Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - EXCLUSIVE: Lots of Drama Around OnePlus

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

This week, the crew sits down to chat about everything from ads in ChatGPT and Threads to some OnePlus drama that just leads to reminiscing about old OnePlus phones. There is also a whole lot of new features coming to YouTube that we couldn't help but discuss. Enjoy! Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Links: TechCrunch - Netflix live voting feature Reddit - Taipei 101 ball OpenAI - Ads in ChatGPT Verge - Sony x TCL Android Headlines - OnePlus article YouTube - State of the Union Music provided by: Epidemic Sound Social: Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Waveform TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Hosts: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, pod. I haven't showered since last year. I never washed my sheets. Who did something? It was like, I haven't changed my underwear since last year. It's like, we're three weeks into January. What is up? People of the Internet, welcome back to another episode of the Wayform podcast.

We're your host. I'm Marquez. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. It's really cold in here. It's chilly. It's cold everywhere, actually. But yeah, we have a lot to talk about.

We got Open AI and Nova Launcher, both adding ads to their products. We've got to talk about that. Also, Sony and TCL joining forces to make TVs, question mark. A bunch of one plus drama that has sort of unfolded on Twitter and we got to talk about that. And then also the state of the YouTube union as presented by Neil Mohan, CEO, but analyzed by me. So we'll get to all of that. But first, which is the but first this week? Netflix is introducing live voting. This is such a small little announcement, but I think it's really cool. What is it?

It's like, remember the American Idol days where we used to like vote for the winners by text message? It was texting or calling, I think. Does Dancing with the Stars do that? I don't know.

Oh. Probably. I feel like they do. I'm sure there are still things that do it. The voice. What's the Mask Singer? Yeah.

Probably does. I can't believe you haven't gotten invited to do that yet. I can't see. I can't wait. On Netflix now, live events via either the mobile app or the TV remote.

different ways you'll be able to participate. But you can't Chromecast Netflix anymore, so... Oh, really? There you go. Yeah, they got rid of the Chromecast feature a few weeks ago. Cool. Thanks, Netflix. Netflix is always adding stuff.

They are. Didn't they try to do streaming, like that boxing event or something? So here's... This is all based on live events because it's affecting the event for it. And I immediately wrote after this, if you're aware of any previous Netflix live events, you know, there's zero chance of things. This works for quite a while.

I can't tell how many Netflix live things for Love is Blind or whatever that I've tried to watch that just were massively delayed or didn't work at all. I don't know why. Netflix can't figure out live, it feels like. It's because they want you to be able to do polymarket bets live on the app. We should remember all of this when we get to the end and we talk about the YouTube State of the Union. Because every complaint that we have about all the rest of the streamers will get to YouTube at the end. And it's like, oh, yeah, YouTube is the biggest streamer and everything works. and it's the most stable and it's the entire creator economy and it's where all the content is.

Anyway, we'll get that later, obviously. But yeah, yeah, Netflix is doing more stuff. They're trying to do podcasts too. They're always doing stuff. Today, the day this goes live Friday, Alex Honnold is doing that Taipei 101 climb. Yeah. He's scaling the Taipei 101 live on Netflix free solo. It's a building, right?

Yeah. I think it's doing it free solo live on TV. Terrible idea. I will not be watching this. Yeah. I will be not watching this. Frankly, Alex, get down from there. You're going to hurt yourself.

Big fan. Big fan. I think this will be no problem for him, like in terms of holds and everything. It's literally nothing compared to L-Cap. But I still don't. There's too many variables and live. You can live your life. I just don't think we need the live footage of it.

Yeah. If it happens. I don't know why they're doing this live on Netflix. I don't want to. witness a why a live crash. For those who are just wondering and may have just Googled it like me, Taipei 101 story 1,667 foot tower in Taipei. It's cool.

I've been inside it. They have a big ball bearing that on the inside that goes through the center of the column that basically it's supposed to take like earthquake, you know, movements and also just like random little shakes because it's like near a fault line. And so sometimes when you're, in there you can see the ball that's like in the center of the building kind of just like swing briefly and it takes all of the the swing out building that's pretty cool yeah that doesn't happen while he's climbing it i don't like it that's all i got to say it's netflix for you i mean professionals

one big thing in free solo he had was he like he really didn't want the production to ever tell him when he couldn't do something knowing how Netflix is doing live stuff how long are they going to delay this when it inevitably doesn't go live oh yeah this reminds me of when i did the David Blaine free, the ascension thing that we did where we, it was going to be a completely different day and it was just slightly too windy. He had to float up into the sky holding balloons. Like that was like, yeah, not today. Tomorrow winds would be better. Weatherman was like, yep, this is perfect.

We did it the next day. Netflix is like, we don't technically know what we're doing at all. That's why it fails every day. Not what you want to hear. I'm just nervous about this because Taipei is very humid and your hands get all clammy, you know. Chalk. Yeah, but then it gets all like muddy and gross. you know he's probably figured out what to do with the team yeah yeah I think he's got it he's

doing but I still don't like it that's all I got to say all right moving on let's go open AI adding ads I've had to type the phrase adding ads so many times in this that it it doesn't feel like a real word or two real words anymore adding ad adding so chat GPT in the free tier and the bottom go tier so open AI recently released they decided they were going to release the Go tier to more people. Originally, this was just a pilot program in India to sell chat GPT at a lower rate. But now they are expanding that to more users. And of course, just like Netflix did, when they made the ad supported tier, they are now

going to put ads in the cheaper tiers. Sam O'Man a long time ago, I think he was quoted saying, we'll never have ads. In 2024, he said, I kind of think of ads as a last resort as a business model. Which last resort's not great if that's what you're doing right now. They, yeah, so along with that, they had some statements about how the ads work. They're saying that it will not affect your responses in chat, GBT. The ads are always separate and clearly labeled. The conversations are private from advertisers, and the higher tiers won't have ads.

There is an example that you can see here. Adam will put it on the screen. No, I won't. The example is, so it's like asking for a. an authentic Mexican dish for a dinner party. And then Chachi Petit goes on to give you a couple options. And then under it kind of clearly separated, not too clearly, but then it says, harvest grocery sponsors,

and says these options might help if you're stocking up on ingredients and has some ingredients that you can buy. Yeah, it looks like an ad. It looks like an ad. But in my eyes, this feels like the exact example of something that could so easily manipulate results later down the line to increase ad rates. And like in the future, first of all, they said we're not going to, no ads will affect results.

But also two years ago, they said ads are last resort. So we're already kind of not trusting what they're saying. But like, why would this not be like, oh, I want a recipe for, you know, this Italian dish. But Whole Foods, Hold food ad rates pay way better. But this ingredient isn't available at Whole Foods. So let's just substitute one of those ingredients in it for something from the better ad rate company. So the argument is like the ads should ideally never affect the like product and the actual results. And it should never be hidden in like you're talking to the chatbot and just starts telling you about a thing.

And it's secretly an ad. Like that should never happen. Should. But your concern is potentially if it knows it can serve an ad with a certain response where it couldn't with another response, it might choose their response to also serve. an ad. I think this is an awful example to try and prove that it's not going to affect because it's so easy to see in this example

where it could easily be implemented in for just more money. The long tail progression of this is always worse than you think. A lot of times when tech CEOs say like we will never do this about two years later they start doing it and they make excuses for it.

Speaking of Demisisis, which is the CEO of Google DeepMind, which makes Gemini, responded to Sam Altman adding these ads to JetGPD saying we do not have any plans for ads in Gemini and regarding OpenAI testing ads maybe they feel they need to make more revenue which is kind of a burn

that also kind of isn't probably stems off the back of these reports of the internal documents saying they might lose like $14 billion this year. Yeah yeah so last resort came up on us pretty quick here they're burning through a lot of money

You haven't made any money for any of these things. I saw this great meme that was like, uh, Sam, or Open AI in 2024 and it just said like dollar sign zero. And then 2026 and it was dollar sign zero comma zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero. Zero trillion dollars. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, they are also asking advertisers to commit at least a million in advertising if they sign up for any advertising at all. Yeah. So that's a big commitment. I think that a lot of people probably. see the opportunity here because chat gpt use is like out of control high and it makes sense because it should know maybe even more about you than google like if i go to google i'm searching for things

i want to find yeah but a lot of people use chat gptt in much deeper ways of like these are things i want to know these are things i want to understand this is like information about me to help inform my thing and so now it knows all the stuff about you yeah and so the ads i guess theoretically could be more targeted so if you're an advertiser you probably like that for sure which we We all know how great this is going to play out when it's implemented, which will turn into a bunch of people asking super deranged things to chat GPT and getting advertisements for the potential item underneath it. Yeah, we'll see if they have standards for who they advertise. We'll have another. Unlike X.

Well, but even like when they used to, remember when it used to go off the rails all the time and you would like ask its name and weird stuff like that? Like we're going to get another week of that. It's just going to be showing. advertising. Advertising for items that really don't want to be part of that conversation and it'll be broken for a week. Then they'll adjust everything. What's happened on YouTube, the adpocalypse. Remember that?

When the ad rates all got cut like crazy? Yeah, because briefly there was like people taking screenshots of like a large company ad alongside some heinous video that happened to be on YouTube. And it was like, oh, do you really want your brand alongside this? YouTube is so brand unsafe. And then all the marketing CEOs and managers went, oh, that's a bad headline, pulled all they're spending so that they didn't look like they were doing brand unsafe things by advertising on YouTube and YouTube had to go, no, no, no, it's fine. That doesn't happen very often.

In fact, we're going to do better. And then they had to slowly convince all the advertisers to come back. Yeah. But I also would argue that they didn't have to convince all the advertisers to come back because there's no other way to reach those people. So they all came back and now here we are. So that arc could be a possibility again for Open AI if they have a whole moment where there's an ad for a knife alongside a ridiculous query about how.

I want to use this knife to do something crazy. Yeah. So, yeah, that's, that may be a possibility. I feel like that's what the million dollar, like, minimum is for to avoid randos just buying ads. Oh, you mean, like, Bluchu? Oh, what? I mean, all over Twitter for the first, like, year of them, um, of Elon ownership,

Blu Chu was, like, the only sponsor because nobody wanted to run ads. Like, hey, it was really bad. Like, absolute no name felt like crappy Etsy store type. ads of white-labeled Alley Express items all over it. Now a lot of the brands came back, but it was pretty rough for a while. But I think the thing with the million-dollar ad,

I don't think they're necessarily trying to get rid of maybe low-quality ads. I'm saying more of high-quality ads are going to be placed in low-quality search results trying to do something funny, and that could backfire. What do you mean by trying to do something? Like people are going to type stupid stuff

into chat GPT to essentially try and break it and get requested an ad, like Marquez said, Like maybe you say something wild about wanting to use a knife for something that's clearly illegal. And next thing you know, Cabela's is on the bottom selling you like a hunting knife or something like that, which would never want to be associated. Yeah, yeah. To your guys know about Chat Shabot, probably knowing even more about you. I mean, META's entire business is that it knows a lot about you. And it knows a lot about you through two ways.

One, Facebook, you just told it everything about you. But that data is very old and people never update their Facebook. So it's like, whatever. or two is the Facebook pixel that tracks you around the internet. That's exactly what Google does when you're searching things on Google. And that's why Google's ad business is like good, but not as good as metas. But now you're just constantly telling ChatGBT, GBT, about everything you are doing in your life. Like when you make a Google query, it is like, I'm searching something.

Because you search this and you're in this demographic and you're in this location, we can infer based on this big data pool that you probably are interested in this. But Chat ChbD is like, oh, he asked for that. Yeah. It's bad. He wanted it many times in many ways. I feel like it's like the difference between knowing everything you search on your phone and chat GPT now is like, I know everything that you told your therapist, every mentor you've

ever had, your boss, your friends. Yeah. Like every, yeah, your medical questions. Yeah. Totally. So it's a big opportunity, but they got to be careful. It can get crazy pretty quick. Well, I don't know if you're attempting to segue talking about Facebook pixel, but.

No. But it is. Nova Launcher. Oh, no, it is getting, it's getting, they added Facebook and Google ad tracking code into the new Nova Launcher. Into Nova Launcher? Didn't they get bought by a conglomerate? I did a really quick TLDR of what's going on. So over the last two years, I'll just really quickly run through this.

Company called Branch acquired Nova Launcher in 2022. I remember this. I remember this. Like sad music underneath this. Yeah. In 2024, there were. So many layoffs to the point where the only person left as a full-time developer was the founder, Kevin Barry. That is such a sad sentence.

It is. And then Kevin put into his contract or got put into his contract that if he were ever to leave branch, the code would be open source and given to the community. Then in September last year, he was told to stop working on the app and stop working on making it open source to where then this past week, Nova was acquired by a company called Instabridge based in Sweden. they claim it's not shutting down. They want it to be actively maintained. They're planning on putting ads to have a sustainable business model. What the heck, do you? Are committed to no ads in Nova Prime, which will be $3.99.

Also, somewhere in here, I don't know why I didn't write it. Kevin's leaving Nova. Yeah. But yeah, Nova Prime will be $3.99, no ads. They did accidentally listed at $49.99 on the app. Been there, done that. Not a great price. But yeah, so now there are.

ad tracking things in Nova Launcher already. We did that history of Sinan Engine Mod DeepDive episode. I feel like Nova is up there with importance. People installed Nova on every single Samsung phone because of how bad. It's me. I have Nova on my phone right now. Do you really? For people that don't know because a lot of people don't use launchers

these days, Nova Launcher was basically like a stock Android launcher that you could run on your phone, people that don't know what launchers are, which is probably a lot of our audience now. Yeah, the home screen and the app drawer and all the pages and the setup would feel very different, especially visually, between different types of phones.

So like a Samsung phone would have all this bloop, bloop touchwits is happening. And then an HTC phone would have like their famous weather widget. And honestly, we all kind of prefer just the clean looking, stockish, Android-looking launcher. And so if you got bloop-bloop touchwiz,

you would put Nova Launcher on it and it would feel so much cleaner and it would be nice right and that was the golden base of Novalanche. Nova was effectively the Nexus UI but it had even more settings toggle and custom. It was so good. I'm most nostalgic about my

no date with Novalancher on in terms of like my peak phone experience. Which is why I was so into the Google Play edition HDC phones because it was all there already. Man. I'm just reminiscing now. So yeah, now it's going to be a sad corporate show of itself seems like that's kind of disappointing.

I actually started using Niagara Launcher a little more. Yeah, which I've seen a couple other people using as well. It's kind of interesting. A little different style, but. Yeah. Very different style, isn't it? Yeah.

I mean, I was thinking the other day about how Niagara is kind of the dumb phone kind of launcher. Because it just lists your app in a vertical orientation, your apps in a vertical orientation with just the text. So there's nothing, there's no big icons to like click around on. It's just like very utilitarian. So it's very good for.

folding phones, by the way, because then you open like a, well, like a hamburger-style folding phone. Because when you open the Z-Flipp 6 or whatever, it's got the longer aspect ratio, so it waterfalls down. Triple fold out. Vertically, like, all your apps are everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, fun. So, RIP Nova, that sucks. Okay. Sony, this is a big story this week, actually, which was a bit surprising. People are very, very emotional about Sony Bravia TVs even though nobody could ever afford them. Sony announced that it is developing a division that joins forces with TCL to start a new venture. Basically, it's like a new company that the two are starting together where Sony is going to

own 49% of the company. TCL is going to own 51% of the company. And it's not, it hasn't gone through yet. Right now, they just have a memorandum of understanding, which is a. a very Japanese thing to do. Concepts of a plan. That's exactly what it is.

It's concepts of a plan. They're basically in talks about how this is going to work, so I'm not really sure why they announced it publicly yet. But there's a very, very thorough article by John Higgins at the verge about this.

He spent 20 years covering TV, so you should really go read his article. And he says in the article, there are still a couple of months before any binding agreements are drawn up and it still has to go through regulatory approval before it can happen. So it's not complete.

And even if it does pass, the new company won't go into effect until April of 2027. But anyway, effectively, this could lead to the Sonia Bravia TVs being manufactured by TCL, which if you sort of break down how the production pipeline of these TVs work anyway, what actually makes a Sony Bravia TV really high quality is not the panel they're using, because they don't make the panels. The panels are made by LG and TCL and these guys. It's really their SOC and their image pipeline.

So theoretically, if Sony allows TCL to use their SOCs and image pipeline, TCL uses their resources for manufacturing, you could theoretically see much cheaper Bravia TVs in people's homes because Bravias are like the most expensive TVs that you can get. They're really good, but they're really expensive. Sony, it's been a while since I've been to CES, but CES being the like big screen, everyone look at us. Sony's always like, they're not doing rolling or folding or anything, but they are like, damn, these look so good. And then you leave CES and you're like, I'm not going to hear about a Sony TV to like come to CES next year and look at all the hairs on that Panthers face again. Yeah, in a dark room.

Yeah, LG's got like the tunnel of fold bowl TVs that makes this like aquarium and Sony's just like, Sony's just like a dark room with like six TVs showing you the highest quality video you've ever seen. Yeah. And then you never see it again. Yeah. So I don't know.

A lot of people are talking about this. I guess I'm a little bit too young to remember this, which is something I don't usually say because we're considered old now. Yeah, but people have been talking a lot about, on social media, about how big of a deal it was if you walked into your friend's house and they had a Sony TV on the wall. Yeah, or like, yeah, because there's just, there's generations of TVs that make a big impact, like the plasma TV stuff back in the day. If you had a friend with a plasma TV, it was like, whoa. I was just, okay. Yeah. That's nice.

Yeah. Depending on how long ago, if you just had a TV, on the wall that was impressive. Maybe I'm just really... You have a TV? I still have none of those things, so nothing's changed. Now there are people actually in college that use a TV as a computer monitor. That's true. Because it's a huge screen.

Yeah. But it's cheaper. And I'm Black Friday at like $100. Yeah. Like 1080P 49-inch screen for like $7. Yeah. That's going to work. Gonna do that.

It's good enough for me. Yeah. Yeah. I'd ask Ellis's thoughts, but he knows nothing about TVs. So... Not a big TV guy. Before TVs could even go on walls, Tony, Tony. Tony, the TV.

Do you guys know that Sony is short for Ansoni? That was a Tony joke. Oh, okay. What's Tony? Oh, Anthony. Ansony. Anyway, yeah, before TVs could. I like that.

That's pretty good. Before TVs could go on walls, Sony made like the defining contribution to the CRT with Trinitron. Trinitron. Was it is Sony that that guy, who like went to Japan who made that video that was a Sony right

just watching how bad he wanted that TV makes me understand how big Sony the gist of it is that like CRTs were really good and color CRTs were really good and then Sony changed the way that the color processing worked that essentially allowed TVs Sony TVs

to be like 50ish percent brighter than all other TVs on the market and so it was like it wasn't like CES now or it's like oh you can see a few more hairs on the Panthers. Like, you'd go into a store and be like, oh, all the TVs are, are bad. And then there's the Sony. Damn. But it costs three times as much. It cost, it cost more until Sony started licensing the technology out to other companies. Then you got Diamond Tron and, yeah, I don't know,

who cares about CRT. A lot of Trons back then. Those names are tough. Yeah, Pegatron. Yeah. Megatron. Pegatron, Tritron, Megatron. One more quick, one more quick story really quickly. Speaking of ads, Threads is rolling out ads globally starting next week. Yeah. Reds. Wasn't there just a bunch of stories about how Threads was just about to overtake Twitter and mobile use? They just did overtake Twitter and mobile use. They're still way behind them with total active users.

I saw all those headlines and I'm like, but they're just putting threads in Instagram. So can they really say that? Like, are they counting that? I think it's the actual app. But the thing about the Instagram threads is that once you click on it, it automatically takes you to the app store to download it and then you don't even have to make an account. So I think the amount of people that they've just easily unloaded on the threads on boarded on the threads. That's like more of the story. It's like Instagram has unloaded a bunch of people onto threads. Yeah. Both of them are a

battle over how can we have the most impressive numbers in an article headline. Yeah, I guess I'm not as interested in users as much as I'm interested in usage. That's fair. Like you could have a bunch of users that don't use it. I hate the usage on both of them. I think threads is still in its engagement farming days, but it's starting to get a little... Aren't all social media platforms still just engagement farming? Well, X will pay you for it, though. Yeah. But different types of engagement farming.

Like on YouTube, there's like sophisticated engagement farming. That's what we do. Venmo, artistic engagement farming. Venmo. Vimeo. Venmo. It also works with... You're not wrong.

Yeah, Easy Pass is just like engagement farming for cars. So, yeah. Threads is in it's like... I mean, I'm getting custom. content now at this point on threads that seems like pretty tailored to me but it's still like full of also brands i've been living great on threads over here over on this side good stuff on threads good stuff on threads the problem is when you hang on a post for like a quarter second longer than you should and then the algorithm's like we want more of that baby and you just don't you just don't

so we're going to have in so everyone gets ads and threads now yeah so they started rolling out very slowly um but now they're rolling them out globally starting then next week they say that the ad delivery will initially, initially, specific word, remain low as they reach global user availability in the coming months. Initially remain low. So get ready for all those ads, baby. That happened quicker than I thought it would, to be honest. Really?

Yeah. I thought it would take, I thought they would wait until they were like pretty dominant before they started turning on the ad. I think they are pretty dominant. I thought they'd wait until they federated. Yeah, it's over. They're not federating anymore. We got one-way federation through threads, and it only benefits them.

Would ads go through the Fedover's? Only if... Probably not. They were federated? If they were posted to... I've got a great business idea. Well, with that, I'd rather talk about a trivia question than be more depressed about advertising. Trivia, and then we'll get to the ads.

This question brought to you by. This trivia question is brought to you by META. Sony Bravia. Guys, what does Bravia? I'm just kidding. We've already done that. Bolivia. And we'd still all get it wrong.

I don't remember either. That was a whole acronym, Bravia? Yeah, it was a trivia question. I remember it. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah. Oh, it's a backonym, right? Right.

Beautiful. Resonance. Absolutely. And resolution, audio, video. I think I would. wasn't here for that episode because I remember listening to this in the car and trying to figure it out. Yeah. Anyway.

Well, and there's stupid laptops also how to the dumb. Anyway, guys, this question is about chat GPT adding ads to the go tier, which by the way, shout out to the go tier. Somebody that I used to know is one of my favorite songs of all time. Oh, my God. Thanks, Marquez. That was horrible. Wait, I'm trying. You should not have to pray.

That was terrible. Oh, go. Wait, that was really good. Wait, actually, when Ellis is tired, he's on. I like all day. I like the Ansony joke better. I thought that one was a bad. No, goate here.

Thanks, David. You're cooking, Alice. I love it. Guys, okay, so as you mentioned, in 2024, Sam Maltman said that adding ads was a last resort. And in January of 2026, ads got announced that they would be added. So my question to you guys is, what took a short? shorter amount of time. The time between Sam Altman saying there would not be ads and saying there would be ads,

or the time between Google Stadia being released and canceled. Released? Not announced. Like from shelf to done. Negative latency. Wow. What was quicker? Stadia is such, such a cool thing.

I'm still seeing articles about like, the Stadia controller lost this, but don't worry, here's how to like get it back and I'm like oh my people are still I was good Google is often 10 years too early to things and Stadia was one of them like Microsoft Game Pass is very very popular Xbox Cloud Xbox Cloud that's just what it's called well because Game Pass is just getting the games via a subscription rate and then cloud is the compute on the cloud just called or like GForce now G4 now is the Nvidia that's the Nvidia version well Well, anyway, the... Wow, showing my age here. Google Glass is also 10 years. I remember discs. Yeah, I mean, again, Google is very often 10 years to early things, but the Microsoft version of game streaming is extremely popular.

Google had... Get off on that website. I'm just looking at other... Why, is this going to be trivia later? Well, no, Stadia. It's going to be on there. It's going to be... Oh, oh, sorry.

I just... I was like, wow, look at all these other things that were ahead of their time and then died. I've played my hand... I've played a handful of Xbox class. I've got pretty faster at home You know Lex Name all the games It doesn't really work

Or at least it didn't work that well for me I found I guess I was playing games that required like Pretty low latency but yeah Like 2K Like 2K is pretty much impossible on cloud My one claim to flame is that I put the I put out the first ever Stadia review on the internet

And then I went on the Pierce Morgan show To talk about stadia Wait, you were on Pierce Morgan. I have an IMDB that I did not make that someone made for me because I appeared on the Pierce Morgan show. Yeah. Can we play that clip on the, yeah. It's not a video clip. So you're telling me.

Oh, it is a video. It is a video clip. You play a game and it's not on your game. Wayform has an IMDB and it only has Marquez and some random guy who included himself in an episode. Richard Cannon the third. The legend. I don't. Anyway, my point is that Stadio would be very popular right now and RIP, but the controllers are very good and you can turn them into standard Bluetooth controllers.

I'm so mad I got rid of mine. It's huge. All right. Well, we'll think about that trivia question. Answers will be at the end like usual. We'll be right back. All right, welcome back. We got to talk about this one plus drama a little bit.

It's kind of all over the place, but if you've been on social media for the past four days or so, you may have seen some of this arc. We could do our best to break down what happened versus what didn't happen. But yeah, so One Plus, for those of you know, smartphone company, a subset of BBK electronics. They make this phone right here. This is One Plus 15. I've been using it for a while. It's nice. But they've been making phones for a while ever since the One Plus One Days when they were like a cult favorite.

Yeah, that's right. And then so over this past week, this article popped up on Android headlines that was titled, Exclusive, One Plus is being dismantled. And this is kind of a shocker headline because they're a company that exists and seems to be doing okay, maybe a little bit quiet lately, maybe a little bit downward trending lately. Can I explain a little context that kind of makes sense of why this article hitting here? Yeah. Just like since the start of the year, there's been some, there's been a bunch of random articles here and there about like maybe BBK slash like Apo and then subbrands One Plus getting in the news. one of them is that RealMe is going back to being considered a subbrand of Apo. They originally were, then they left after a year.

Now they're coming back. Part of that Apo is saying is to improve resource management and Apo's global expansion strategy. I know that's not One Plus exactly, but, you know, general branding around there. There's some rumors that then got deleted about the One Plus 16, maybe not coming to the U.S. And then Pete Lau also right now has an arrest warrant in Taiwan for a little. legal business and recruitment activities. Oh, wow. I forgot about that.

Allegedly. Totally solidly. So, yeah, there's a reason one plus is, it's hot right now in the tech world, at least, in specific tech world. So, like, this article talks about a lot of those things, but it makes sense why it came out right now. Yeah. You mean the article?

The article, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I saw that headline. I was like, oh, that's really interesting. So I read the entire article. A couple things stuck out to me. One was nothing was actually exclusive or knew about One Plus actually being dismantled,

but it was a bunch of publicly available, but information about the trends with One Plus lately and the rumors and the types, sort of summarizing putting everything in one place. So that was... Note on the summarizing. Yeah, yeah, maybe a little bit of... Heavy on the summarizing. Yeah. Well, people might, first of all, use the word clickbait to describe something that says

exclusive in all caps and then doesn't have exclusives. But the other thing was it felt very much written by Chad GBT. I read the whole thing and it was by the third of the waypoint, it was painfully obvious that it was like structured the same way over and over and over again, to which the author, I guess, later admitted that he, like, updated the headline. It was like, yeah, I did use AI to structure this. But to clear that up, they originally had made the post that it was written by someone named Alex Maxim at Android Headlines.

Then everyone started saying, this is AI, because of it had a lot of, what do they like to do? A lot of like, if X, then Y. It's like, it's not, it's not this.

It's actually this. This wasn't just a this. It was a whole, like something like, and then the M dashes are always like, justice for the freaking M dash, man. I used to use that shit all the time.

Don't use it. I can't use it anymore. It's, yeah. It's like an extra finger. It's just such proof that it's AI at this point. I just never want to end my sentences,

you know, just stop using periods. Just dashes only. Let's recreate the ellipses, but with commas and just use that. Three commas. You know what it's funny? When I do my script writing in Google Docs, I use dashes, ellipses, and semicolons to indicate, in my own head, a different type of pause.

Yeah. And it's just, I'm reading it a certain way because I know what that means to my brain, but now online, it means this was written with AI. So I can't use this ever outside of my script writing, but yeah, it is what it is. But so originally it was said it was written by Alex. And then after it got all the flack online about it being written by AI, he came out and said, this was not written by me. It just had my name.

To then which Chris Yaculik, the owner of Android headlines, said that he wrote it and then admitted to using AI in it claiming. He said, as a site owner, I made the decision to use AI assistance and structuring this article. Everything else is human work, including the entire investigation reporting from independent sources. current and former employees, Chinese business publication research, and four analyst firms. But like, there's so many red flags going on here. Red flag number one, why hide that at the beginning? That was why, why put a different person's name on it? Why do any of that?

Why not write your own article? It's just a bunch of weird things going on here. And then also, yeah, I don't know. this doesn't, it didn't convince me that, uh, I don't know if you read it and we're convinced at all, but it didn't convince me that one plus is actually like on their deathbed. Like it seemed like it wanted to convince me.

So yeah, there's a lot of things that are going on with one plus like you mentioned that are really interesting to follow and that sort of represent like the end of an arc of what was once a really, really hot brand and is now just kind of like, uh, corporate like sub brand going back to like its roots. But yeah,

it was just kind of a disappointment to me. Yeah. That's one of those things where it put a lot of things in one article that I think could have been a useful article if you wanted to say, here's everything that's going on with Oneplus right now. Yeah. But slapping an exclusive badge on it and offering no exclusive information is like very clickbaity. And then putting a different author because it seems like he maybe has had more like viral

posts. Posts. So they seem to put it on him to try and maybe get some more traction from it. Yeah. Now if I'm that author, I'm not happy because now it looks like I did a bunch of AI garbage. Exclusive. Well, exclusive M-Dash, brand new One-plus M-Dash drama. One-plus isn't dead. It's actually alive.

That's what we're title. One-plus has sons come out and just clarify that they are not shutting down. They said recent unverified reports claiming One-plus is shutting down are false. So there's that. Oh, yeah. And then they said, Oneplus India's business operations continue as normal. This was, because this is One plus India responding, correct? Just to be fully clear on that.

Yeah. And a lot of people are like, well, that's just the India team that's saying they're not in closing. And it's like, you know, maybe it could happen. I think that there's a lot of reasoning why Apo might want to simplify their lineup again. The Apo brand is very popular in China and different parts of Europe because Apo phones are sold in different parts of Europe. And, you know, they tried to. change the one plus UI to color OS and then they just change the name back to oxygen OS but it's still color OS which is good it's a good OS it's one of the things that was interesting to me about

this because I still am like thinking a lot about one plus and the existence of subbrands and why companies use them is always interesting to me like why do you have lexas as a subbrand of toyota because you can't really sell such a pricey car with a toyota badge so you have this this badge like this is what Genesis is, this is what a lot of other companies do. CMF. CMF, again. So, Opo is a huge popular company in one market, but the same company wants to use a new brand called One Plus to get into other markets that aren't as excited about buying something from

Apo. And they kind of had some success, like in the U.S. and in India, and people were getting really excited about One Plus phones. I remember the One Plus One being impossible to get in, like the invite system and the Cyan Engine Mod collab and all of that. So following all that was very exciting. You can get One Plus stuff at carriers in the U.S. now.

Yeah. It felt like for a long time new phone companies were not in carriers in the U.S. Yeah, for sure. It was so hard to get a new phone company off the ground all the way to the point where you could actually sell it to a real human in the U.S. If you aren't in the U.S., you probably aren't as familiar, but for those in the U.S., you know,

like it's mostly Samsung and Apple phones in stores here. They've made the deals. There's some Motorola stuff. There's the prepaid carrier stuff, but like if you want to come in and spend $800 or whatever premium flagship money on a phone, the options are slim. And it was so hard to get on the shelf alongside those, let alone get enough market share. Like the pixel is at like 2%. Yeah, I was just going to say even pixel took so long just to get on shelves. And that's Google.

Yeah. Right? So imagine a new company trying to get along. So the story was really exciting. And One Plus got very far. And as far as the enthusiast crowd goes, they kind of had a stranglehold on like, I, I, I, I remember so many of my friends buying One Plus phones because it was like, yeah, the the One Plus 7 versus all the other phones I could get for the same money is unreal deal.

Right. So, yeah, the arc of one plus has been fascinating to follow. Now, I mean, I use the One Plus 15. They still, to an extent, represent a lot of good things. Like, this is still one of the cleaner versions of Android with their, again, we were talking about launchers earlier, but the skin. Great specs. Still pricey.

Yeah. Yeah, there's still good enough phones that we should keep them around. So we don't want One Plus going anywhere. Yeah, there's a couple of major reasons why these brands like to make these sub-brands. I mean, obviously, you've got to subdivide. You need to know this brand represents luxury, right? Like Louis Vuitton is never going to sell like a $40 sneaker or something or a $40 bag, whatever they make bags.

But the other big reason, hey, I'm not a fashionista. We all know this. I bought this for $5 at the $2. I see that Gucci belt you've got on right now. You're not fooling us. Anyway, but the other reason is that a lot of Chinese brands want to basically sneak their way into the United States. This has happened a million times. Like, the U.S. government doesn't know that Hossa Blod's owned by DJI.

You know what I mean? They just don't know. That's like, that's why they try to make it such a big deal that they're like, oh, don't talk about it. Don't talk about it. Even though when you send in your Hossabod camera for service, it goes to the DGI headquarters. They're like, but we're not. Anyway, a lot of phone companies have done that because, I'm trying to remember the brand, Adam you might remember, the brand that we got put on the, besides Huawei, they got put on the entity list that, like, it was it honor or there was another phone brand that in 2017 or so got basically forced to stop selling phones in the United States.

Huawei was a popular one. Huawei was the main one. Yeah. But effectively, like, when the U.S. government realizes that a company is Chinese, they get really nervous about it, especially telecoms companies, you know, networking companies. So, I mean, One Plus, in a large way, was a way for OPPK group to get their devices in many more markets. And the fact that the original One Plus ethos of like, we're community oriented, we're doing all these community events and this and this and this. It was like, we're homegrown, but we're just, you know, owned by a giant mega corporation. It was the flagship killer.

Yeah. But especially now with there being a lot more tensions heating up between the United States and China. and everyone, the tariffs that are probably going to make it really hard for them to keep selling one plus phones in the Western world for the price that they sell it at. You could see a big reason why they might want to pull back and just be like, you know what, One Plus is not doing as well as we thought. Oppos phones are actually still selling really well. It's just that like this article is just, it's jumping to a lot of conclusions.

Big jump. It had the opportunity to like maybe have a, or potentially still does have a good, bunch of interesting information, but you kind of shoot yourself in the foot when you put that title, do the weird author switch, use AI in a bunch, like, you've just turned it into a big laughing stock kind of at that point, which is not a great look. Not a great look. Yeah, multiple different one plus kind of heads of social media have come out and been like, the rumors of my death are highly exaggerated. Yeah. Okay, question for you guys. No. In, okay, never mind. onwards um what was peak one plus phone to you because miles and i andrew little this morning

we're talking about this and we all had different answers 70 that's what i said i got argued against as the seven over 70 70 is better i think they had two peaks i think the seven and seven t and seven t pro are is one of the peaks and i think the one plus one is the other peak i would say one plus one as well is the peak it's the start yeah and i don't think you think they peaked right off I think they peaked right off the bat. Do you know what the peak was? The Pocon P.H1 or whatever, F1? I just, I think the one plus one peaked in some ways.

It wasn't their best phone ever, but it was one of the best deals ever. And it was one of the biggest hype machines ever. And people got, it was one of those rare things where it actually lived up to the hype. I think that's why it felt like. Yeah. The one plus three was the phone where a lot of the people in my life that knew sort of about technology and wanted a good deal started being like, I'm hearing a lot about this one plus three phone. and I knew a lot of people who actually bought the 1 plus 3.

It was easier to buy because you didn't have to go through the invite system and everything. Okay, I think Miles was agreeing with me. He just had the wrong thing that because he was like the one with the pop-up selfie camera and that was the 7T pro. Oh, I thought he said the McLaren edition, which was the Maclaren edition. No, no, no, no. No, but he thought the 7-Pro was the one with the pop-up selfie camera, but the 7T Pro is it, which then was the McLaren edition, right? The pop-up selfie camera was the Miata edition. The 7T Pro was a phone that I could have used for ever a long time.

The main problem was the ghost touches on the corners, on the sides, because it had a wrap-around screen, and I swear that thing was tapping all over the place. That was a downside I would be willing to live with for all the upsides of that phone. It was so fast, so fast, great, great software optimization. Really good screen. The whole fast and smooth thing was like very appreciated. And now here we are on the 50s. The 15 is still one of the absolute fastest and smoothest phones, but lots of phones are fast and smooth like that now.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was wondering before because you've been using the 15 now for weeks. Yeah. How does this compare to, like in your Mount Rushmore in your head of One Plus phones? Is this on there already? Or is this still working its way up? So the battery life of the 15 has elevated it a lot for me over other phones I could be using. I think that combined with fast and smooth and clean software is why I'm still using it.

The camera is such a huge letdown, which is what's dragging it down from like possible peak status. That's why you bought a hassleblad. Yeah, I kind of get the hassleblad stuff somewhere, so I bought a hassleblad. No, it's, it's one of the best phones still, but it's in like the arc of one plus. It's definitely not one of their all-time best. But it is like convenient that they jumped on the silicon carbon thing early and executed it well. Like, I wonder if in 10 years will you be remembering this phone fondly? Not like the, not like the peak phones.

Yeah. Carl Pay left right after the peak. It's like right as the stock is hitting the top and then it starts to go, he left after the 8T. The 8T. Yeah. Yeah. I think that was the one that was, the 8 was like locked to Verizon. I think, oh, it didn't have the 5G band and it was 100, or it did have the 5G band, the millimeter way band, but it was $100 more if you bought it on Verizon.

but you had to buy that model. Yeah, I want to do a quick exercise. I really can't remember. Like a jumping jack. The exercise I wanted to do is I'm going to read you the titles. The titles I used for all of the One Plus reviews. Ooh. Okay.

So the One Plus One Review is just called the One Plus One Review, right? The One Plus Two Review didn't have a subtitle, but it was called the Flagship Killer and got the full review treatment. One Plus Three Review was a third attempt at a killer flagship, and it was, had that metal jack. it. Then I started doing titles. So there's no one plus four because four is bad luck. So no four. I think five is when I was it 2017. Did that come out? The one plus five I have it here was yeah 2017 six million views super super so that's when I started then I love the five T one plus six review was my most reviewed my most viewed phone review I had ever made at the time also they just pumped it up with a bunch of other uh, uh, uh, I'm

bunch of extra views so it was 22 million views title is right on the money eight plus for the price then the one plus six t new design same price then the one plus seven you could use that for every team model pretty much after one plus seven review is way under the radar one plus seven pro review is silly fast silly then one plus seven t high refresh low price and seven t pro tiny tweaks to Excellence. Now we get to 1 plus 8. One plus 8 review, special no more. One plus 8 pro review, finally a flagship. One plus nine review, sneaky value.

And one plus nine pro review, a huge Hosselblad promise. Can I say even the title, finally a flagship, almost feels like a negative title in the arc of one plus. Like its whole thing is flagship killer. and when it, it almost feels like you're saying that they like, um, conformed to like everything. They're not a flagship killer anymore. Yeah. They're the flagship, aka the shit pricey. The thing that's about to be killed by the next killer.

Yeah. The poker phone. Yeah. I was reading my review titles for the one plus phones. Uh, for the 70, I titled the review, One Plus 70. Is it too good? So good. Then One Plus 8 and One Plus 8 pro I titled, what should have been.

Oh, wow. And then, uh, I'm immediately. after I made a video that... Oh, these are the worst ones. I made a video immediately after this literally called is One Plus turning into Apo. All of these would be made better if you put exclusive at the beginning. What's the...

So I have three in a row for the last... You can tell they're no longer on their peak. I made a video called What Happened to One Plus? Then I made a video called One Plus 10 Pro Impressions. What Happened? One Plus 10 T impressions, somebody that you used to know. Oh! Wait!

There's no way that I went full circle. Yeah. That's like John Oliver where he makes a reference in the beginning and pulls it back at the end it was the real title. Wow.

Yeah, pretty good. I was just gonna say the, you need to put the meme of like, what is it, who from the Simpson goes like, you can see the exact moment his heart rips in half.

Like that's 17 to 8. Yeah, you can see it. And that's when Carl Pai left. So the arc is real. The 13 and 15 are good phones, but you can see when the peak was pretty clearly. Yeah, reports of their death

have been greatly exaggerated. Let's say a quick ad break. And do some trivia. Trivia, dude. So earlier in the show, we spoke about Netflix adding live voting to their service. We also spoke about American Idol, which you may or may not know. The first episode aired in 2002. So here's your question.

Kelly Clarkson. No, it was Clay Aiken. Rupert. Acon. Rupert. How old was Ellen? when the first episode aired in 2002 in 2002 what month did it air what month thank you for asking it aired June of 2000 this question is just how what month was Ellis born I think that's all the

information you get I know that I know that how old are you else no don't worry about wait wait said he's 28 June of 2002 was the first episode June of 2002 so how well I'm 12 I can't remember else's birthday I had to ask him 28, but he hasn't his birthday. I'll give you a hint. What's the last letter of the day? It's also my dad's birthday. I actually do know your birthday.

That's actually, but only because I went to your birthday party. It runs in my family. No, I'm not joking. Like, there's a bunch of members of my family at all of my birthday. That's kind of sick. I don't know what to think of that. I don't know if that actually works, but I was. Genetic.

Your dad was born on the same day and same time as you in the same year? Yeah, same year. everything. Your dad and you were twins. Clones. Oh, no, my birthday runs in my family and proof that there's something going on is I was born like really premature. Like I was not supposed to be born anywhere close to my dad's birthday and yet I was like that explains it. You rolled up and you're like, what day is it? Whoa! Oh! Oh! He probably had some sweet plans that day, dinner. Not anymore. How long did you cook after you came out of the womb? How did I cook after I came out of the womb? How did I

cook after I came out of the womb, I have no idea what you're asking. If you were premature, you know. Are you asking how premature I was? How long did I cook? Yeah, you still have to. Your brain had to continue to develop. You know, I popped out the womb. I immediately pirated a copy of the Hell Studio and I went to work, man.

That makes sense, bro. That makes sense. All right. We'll be right now. your docks, your permits, your moves, AI levels up your pitch, gets it in a groove. Choose a template with your timeless cool. Graph design, deliver, make it sing.

AI builds the deck so you can build that thing. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. All right, welcome back. There was a Verizon outage last week, and pretty, I mean, it's exactly what it sounded like. Verizon was just straight up out in the U.S. for, like, hours, right? I am a Verizon. customer and I never lost service. I was so confused. It wasn't everybody. It was like a lot of people.

Maybe it's because I'm a visible customer, but I thought that was a Verizon network. But yeah, I think I read that the like the what's the website? Is it down or something like that? Is it down right now? I'd like over 175,000 queries or something about Verizon. But so it went out around like 4 p.m. EST four hours like a very long time. I think it was till pretty late at night. Anyways, I'll quickly, I just want to know, they wound up giving a $20 credit to everybody. Hell yeah. In one way, if you're thinking about like pro rating a month long contract, a couple hours is worth way less than $20. Yeah.

But at the same time, if it was like if I had my GPS going or I had to like pick up a kid from school or an event, like pro rated minute by minute, $20 is like more than enough. the amount of stress and how annoying that would be for those hours is not even close to like I would pay $20 to just get my service back at that point. So what do we think is, do we think that's an appropriate credit? It never is. Yeah, that's the thing. There's no way to accurately assess the amount of convenience or inconvenience you've caused and like appropriately compensate everyone.

So them deciding to give $20 to every customer who lost service is like, that's that seems fine. Some people are going to be disappointed because they had worse inconveniences. Some people are going to be like, I didn't even notice it was out and they just got 20 bucks. Yeah. That's just kind of the way. I'm also like I'm not, you know, I'm always for like corporations can give money to people. It's fine.

They're really, really wealthy. But, you know, giving every single Verizon customer 20 bucks is kind of a lot of money. I'm assuming it's based on outages, but that's still so, so much money. It's a lot of money. And it means that they're, they're, what, is it January? Their January revenue is going to be down like... Well, didn't you also have to go...

I believe you had to claim it. Oh, so it was like... You had to go into the app or the website or something and claim it. Which like 20 people did. Exactly. Okay, never mind. They should have given people a lot more money.

How many things go down and you don't get... Like, how many times is your Comcast or your home internet or whatever? You don't get money back for that. And it probably caused you some inconvenience. Yeah. How many times does YouTube go down and you don't get your premium money back or whatever? Yeah.

And it sucks. Yeah. I mean, I had my life. like flight canceled one time because they claimed it was weather, but it was like weather from three days ago that they were just still backed up on, which then eventually after enough people complained, they gave me like 30,000 miles. It's like not even close to the trip. I guess I still got my miles back, but like I had to cancel non-refundable hotels, all sorts of different. I lost like $2,000 or something on it. It's like cool. 30,000 miles is like I could maybe get like two

diet cooks on the way like it's it's nothing the the last time i flew i won't i won't shame them here but the last time i flew the last time i flew american airlines they why not shame they're like the worst airline they rebooked i had a layover somewhere and they rebooked the first leg of the flight to get in after the layover was going to get in in a random city that i knew no one in and then i was like i got there two hours after my layover had left no No more flights the rest of the day. And I go up to the American person and I was like, so my hotel. And they were like, no, you're sleeping at the airport, buddy.

And then imagine your Verizon's out. And then guess how much they offered me. I bet you it was like a $15. It was $0. It was literally $0. Dang. So shout out to Verizon. Yeah.

Honestly. Yeah, Verizon. Was it only in New Jersey? Was the outage only in New Jersey? It was enough that I saw memes on threads that day about Verizon peeing out. So it was pretty widespread, probably. Maybe Staten Island. Okay.

Yeah. There's a lot. I just want to get that in there. Memes on threads. Staten Island, New Jersey. Yeah. Staten Island, New Jersey. Get out of here.

All right. Well, I got one more story for you guys. And that is, it's January. And every January, Neil Mohan, or whoever is the CEO of YouTube at the time, puts out a letter as a sort of a state of the union of what's going on on YouTube. And it's usually pretty informative. I will say I appreciate a little. peek behind the curtain into what YouTube is planning on emphasizing and working towards in the

upcoming year because we're YouTubers. We want to know ahead of time as much as possible what's going to go down on this platform and how to prepare for it and how to maybe even take advantage of stuff that's going to be emphasized. So I read it. It was an interesting blog post and I have some highlights that I'll share with you and maybe I can get your reactions on what you think of some of these things. Some of them I thought were like little nuggets that were really interesting buried in here. So the, the, the, Sort of headliner one that you kind of expect them to say every year is Breaking news.

YouTube's still really huge. Exclusive. Really big. You're exclusive. Are you serious? Yeah, it turns out there on an enormous website. Dude, that's no way. Biggest streamer, biggest podcast platform, biggest video library.

What are your sources? Yeah, sources are I use it every day. It's pretty huge. Did you come up with that via chat, JBT? No, I swear. This had to come from the CEO himself. So, yeah, that's still true. Great.

They emphasize all of that. creators are real businesses now. Like the creator economy is still mostly YouTube, and it's good that they sort of reemphasize this because we're on lots of other platforms where it's like, you could have a business on Instagram or you could have a business on Facebook. You could have a content creation, TikTok business,

but at the end of the day, the most stable version of that is a YouTube one. Everything else is so volatile. Yeah, they've just reminded us that that's true again. So I wasn't shocked by that. Yeah. There was a brief focus on making YouTube safer for kids and people who are of learning ages. There's a quote that 79% of teachers in the U.S. who use YouTube agree that it helps students learn,

which I thought was an interesting phrasing because I thought they were going to say, 79% of teachers in the U.S. use YouTube to help students learn. But no, it was 79% of the teachers who do use YouTube, then think it helps students learn. I think 9 out of 10. Oh, wait. There's 21% of teachers who are like, yeah, we watch YouTube in class. doesn't actually do anything, but that's one in five. Yeah.

Well, I think nine out of ten people would only buy a new car if it had Apple Carplay in it. It's just interesting. Not all teachers use YouTube, and not all of them who use it, agree that it helps students learn. But 79% of them do. I hear from teachers all the time

who are like, I showed your video about this business to my business class in college, and it was very helpful. Thank you. I hear that all the time. So it was cool. They also will let you set the timer for scrolling shorts on your kids account

to zero. Can you do that for a time? That was just... Wait a second. Wait, that legit. I was just thinking of that in the car this morning. I was like, I deleted Twitter. I deleted Instagram.

I deleted TikTok. All the shorts things, but I need YouTube for work. And I... My thumb just hovers. Stop it. And it goes, if I could have that, I would love that timer. I think it's a parental control, but you might as well be able to do that. Can you pay the parent and the kid?

Yeah. I want to pay the guardian and the child. You can if you're Ellis. Set up parental controls and then flip it. That's a good one. We're very referential. Yeah, that's a good one. But you should set up parental controls and then log into your kids account.

L.S. do you want to be my dad on my YouTube account? I can set you as my guardian. We could be each other's dad. Yes. Yeah. So anyway, that's all good. They also had a statement that was very definitive.

This is all in service of empowering parents to protect their kids in the digital world, not from the digital world, aka, please keep letting your kids use YouTube. It sounds like you have to protect them from 21% of teachers. Because I don't know what they're showing them, but they're not learning on it. Unhelpful YouTube videos. They're just watching AI slot videos. Yeah. There was another push, and I think this is going to continue, because this is in their letter,

about making YouTube content eligible for and rewarded for, or rewarded along the same lines as, like, traditional media, like Emmys and Oscars and that sort of stuff. They seem to really, they always have this, like, back of the mind, like, inferiority complex. like they always have to prove they're better than TV by doing TV stuff. I always thought it was weird. It's like, dude, you're the biggest streaming platform. Yeah, they're the biggest streamer. Like, you, your audience loves you for like what you are, but they also are like, but

please, Jimmy Fallon, please put it on YouTube. Like, they always have all this TV stuff. And this is another one of those traditional media things. They're like, oh, but we want this stuff to win Oscars and Emmys. I personally don't really care if YouTube videos never win Oscars and Emmys. I think there will be a future version of that at some point that's just as valuable and prestigious. The streaming. We're going to win our Golden Globe and then you can feel like that.

We were, I don't even remember, Emmy nominated Oscar. Retro Tech was Oscar nominee, whatever it was nominated for. And it was cool that it was nominated. That's fine. That's about as far as it would go. Fake awards show. The trophy wouldn't mean as much because I wasn't aiming to get the trophy. You don't want to be an Egot winner?

Well, I think that some people do. I think some people aim to make a thing to win the award. And GBAHD, the show, the play? The play. Anyway, so that was the thing in the letter. Then, of course, they had to get to the AI stuff. So here's two of the more interesting nuggets. One of them is actually not AI, but it's an interesting note.

Adding a way for creators to insert baked-in ads into YouTube videos that can then disappear. What? It was just one of those little things that they just tossed in there, but that they would be working on a tool this year that lets you have a baked in... You know how we'll do like a thanks for the sponsor and it's baked in fully into the video. Yeah.

And then there's other types of ads that are not baked in. Oh. Like an overlay ad or a side ad or a pre-roll ad. It's a tool to allow YouTube to control how long that baked-in ad is viewable and then removes it. And it was interesting hearing about that and I got briefed by YouTube

and talked to him a bit about this. And I guess the example that this would make the most sense is let's say you have a sponsor that would look to put an ad on your channel but can't afford, say, your whole typical viewership, but they can afford the first 100,000 views or the first million views. So you can have an ad that is baked in and appears in the video

for the first X views and then removes when it hits that view count. So they can pay that lower total value for that sponsorship and they still get to get to your audience. And they got to, you know, you got to work with that company. That worries me that this is just going to lower sponsorship rates. Why? Because companies know that after a certain point in the video being public, that the views are going way down anyway. So I feel like the sponsors are going to be able to be like, well, you know, since we're not getting it for the lifetime, we can pay you less.

I think that would actually empower creators to charge more for a lifetime because videos sometimes have a longer tail and overperform. So if you're reaching out to me in the past as, let's say, whatever company, you go, hey, we want to work with MKBHD and we have this stuff and we like you, you like us, let's work together. Your audience loves our product. And there is a baked-in ad and that video could get the regular number of views or it could happen to get 22 million views like a random video sometimes does. Right. That company doesn't then pay more because of the 22 million views. They just got a good deal, basically. That is sort of the chaos.

It would also, in theory, allow creators to make more ads than videos. If they could get dynamically in, like, does that make sense? Yeah, you could have multiple sponsors for one video and it just, like, after the first $100,000, the second sponsor gets show. Or it's like, if you have a catalog of 20 videos, like you're, you know what I mean? I don't know. No creator has just 20 videos and it's getting ad deals. But you know what I mean, like hypothetically.

That's, you know, you know what I mean. You know what I mean. Go T.A. But like, yeah, like you could in theory not make a video for a month but still take ad deals that get retroactively applied. I also like this idea. I just want to say because I think it would be really fun for TV viewers if those dynamic ads played. Not for me. I'm a premium subscriber.

No. So here's, you would see it as a premium. I know. But I love the. idea of these playing in-between videos. Post-roll? So it becomes more like a linear TV experience. Like when you're watching on your couch on your TV.

Right. You know, instead of in the middle of a video having to take a break and be like, here's this service that'll allegedly delete all my data. I have no idea if it will or not. Finishing a video. And then instead of getting like a normal bad post-roll, like ad ad, getting something made by a creator and then going to my next video. That's like a real episode.

This does, though. No, I know, but I'm saying it opens the door to that being possible. I mean, I guess you could put the slot at the end of the video theoretically. It wouldn't be in between, but it would be a... No, no, I'm not saying this is what is happening. I'm saying the fact that now these sponsors are discrete video, can be discrete video productions that are dynamically inserted and are not linked with a specific video production.

YouTube could in the future make the viewing experience more similar to a linear TV experience, which I think... I wouldn't put a pass. I would enjoy if I wasn't a premium subscriber. It's funny. It arguably almost works better for us if we were to accomplish because we do post roles so much. I see there being an issue for people who do more mid-roll stuff because most YouTubers like to make ads come in with a great segue and stuff.

But now if we're starting to like, even if we're not going to sell second ad after first one reaches a million views, now I segueed into something. where did that ad start and where did it end and where did it pick up from? And now we just lost a minute of video. Is there now a weird jump there? I also want to know, how does YouTube know this is going to be an ad that's in there?

Could I just say, oh, I want to make a little Easter egg for the first 10,000 people that watch this video? Can that come in and be like, yo, here's $15 off shop.mkVHD.com for our first thousand. It's like when you go to a sporting event and you get a hat for the first 10,000 people. I think that would be great. Because they really incentivize people to watch the video as soon as it goes live. It would.

But does that mean we can put whatever the hell we want in here? Can we do that on podcasts already? Yes. Dynamically inserted ads, but just whatever you want. Yeah, like there's nothing stopping us in Megaphone from not putting an ad in the ad slot. Yeah. No, I think that's valid. I think, I mean, this is only a single line in the letter.

So I don't know. There's no. Well, yes. other than, you know, the people paying us. Yeah, yeah. But in theory, you know, if, in theory, if all the money just disappeared and no one wanted to sponsor, we could just start doing whatever, man, right? Right?

Yeah. No, I think this is only one line in the letter, but so we don't know what the UI is going to look like or how this tool will be allowed to be used. But I do think that that is something that will happen. Yeah. There is one thing I know for sure, and that is it will break chapters. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're about to dynamically put ads in, and I still need to type out the damn numbers for chapters. We've been saying forever chapter should be built in UI.

There are three truths in life. Death, taxes, and chapters breaking. It's true. Within the first hour. I think some people are going to be mad at this because now technically, so if you're a YouTube premium subscriber, you don't want ads. That's a big reason why you pay for it. previously YouTube couldn't control the ads

that people bake into videos now they are kind of controlling it and I think premium subscribers are not going to want to see it. I agree with everything we're saying here and like for a creator this is good and probably for most audiences this is good because hey maybe you watch our videos

later that night you might not even have to see an ad that we do. That's like one that we need to continue paying our employees and having a building and everything. It's really, it's interesting. I think it lands on the creator how they choose to use the tools

or not use the tools. So like if I'm subscribed to premium, I don't expect to see pre-rolls ever or whatever, like pop-up ads or anything like that, but you still see all of the mid-roll ads that YouTubers do all the time and post-roll ads and things like that.

The integrated stuff. So the main difference is going to be that sometimes it gets deleted. So if I'm a premium subscriber, I'm still going to see all the mid-rolls and the post-rolls from all the creators who choose to continue to do that. But sometimes the creators will choose

to use the YouTube tool to get one that's dynamically inserted and then you might not ever see that one, maybe. So it feels like a win just for everyone who doesn't have to see the ads that get deleted. Yeah. But yes, it is like putting it in the hands of YouTube. But I guess I wouldn't expect YouTube

to just delete every ad that goes to that tool for premium users. That would seem like not something that they can do. It reminds me of the skip ahead feature that they have. Yeah, which is a premium feature, I believe. And the skip ahead feature is just an auto, it's like a, I think it detects based on user behavior.

It seems like people fast forward for 30 seconds here, and it's usually because of an ad. And that's why they imagine that feature, but like that's why that exists. I thought that felt like a way of YouTube being like, hey, we're going to give this to the benefit of the users, but only because that's money we're not getting a slice of right now. So it's good for the users because it's not hurting our bottom line.

Then my ultimate goal for here is if YouTube's allowing us to use this feature with our ads that we're negotiating, where's their benefit from this? Yeah. Will they eventually take a cut of those ads? And can they? Because, like, they're not part of negotiations from, I don't know. It could be like, something weird's going to happen there. It could be some sort of premium paid ad slot feature that they ask for a cut of or something. Or like they give the option to put another ad in there.

Maybe it's like, oh, we negotiate with Dbrand and pay for a million views. and they're like, oh, but after that million views is up, here's X amount of like ones that now could live in here. Yeah, they insert their own ads in there and then they start getting a cut after the first 100,000 or whatever. Interesting. It starts being YouTube ads. This is also going to give advertisers, I feel like,

a way more accurate ROI because they can see exactly. Exactly what their buying. There's going to be more statistics for it. Because it is chaotic right now. It's like you could pay for a video and you get, you get 22. million views or you get like a hundred thousand you don't know what it's going to be yeah you try your best to like i see this in contracts all the time they try to slip in like a minimum view guarantee like

oh if it doesn't get enough views then you have to do another make get of free and don't ever creators do not sign those that's like a huge red flag so obviously advertisers always want to know exactly what they're getting and so maybe this is a tool that lets them know more specifically in some cases exactly what they're getting i that annoys me so like if you're an advertiser and for some reason listening to this, especially this deep into the episode, like, stop worrying about, I know you kind of have to worry about the numbers, but like, do the partnership because you like that creator and their audience and you think this is a good, like, if you put a minimum view guarantee, it's such a red flag of like,

you don't care about this partnership at all. There's different tiers of partnerships, I feel like in YouTube, and some of them want to be, like I always use Dbrand as an example. They know what it's like to work with a creator. and they are really good at working with creators and facilitating letting the creator do their own creative. That's why you work with them and reaching your audience with their product.

That's like what you want it to be. Some companies are bad at that. And so they're after like, okay, we need to run a campaign that gets 10 million views and we need to get it in front of young, affluent tech purchasers. Okay, what do we do? We work with these three tech YouTubers,

we guarantee 10 million views and we press by. And that's not the same thing. It's probably a lot of that is we work with insert middleman marketing agency and that person that is like, I want to give these numbers. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it's one more tool. I noticed it in there. I feel like we'll see it when it rolls out.

It'll be interesting. But yeah, then, of course, in the last bit was AI. So yes, AI, there's still going to be AI creation tools on YouTube, just like last year they talked about this. They're adding more tools. We're actively also, they say they're actively combating AI. They're trying to reduce the spread of low-quality AI content by building our established systems that have been very successful in combating spam and clickbait and reducing the spread of low-quality repetitive content. That sentence was repetitive. Yeah.

So I wonder. Was there an MDash in there? Yeah. I don't know exactly how effective their tools have been, but they claim to be both adding AI creation tools and combating AI slop. That is fascinating. And then last I saw they mentioned a tool that they plan to roll out this year, which will allow creators to create shorts using their own likeness. I can't wait to try this. I don't know what the...

And I'm super against this for regular people, but for us five, I want to do this so bad. I'm going to do an AI podcast. It's really interesting. Last year, I have vague memories of them talking about this. I don't know if it was in the letter or at an event I went to where essentially YouTube has your likeness and can use your. your voice and your face to make you dance and like walk around and do things in videos and do trends. And I don't see how this isn't slop.

But some people are going to make it fun and they're going to make it like entertaining, interesting content. Hi. I'm not sure how people are going to use it. This is how I'm going to do the podcast. It might be a little late. Yeah. 300 episodes.

Yeah. That'll be interesting to keep an eye on because our likenesses. Can't wait to make us dance. Yeah. This is definitely an opt-in thing as well. I hope so. Yeah. Okay.

This just makes me have two requests at the end of it. Okay. The version of the time limit on shorts, but I want to parent me, the parent. That sounds fantastic. Yeah. And how have we still not done chapter stuff yet? You brought it up and now I'm just mad again. And all I could think about this whole time is they're dynamically inserting ads and we still don't have a UI for chapters.

Seems crazy. They should name it after. when they finally do. You know what I also learned in when we did our all mistakes video? Mm-hmm. The same way that you add chapters to a YouTube video, which is by going to the description and typing all of your timestamps and formatting the chapter names yourself and then YouTube auto-detects that formatting

and adds the UI, that's the same way you add corrections slash annotations to YouTube videos today. But they never told us that. There's still a feature. They don't tell you about this. They don't like actually. It's not built it to the UI. You then go down to the box.

down to the bottom and add the word corrections colon space timestamp and then write the corrections out and it shows up visually in the corner. I hate they have to run freaking Python script in order. I don't just add this into this UI. It's just a, they should just add it into the upload. Everything is just a Python script, David. Quick, say something false so I can correct this. I'm eight and a half feet tall.

Perfect. Correction. He's 8.75 feet tall actually. Grom is this true? So, yeah. They refuse to build the UI. I don't know why it's taking so long or why they refuse to do it. But you can do corrections and timestamps for chapters and hope they don't break.

Just cross your fingers. Cool. Speaking of things that don't break. Trivia. Hit the lights. Oh, and they broke. They broke. They do break.

Everything's broken. Only when I say they don't. Every week. Wow. Touch designer crashed. You totally jinxed it, Marquez. Yeah, for sure. Okay.

Trivia. Yeah, but first, a quick moment of silence for Jimmy Butler's ACL. Damn, damn. That was the worst moment of silence? Yeah, no silence. Eat it, ACL? No. I can say it.

I've lost four of them. Are any of your ACLs yours anymore? No. Wait, you got an ACL transplant? That's how you fix ACLs. I thought they take it from another part of your body. It depends. Oh, they're mine.

They're not my ACLs. ACLs, though. They're my Patella tendon and my hamstring. I don't have a cadaver. Someone else's ACL. I didn't do that. I was too young and flexible, which got proven wrong when I tore it three more times after this. Amazing. Anyway, guys, what took a shorter amount of time, shorter amount of time? San Malton saying, we won't put ads in, or not we won't, but Sam Waltman saying, we're going to try not to put ads in chat GPT and then putting ads in chat GPT or Google making stadia available to buy and then not available to buy. And can you remind us the timeline for the Sam Altman quote?

I will say it is from 2024 to 2026, but I won't say what month in 2020. You said, should be the user time or longer amount of time? They are closer, which is shorter, which is a shorter amount of time. What happened faster? Also, I just want to say, you know what, actually, this is going to be a rare. You know, when I tried to find exactly what month, Sam Altman said that, the only place that I found an accurate thing in was Google AI overviews. Everyone else who tweeted about it said it happened in October, but it did not happen in October. It happened in May.

And everyone reported that it happened in October because the video of him saying it got uploaded in October, but the video was shot in May. Please do your due diligence internet. Got them. Tweeters. Wow. Ellis is an AI overview lover. Yeah. That's just an AISN AI overview sitting in a tree.

There's your next correction. Flip him and read. What do we got? Thank you. Who would like to read first? I think it was Stadia. That was shorter. Stadia had a lifespan of November 2019 to January, 23,

giving it a 38-month lifespan, which is incorrect. Wow. Yeah. And Andrew and David, you guys have the same answer. Yeah, sort of. Same but different. Yeah.

I said chat chipped-t. I said Altman. Which is both correct. Yeah. That was 20 months. Back to my old ways of not getting trivia points. Adam. Well, yeah, Marquez, you should just decide your answer and then no, no, no, that's rude.

You got it right last week. I got one point this year. You're doing fine. No, no, no. Yeah, actually. Yeah. Quick update on the score. Thank you for everyone who commented last week

that it was incorrect in the video. We fixed it today. Now, correction. It is actually Marquez with 12, Andrew with 16 after that correct answer, and David with 15 after that correct answer. Now, next one. And this one's worth 50 points.

50 points on the line. No, not 50 points. How old was Ellis when the first episode of American Idol aired in 2002? Is this closest or you just have to get it right? I'll let, oh, okay. I'll do closest, I'll do closest. So someone gets a point.

Who will it be? Will it be you, David? It's going to be you, Andrew. It's not prices right. It's right. It's Delta. Yeah, I'm just going Delta here. How well do you know American Idol and Ellis?

What is that Venn diagram? Whoa. What are you got? That's so specific. I don't know when any of this stuff happened. I said 10 months old. I said three. David, what did you say?

I said five. So the correct answer. That's four, isn't it? Is four. So you both got a point. Oh, shoot. No. You did Delta.

So I knew how old else was now, but I didn't take into account the fact that he was born in July and this was June. I did that. I didn't think about that. Dang. Well, I feel bad I forgot you were in July. I could have sworn Ellis was 12. I'm going to get a point. I'm going to get an appointment for sure.

Did you guys know it's going to snow this weekend? Alleged. For anyone that's still listening, every break we've taken this entire last three hours is Marquez just online with 40 articles about how much it's going to snow this weekend? It's so much. If we make it a trivia question,

will it snow this weekend? It won't. That's a joke about you getting everything wrong, Marquez. Yeah. He's too busy tweeting about the snow around. It's gonna snow a lot. Anyway, well, join us back next week when I hopefully get

maybe a point on trivia. It'll be February by then, won't it? No, we got one more January episode, I think. So stay tuned for that. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Thanks for subscribing most importantly and getting us off the hype train.

You know what that means. Catch you guys in the next one. People were saying they could still hype us for some reason. So that's broken already. Keep piping us then. See you later. Bye.

Wait from a produced by Adam Alina and Ellis Riverman. We're partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network, and our trotro music was created by Vain Sil. Bingo! Let's go! We're talking about weather for the next hour, right? Absolutely. That's word, Dan.