and the pes dispenser was anointed or whatever, I don't know what happened. So you're, um, you're doggedly anti-religious street carers are very appreciated. I'm just saying that, uh, saying that this world is bullshit. You need to open your eyes to what's really happening.

In conclusion, wake up sheeple. Yes, seriously, wake up sheeple and realize that the illuminati is in control of everything. Yeah, so any who, moving on, but there's these myths, right? And that was the thing where I'm like, so one is the myths are destructive, because lies in general are bad. Right. And then two is there are people who do really good work, but there wasn't any place to put it down.

So the PR person or the like, even like there are sites where Twitter having a fail well or whatever, sites that have trouble scaling, they're like, well, we got this hired gun. This one person who really knows how to scale web services and we brought them in and they fixed a problem. And I'm like, they're the, oh, well, we got this hired gun. This one person who really knows how to scale web services and we brought them in and they fix a problem. They're the person who got rid of the fail.

Wow, the fail whale. I totally forgot about the fail whale. Keep thinking about the fail whale. And we haven't seen it in so long. Well, Facebook was down the other day. Facebook was down the other day. I heard somebody was tweeting at me. They're like, Facebook is down, but I checked that.

It seemed fine to me. Well, that was just exciting. Like, these things are foul, foulable systems. But like, people saw problems and you have to like, oh, you know, I'm going to come in and I'm the expert. And I'm going to, and those people sort of disappear. And then of course, like the Winston Wolves of the world. Exactly.

Yeah. The Winston Wolves. And then you have to like, who gets he raised from the story? And of course, it's like women underrepresented minorities. Like, there are people who are there from day one. Oh, there were, there were, yeah, there were people of color here, sure. Right, right.

Yeah, and I mean, I'm old enough, I remember in the early days of like the social web when like we didn't yet know who we were supposed to exclude. Everybody was kind of there. I understand. Listen, I think I feel like you're mistaken here. I'm fairly certain that all modern digital, you know, web based businesses are built by white men in their

mid-40s. I'm really certain. I'll be honest, some of my best friends are white men and they're at mid-40s, so there's some of the best, some of the most choice folks are white, white, 45-year-old men. But I also feel like, you know, I got my big break from like being hired by a Latino woman who was creating social media tools and like how I got my foot in the door.

And like actually one of the people that helped solve the fail well was the people that had made some of the early, you know, technology for scaling those kinds of social things. And like she's, I'm thinking of a friend of mine who worked at Twitter who like checks literally every box you could imagine for like identity. And I think, like,

like, for diversity. Exactly, right. Like, like, this sort of like HR dream. And I think, I think it's best of the week. I, by the way, I know what you're like. It's like, oh, she's a gay, black woman. Yeah. It's like, oh, perfect.

So, and it actually bit like in this industry, in the tech industry, and listen, I've been in conversations with people where it's like, oh, you know, be great to hire this person because they're gay and black. And it's a woman. And people are like, yes, slam dunk. And it's, but it is true. We're so bad for sure. So bad at diversity in the tech world.

I mean, I'm not saying anybody else is that great at diversity, but we are so bad at it. And listen, I'm as guilty as anybody as of having been bad at it and not hired as diverse as I should have or when I make too. It took me a long time to wake up to it because, well, one, I'm used to thinking of myself as a minority, which culturally we are, but actually Indians are so overrepresented in tech, it's insane. It's actually it feels a little racist Yeah, well, I mean if I feel like Indian Indians and tech are being racist against me is that possible? I mean, you know, then again, I have a lot of I feel like a lot of people are against me

And I think Indian folks in general look down on everybody else Wow world, right? Like that's like that's because they're like listen You know thousand years ago, we were it, right? Like best food, best clothes, food still amazing. Food still amazing. And, right. And so like coasting, like this is a very, no, but India's, but India's huge and very powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it is actually like a variation thing in general. Like I always think of like the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and they had that insane opening ceremony.

And it was like the most extreme thing in the history of humanity. Did they have CGI in that? No, they didn't have to because it was like all of the people. It was like we put one million people on the floor. We can spare them. It's fine. And what I thought was they were like China was saying,

not like wow, look at our great Olympics. They're like listen, we are the original superpower, we run this shit. And we took a couple centuries off to catch our breath. We were just chilling for like 200 years, 300 years. Well, we want you to know, like the Inter-Eggdom is over, and we are back. There were some things that occurred that, you know, like British imperialampirialism is probably not like a high not everybody's loving that no but there's that there's like this mo they're like listen you know we we took our after all for a minute but we're back now and this is our world

again we just want you know and I think Andy is kind of like in that same vibe where they're like like because like the prime minister is visiting the US right now and he's kind of he's a scumbag he's like kind of awful he is prime minister yeah yeah yeah and everybody's kind of, he's a scumbag, he's like kind of awful. And he's prime minister. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And everybody's like, how do you really feel about him though? What, what do you, what do you, like, what's he gonna do to read my tweets and get back? How you maybe, maybe.

This, oh, that's the worst feeling in the world is when you have a certain size Twitter audience, you're like, oh my god, they're gonna see it. Yeah, you know what I mean? Because I can just be like, oh, I don't like whatever, I don't like that new drain out. But that's, but that's, you do a lot of that. I actually, when you've talked about this a little bit

on the other podcast that nobody will ever hear. But one of the things I like about you, and I know we're kind of all over the place, but this is how tomorrow works. You seem very real to me on Twitter, and very real to me on the internet, and you do say things that I think are, get you in trouble or miss people off.

Which, to me is like, one of the things I realize, and I've had a few moments, I have a lot less of them now, but I had a few moments early on with Twitter when I started getting like a bit, a little bit of a following, not like you because, you know, I wasn't on the suggested users list. Yeah, it's rigged, it's rigged, man. But, you know, you say things, you're like, I shouldn't say this because people are going to get mad. And like, one of the things I realized is that the people who really highly edit their personality online and particularly like in sort of open expressive forums like Twitter,

I find them to be boring and I'm less way less interested in them. I'm interested in the people who say things that I disagree with or say stupid things sometimes because they're the most interesting. Thank you, that's a great. And you're one of them, you say stupid things all the time and I love that about you I just want to say I really appreciate people that say stupid things But you know Thanks for coming on the show, but you were like you're like six degrees of prince like I feel like you can relate

Anything back. Sorry. We're way off topic now. That's fine. I feel like one of the things you're one of your specialties It's like something's like talking about something totally random like steak or something. And you're like, you know on princes 1991 album. Yeah, he had opinion on steak. Yeah, I was 91 album. Can you tell me what are the pros? Diamonds and pearls. This is a great record. It's okay. No, it's a good record. That's a follow up to the Batman album. Actually graffiti bridge happened in the middle, but it it really between those two. Yeah you don't want to get it. So 89 when he did something in 90 and then 91. Well from from 78 until about 95 or 96 he did an album every year. At least. Diamonds and pearls is very sexy record. It's it's good. It's a song. Song diamonds and pearls is great record. But it's a mid

level like as an album and a mid level in his career. But what's the best Song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, Main Street kind of thing, like is this very, like, let me do everything I can do and, or like, you know, Beatles, White Album kind of thing. Like, here's the breadth of everything I can do and you pick out what you love at. – Turns out Prince can do a lot. – Yeah, well, that's, I kind of, I mean, this is actually to the broader point of like, people were like, I think a lot of people think, me talking about Prince is either like this weird

affectation or like a kind of a half joke, which sometimes it is. But for me, it's like a lens on pop culture and tech and like the changing roles of identity and culture. Like that was my sort of experience of like discovering all those things, especially like children of immigrants. Like my parents didn't have some like grounding. Like I didn't grow up with my parents playing the Beatles.

Like I've never listened to a Beatles album in my life so my Yeah, I loved India though didn't they yeah, they discovered India's I understand it like a lot of their single handedly responsible for I mean my parents were born in India Came to the US and then when they you know first heard the Beatles are like we should go to India and find ourselves They finally yeah, somebody gets India. Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, uh, So you don't like the Beatles? Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, I really,

well, I think it's like, you know, how America's founding father was George Washington. Uh, India's founding father was George Harrison. Mm, a lot of people don't know that. So you are actually, you're not psyched on the Beatles in India.

I don't actually, I don't actually have that strong. You sound, you sound like legitimately perturbed by the whole system. No, I'll tell you my honest opinion is, Indy got its independence in 1947. And Harrison and the Beatles start going back to India doing their like, we're finding ourselves thing in what,

67? Something like that. So it's 20 years from we're killing you. Yeah. To like, hey, we love you. We love your music and we're going to take you to like hey to we're that bastardizing your culture. We love your music and we're gonna take it to the world. We're not gonna pay you but we just love your music. I got it. It's just colonialism. It's also like yeah it's I mean orientalism as it's called. You know I mean there is this there is a British fascination with Asian culture and exotic culture obsession, which is very well-evident and Beatles music and the same.

The British are obsessed with Asian culture and Indian culture in the way that a seven-year-old is obsessed with the ants in their ant farm. Wow. That's fucked up, it also fairly true. Yeah, I mean, like that's it. It's like, yeah, look, come help me watch this thing. Well, the British, they can't be trusted. We know that. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's not going to be super pro British. Yeah. And it's funny because actually, like, like we visit London and I love London and people are super nice. But I'm just like structurally what the Beatles did was completely unnecessary. Like a boy band coccards India again, it's like, man, I don't think we really needed that.

Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like it wasn't, I wanna believe that it wasn't as premeditated as the way, as it sounds the way you're describing it because it does when you think about it and those in that light, you're kind of like, oh yeah. Sort of fucked up. Well, what was happening when Lenin and Harrison and McCartney what was happening when they were

growing up they could not have missed oh well the Rajas falling and our empires falling apart and we're fighting for dear life you know with these folks I mean because the part of it is like this is my context for this is like so the biggest standing army during World War II was the Indian Army and they were conscripted by the British to fight on behalf of the allies four million soldiers, right? And it's like Well, but can we like can we have control of our country? And then maybe you could ask us if we can fight and then and then at the same time like the great

Arguably one of the greatest famines and human history is happening in the region of India my family is from Millions of people are dying because they're basically like the British are like cutting off supply of food to try and undermine the independence movement. And it's like, you know, that stuff absolutely made the news in Liverpool. There's no question. There's no question was in the newspaper. Right, right. Right.

How much of those guys were paying attention to the news in their case? Right. Let's just assume, okay, let's just not assume the 30th is sending dollars. No, no, no, no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no of T has gone up. And I think they had a good intention. Well, we want to honor this culture that we haven't been respecting thing. But like, well, just bring them over. And I think like Ravi Shankara sort of like got to benefit from that, like some association with them and do it, whatever. And like George Harrison did fundraiser for Bangladesh. So like, there was some good there. Like, I'm not sure, saying like these are evil people. I'm saying like, there's a modern model, which I think people are starting to understand,

which is not like, well, if you appropriate this culture and put them on a t-shirt and urban outfitters, you've helped them. Yes, I agree with you. And now you've ruined the Beatles India period for me forever. Good, I hope you're happy. That's the goal. It's interesting when you think about the people that you've never heard of. But what's interesting is like what you're talking about in the end of the video. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that.

I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that.

I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that.

I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that about in critical terms. And you know, something that by the way, I feel like you had a point that you were trying to get to way back when that somehow we got off top of gone. And if you want to get back to it, maybe now is the time. Yeah. So there's there's a piece here, which is like that critical thought applying to tech and the tech's impact on culture is what I want to be a voice for. And like it's it's obviously super pretentious. And like who the hell am I to say that?

And I don't have any education and anything little on that topic. So why should I be a voice for it? Sure. But I got this platform, especially in Twitter, where I didn't earn it because I was on a suggested user list. But I got all these things. Well, you've worked hard to retain those all of us.

Yeah, oh, I'm not denigrating. I think I'm good at Twitter. You're very good at it. Thank you. But there's also a separate piece which is like, and I got, because I had friends that were part of the founding team at Twitter and I got put on some list, I also got a lot of amplification and voice.

And so I'm like, some part of it's earned, some part of it's not, but regardless, I have a platform. And then I'm like, well, what would I do with it? And once I realized, I care about being able to support my family and live in New York City and all those great fortunate things, but beyond that, I don't have any ambitions. I don't care about what most of the sort of definition of success is in the tech. Well then once I've achieved being able to have a stable livelihood, then I'm free.

There's nothing like I want to optimize for being able to express myself and to learn and to be thoughtful. And like every single day I can say something on Twitter and either it's like really well thought out and a rational argument and people are like persuaded by it. Or I'm like, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about and I'm just going to throw this out there and people are going to educate me because they want to, they think I might listen. Like that conversation is so rewarding

because then I can just amplify these points of view where like today, like this is like a very current example is the prime minister of India is in the US. He's touring. You hate this guy. Tech companies, you know what? I don't know enough to hate him. What I know is he is supported

horrendous policies that have been really destructive so there's like a hard right uh... hinduist movement in india that um... regularly kills muslims and christians and outcasts across the country it's it's violent it's hateful it's horrible and i was raised in new but our family also was really involved in minority rights for folks in this group. So that was like, because they saw that. I mean, it's just like you can't see that happen and not be moved by it.

And Modi, who's the prime minister, comes from one of those hard-right groups. And inarguably, the groups that he was supporting and part of burned a train full of Muslim pilgrims with like women, children, and hundreds of deaths, and no prosecutions. And in fact, people who objected and even like Hindu elected officials that objected were killed, it's just straight mobs. Not recently.

This is, I want to say, in 91. I'm probably conflating a couple different events, but there's like it's it's about 25 years ago You know, but not that long ago. No certainly living memory like very like there are people that survived the attacks that are still alive and speaking out on this and You know, he sort of dances away in a technicality like I I wasn't there. I was you know, whatever I was in at the scene Which is can you imagine the parallel in America? Yeah, yeah, I absolutely can't. Even if you weren't at the scene, can you imagine the reaction? Yeah, and so, and I mean, I think he's probably made some moves to disavow

and mainstream and normalize his views a bit, but like, you're there and you've never been held accountable and that's a big deal. So that's kind of part one. And the part two is there's this horrendous series of laws called Section 377, which are virulently anti-LGBT and were enacted during the ROTS, during British rule. And it's weird because there's this ancient tradition of India being very LGBT friendly, like in a million different ways, but even just sort of like there are temple carvings of every form of human coupling that you can imagine happening.

And no Jesuans, it's like, yeah, I mean we learned that this stuff is normal and common and just human. And the common sutra is Sunday school in the culture. You know what I mean? So lies it. He's it though. It really is. Is it really?

I mean, not at the temple that my dad founded, that we went to growing up here in the US, but certainly in parts of India, like it's not a big deal. I got it. Maybe that's where I'll find religion. Well, what I'm telling you about is some of the practitioners of it that kill children and burn down villages are the ones that are leading the conversation in the faith right

now. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Section 377 is like this terrible law and Clearly should be repealed and it's actually It's weird because they're trying to construct this idea that India was also a Hindu country

Which is false and also this sort of like that Hinduism was already really always really conservative and an intolerant Which is false. Yeah, and so there's sort of going backwards trying to say well our history was always like So I think this happens again in every culture. Oh for sure Yeah, yeah, and certainly happens here. Yeah, and so the Prime Minister is going who's supported those laws and been part of these hateful actions over time is now visiting with Zuckerberg and visiting with Sushinadella at Microsoft. And the crazy thing is Google, Microsoft, Adobe,

every single one of them is a CEO who is Indian born not just of Indian descent But born in Indian came to the US right which is like You would think right you would think like Sundar or yeah or Satya whoever might say Hey wait a second. I don't agree with these politics. Well, right in the thing is but this but this team cook I mean does he meet with Tim Cook? I'm sure he must. Well, that seems like a very awkward situation. Yeah, I think so. Because Tim Cook is openly gay.

And I mean, I think Cook, to his great, great credit, has gone beyond being like, I'm out and into, I'm an advocate for a broad range of social issues. Oh, for sure. That the CEO of one of the biggest companies in history of the world doesn't have to stand up for it. So like, I have a lot of money. And which is totally uncharacteristic of Apple in every way, shape and form.

To me, I think that's like the biggest difference that Tim Cook has brought to Apple. I don't believe he's brought any product differentiation whatsoever, but I do think his positioning of the company and himself in an advocate space is totally unique. Seed jobs had no interest in charity and no interest in advocacy, give it his position, which goes back to that founder myth stuff, but think about that anyhow. No, no, I think this is an important point, which is this, this is a sort of glass-nosed era at Apple, right?

We're like re-engaging with the press and re-engaging with their moral obligation to society. And I think Tim Cook is being an extraordinary leader in that regard. And that's like, and I don't say that lightly, like I have a million criticisms of Apple and of every company and including my own. But like, I think that just that there's this reckoning with like,

well, we have a responsibility if we are going to be one of the wealthiest institutions that's ever existed. And I think that sort of reckoning with like, well, we have this much power is so important. And it trickles all the way down. So at the high level, can you stand on the world's stage with the leader of the biggest democracy in the world

and say, I need to represent not just who I am, but everybody who's like me, who's LGBTQ, and say, it matters what our rights are in that we're treated with basic human rights. I think that matters. At the other end is like Gina, my co-founder, she wrote this great piece about how you represent people's gender identity on a drop down in your software.

So you're filling out a form, and you put in name, you put in zip code, and then she's like, first of all, you probably don't need gender. I don't, yeah, I mean, the only thing that you need gender for from what I can tell is if you're collecting a data for advertisers. Yeah, right. Essentially, you probably don't need it, but if you do need it, make it just free form. People will know what to put in the box whatever is appropriate for them Right, you know like there's no argument for it like you can't collect it

You can't collect good data Well, and then you get into that is like well actually it's pretty easy to normalize right like because the things people are gonna Write like the vast majority of people will probably write male or female You know, right woman whatever and then if they have some other identity that they express themselves by It's more accurate to capture how they describe it than it is to shoehorn it into what we all have chosen. We'll also presumably, in presumably if you're an advertiser,

you're gonna go, okay, we've got like somebody who clearly identifies as male, somebody who clearly identifies as female, and then like, we have to create groups for other things, but other is not the group. Yeah, exactly. It's like, yes, there are going to be people who answer like trends, right? Or they may have a more static sort of answer, but it's going to be a smaller group of people,

but you can identify that group. Yeah, and I think this is the point, or they might have really good reason not to choose to identify with anything because it affects their safety, it affects you. And so I think this is the thing, and that's one example, but it's like there are moral choices in the text boxes we put in our apps and the drop down options on the menu that are under your thumb when you're going through an app. And as an industry, we sort of just keep pretending that's not true. Right.

Like we keep passing the buck around. Well, we keep not thinking about it, and that goes back to that critical thought point, which goes two ways. One is the critical thought from the people making the things, and the other is the critical thought from the people who have to use the things and have in our thinking about the things, right?

Yeah. Which I think is really important. I want to take a quick break, and then I want to get very quickly back to two things, anyhow we'll take a break. So I want to talk quickly about wealth front again. Now look, you know you should be investing your money. You've probably been wondering how to do it. You've probably even tried to do it yourself, but you don't know how to invest.

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Okay, two things I said I wanted to say before the break. Well, one is, I was saying a long time ago, the beginning of this conversation, we were talking about MakerBase. And I said it had two purposes. And one I was saying is you can catalog, you can catalog, you know, what you people can go in there and catalog what they've done. But then I assume, and maybe this is the business, that if I'm a person who needs people, this is an amazing resource to actually identify

who is doing the real thing. Yeah, yeah, because in a lot of situations, there are a lot of people at companies, and as I can tell you, from being at several companies with lots of people, sometimes there are people there who are really doing the things, and sometimes there are people there who aren't. And you don't always see the clear divide between those two things. I'm a talker, right? So I get a scribed credit for things that I'm proximate to just because I'm the name that people know. Whether I did tons of work or no work or whatever, and I try to be careful with sharing a credit, but I'm sure there are times like I just miss it.

This was the same as being like editor in chief of something. Or CEO, we talked about this on the old podcast that got ruined. Being CEO, you're always the guy who's quoted even though there's like 5,000 people who are actually doing the work, or even like five really talented leaders within the company. At the end of the day, people are just like, oh, get the quote from the CEO and that'll solve everything. So the goal of MakerBaseases not like a hiring thing, like we're not trying to be LinkedIn, but to complicate the story away from the lone genius single founder,

energized by presumably himself. Yeah. Like that, that ain't how it works, right? It is these things. Why guy in a garage? Yeah. I mean, it's it's like it's true true

faunsy was a guy in a garage the faun's a yeah right and he had i really i've been thinking about faunsy a lot because really so correctly if i'm wrong this is my recollection okay but happy to you 70s and 80s tv show reflecting on the 50s mhm right so time period when Jim Crow is still in effect Okay, but happy to 70s and 80s TV show reflecting on the 50s, right? So a time period when Jim Crow is still in effect when not when the things were when everything was really good in the world Right, right and the show is called happy days. Yeah, that's what happy day

And you got a guy who works in garage. Yeah, and his office is in a public restroom in a diner That's yeah, that right. I guess he describes it as his office. It just seems to be where he dulls out advice, right? Okay, but right, but his office is a public restroom. Yeah, sure. And his catchphrase is telling people to sit on it. Yeah. Is that right?

I think so. I thought his catchphrase was, hey. Well, he had a, right? He would tell people to sit on it. Oh sit on it. Yeah right now I was like seven or eight. So I don't think I got this but that's gotta be some kind of sexual reference I thought it was like sit down and shut up. Is it like sit on your bottom like sit on yeah like sit Okay, yeah, I think you're on you need a little bit. I don't think it's anything that sexy Okay, I always I always took it to mean like,

if you said sit on it, it was like zip it. Oh, so it's like have a seat. Yeah, all right. Like sit, sit down and shut up on that slide. So I don't remember exactly when he used it. So, all right, that's fine. I can be wrong. Oh, great, that maybe it's not,

maybe he wasn't telling somebody something. Still, I like the backdrop that you're painting here. I just want to get, I want to get the picture of the guy Yeah, and this guy and then also like if on to one same clothes every day right same clothes every Greaser. He's like a really wearing a greaser and then Emotionally he's so constricted that he actually is incapable of saying sorry, right? This is a whole episode I don't remember that episode. He's like I'm Oh, he can't say it right. He's like you can't well, it's because it's not cool to say sorry I guess so so he's the coolest guy in town. It's like this this like incredible description of masculinity

Which is like yeah literally greasy literally wearing the same thing every day now totally alpha I mean totally an alpha male and incapable of even the basic emotional expression and and he's totally gonna have a male. Incapable of even the basic emotional expression and all the women, including like a housewife like Mrs. C, find this guy irresistible. Irresistible, classic stuff, classic stuff. What's funny is that we, as you- Those days were happy, clearly.

Well, you know, you're not even really touching on the societal backdrop here, the socio-economic like happenings of the time. I mean, when's that show said, it's like, is it in the early 60s? I think the early 60s, right? I mean, think about what's going on in society with women's rights, with civil rights of all types,

with the black rights movement. Like Rosa Parks takes place, like her actions in Montgomery take place during the run of one happy days exists. Is there even a black character on the show? I can't imagine so, because what would you do? Like how would you possibly?

They'd be like, they'd be like, yeah, I can't imagine. It would be bad, I think it would have been. I was so excited and I never would have been happy days. It was only one contest there.

So I've got to have written like a major thesis on this. Oh, I'm sure this right. But I don't, I don't cut into book learning. Yeah. I really, like, there's a, there's only one contest I've ever wanted to win. And it's banana republic had a contest. I like this. Where they were, they said, you know,

if you buy our new fashion line that we did in conjunction with Mad Men, you can win a walk buy our new fashion line that we did in conjunction with Mad Men, you can win a walk on a roll to Mad Men. Yeah. Like you would be an extra. And I just, like I so desperately wanted to win it, because what would they do? Yeah. What would they do?

They had to invent a totally weird history. They had to put me like a historian. Like it would be so distracting. It would be, it would be, it would be completely break the show. It would cost them in some, there cost him in some Indian businessman or something. So my dad used to use the US in 1963. Yeah, they did. And the immigration laws changed in 1965

to allow Indians basically to immigrate. But at that point, from like 40, so in 1915 or 16, they passed the Chinese Exclusion Acts that were like no Chinese people can immigrate. And then they had a line at the end that was like one sentence. And so it was like, and none of you Indians either. So like that was the law. And then after this 4 million Indian soldiers showed up and like helped the allies win. They're like, listen, we love you guys.

So we're going to let 100 Indian people in every year. Okay. So that was the law from like 47 or something until 65. Wow. And that was a pair of my dad was one of those hundred. So there was like maybe a couple thousand Indian people in the US total when my dad came to the US in the 63.

So in the time period when madman runs, there's probably fewer than 10,000 Indian people in America and nobody's seen one. And it would be a good deal. Well, I mean, if it can be anywhere the somebody's gonna be in new yorks and you are right so they're probably a few hundred a new york right and so that but some you know maybe in the advertising industry

probably not i'm thinking not i'm thinking judging by what i saw how they treat white people and i don't think yeah there were a lot of you folks are showing it's true well as a big it was a big i mean they kind of i mean they didn't even i mean a madman by the way i love madman's true. It was a big, I mean, they kind of, I mean, they didn't even, I mean, I'm mad at, by the way, I love mad men. Sure. But, you know, they didn't really touch on, I mean, they kind of got into it a little bit later on,

but like, with what was going on with Black rights and civil rights in America. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they sort of, it's a side story in that. Well, right, but it's there because you couldn't avoid it. But it's a white man, the show's told from a white man's perspective. Sure, sure. So it's not, you can't really ask.

The exciting thing was that what they meant in doing this banana republic contest was like, you would just cruise by in the background and you'd be able to freeze the frame it on your T-Vo. And then you would put it on your Instagram and tell people I was on that way. Sure, that's what they wanted to do. But did this happen?

Did somebody win this? I'm sure, I don't even know. Do you think it was a white guy? I just know I didn't win. That's what I know. That's what you wanted to win. If I wanted to, imagine how bad he would break the show maybe it's a guy who got a vacation. You just got a really good tan Yeah, I know they just like they play it. Yeah, they play it totally differently

Yeah, yeah, they'd be like just put on some wide lapels and look cool But I just think about like you would like because it would totally take you out of the show Like if you just saw in the background of one shot where everything's so meticulous and everything's period and everything is exactly right and some Indian dude goes just just walking just not even anything just walking the background and probably I would have to wear a turban like I think do you want to pull off because you would probably be sick back then like I think that's probably most of the I don't think I don't think either but in her public or madman would get into this

love well right but even if they didn't even if I'm straight up just wearing a don draper suit, you'd be like, what the fuck is that? You'd look great in a don draper suit. I do, this true. But I think the point here is like it would, it, there was a meeting at banana republic, right? Or they're like, we're going to make the best contest.

We have got the perfect way to capitalize on Mad Men's popularity and our association with them. And nobody in that meeting was like, what if anybody who's not a white person, it didn't even occur to them. And I was like, that was such a thrill to me, because I'm always imagining the meeting, like everything in culture, like I see a sign in a McDonald's. What if somebody had some of those top-of-the-chairs? Yes, right? Yes. Or somebody has a prosthetic limb, like everything in culture, like I see a sign in a McDonald's. What does somebody who is a college? Yes, right?

Or somebody who has a prosthetic limb, like anything. Anything of the contemporary world. That'd be great. And it would just be like, or somebody with a non-traditional gender representation, like any of these things. All right, now you're just getting crazy. We just collapsed the show and I was like, I'm sure they had some kind of video power though, right? They could have been like, you know, you don't really work for this episode because you're not white.

Right. Right. But just something like that. I just, that's so good. All right. Well, I'm disappointed you didn't win. All right. Hold on. So we managed to burn through already. I just said we've managed to burn through like 47 minutes. And I haven't actually talked to you about a single thing that I thought I was going to talk to you about. Okay. One other point. Okay. Really quickly.

Yeah. By the way, this is. This is why we ended up doing a two-hour, previous podcast. We're not doing a two-hour one today though. I want to say, the second thing I wanted to say, which by the way, we could talk about your madmen of the inter-public contest all day. Did you know number two? Well, it's about critical thought, and it was about, I actually think there's a trend

on the internet right now that is like really annoying to me And I think that some of it is I mean I have a kind of theory So there's there's a is like Critical thought like actual criticism of things and I mean like to be critical of things Yeah, is now seems to go in like two directions on the internet. One is like straight to absolutely vial hatred, right? Like to like a bad, bad, or awful place. And the other is like, people go like, oh, I don't wanna hate, like hating's not cool.

Like I wanna be, this is like, we should all be friends and let's really like cheer on whatever everybody's doing no matter what, even if we agree with it or don't agree with it or we like it or we don't like it. I mean, I was in San Francisco for like doing a startup like cheer on whatever he's doing no matter what even if we agree with it or don't agree with it or we like it or we don't like it. I was in San Francisco for like doing a startup in like a four or five or six. And I came back one of the main reasons I came back east like it was, well one was like my wife wanted to build a site with her friends and then I was like,

I can't stand the lack of criticality around what people are doing. And it was for me, being in New York was, you can sit down with somebody, tell them, I got this idea for a start-up, or I'm building an app, or whatever. And they would be like, that sucks and here's why. Yes. And in San Francisco, they would say that sucks and here's why, but they wouldn't be sitting at the same table as you. Right. And they also might also fund it just because they think about it. Right, right.

So he's like, yeah, maybe. And I'm really. And he's $10 million. Yeah, and it was sort of like just because I think it's about that. Right, right, right. So, he's like, yeah, maybe. And I'm really... And I'm just $10 million. Yeah, and it was sort of like, and I think this goes into the inclusion conversation too, which is like, my goal for inclusion is that we can have all the underrepresented folks that there can be as many black folks and Latina folks and LGBTQ folks that could show up

and pitch totally stupid ideas and get funded. Right. As there are, as there are like white and Indian and East Asian guys pitching stupid apps and getting funded. Like then that is accept the dream. The aim is that we're all that we get the VCs to blow as much money as possible on bad ideas. Exactly. It's pitching the bad idea. Every bad idea from everyone should get some money. But doesn't it, don't you feel like it's driven? I feel like somehow, and I'm going to probably get into some kind of weird hot water here, but I feel like we've taken the political correctness concepts of the 90s to a place where people are so petrified of people can't make the distinction between what is like criticism

of like a group or a person and criticism of a thought or a product. Well, there's a weird, there's a couple of different kinds of uncritical criticism right now. So one is just like never say anything negative, right? And that's like obviously stupid. No haters, the no haters. The no haters policy. Then there is the, there's critique on the basis of sort of social justice, which often gets labeled like that's the political crack. These are social justice, which often gets labeled,

that's the political crack, these are social justice warriors things. And the people that object to that are always the people who are like, well, I'm very privileged, and I hate you pointing it out, right? Right. It's like the meat eaters. I mean, as a vegetarian, well, I'm sort of not that good at it.

I've been a little bit, I've been eating fish lately. But as a person who's been a vegetarian and as having a wife has been a vegetarian, if you ever talk about vegetarianism to people who eat meat, they get very defensive and angry at you like how dare you question my Privileged eat whatever I want. It's so funny for me because it's very uncomplicated. I eat meat And I know that probably in my son's generation, but if not the one after that

It's gonna look unconstantable that I did so. I generation but if not the one after that it's gonna look on constable that i did so i hope so so so it's very like it's like i'm not i'm not like i've curtailed it i've tried to be more reasonable about sourcing and i'm not pretty i'm not preaching and you can get it but what i'm saying is like you want to put that uh... those beautiful animals in your mouth and don't let me stop you know what this is literally how i think i was

like pigs are incredibly smart. Incredibly soft. That's why I stopped eating these because of a pig. But the difference is like I've actually like butchered a hog and dressed down animals and like you know taking a part of goat and you second me. Well, no, I mean it's like you know it's not. I'm not like I'm not proud of it but but I like, I felt that was my ethical obligation to be informed about the choices that happen.

Yeah, at least when you can just rough up the animal before you made it. What, you confronted, if you've never had the blood of an animal on your hands, you shouldn't eat meat. I think that's pretty simple, right? What if it's just been, what was like an accident, like you're clipping your dogs nails and you clip them to your heart?

Yeah, that's not, that's the count. Yeah, totally, totally. Like I clip my dogs nails too short, so I feel justified eating this steak. Yes, that is, that's not the count. Yeah, totally. Totally. I clip my dogs nails too short, so I feel justified eating this steak. Yes, that's exactly how it works. That's the process. Good. But no, but I think,

so I think there's this thing where it's like, it's not complicated to me to say future generations, including perhaps one generation forward, we'll look in judgment on some things I do and consider normal and be a guest, because I hope that's the case. Well, it's just like how we have these really fixed sexual identities.

And I think in like 20 years or maybe less, I mean, kids are gonna be like gay, straight, like what is that even? Who cares? Well, I mean, even the clarity that comes from when, like, so as a kid, I was born in Pennsylvania, but as a kid, we would go back to India to like,

where my folks were from. And my dad's village is from one of the poorest parts of one of the poorest states. So we're from like a state that's on the eastern coast of India called Aresa. And it's like, it's like the Louisiana of India, right? And so it's like 8% of the population, but only less than 2% of the diaspora.

Nobody gets out, right? And so, and we're from the, like the part of Louisiana that's not in New Orleans, right? So, so like that's, that's fine. You're painting a very good picture right now. But like great music, great food, what they do to shrimp is amazing. Like it's like, it's a great, you know,

I'm very proud of where I'm from, but like the poverty is real. And so, and there's a, and the region where from there's a lot of Aboriginal folks. And they are, you know, a family of four lives on like six to eight hundred dollars a year. And, and we would go to my dad's village when I was a kid, like we lived there for like a month at a time sometimes.

And there's no running water then and no electricity. They would have generators that would run some of power for like a couple hours a day, but that was mostly not there when I was a kid. And I would play with the, some of the village kids, you know, that were from that environment. And even the well was like 20, 30 feet deep,

so you could get pretty seriously sick. It wasn't clean water. And I went from having a Commodore 64 at home. And to an air condition? Yeah, oh, I mean, and yes, some running water and vaccines. Right. And supermarkets and going to my friend's house to watch MTV to living there.

And as a kid, you just go, like that's what we're going to be and you don't think about it. I mean, I still got to play soccer and I still got to go fishing and I still got to ride bikes. Like some of the stuff that I did anyway, I was doing. But it was very clarifying because I didn't have this idea, like I mean because I spoke the language and I knew these folks, I didn't have the idea that this was different than me. And only when I became an adult did I get what I had witnessed. Yeah, the disparate,

the how you know these situations are so distant from each other. Right, and that my cousins who were girls didn't go to school because they were busy carrying water from the well to the house. Right, and in a way, when you describe what you just described, I mean, aside from the water, you know, being, you know, getting sick from the water, I mean, there is something that it's kind of amazing to have had that experience.

I wish that I could have had a broader perspective when I was a kid, or even be able to look back on something and say, oh wow, like look at how different the world is, look at how different life is in other parts of the world. And I don't mean just as like a lucky loot, like just for the sake of it, but having actually experienced it and understand it,

I think there was a real value there. It was the living there, right? Cause like we visited places, like we went to Canada when I was a kid. You know what I mean? Like it wasn't. You're like what? Butter tarts. Yeah, you know, like visited places, we went to Canada when I was a kid. You know what I mean? It wasn't. You're like, what? Butter Tarts.

Yeah, you know, like, routine. This is brilliant. Yeah. And which it is. But I think there's a, like, you visit. And then the difference was, this was family. This wasn't any different than my friends would be like, oh, well, for Christmas, we're going to fly into my grandmother's house.

Right. You know what I mean? And so it was, like, the trip took 48 hours and we would stay for weeks and months at the time because it was so arduous. But like the conceptually I just saw it as going to my grandparents house. Right. So it's a totally different relationship there. Yeah.

And I think I didn't realize until I was an adult how it had stayed with me. Yeah. Where it just was like, because you know, all of us have seen somebody, oh, I got a social media campaign and we're going to build a well somewhere. And I worked with charity water to do the campaign, you know, two years ago now. And I was like, this is for like exactly the same kind of well we built in my family's village. You know what I mean? And the region where we did the campaign, and I was very specific about like, I wanted to be here because this is, these are my people. Right. And, and that was very specific about like I wanted to be here because these are my people.

Right. And that was sort of my first reckoning with like well one how do I use my platform in a way that sort of how do you use that suggested users list. Exactly right. How do you like like if I can solve to solve well problems. Yeah, I mean like just basic water acts because what happens is like so the girls in our village go to school now and It's because there's a well and the well cost like

$12,000 right like the investment on something like that is so minuscule Yeah, it's like you can configure massive for the people there like they couldn't I'm sure would be very difficult You can very easily configure a Mac pro that costs more than the cost of providing water to an entire village in it Yeah, you shouldn't do that though configure a Mac Pro that costs more than the cost of providing water to an entire village in it. Yeah. You shouldn't do that, though. You, I mean, do both. At this point, I mean, unless you're serious, like, video professional. Exactly.

I mean, if you're doing 4K video, by all means, you get to Mac Pro, but I mean not that. No, people don't need drinking water if you're doing 4K video, but other than that. That's right. That's right. I think there's a thing of like, I'm not saying either or, I'm just like, once you're aware of it, you can never forget it. Yeah. Well, that awareness, but that's actually, not to bring this all back to something I was

saying, but that awareness, I feel like people are so, we're getting so aware. I mean, I think what's so amazing about, I've got this big long theory about this, sort of like where, and this is of course in my world, where media and journalism is, and why we talk about the things we talk about now, and why we have things like explainers, and why we have things like TV recaps, or it's like a very hot thing to everybody's TV recaps.

And what is the culture that drove those things? And I think like, actually for me, if you go back to like a post 9-11, very just right after a post 9-11 world where so a couple of things happen all in tandem. And this is a big, I can just talk about this for hours, but I'm just gonna give you my little snippet. One thing is, one thing is like suddenly, so we've got the internet, which is really becoming a thing.

In 2001, people have to remember like, the internet is not even remotely what it is now. In 2001, so people want to go. 30% of people were doing dial up on AOL as their asses. Remember like the internet at all and who are on the internet now and like remember nothing resembling a remotely resembling a smartphone for any part of the population that doesn't come until 2007 I mean when you think about this like the smartphone doesn't really enter the picture for anybody who's an average consumer until 2007 which is like not that long ago, but it could be a million years ago. But anyhow, so you've got this post 9.11 thing where suddenly the internet is becoming a thing.

It's not that quite there yet, but our ability to connect to other cultures to other people to each other is now way blown up and in a good way. And then you've got this sense, at least in America, and I think I do think this resonated elsewhere in the world where people are like, wow, at least in America, and I think, do I do think this resonated elsewhere in the world where people are like, wow, the world is way bigger and more complex

than we previously considered. I mean, we hadn't, in my lifetime, or in most people's lifetimes, hadn't had this kind of global event where it was like, somebody else's reality literally came crashing into our reality. And people who assume they knew how the world worked or thought they knew were like, wait a second,

we don't know shit about how the world works. Or that you could get by without knowing, right? Like, you might be like, oh, I know, I think it's totally different there, but it does it stuff. It's no longer a big deal. So I always, I trace those two things back to a starting point of like what has created

our new kind of reality and journalism. And like, there's a bunch of different, reality and journalism and like there's a bunch of different and in media and there's a bunch of different ways to slice it but some of the big takeaways are this idea that like we started to kind of like figure out tools for explaining and describing our world differently. I think like the explainers are really good example of this where it's like seriously tell me what the fuck is going on you know, and like it started out as like the Malcolm Gladwell movement where it was like oh this one thing explains everything And then it now has become like this one thing explains everything or you don't really know about everything But we're gonna tell you what it means and then there's also this kind of like the hot take slash like TV Recap to me is like born of the like global conspiracy theory that everybody thinks we're living in now.

I think like lost actually had a big impact on this. By the way, my original point that I was trying to connect up here, I have no fucking idea what it was at this point. But I do think that we have these two things that are really similar and really shared. And I don't know why I wanted to talk about them. And I did want to link them up to something

you were talking about. I think there's a point here, which is that we synthesize a lot of information. And I think the lost point is really interesting because the text was never enough for lost. You had to have text plus context and the context was collective. Without wikis and online comments and without podcasts, you couldn't actually understand lost. No, I mean, and they actually, as increasingly designed it for that audience, which is again where you've got that rise of the internet starting to intersect with the rest of reality.

And like, you know, think about loss. Loss has a direct lineage from like 9.11. Like there is no loss without 9.11. Loss is like probably the most post 9.11 show that's ever existed, except maybe until Homeland, let's say, or I guess 24, I didn't really watch 24, but at any rate, because I don't watch my whole look. I believe. But don't you think there's this very direct line

and then it's like, oh look what's happened. Now you're taking this thing apart on the internet and trying to put it back together. It's such a weird anyhow. This has something to do with critical thought, but I've so gone down my own weird rabbit hole. Well, no, I think there is a through line here, and I think one of the pieces of it is,

we don't have complex narratives about technology, right? We still... Are you bringing those back to MakerBase? No, no, I'm bringing it back to being... That's why I created MakerBase. No, no, no, no. I mean, because like, why, like, I mean, some of it, yeah, is why is that the thing I'm working on? But for me, it's no, no, no. I mean, like, we, because like, why, like, I mean, some of it, yeah, is why, why is that the thing I'm working on?

But, but for me, it's more about like, why is it bad to pretend that Mark Zuckerberg, single-handedly, creative all the Facebook from, you know, it's sprung forth fully foreign from his forehead? Well, it's not bad because like, I need to take that guy down a peg because he's rich. Right. It's bad because it doesn't let us fix what's structurally wrong with the platform. Right.

Right. And that's the thing about like, you mean the platform of Facebook or the platform of the internet? I mean, the platform of Facebook, in this case, but like, right. What's structurally wrong with it? But I mean, so Facebook.

I want to know. Well, Facebook is a superset of internet. Like, let's keep in mind, like more people have access to Facebook than feel they have access to the internet. It's the internet. Yeah. In many ways. in many ways. It's more than internet, right? Because it's like that connection and that connectivity, like kind of in the way that like SMS is or something, right? Weirdly, but weirdly like AOL in the 90s. Yeah, yeah, totally. And of course, like, how do we learn the lessons from AOL in the 90s? Because it's not taught at college.

There is no college class on like stupid repeating patterns and tech that we should stop doing. Yes. That doesn't, right? Like, that doesn't exist. You should teach that. I've got a problem. Let's try it together.

Could we do professors and not? Please. I would love to do that. But like, that's the thing is like you can, you know, get blackberry in there, get them in there. They're definitely a case study. But even the basic stuff where you're like, oh, people are making office software again. Well, we've been doing this for 40 years. Maybe we've learned some lessons about word processors.

They're like, no, no, no, everything is the beginning of history. No, you don't get it. You're not going to learn from time. Yeah, and so that sort of like a historical, what I always think of as like kids showing up for the first day of Y-combinator, and they're like nobody's ever made a spreadsheet before. And like I just wish there were some way to have them go and point out, like,

oh, this is the issues that arise. And especially in regards to like the ethics of it or the social impacts of it, to you, it to like the ethics of it or the social impacts of it, to say, oh, well, you know what? Like even something as simple as you build a social network, it's talking about what you profile as your gender identity as, but even like who you share information with by default when you go onto a new social app. And you could say, not even ancient history, I'm not talking about going back to like, you know,

time sharing systems in the 70s, but just say like Google Buzz, right? Google Buzz was not that long ago. It was like a decade ago. Wow. And you say Google Buzz. I think it was less than a decade ago back. Right, but in the last decade,

I think it was like four years ago. Right, right. It was five years ago. The servers are still running. Yeah. And like they haven't cooled off from there off from both the one that was like the real time like chat that was way of those way that was way of what was buzz it was like their

twitter uh... it was integrated into gmail and it had some face bookie and uh... and some to the retive function yeah i don't know if you know that it used your gmail inbox as a proxy for your social graph. Oh right. And that has problems for 1000 reasons. And this is such a classic engineer like engineer driven decision like, oh yeah, just you know, pull that database and like we'll get all the information. Yeah, exactly. It's the hammer that I said like, you know, this guy's like secretly gained, doesn't want his family to know.

Like, he's emailing all these other people that like aren't part of his circle. Or as it turns out, my boss isn't my friend, right? Like, there's a lot of things that legitimate reasons there. And so there's a design patterns that happen, which are like, don't treat your address book as if it's a friend list. And you're like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. We saw that there were some mistakes here. We saw some people were victimized, vulnerable by this. And then if you're a young person who wants to make apps, and you've got a great idea for an app, and you're about to make that mistake again, how would you know?

Where would you go? There's the history. There are very few history lessons. There's zero. Is digital. There isn't even a medium-think piece about, like, don't you think? Actually, I mean, that's one of the things that, yeah,

that's one of the way, sorry, I interrupted you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,, I mean history is sort of, it's like we're anti-history, digital people, like internet people are anti-history in many ways because they think it's like, it slows progress. Yes. You know, basically like, no, you know, ship it, fuck it, ship it. Yeah, and this means, well hold on a second.

And this means that the database, where you pull the database, right, the fight against regulation. Right, like regulation, so you go, if you go into whatever, you go into a store and they're like, we don't take any bills over $50 and they got a little sign that says that That is a documentation of a transgression. It's a recording of history of when they were victimized Right, they got scammed by somebody had a fake counterfeit bill, right and and and what the sign is is The documentation of how do we not make this mistake again?

Right. Right. And all of regulation and legislation, and perfect as it is, as inaccurate as it is sometimes, is that, is a signpost recording, here's something that went wrong that we don't want to have go wrong again. Right, well, you know, and make no mistake about it, you know, people talk about like this, like small government and creative regulation. It's like, no, this is what makes societies work. Sometimes it makes them not work, but a lot of the time. It's perfect because like some people

have a legitimate $50 bills and so we shouldn't throw out the bad if they're good. That's true. Like let's come up with a more new one solution. Let's have those little markers to check whether the bill is real or not. Like that's fine, but as a step one, let's stop the harm, make sense, and we end up with things like meat that is inspected, and that's great, right?

We end up with really, really good social benefits. You want your meat, you want your meat inspected. You want your meat inspected. So, clearly, we want to have, whenever somebody makes a new social app for photo sharing, the default probably should be you don't disclose their location even though the XF headers have their exact GPS coordinates baked into the image. Right.

Right. Now Twitter has enough institutional knowledge that when they introduce photo sharing, they automatically start stripping location from XF headers before sharing it out. But start up X, new one, new Y-combinator kid who's like, who's only been in the industry for three years and just got out of school, doesn't know that. And I'm not saying he's a bad guy because he doesn't know it, but he wasn't going to be taught it in his CS class. Right. And there isn't a best practices checklist to go to another starting to be, but like broadly there is and there isn't a cultural

Expectation, but it also as we move away from education. I mean like basically VC culture promotes like a move away from sort of like Organized education in many ways. Yeah, so so you have to wonder and but I'm not by the way I'm not saying like oh everybody should go to some course in college Yeah, I mean I don't go to college and that's not no neither did I it doesn't really work like that But like how do you how do you like? Create a shared that shared knowledge So I think create a shared base of knowledge or make her base

or a shared set of Cultural norms that enforce a certain level of protections amongst the people who are most vulnerable right Right. That's actually almost an exact definition of what the law is. I don't know how to do that. You got to, yeah. I think you make a law. There ought to be a law. So you think there should be a law. Don't automate. Actually, but it is. The location things are really great. Every service I use when I first, when you've actually, I just experienced this because I got a new phone and I couldn't use my, this is stupid, but I couldn't use my backup

because I had been using beta software. So I had to basically start from scratch. And in doing that, I was like, oh yeah, here's all these apps on board now. Like I forgot how Instagram on boards when you first sign in. Right, and they have to be. And it's like, do you wanna share your location? It's like, you know what?

I didn't actually fucking ask to share my location at all. And the fact that you've just prompted me to ask for my location makes me feel like I'm gonna accidentally share it. It's like maybe just don't turn it on and make me, make it clear that there's a place that I can turn it on if I want to. Yeah, yeah, and that's the thing is like,

and I mean to their credit, Apple and Google have made the like before an app gets your location, you have to tell it that you're gonna share your location thing or like your photos or your contact. Yeah, but like you just hit yes. You just hit up that. But that's right, that's the thing is you become blind to those it that you're going to share your location thing or your photos or your content. But you just hit yes. You just hit that. That's right.

You become blind to those messages and you go, okay, okay, okay. The reality is app developers should go, they want you to share your location because it's better for advertisers and it's better for the bottom line. And of course, there's a certain part of the app itself, which makes it better by sharing your location. No question about that. But at the end of the day, so much of this is about, and this is, this goes back to your point about ethics. It's about not putting the user first. And by the way, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, notoriously bad

sometimes. Yes. At putting the user, at really putting the user in, people say, Apple puts the user first. Every single one of those companies has broken the law on some form of user privacy. Totally. And often doesn't just put the needs of the user ahead of the needs of their business. And you do have to strike a balance. And I think, I've talked many times on this podcast and elsewhere about how user aggressive it is,

how really kind of like violent it can feel sometimes towards a user to do the things the companies do that may they where they make you jump through these like insane hoops. I was just reading somebody wrote, I wanna say Jeffry Zeldman, is that somebody who has just written, I wanna say wrote something about ad blocking, which is a great segue

because we're segueing into, I did wanna talk about this and by the way, we're now a well over an hour. But he wrote something about, I think was sort of response We're segueing into I did want to talk about this and by the way, we're now a well over an hour, but yeah He wrote something about I think was sort of a response to something that Neely Patel wrote that added their in chief of the verge on ad block and what it really means and it's sort of talking about how oh Companies do these things that are bad for users, but we accept it and we we move on with our lives You know, and there is like he kind of catalogs all the things like, oh, if you want to buy things on Amazon, to watch on your iPhone, you can't buy them on the iPhone

because Apple wants it's cut and all this other bullshit. Right. So there are all these situations. And a lot of some of those are just monetarily driven. Like, this is how our bottom line is at stake. So we have to put these features in. But some of our ethical blind spots, I think, are like, you don't know better, and you don't know how't know how human, you need almost need like a psychologist to go like,

let me tell you how humans react when you do that. Right. Because like a lot of these people are like, and they're not bad people, but they just don't considering the human impact of the things that they do. That's exactly it. I think there's, I mean, so I'm advocating at one level, you know, you got to have the regulation, you got to have the laws. And then there's the part which is like, there's lots of stuff that think there's, I mean, so I'm advocating at one level, you know, you got to have the regulation, you got to have the laws. And then there's the part which is like, there's lots of stuff that's not illegal that's

just creepy as hell. Right. It's like, you didn't break a law, but it sucks. Yeah. And so how do you do that in a way? Because like, what happens is the stuff that seems creepy or on the line or arguably an ethical or whatever it is, all is the people that are hurt the most of the people in the margins. Right. Of course. And their concerns part of the people that are hurt the most of the people in the margins.

Right, of course. And their concerns part of the reason that they're not considered in advances, because they're not the people building the apps. They don't get the funding, they're not hired by the companies, they're not present at those startups. And so.

And that is how MankerBase can help. I did use a good ad for the idea though. Honestly, like all joking aside, it does make what you're doing make a lot of sense to me. And make more sense. I mean, that's the idea though. Honestly, like all joking aside, it does make what you're doing make a lot of sense to me. I mean, that's the part, I mean, I hope everything I do fits into helping deal with that issue. So like, make a base certainly, but like, if I have a tweet that encourages somebody to think about what the ethical implications are of what they're building, that's great too. Like, it's all of those things together.

Hopefully, this podcast conversation will make people reconsider their bad, their bad, unethical ideas. Or even just thinking like, and I've been this guy, I've built, you know, blogging tools and social apps and stuff where I'm like thinking about the good, positive thing. We're like, oh, I built this tool and these people met each other and they got married and isn't that great. And that's what I wanted to enable, right? And I've also built platforms that people have used to dox me and my family because I didn't anticipate it. Yeah. And I didn't think about it.

And so like I learned the hard way that my short-sightedness and my focus only on the optimistic positive outcomes as opposed to the vulnerabilities I might introduce to people that are at risk hurts people. Like I hurt people indirectly and enabled others to hurt people because I wasn't thoughtful about it. And you're a bad guy. I have been.

I have been. And that's it, right? Like, we're all complicated. And like, nobody's founder, man, it's like, and this person, this genius came up with this in his garage and people use it to harass people in this way. Right? Like, that is never the story. And I'm like, this would be great to harass people in this way. Right? Like that is never the story. And I'm like, this would be great to harass people.

Yeah, exactly. And yet we make that. I agree. All right, really quickly. We're going to do like two minutes on ad blocking. And then we go to rap. Sure. So you wrote something. You had a Twitter tweet storm the other day about ad blocking. And then you wrote something on medium. Which I really liked, it was basically like about people passing the buck. It's basically about people saying like this is not our problem. And one of the things, like I'm going to just draw out a particular piece of that.

Like you talk about Marco Arman and his accent having pulled what was his ad block? Which is like a very successful ad blocking app. That also happened to, and I'm guessing, I'm just guessing he got some emails about this and that's why what happened happened. He pulled it after realizing that, you know, basically using a sledgehammer to solve ad issues hurts everybody, right? Like you're knocking down the building that everybody's inside of. John Groober's in there,

cockies in there. Sure. You know, and also so is I more with the ads that you really hate. Yeah. And when you block all the ads, and this is one part of your thing, I just wanna say. But it is, there is this,

and actually this gets into this ethical conversation we're just talking about. But there is this. It is about ethics and journalism. It is actually about ethics and gaming journalism. But you do get to this thing where you realize having been thoughtful when you make things is often not just about like, are you a good person or you bad person or do you want to make a lot of money or do you not want to make a lot of money. So it's just about seeing like really investigating and exploring the landscape of what you're doing

and asking the questions that maybe aren't the first questions that come to mind. Yeah, it's not obvious. And so, like, I actually, I had very high praise for Marco and the piece, because not, like, obviously, I wish he would have had a more nuanced and complex thought about it before we launch the app. But yeah. But he reacted to the facts on the ground and the introduction of all this complexity by being thoughtful and pulling back even though it cost him money. Now obviously he's rich enough to be able to do that and that's great. Right.

But it cost him money that he'd made by doing something that he realized was like the wrong thing. Yeah. Well, he, yeah, he felt was wrong. Did it cost him more money? I don't think he cost him more money. Um, who knows? I mean, I he realized was like the wrong thing. Yeah, well, he felt was wrong. Did he cost him more money? I don't think he cost him more money. Who knows? I mean, I don't know. We don't know.

But certainly cost him time. I mean, he had to build the app and all that stuff. For sure. So the thing for me was like, I want a thousand more stories of people saying, I reflected on this and I changed my app, or I did something to cost me money, or they cost me users. And I think that alone is worth celebrating.

In the particular context of ads, one of the things, and it's funny because I thought this right when piece first came out before Marker pulled it, he was like, well, I use Ghostrease database. And Ghostrease is a service that tracks all the trackers for all the different ad networks. And they use it to both to help users opt out, readers opt out of that stuff and to help publishers track people.

So I guess they get paid on both sides, which is right. But whatever, they have the list of everybody that tracks everything. And he said, so I use their database. And this is a really common pattern in tech. It's a design pattern. I use their API and we use their data. And that's how you know it's trustworthy, right? Which is true, like it's a validation of like,

there's another party that focuses on this and we're gonna leverage their infrastructure there. Like, hey, we use Google Maps and this in this navigation app that we've done for biking or what? Yeah, or like the safe browsing stuff, like your browser will tell you this site is, you know, compromised or whatever, then they all share that information between Mozilla and

Google and whoever right right so so like there are these shared systems on the other hand it's a complete abdication of the ethical decision making because what you did is that it's not my fault right that your site was blocked it's on ghostries list and it's a and it's and also like removes nuance from the thing that you're making, which is so desperately requires nuance. Right. And so what you do, and I think we do this in a lot of a second, I just sort of used ad blocking as an example, is we sort of passed the buck and saying, there's some kind of

like an apple did this with enabling ad blocking in the first place. Apple is like, well, we're not publisher-host, so we just let users decide. Now they made the hook for this, right? And of course, and they advertise it as a feature in the new OS, and they have sessions about how to build this kind of stuff at WWDC, and they have documentation on their site about the ways that it interacts with content.

So they're like, there is nothing neutral about their position. They're obviously trying to enable it. Now, I actually think there's a strong ethical argument to be made for why they should in terms of tracking, in terms of malware. Like, there are a lot of things that are broken in the ad ecosystem that you can speak to. But they are not opinionated about that in the API. The API doesn't have easy methods on the Apple platform for making ad blockers that only target third party services. It is trivial to do. It's very easy to recognize at the platform level, at the API level, at the Apple level,

whether that tracking is coming from the site that you're reading or not, but that's not designed and built into their system. So the technology has very strong opinions about what they're enabling and they've made very strong decision they could have made it hard to block first party as an easy to block third party as a nice guys but i think the bigger but i think the bigger issue that blocking is and by the way i'm here's here's one thing that i agree on uh with everybody who wants to block ads.

Ads are bad. Advertising on the internet is bad. Not all of it, a lot of it is actually quite good, but the majority of it is bad. It's the wrong ad of the wrong time. It's intrusive stuff. It's bad actors. And there are bad actors.

And there are bad actors and it's stuff that tracks you when it shouldn't track you and is pulling information that it shouldn't pull and it's chasing you around when it shouldn't. There's all that stuff. I agree and it has to be fixed. It must be fixed. I will say this.

This is something that has been completely left out of the conversation, which really fucking annoys me. People have been working to fix it. A lot of people have been working to fix it. I can tell you at every business I've been at for the last, you know, since I left AOL while Vox and Bloomberg, we worked our asses off. At Vox, we worked our asses off to create new types of advertising that was less intrusive, that was smarter,

that was lighter weight, that was valuable. I mean, there's a lot of people. There's a lot of people that those two go hand in hand, in my opinion, but was adhering to new web standards that wasn't using the bloat and the crap where everybody else has been using for years. And at Bloomberg, we were doing the same thing. And in fact, if you look at, by the way, like, not patting myself on the back,

you're too much. But like, if you look at the load times of Verge to Bloomberg, you know, when I left, you know, obviously we hadn't had a chance to redesign, completely redesign the Verge in the, you know, short time it's been in the existence. We were, we did when I first got to Bloomberg and one of the things that we were doing was like, how do you make this page load really fast and make it really lightweight and Reduce the amount of ads and trackers on it. I mean, I killed like when I walked into Bloomberg I killed like 13 deals that were like things that were just existing on pages like little banners

Yeah, yeah, they were just there forever, you know, and so and so there were a lot of and I'm not saying myself But a lot of people in the industry working really hard to fix that stuff. The idea that like, oh, you need a wake-up call. You know, this is for like people, and I'm not saying Marco. Marco was one of them, and there are a lot of other people who got on their high horse with this smug attitude of like, I'm gonna come, and I'm gonna be the cowboy here who shows everybody the light, you know?

Like, you don't wanna learn, we'll force you to learn. And the reality is- Well, the thing being this smug self-righteous person that I am like I can't point the finger like I think but if I hadn't known if I hadn't spent time working in publishing and building tools with people and I didn't know I might have had the same opinion as I think you just hit on a perfect point which is if you didn't work in publishing and you didn't have the experience the the answer is not to go hey let me get this machine gun and shoot out every window in this house to try to hit like the criminal that I think is in there. It's like, let me go and let me walk a knock on the front door and like talk to people. I mean, nobody did that. All these people who are making ad blockers

who are charging money for ad blockers aren't talking to the publishing community and saying, what can we do to figure this out together? They're talking to users who say, I hate ads. And this is to me like the ultimate problem with ad blocking and the way that Apple has done it allowed it to be done. They haven't done it, but allowed it to be done. This is true for Google and Chrome and for Firefox and other things. Well, there's a structural thing here, which is there's a sort of picking sides version of building apps and building technology, which is I am for these people and against those people. And that marker would not see publishers as his constituency, I think from InstaPaper to Peace and on, is not surprising.

I mean, I don't think, I think that sort of like he has come up in and been rewarded for a model that is about X versus Y Yeah, and I think a lot of it for a certain kind of user It's for somebody who wants to fucking feed. I mean honestly, I people tweeting me and they're like, oh, I put this in my You know in this app, which then converts it to all Texans like oh cool. You destroyed like a really beautiful Piece of work on the internet because like you just want to read a feed. That's awesome. A lot of people have been reading feeds for a long time

on the internet. You want an RSS reader? There's plenty of them out there. I'm not talking about those people. Well, right, but to my end, I'm not troubled by that. I think the problem is how do we get coding culture and tech culture to think about multiple constituencies and multiple communities as being served.

It goes back to our ethics conversation. Well, right, but that's actually what it is. It's the quintessential example of it. What's happened, what I think I see, and I mean, Marko- Marko-Bloxman doesn't talk to me, so I don't know. This is all a projection. But what I think I see- Not surprising. I'm this all a conjecture. But what I think I see. Not surprising.

I'm not troubled by it. There's a lot of times I'd probably block me too. I'll never block you. Let's first see. My promise. What I see him wrangling with is problems are more complex than simple binary expression and code allows. And I'm talking to more than one audience and I'm talking I have to be

Mindful the more than one community and I need to think about what that means because I have a lot of power Because my code has values baked into it. Right. It's like the location sharing It's like you think this is like solving a problem But the problems it creates you can't see and you're not asking the right questions or the right people to figure that out. Like, to me, that's the really, that's like part of, that's the, I think you're talking about like ethics in creating these new things that we all use. It's really about, it's not just about like, did you learn a lesson somewhere? It's, who are you talking to?

What questions are you asking? What's your level of cultural literacy? Yes, like the domain you're entering. It's who are you talking to? What questions are you asking? What's your level of cultural literacy about the domain you're entering? When you decide to get into the social game, you're gonna make a new social network. Who are you talking about and talking to and thinking about when you build that?

Because the one little change, hey, block all, you know, use ghostery. I decided that database is the easiest thing. Suddenly, like, you know, John Gruber who has been like, you runs these very minimal ads from the deck network. Suddenly, like, guys, you probably think are okay. And, and places you think the ads are okay are in the same boat as the pop-ups that are, yeah, you to re-nard it. There's a lot of babies in the bathwater. And it's like if you don't have the conversations and you don't do the investigation, you don't make the considerations for a large group of people,

then you're gonna end up hurting a group pretty easily and pretty quickly. And I think the issue that is broader than ad blockers is every single one of our apps is doing this to somebody. Oh, yes. I mean, how? I mean, you have to imagine like some of them are fairly innocent, some of them are fairly innocent, but like, but they are like, there is, listen, there's just so many new levels and angles to think about when you're dealing with the audience is growing at a ridiculous rate. Yes.

And the, and things can get out of control so fast. And the audience is changing too. You look, go back 10 years ago and look at like the LGB, look at anybody, any diverse part of the audience you see now that's very vocal and very visible, not just, you know, not just LGBT, but all over the place. You have to consider a different world. The world is changing rapidly. The one thing I wanted to say, sorry, and we You have to consider a different world. The world is changing rapidly.

The one thing I wanted to say, sorry, and we do have to wrap up, but this one at one point I want to make about ad block and I'm curious to know where you've fallen this. It's the biggest issue with ad blocking is this, when you ask people, do you want an ad, like they're not talking about like, oh, I hate those intrusive ads.

Some more sophisticated readers and viewers will say, you know, I really like this kind of advertising, but I, you know, the people who really understand it will say, I really like this stuff. This actually serves me in some way. This stuff is the garbage I want to get rid of over here. Most people will say ads are no ads, and they'll go, no ads, of course.

My problem with all of this ad blocking software and it's not just ads by the way It's web fonts. It's the trackers that aren't in truth of that that editors and publishers actually use to help you get better stuff Like chart beaten parsley or trackers that are on pages that show where you're clicking and what you're looking at Yeah, those are you know what the reason people use those are having been in many newsrooms They use them to figure out what does the audience want to, what are they doing right now and how can I serve them something better or more fitting to like their needs at the moment. So, like, so these, these blockers aren't just blocking ads, they're blocking the design

of the sites through web fonts, they're blocking the editorial tools that, that newsrooms use to figure out what you should be given. And they're doing it in a way that is just a broad, very broad stroke. It's like, kill it all. We're just going to give you the content, you know? But the reality is, if you give people a choice and they say no ads and they flip a switch and it also flips off all that other stuff and it also flips off every ad that could be on there. There won't be any content, right? And people don't seem to make that connection.

They feel like, they seem to feel like there's this ever replenished bounty of content, of things that are made, ideas, and words, and video, and images, and you know, that stuff doesn't come from nowhere. And it doesn't need to be funded some way. And if you're not going to pay and if you're the person who says I don't want any ads, it's like what, like what happens then? And I don't think most people make the distinction between like only the good ads and no ads.

I think they say no ads. And I'm just curious like how do you, I mean, how do you feel like we solve that issue where where the average consumer isn't making a distinction? Like you've got to help them, right? I'm leading here, but you tell me. Yeah, I don't think most consumers want to make decisions about ads. But if you ask most consumers, don't you think they'll say,

like if you say you can watch TV with ads, or no ads, what are they gonna choose? Of course, they're gonna choose no ads, but I think there's a sort, and I think it's funny because people pay for magazines and they have ads in them And that's fine, right and people pay for Hulu and has ads in it and they get furious Yeah, well they get the ad free version now, which is great by the way Yeah, but there's a sort of and I think there's a

Some of it is about Whether it's an interruptive and single-tasking you can skip past it some of is about whether it's interuptive and single-tasking, you can skip past it. Some of it is about the creative. I mean, literally, you can talk to people and say, I hate ads, and you're like, oh, well, what do you think about like TV commercials, and I'm like, I hate them. I'm like, well, can you think of any that ever made you cry? And then they'll always have one. Right.

And I've been on the web for as long as the web has existed, And I've never been moved in any way by any ad on the really right. And now it could be. I might remember this. I'll get in the beginning example. Do you remember the Apple ad for the iPod touch the funnest iPod ever that it was on pitch for it like eight, the navigation and like sucked it into the iPod. It was like a crazy... Okay, but there's great creative.

I wasn't crying, I wasn't crying. Now for sure there's great creative stuff. It's a very clever idea. Right, and actually that web ads people remember the most are videos that were made for TV that then go into YouTube, right? So, and I'm not saying no creatives happening. I'm saying that leap into everybody knows like I'd like to buy the world of

Coke or whatever. Like that sort of like that level of creative evolution didn't happen. And I think that would change the conversation about ads all along. But it's a different it's also different platform. It's a different platform for sure. I mean TV TV is dominating like videos dominate. If you're in the midst of it watching a super the super bowl or a TV show that you really care about and a commercial comes on that has the same that literally is using the same tools as the best drama or the best common

Of course it's gonna be effective. Like it's a you know video Video and sound married you know put together with a narrative with like dramatic license That's like a dominating effect on the viewer. No for sure, but I mean there's also no That's like a dominating effect on the view. No, for sure, but I mean, there's also nobody's done a Paul Ford, what is code that's sponsored content, either. Wow, what would that be? I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, the question is like, what would that be actually? The question is like, what would that be actually? The question is like, what would that be actually? The question is like, what would that be actually? The question is like, what would that be actually? The question is like, what would that be actually? The question is like, what would that be actually?

The question is like, what would that be actually? The question is like, what would that be actually? The question is like, what would that be actually? The question is like, what would that be actually? The question is like, what would that be like what is code is and any kind of ad is trying to sell you anything like, if it's a story, if it's a story, it comes off as deceptive, you know, like, I don't know, because you look at like, I mean, a lot of us in the industry watch Apple's keynotes and that is a two hour ad. Yeah, but it is a two hour ad and anybody who doesn't cover it as a two hour ad or doesn't think of it as a two-hour ad is crazy.

But the point is, there are people that watch it for entertainment. There are people that watch it too. Well, that's because it's a company introducing wildly popular consumer products. It's like an auto show. It's not the only reason. An auto show is an ad for automaker. That's not the only reason. Part of the reason is, it's a really, really great ad.

Right? Like, actually, actually, I'm gonna challenge you a little bit. All right, sure. And I'm gonna say that like at this point, it's not a really great ad. It is an ad we've seen a hundred times. Oh, sure, right.

But I'm saying the four-year-old is scripted. And like, I'll tell you, there were moments when jobs was doing them, they were like, Transcendent. They were transcendent, they were like, I'm seeing like a master shaman. This is like, I'm at a Broadway show and I'm seeing like a master shaman, work his craft.

But like, when you watch Chan Cook or Phil Schiller do it, you're not like, holy fuck. These guys are blowing my mind right now. We get to iPad 11, obviously, it's a pale shadow of the like, you know, it's a communicator and it's like that job's thing. But the structure and the revelation of the first times that they did it

and that iPhone roll out, like obviously, were this, like it's such a trope now that like I'm able to write parodies of it, right? So like I get that, like we've done, like we've mocked the Apple keynotes and like I could write an Apple keynotes mockery parody now without an event taking place. Of course, it's become a trope. Initially, it was the best ad anybody'd ever seen.

Absolutely. Let's remember, initially, it started as an ad that only a few people could see. They didn't stream it. I mean, they didn't start streaming until a few years, a couple years ago, really. Very, so. You know. So, so anyway, we're, we're sort of, I think we're talking about a lot of things and a, a, a, a, boil it down to, the evolution of ads is going to happen. It's going to happen more quickly because of this ad blocker conversation, even though ad blockers, I don't think are ever going to be that popular. I have that much material monitoring. Right, they've existed. I'm upset with the way Apple has carried out,

it's allowing ad blockers to exist, and I'm upset with the way people have taken advantage of that because I think it's like really thoughtless. I would say the same thing has happened in browsers and it didn't kill the ad industry or kill the industry of journalism or media, but there is, I mean, apples take it slightly more insidious. I mean, it's like, we run an ad network. We've just introduced

a news product. We're killing ads. We're allowing people to kill ads in our browser, which is where most of the advertising is seen for news. Oh, by the way, look over here at Apple News. We've got some nice offerings. And by the way, there's there's a power by i add to there's a bunch of interruptive i add to the midst of it it's like these two things are fucking in congress right no course the connected and of course that's apple strategy and and if it's not if it's that these groups are so siloed they didn't know what the others doing the shaman them for their incompetence right right like as a strategy it makes perfect sense sense. Like we killed ads on iOS.

You can almost hear the conversation in the conference room where it's like, imagine the meeting. Were there like showing where the guys are demoing for Tim, you know, here's like, I ads isn't doing that well. And also we've got a lot of new mobile views on it. Yeah, okay. So, so, so, imagine the meeting and then talk about the implications. And then we say, well, who is it that's not going to be able to adapt, that's not going to be able to go to new ad formats or use iads when they're on iOS or X, Y and Z, all the changes. And it's going to be the most marginal publishers, the independent voices, the people who don't have ad tech on staff and in their stack,

the people who are relying on these third party networks, or that use the sketchy stats because that's all they can get to be able to stay afloat. And I think of sites I love, I think of like, I'm Gruber, the Dacker Religious Amplestory, I think it's something like the toast, where they, and they're redesigning, but like, and this is,

I would say this to Nicole and Mallory to their faces, and this isn't talking out of school. There's a lot of shitty ads on their site. It is, it's really gross, and it's really slow, but I love their writing and I'm glad they can pay their writers and I'm glad that they exist. And so I'm like, you know what, I'll put up with shitty browser crashing ads on your site because the site needs to exist. And I get that you're doing this because they monetize at a higher rate and you're a tiny, tiny site. So you can't do like you don't have,

there isn't a person to do you know original display as and rich integrations and native content like it doesn't exist right right right we have to come up with better standards generally speaking for sure for that exact purpose like we can't keep running these shitty things or ads but if everybody in their audience their audience is very tech savvy very literate every in their audience runs to blockers well i have a little bit of just go away and it squeezes them even more tightly right they can't pay for like we're gonna innovate our way out of this right but

this is like they just go away but this is like the markers of the world don't give a shit they neither does group or i think i think i think i think i'm like a couple examples but this is the way people think they're like well you know what some stuff will have to die but will have better ads afterwards. And it's like, you know what? I think they think that way until they think about it. And I think that way until they confront it

with something they love dying. And like, to your point about the people who are marginalized, like what the toast may represent, or what feminists theme may represent, or a thousand other small sites that are doing like small, great work that's necessary for the internet to be what the internet is, they may never see that and may never feel it,

and so it would never be a problem for them. You know, I mean, the people who are critical of ads would never see those sites to begin with. And so it's like, who gives a shit? But it's the same thing about like cutting out like, you know, minorities from history. The people who are doing it don't even see them. But that's the way of recognizing them.

But that's the way of ads as a way to prevent erasure and to give voice to minorities is not a story anybody has told. For me, I was the guy who was like, we did a blogging service when I was doing a startup 10 years ago. It was for paying. Well, those stupid bloggers and WordPress, they have ads and they're free. We charge money because ads are gross and we don't want ads on the internet. I was doing a start of 10 years ago. And it was for paying, well those stupid blogger and WordPress, they have ads and they're free. But we charge money because ads are gross and we don't want ads on the internet.

I was the dude, I was that guy, right? And not realizing, I'm just privileging rich people having a voice and everybody else not. And if the web had evolved the way that I thought it oughta when I was young and dumb, then Facebook never would have reached 2 billion users. And WhatsApp wouldn't have reached all these people. And I never young and dumb, then Facebook never would have reached two billion users. And WhatsApp wouldn't have reached all these people. And I never would have had, I wouldn't be able to send a message to my cousins on the

other side of the world who were in the rice pad here in our old village. That happened because ads happened, and it happened at large scale. That is what subsidized it and sponsored it. And that's why the like the ethics of a web free internet that the early geeks wanted and I was one of them, were about protecting a priesthood and preventing access and about denying people voice and expression and connection, and I didn't understand that. And it took me a dozen years. If you want to keep the internet what the internet is, I mean, I'm not saying ads have to stay the way they are,

they have to change. Like full stop. But the existence of that. I think it's broken, but like we can't, the way to do is not to turn off all the ads. Like that's just the, that's the issue. It's like I want to have a conversation. I want to engage with the people who are creating those apps.

I want to engage with advertisers. I want to engage with publishers. I want to engage with Apple and Google and say like, listen for real until you like convince everybody to use micro payments to actually pay out of their pocket to look at things And by the way listen, I'm a guy who pays so much fucking money every month for content I have tons of subscription services. I subscribe to 20 magazines every every music service

I'm yeah, I mean seriously same here, and it's like I'm happy to pay for it Not everybody is okay, not everybody can not everybody can right and for those people Let me like let's figure out how advertising should work. But before we decide for everyone that the all has to die or the toast, whoever has to die, because we're going to go through this brutal period, it's like, let's not make it so brutal. People aren't, no one's being truly injured by advertising, okay? It may be annoying, it may track you more than you want.

I don't think there's ever been an actual physical or emotional injury brought upon by a web advertisement, except like those really bad belly flat pads that are just ugly. So like, you know, it's like, it's like let's actually sit down to the table somewhere and say, guys,

we all have a role to play here. There's gotta be a better way. We can be better for users and be better for publishers. What is it? You know? That's all I'm asking. And Neil, is that too much to ask? I don't think it's too much to ask. I think we too much to hope for.

We have a lot of these stories about complicating tech and complicating media and thinking of a lot more factors and thinking of people that are different than us that are going to require a huge amount of education and the only way I think it happens is if we built the technologies so they're automatically prompting people to think about those things right from the moment they create. Right, that has to be baked into the culture. I agree, now we just have to figure out how to do that. Give me 50 years.

Let's do it, 50 years. Let's do it. That's not just 50 years will all be dead, man. If you don't get this right. I better get it done in that amount of time. All right, listen, we got a wrap. This is, here's what's incredible is we've done an hour and 45 minutes according to my read out here, which is, it now means that we've basically done four hours almost of conversation. If your file is fucked up on this one, I'm going to kill you. We're good. Anya, I know this was another awesome conversation. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for joining me for a second time. I know this, like, we're both on a Sunday here and you probably had

other things to do. But I'm psyched that we had this conversation. I think this one, honestly, was as good, maybe even a little bit better than the first conversation we had. We won't tell them about the horrible secret I revealed in that other podcast that they'll never hear. Oh yeah, well we won't, we're obviously not going to bring that up because it was a shameful secret that no one should have to hear about. Yep, so. I mean, thank you, thank you again for doing this.

You got to come back. We'll do a third one. And thanks again. And now let's, both of us go enjoy our Sunday's. All right, thanks for having me. Okay. And as always, I wish you and your family the very best.

And did I say your family? Well, what used to be your family? you