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0:32

Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine

0:34

and the vox media podcast network. I'm Kara

0:37

Swisher.

0:38

And I just had my play date with

0:40

your friend here.

0:41

Oh, good. The tough guy act that Kara

0:43

puts on, she's

0:45

actually quite worried about me. And you're you're actually

0:48

very maternal, and she's been setting up a series

0:50

of play dates for me. And I had my second

0:52

one

0:52

today. Patty? Yeah. With Patty.

0:54

How was that?

0:54

So Yeah. He's a very impressive

0:57

man.

0:57

Listen, hey. I thought he would like he's very tall too.

0:59

I thought he'd like that. He's tall.

1:00

He's very tall. I think he's very handsome. I like to

1:02

hang out with people better like that. Exactly. I try

1:04

to think these too. This is Patty Harvison. He

1:07

was the commsor essentially

1:09

commsor for Prince

1:10

Charles, but much more than that, he's a very

1:12

high level.

1:12

Damn. Damn. The the the bro one.

1:15

He was the head of comms from Manchester United.

1:17

Yes. I thought you'd like that part. I I work

1:19

on these things. I try to

1:20

see

1:20

you in. You're very thoughtful. He's just sort of

1:22

cool. He said he was on my podcast talking

1:24

about Prince Harry, the book and everything. And

1:26

he was quite for someone who worked for Prince Charles,

1:28

he was very even handed, which I was surprised

1:30

at. So it was interesting.

1:33

He's a he's a sharp, sharp calm

1:36

strategy kind of person that I thought

1:38

was great. Very

1:39

No. I'm assembling. I'm assembling my cancellation

1:41

team. He's gonna handle my p r,

1:44

my comp strategy. Yeah. Well,

1:46

I'm glad you're making friends. I have more friends for

1:48

you to meet, and I'm just selecting them carefully. I don't

1:50

wanna have any more. You're not Very good at those. You

1:53

will. I know when I do it for my kids, so

1:55

I know how to do children. To get children

1:57

happier into their

1:58

surroundings. Anyway, Alex got into

2:00

a couple of colleges. I can't I'm not allowed to talk about him, but

2:02

he's now relieved. So Did you get into

2:05

I'm not telling you. I can't touch I

2:07

can't touch like he's mad at me, but I'm glad

2:09

he's relieved. He thought he thought he wasn't

2:11

gonna get us anything. He's already gotten us to two,

2:13

which is great. Oh, which is great. Very happy.

2:15

That's great. Well, he should know that it was

2:17

it was really a function of his

2:19

excellence and the fact that he has rich parents. But

2:21

congratulations. No. It was not. He's

2:23

really got great grades. And and Louis

2:25

Swisher got straight a's at at at

2:27

NYU. So I'm trying to They all get straight a's.

2:30

Every household could get straight a's now. Like, No.

2:32

They don't. No. They're not Louis Swisher. And

2:34

so I'm celebrate my amazing

2:36

children. Is he going to did he

2:38

get into any good public schools? Yes.

2:41

Yes. Really? Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah.

2:43

That's where we're in. That's a real test. We're in

2:45

public schools trying to stay. They they try

2:47

and they haven't lost a script. They're actually looking at

2:49

kids based on Those are the ones he applied

2:51

to are public schools. He's once a big

2:53

public university. Yes.

2:55

Yes. He doesn't like the ivies. He does not I can't

2:57

believe he hasn't called me about this. This is one of the few

2:59

things I know a decent amount about. Yeah. He doesn't hasn't

3:02

interested in what you think. What

3:04

I think. He did it on himself. He's an amazing

3:06

kid. Definitely. Anyway, there's a lot to talk about.

3:08

Thank you. I'm very pleased, and Clara made

3:10

a lovely crown. At school. It was

3:12

very nice. I was very pleased with that. So

3:14

there we have it. And so let's walk. Well, we're all

3:16

caught up in the kids. Cut up on the kids.

3:18

Anyway, Today, we'll talk about Netflix

3:20

earnings and a high profile departure. Also,

3:23

hit Google as the company calls in some

3:25

big guns, and we'll speak with author

3:27

Corey Doctorow about how Big Tech Rob's

3:29

artists and content creators. First,

3:32

Jeff Zions will replace Ron Klean,

3:34

who you know, pretty well as president Biden's

3:36

chief of staff ahead of a likely

3:38

reelection campaign and a probe of Biden's

3:40

mishandling of classified documents.

3:43

Zines formally served as the

3:45

COVID-nineteen response coordinator for the

3:47

Biden administration. A pretty good job. Claims,

3:49

who's been with Biden forever, also

3:51

has been in tech. That's why I know him. Plans

3:53

to leave after the State of the Union in February.

3:55

We're the longest lasting first chief of

3:57

staff for any Democratic president. Very calm,

3:59

not a lot of like, it wasn't certainly wasn't

4:01

Trump's first. Two years. Mhmm. So

4:04

any thoughts on this? I Everything I've read about

4:06

them, it kinda kind of describes power

4:08

and sort of behind the scenes power player

4:10

and very well liked very savvy.

4:13

Yeah. It sounds like

4:15

it's a loss for the administration because it sounds like he

4:17

did exactly what he was supposed to do with a lot

4:19

of that's a tough

4:20

job. Right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You have to like well,

4:22

he's got a he's got a a reasonable

4:24

person he's working for. So it's not like it's

4:27

he's asked for crazy things in the middle

4:29

of the night and stuff. But yes, I

4:31

mean, the only thing about this and I happen

4:33

to think all these people are very confident is that

4:35

you would wonder he has to sort of stick with

4:37

his guy he has his guys that he's had

4:39

forever and speaking of friends like

4:41

play dates. And that's all he could that's how

4:43

he goes to. And I get that when your president is

4:45

who can you trust rather than people who are in

4:47

it for something. And I do think the Trump

4:49

administration and many of them are full of

4:51

people who want to advantage themselves

4:53

constantly. I think these people are have

4:55

been with him. And that's I don't so

4:57

I think about that a lot with tech companies too

4:59

about the people around people, enablers,

5:02

as you know. Is an issue

5:04

we've talked about at Twitter. It's happened at

5:06

Google and Facebook and stuff like

5:08

that. Just interesting. Well,

5:09

look, I think

5:11

most people would agree that

5:14

one of the president's real

5:17

victories is that it's and maybe it's just

5:19

contrast with the previous administration, but he

5:21

surrounded himself a lot of competent people.

5:23

Yep. Yep.

5:23

And that, you know, team the best

5:25

players who wins. Not shit, not not jazz

5:27

hands, not a lot of omerosas there. Anyway,

5:30

speaking of enablers, Musk is not

5:32

talking about Twitter this week, but he's talking about

5:34

his tweets. The funding secured tweets in

5:36

court. He's in court in the the

5:38

San Francisco Bay area. As a reminder,

5:40

the Tesla CEO tweeted the time the deal

5:42

to take somebody private at four. Hundred

5:44

and twenty dollars a share was confirmed.

5:47

The claim was false. The deal didn't happen.

5:49

Let's testify that it's difficult to link Tesla

5:51

stock price to his tweets. Of course, then they have

5:53

someone doing just that. He said

5:55

that short selling should be made illegal referring

5:57

to those who do it as bad people on

5:59

Wall Street. That may be. It has nothing to do with this. He

6:01

was trying to battle short sellers, I think,

6:03

in that regard. And then he

6:05

said people shouldn't believe his tweets.

6:08

Trials continuing. He's not done yet. I think

6:10

he's testifying some more today. I don't think

6:12

he came off particularly well

6:14

that's an interesting defense and novel defense

6:16

don't believe what I

6:16

tweet. Let's look at these statements. He

6:19

he testified that it's difficult to link

6:21

Tesla stock price to his

6:22

tweets. No. Actually,

6:24

there's statistical -- There's

6:26

all sorts of evidence.

6:27

-- that investors had that. They had

6:29

those. Go ahead.

6:30

The the moment he said that, the stock

6:33

skyrocketed. There was no other information.

6:35

Yeah.

6:35

Hitting the hundred dollars. We live in

6:37

a society where the CEOs have publicly

6:40

traded companies are expected to tell

6:42

the truth -- Yeah. -- cannot issue

6:44

false information that sends

6:46

a stock way up or way down.

6:48

Yeah. And he might not like short

6:50

sellers, but short selling is something that

6:52

almost every major pension fund

6:54

engages in to hedge their

6:56

bets such that if the market goes down as it

6:58

did last year and that the firemen and school

7:00

teachers and firewomen who have invested

7:03

with that pension fund don't get hurt as badly.

7:05

Shorting is just a component of the market. So what

7:08

happened when he put out that lie? And

7:10

let's be honest, it was a lie -- Mhmm.

7:12

-- people who were short got burned

7:14

people who thought, oh, maybe this

7:16

is the maximum number the stock will

7:18

ever go to because it's being bought. I'm

7:20

taking a private. Maybe I sell my stock

7:22

and the stock went up. I mean, this

7:24

is the bottom line is a lot

7:26

of people were taking

7:28

actions that may or may not have benefited

7:30

them based on -- Yeah. -- the

7:32

statements of a CEO who is expected

7:35

by law -- Yeah. -- to tell the

7:37

truth. Yes. So this

7:39

hasn't gotten a lot of coverage. Everyone's obsessed

7:41

with Twitter. Yeah. But

7:43

I'll ask you this. What other CEO

7:45

has gone in a public format? And

7:48

said the company is being taken private

7:50

at this number. And I have the

7:52

funding secured. And as many people

7:54

that wanna be involved with him, wanna be

7:56

in his next deal, wanna provide

7:58

financing. No one would actually

8:00

say, oh,

8:01

yeah, I can see why he

8:04

would have thought that we were funding it. Yeah.

8:06

He's saying he he thought it was

8:08

done deal. He still shouldn't have tweeted at

8:10

all. I mean, besides he's doing all these excuses, I

8:12

thought it was a done deal. The Saudis were

8:14

in, but then they were out. You don't you don't do

8:16

it at all, and then you don't do it if you

8:18

don't know for certain, something like that. And

8:20

even if you were doing something to I

8:22

think he was trying to screw the short sellers. I think

8:24

that's what was happening here. So

8:26

that's what he was doing, but that he can't

8:28

do that. He just can't do

8:29

that. It'll be I think he's probably gonna lose this

8:31

trial. And then he'll continue to litigate. I'm

8:34

sure. It would be striking if he wasn't

8:36

found and severely have a

8:38

pretty serious settlement here because

8:40

you could argue so many different ways

8:42

that so many different people and organizations

8:45

lost tens of billions of

8:47

dollars here. Mhmm. And you have

8:49

someone who has been on, you

8:51

know, in

8:51

and in and on boards of public companies,

8:54

you have to be correctly.

8:56

Mhmm. So careful -- Yeah.

8:58

-- about what you say because you don't wanna

9:00

give people misleading

9:02

information. And, I mean, I'm talking about

9:04

even remember I was on the board of Eddie

9:06

Baur, and we were doing an earnings

9:08

call. Wow. Do you remember Eddie Baur? Yeah. I

9:10

remember. I can't believe you're on the board of Eddie Baur. But

9:12

go ahead.

9:12

Anyway, it's

9:13

pretty much very, very bizarre.

9:14

Yeah.

9:15

And the company was doing really poorly, and we

9:17

were about to go we were contemplating

9:19

a bankruptcy filing.

9:20

Yeah. And we and we had our annual meeting. And

9:23

a hundred people showed up to the

9:25

annual meeting. And the CEO, we were

9:27

viewing the script of the CEO, and CEO was

9:29

mainly breaking the song about what a great brand it is

9:31

and my boss. You should say nothing

9:33

because anything that even indicates things are

9:35

going well. Yeah. Maybe some guy or

9:37

gal in the audience goes out and buy stock.

9:39

And tomorrow, we might file bankruptcy and the stock

9:41

goes to

9:41

zero. Yeah. You

9:42

just But that's

9:43

how thoughtful you need to be. That's what happened to

9:45

Bob Chip and Mary was going on about Disney when

9:47

it was the report right then when it was

9:50

reporting back, really? Yeah. You really this

9:52

guy doesn't have any kind of governor on himself. He

9:54

is just an id, Twitter, and

9:56

that's still no excuse. That's still no excuse. And by

9:58

the way, he can't if he loses a sentence, lot

10:00

of money. You can't afford it. Twitter's

10:03

three hundred million dollar interest payment is

10:05

due. Let's be clear. They have the money due

10:07

that they have with cash flow. They've also

10:09

got a loan that they

10:11

can borrow a five hundred million dollars

10:13

credit line essentially.

10:15

So they can pay this. It's just that it'll

10:17

put them further into debt. And then he'll have

10:19

another one in another couple of months. And

10:21

so it's gonna be sort of a, you

10:23

know, hide the whatever whatever you

10:25

hide, hide the source. Forget the gate.

10:27

It's gonna be try to try to pay this

10:29

thing over and over again. And at at some

10:31

point, he's gonna run out of space. Presume

10:33

unless he he dips into his own money and that'll

10:35

affect his other shares, whether it's

10:38

especially

10:38

Tesla. My my dad is my

10:40

dad used to tell me that the rich

10:42

live hound amount as well just on a higher

10:44

level. Yeah. And it's it

10:46

strikes me the same thing as here because you have with a

10:48

third wealthiest man in the world, isn't a cash

10:50

crunch. He has Based on the stuff

10:52

I've read, he has the money

10:54

to make this payment. Yeah. But

10:56

he has a company that is unsustainable. He has

10:58

a company where fifty percent of the

11:00

total revenues are have to go to interest

11:03

payments, which means his company does not

11:05

work. Mhmm. And so he either need to he

11:07

there's really I can't see him going down

11:09

to what, ten percent of the

11:11

original staff, he's down to twenty five percent So it's going

11:13

to be hard to cut more cost. So it's going to have to

11:15

come up with something that grows

11:17

revenues. And that's conceivable.

11:19

Maybe he'll come up. Give us

11:20

help him. What? Well,

11:23

at this point, he doesn't have time to

11:25

do anything that significant. I mean, sounds

11:27

very boring. What he needs to do -- Mhmm.

11:29

-- is plain ice and kiss some

11:32

serious advertiser ass right

11:33

now. Mhmm. And try and get the people who

11:35

are already used to spending money on the form

11:37

back on. If it's fine, if it has efficacy. They'll

11:39

come back as well. But that

11:40

but that's my point. That's the that's the

11:42

shortest the shortest route between points a and

11:44

b. He needs to get revenue in the door immediately.

11:47

Yeah. And anything around subscription at

11:49

this point or AI, whatever jazz hands

11:51

we wanna talk about will take years in additional

11:52

investment. Yeah. We've been erosion of

11:55

equity for sure. For the people who own it. You mean, it's

11:57

gonna go most people think it's to zero anyway, the

11:59

equity he has, given

12:01

the price like, it's not worth anything,

12:03

but at the same time, he's really gotta

12:05

keep get money in the door. They keep talking about

12:07

this this subscription thing isn't

12:09

working, long

12:11

form tweets, all

12:13

it's all long term and difficult

12:15

to build those businesses and really

12:16

hard. I think advertising is is

12:19

only back quick revenue, quick fixed

12:21

revenue for sure. But this notion around

12:23

CEOs and our communications -- Mhmm. --

12:25

imagine a CEO is about to leave a company and

12:27

he's gonna retire and he's got a options

12:29

vesting and he wants to sell them and

12:31

he wants to set himself up. If that jury

12:33

doesn't find Elon Musk, get guilty

12:35

and hit him pretty hard What's

12:37

to stop every CEO on the data they're vesting

12:39

or whether they're about to sell shares from going,

12:41

oh, guess what? We we're in

12:43

talks to take the company private at an eighty

12:45

percent

12:45

premium. Yeah. I mean, at

12:48

some point, nothing any

12:50

any company CEO will say

12:51

-- Mhmm.

12:52

-- will be believable. Right. And

12:55

what's to stop any of them?

12:56

Because I know what?

12:56

It's like most people don't believe me because I'm

12:59

such a non

12:59

Most people don't believe me.

13:01

Was essentially what he said. I think

13:03

I I wasn't quite clear

13:04

what I was saying. That's not true. The

13:07

markets do believe him.

13:07

Yeah. When he goes when he says,

13:10

when any CEO, including him of a

13:12

public company, says,

13:14

I'm taking the company

13:14

private, at four hundred and twenty dollars a share and

13:17

the funding has been secured, the markets

13:19

take that seriously. Yes. I agree. I agree.

13:21

Anyway, lastly, one thing that

13:23

I do think is unfair I have to say, and

13:25

I usually don't take Amazon's side here,

13:27

but the US attorney's office in Manhattan

13:29

is investigating whether Amazon downplayed

13:31

poor safety record in order to get credit from

13:33

lenders. The investigation makes use of a

13:35

law from nineteen eighty nine that could allow the

13:37

government to bring a civil case against

13:39

Amazon. They should focus on the safety

13:41

record or whether they told the truth, and they should focus on

13:43

lenders. But this seems like a a

13:45

tear docket to

13:46

me, a legal tear docket, but I don't know

13:48

about you. I I

13:49

agree with you. I don't I

13:51

I when

13:51

I read it, I had triple understanding it, and it

13:53

felt like that that

13:55

big tech has become such a amiable

13:58

or easy punching bag that

14:00

this is it's just all like a big against

14:02

markets, they should do anti trust, they could

14:04

look into safety, you know, these are

14:07

all individual like sort of this omnibus bill that

14:09

they shove everything in. It just seems

14:11

at your duckin. Legal to duckin.

14:14

Anyway, I like it to

14:14

duckin. You're headed to

14:15

duckin? You projected I I did know what it

14:18

is. I don't know what a trueduckin is. I

14:19

don't know what a trued up.

14:19

I think this is you showing off your Georgetown.

14:22

No. No. It's a cool

14:23

thing. You put AAA

14:26

Turkey

14:26

Oh, turkey and a duck? Duck and a chicken. You

14:28

put the chicken in the duck, I think,

14:30

and you put them all in the cavity of

14:32

the

14:32

turkey, but one inside the other. Really kind of

14:35

sick in the head, and then you cook them all. They're

14:37

ducking. Thank

14:37

you. Nice.

14:38

Yeah. Yeah. It's lots of meat, but it's

14:41

really propulsive. Anyway. It's

14:42

like the Long Island iced tea of of

14:44

foul. Just put everything in there. I

14:46

kept putting the word of a tardive duck in anyway.

14:48

Alright. Let's get to our first

14:50

big story. Read

14:55

Hastings could be the gray man of Netflix

14:57

that's a joke about. Show they have.

14:59

Hastings announced his departure as co

15:01

CEO last week. He will be

15:03

replaced by the company's COO, Greg

15:05

Peters, and Ted Sarendos will

15:07

remain as co CEO. The news came

15:09

as Netflix reported its fourth quarter

15:11

earnings. Let's look into this glass

15:13

onion service added more than seven

15:15

million subscribers beating expectations of

15:17

four point five million. Netflix hasn't

15:19

said how much of that growth comes

15:21

from the new ad supported tier, but

15:23

Netflix doesn't want to talk subscriber numbers

15:25

is no longer issuing guidance there. It's focusing on

15:27

a kaleidoscope of their finances instead,

15:30

but still earnings per share were down more than ninety

15:32

percent from a year ago and the company slightly missed on

15:34

revenue expectations. They're sort of trying to build this

15:36

business. I think that's fine. It seems like

15:38

it's off to a good start with Microsoft as

15:40

their provider. And this

15:42

co CEO thing still confuses

15:44

me. Hastings, of course, as we

15:46

talked about, has a

15:48

long an August history.

15:51

He's done a great job at his work, but he's

15:53

still there as executive chairman, so that they have

15:55

a probably a very involved executive

15:57

chairman and two

15:58

CEOs. And I guess Sarando's

16:00

couldn't just have the single one. I actually

16:02

like the co CEO thing. It's actually

16:04

a pretty smart strategy. Because it

16:06

doesn't give any one employee too much

16:08

leverage over the

16:09

enterprise. I guess.

16:10

Yeah. And when they get along, it seems like

16:12

Regent had a nice partnership.

16:15

But we've talked about Reid a lot. And I'm

16:17

always thought, well, Reid gets a lot of

16:19

warning credit. I still don't think he gets the

16:21

credit for his role. In

16:24

changing business. Yeah. III think what

16:26

he accomplished is nothing short of

16:28

remarkable. Mhmm. Think about it. He was doing

16:30

DVDs by by mail And he's

16:32

had this vision of broadband. But his

16:34

vision of broadband was US Postal Service.

16:36

He said there's a million people -- Yeah. --

16:38

delivering content to a

16:40

hundred million homes

16:41

that's the broadband infrastructure we wanna leverage.

16:44

And then we saw actual broadband come

16:46

into the market.

16:46

He moved into it. He

16:47

had the greatest pivot probably in business

16:50

history. For sure. And

16:50

then he was the first major player to

16:53

go vertical in content with House of Cards. I

16:55

mean, these guys have always been

16:57

sorta one step

16:57

ahead. He's quite good. I think they've moved to

17:00

advertising with smart. I think I think just it's

17:02

just what's happening. So, I mean, I think

17:04

people were wondering why Sarandos didn't get

17:06

the single CEO ship. Probably he

17:08

himself. He said he's gotten used to it. He

17:10

expressed a little bit of surprise, I think,

17:12

in one of the interviews. And, you know,

17:14

he has a little reputation for

17:16

green lighting everything, and some of them are poor

17:18

performers. I'd like to shed some light though on one

17:20

thing. They moved Bella Bajari

17:22

who I've done a interview with,

17:24

who I think a lot of. She was

17:26

promoted to chief content officer. She was

17:28

running the television part, and then a guy named

17:30

Scott Stuber was running is running the film thing,

17:32

and he's reporting to her. You know, one of the things that really

17:34

drove me crazy is a lot of the media was

17:36

going, oh, they had to put her name in for a

17:38

diversity thing. This is the woman

17:40

who got in the you

17:42

know, I'll go back, squid games, Indian

17:45

Indian matchmaking. She

17:47

did Wednesday. She did all kinds

17:49

of things. Bridgeport, she got great

17:51

stuff. She did Damer. All

17:53

the big hits there are her

17:55

team, essentially, across the

17:57

globe. And They just a provider in the New

17:59

Yorker as someone who like

18:01

likes commercial popular stuff, and it

18:03

was a weird article I thought. But

18:05

she's certainly been behind a lot of

18:07

their

18:07

success. Now a lot of people say, why wasn't she made a

18:09

co CEO? That is an excellent question. But

18:12

but

18:13

Well, clearly, because she's a woman as you're implying No.

18:15

I'm not implying that. No. No. No. No.

18:16

I don't Why are we talking about this? Because on the

18:19

a lot of the coverage, let let me

18:21

finish I'm sorry. Go ahead. She's in the

18:23

press release or got this thing because of diversity

18:25

and because of being a woman. She got the

18:27

job because she's talented. Period. That's what

18:29

I'm saying. But a lot of the the media coverage is

18:32

still done by guys. I'm sorry. And a lot of

18:34

people I regard, well, were

18:36

like, oh, she got it because

18:38

they her in there because that well, maybe they put her in there because she

18:40

deserves the job. I just drove me crazy watching

18:42

the coverage because

18:44

she certainly of all these people, she's had the

18:47

most hits for them, which is interesting.

18:49

Not

18:49

just She did to your point,

18:51

she did that great Netflix

18:53

series about Abraham

18:54

Lincoln. I

18:55

don't remember. Yeah. Don't you remember

18:56

the the finale was shot before a live

18:58

audience? Oh my god. You're oh my

19:00

god. You have to cancel. I'm trying to

19:02

say No. She's

19:05

doing a lot of part. We just stuff that's premium

19:07

and commercial. She did love as

19:09

blind selling sunset, but also is

19:11

doing this three body problem with the

19:13

the the game of Thrones

19:14

people. Like, I just feel like it's it was I was watching You

19:16

wanted her to

19:16

be a Co CEO? We didn't No. I didn't want her to

19:18

be a Co CEO. I just didn't want them to then if

19:20

she wasn't Co CEO to say she done she

19:23

got She's on the press release because

19:25

of

19:25

this. It like -- You said that?

19:27

-- lots of the coverage. Lots of coverage

19:29

I was reading. I'm not call anyone out because there's a

19:31

lot of people I like who did it, but I just feel like

19:33

it was quite she's quite she'll

19:36

probably be the CEO at some point. Probably, it would

19:38

be my

19:38

guess. Nonetheless, I was irritated by

19:41

that. Very irritated. It was like, Matt, I tweeted.

19:42

Matt, I was

19:43

like, god. I was mad. No. So you let you downplay,

19:45

like, it

19:45

was his. I'm literally just sitting

19:48

here. I'm little this

19:49

is This is We have officially become a married couple.

19:51

I'm just trying to find

19:52

an elegant way out of your anger right now.

19:54

What can I do? No. I'm not anger.

19:56

What are you like, people who do

19:58

like can I

19:58

take out the trash? Can I hit our

20:01

kids? What can I do amazing? No.

20:03

Last thing is what drove me crazy is

20:05

they then re brought up this Cindy Holland

20:07

who was who was who was

20:09

a great programmer

20:10

too, but she's more pop Bella

20:13

makes more popular stuff and reached

20:15

for reality. That's nice to see why you're

20:17

angry. No.

20:17

But here's the situation. They were still

20:20

having that fight happening. It's such a

20:22

sexist camera

20:23

lost. I just I let me

20:25

just say congratulations to Bella

20:27

Dario. Congratulations to Greg Peters. And

20:29

I do and congratulations to to

20:31

read Hastings who was -- Mhmm. -- is a legend and

20:33

a legendary six medium. Alright?

20:36

Agreed. Alright. Scott, let's

20:38

go on a quick break. When we come back,

20:41

lay us hit a new

20:41

high. We'll speak with a friend of pivot Corey Doctor about

20:44

how platforms shortchange content

20:46

creators.

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21:57

Okay, Scott. We're

22:00

back. We're disagreeing a lot lately. I

22:03

kinda like it. What do you

22:03

think? We're the Bickersons. We're with

22:05

Bickersons in London. Too, but you were wrong about Harry

22:08

and you're wrong about government surveillance. But That's

22:10

what Patty said. Patty said I was wrong about

22:12

Harry and Meghan. He thought I was harsh on

22:14

the monarchy.

22:16

Well, he would he did work for them, but he is

22:18

a perspective on that. Alright. We'll get back to layoffs.

22:21

January isn't even

22:21

over, but already this month has

22:24

seen more tech In the first half of

22:26

twenty twenty two.

22:27

Just since our last episode, Google

22:30

announced that it will cut around twelve thousand jobs

22:32

and not very nicely in some

22:34

cases according to some tweets I saw. Spot if they said it will

22:36

lose about six percent of its staff. That seems

22:38

to be the number six, seven percent. Wafer

22:40

is laying off more than seventeen

22:42

hundred people and were in the same boat. Fox

22:44

Media cut seven percent of its staff this

22:46

past Friday. Google layoffs brought

22:49

confusion. Employees reportedly found

22:51

out by scanning their badges as they

22:53

enter the office and seeing who was

22:55

denied. That's depressing. It wasn't clear

22:57

how they made their layoff decisions and they're probably

22:59

some high performers were cut. The guy

23:01

who wrote the book on research finding Dan

23:03

Russell had been let go and stuff like

23:05

that. I mean, they have their reasons for doing the

23:07

things they're doing, probably. It

23:09

felt hazard at Google for sure, but it continues.

23:11

You have been someone who thought it was

23:13

good because they had been because they had been

23:15

cleaning up areas that they overhired in,

23:18

for example, they were doing a ton of hiring.

23:20

And it does move people to bet different

23:22

jobs. Most tech workers find jobs within

23:24

three months

23:25

typically. What's interesting is that or I find interesting

23:28

is from a societal standpoint.

23:30

One thing about the tech

23:32

workforce is very skilled,

23:34

very educated, very well compensated,

23:36

also very young. Mhmm. It's

23:38

so young that a lot of these people

23:40

have been laid

23:41

off, have have never been through a

23:44

layoff. Yeah. And even when you look

23:46

at what we're experiencing and

23:48

colleges around America because of a variety of things

23:50

and

23:50

cutting concierge

23:50

parenting or bulldozer parenting, a lot of

23:52

these kids get to college having never known

23:54

any disappointment. Yeah. And they face their

23:56

first

23:56

disappointment whether to get

23:59

foresee or they have the heartbroken, and

24:01

they have, you know, they've had so many

24:03

sanitary wipes on their, you know, on their

24:05

used on their lives that they've never developed their own

24:07

immunities. It's kind of Princess in

24:09

the peace syndrome. And I

24:10

think a little bit is playing out here. And that is

24:12

I think we have a generation of people that

24:14

have never been in a down

24:16

economy. Yeah.

24:17

This is it. And the New York Times talking

24:20

about that. The young people were like,

24:22

what? And the old people were like, yeah.

24:24

Whatever. Well, I was even thinking about

24:26

My dad was on a real upslope

24:28

in terms of his professional career, especially for

24:30

a guy who was pulled out of school. He was thirteen

24:32

until about his forties. And then

24:34

when the eighties came and reengineering was a big thing and they

24:36

used to come in and just anyone with a VP or

24:38

SCP title, they would fire him. My

24:40

dad moved from LA, to

24:43

Columbus, Ohio, to Chicago,

24:45

to Phoenix, to Ocala, Florida,

24:47

to back to Tucson,

24:49

because every two or three years you get fired from

24:51

a big company. No. And you'd have to go

24:53

where the work was. And something

24:56

I've realized, like, my dad to

24:59

his credit know, he was angry and depressed generally, but he wasn't

25:01

any angry or more depressed. He he

25:03

I don't wanna say he got used to it. Mhmm.

25:05

But the people in the seventies and

25:07

eighties or just traditionally,

25:09

people got, you

25:10

know, it wasn't an unusual thing. People

25:13

had,

25:13

I don't know, bad things happen to them

25:16

professionally, so to speak. And

25:18

if you are if you are a tech employee

25:20

under the age of

25:22

of call it forty -- Mhmm.

25:24

-- you likely have never seen a down economy.

25:27

Right. And this is really I think it's

25:29

really rock some worlds for some people.

25:31

And here's the here's the bottom

25:33

line. If you are at it.

25:35

If you're a Microsoft, if you're at any of these

25:37

companies, what does that mean? You're

25:39

incredibly well educated. You're

25:41

incredibly skilled. You're probably very good at what

25:43

you do. You live in a

25:45

wonderful economy or you live in a, you

25:47

know, democracy, traditional

25:49

companies want to speak to

25:50

you. I mean, it's just these are these

25:52

people are gonna be just fine. Yeah.

25:53

They'll move people to more areas they should

25:56

move into. I think have you been laid off? I've

25:58

never been laid off. I've been fired. I think

26:00

I've been fired from every job, but every

26:02

half. I just started

26:03

serious. That's why I started and this this

26:06

is a

26:06

learning here. The

26:07

area is a certain

26:09

you you

26:10

I've always started businesses and people always say,

26:12

oh, that's because you're so talented and they give you

26:14

the benefit out. It's not.

26:16

It's because I don't have the skills to

26:20

navigate and endure organizations.

26:23

Yeah. And that's not that's it's not

26:25

a feature. It's a bug. Because in order to

26:27

to do well in a corporate world, you

26:29

have to be able to endure the occasional

26:31

injustice. You have to be

26:33

secure enough to not worry about what they're

26:35

saying about you. You have to put up with bullshit. You

26:37

have to put up with less talented people occasionally

26:40

being promoted or paid more than you. That's just part

26:42

of it. But if you can endure

26:44

that, these organizations known as

26:46

American corporations are probably the greatest

26:48

platforms for wealth creation and history. Yeah.

26:50

And so people who are able to

26:52

navigate a corporation -- Mhmm. --

26:54

are really

26:54

skilled. We're bad. I never had this. We like each

26:57

other. I think we're bad employees. We are

26:59

bad employees. But it really

27:00

is. People romanticized entrepreneurs.

27:03

Yeah. My my stall made

27:05

a Morgan Stanley. The only job I've ever really had

27:07

was I was an analyst in fixed income

27:09

at Morgan Stanley. Mhmm. And my

27:12

stalemate is stayed

27:14

there in Rose

27:16

device chairman, and we got together

27:18

And by most measures, I've been a

27:20

fairly successful entrepreneur. And we kinda ended

27:22

up in the same place

27:23

economically, but he did it with a lot less stress

27:26

and a lot less ups and downs. A bad on

27:28

speaking of employees. Google

27:30

founders, Larry Page, and Sergey Brent have returned to

27:32

the company help advise its AI efforts. This

27:34

is a typical move by these companies.

27:37

Google reportedly in a panic mode after the debut

27:39

of Chat, GPT, like they didn't see it coming

27:41

from OpenAI. Now

27:43

Google plans to release a

27:45

suite of products has been working on this that

27:47

has its own versions of these things. I

27:50

believe it's called Lambda. I believe that's

27:52

what they're called. I

27:54

don't get this. These guys have been, like, on

27:56

boats and yachts and

27:58

doing other

27:58

things, riding around on

28:01

many wheeled bicycles. What

28:02

are your thoughts on this? Creativity within a big company. You're talking

28:04

about the people that stay. Right? The creative people

28:06

tend to leave these big companies, and therefore,

28:08

why would they create something

28:10

like this at Google, so Google can benefit. I just think

28:12

most people are have their self interest. And if

28:14

you have something super cool, that's why I

28:16

leave places. I got something super cool or I

28:18

don't wanna share it. Kind of

28:20

thing. And so I I it's hard to be innovative

28:23

within a big company. And especially when

28:25

your bread and your your bread is being

28:27

bothered by Google Search for so long, why would

28:29

you innovate? Why would you push

28:31

it and break it? So and I just think the

28:33

idea of founders, I think it's very

28:35

romantic, but kind of

28:35

ridiculous. You mean this is on

28:37

Larry and Sergey coming back? Yeah.

28:40

Yeah. All this I think the reason why they didn't do this is because

28:42

they're doing other they're doing things to keep

28:44

their business going and do really well.

28:46

And there's no reason to be innovative within a big

28:48

company when your like

28:50

you were talking about your friend. He was probably didn't

28:52

innovate anything in finance duty,

28:54

but even if he made the same amount of money and

28:56

you certainly

28:56

have. So Well, yeah. But what you're referring

28:59

to is Clayton Christensen's innovator's dilemma. And that is

29:01

you're just for a mess. Yeah. You're a

29:03

mess to kill the golden goose, so you

29:05

don't want. Yeah. You

29:07

you don't wanna be the captain that

29:09

that says, I know. Let's let's

29:12

let's build an iceberg to sink our

29:14

own ship. You just I mean,

29:16

one of the reasons why Apple's been so successful

29:18

is they've never been that scared

29:20

to disrupt themselves. They will

29:22

take the iPod which was a huge selling

29:24

product, and I'll turn it into an icon that goes

29:26

on the iPhone. Mhmm. So the but

29:28

that's that's the traditional that's

29:30

why big companies, you know,

29:32

fail or stop to innovate as they say, why on

29:35

earth would we eat our own yen?

29:37

Mhmm. Yeah. But I this the Google

29:39

thing is interesting the founders coming

29:41

back. That feels to me more like a photo

29:43

op. Yeah. I mean And anything else? Yeah.

29:45

I mean, do they my guess is

29:47

they had really decade ago. I

29:49

you know, like, one of been sailing or I don't know even what

29:51

they're doing. I mean, literally, I was

29:54

at one of their ex wife's

29:56

Turkish ex

29:56

husband, he arrived on, like, a ten wheel bicycle.

29:59

It was weird. This is like, well, this was a long time

30:01

ago too. You're friends with one

30:02

of his ex wife? Not friends.

30:04

I was just there talking about her.

30:06

I

30:06

don't know about you, but I'm just in sense that she was a mid co CEO

30:08

of Netflix.

30:09

You know what? I look,

30:12

you know, I just you don't even you don't

30:14

even see it. You don't even see it. Just don't

30:16

see government

30:16

surveillance. You've never been gay. I'm

30:19

unconsciously

30:19

biased. You're

30:20

not you're

30:20

consciously biased. That's

30:22

No. But I'm I'm conscious of my

30:25

unconscious bias. Oh

30:25

my god. Just you know what? You don't even you don't even

30:27

see it in

30:28

the in the day. I'm glad. Women

30:30

and people called you get credit of things

30:32

they accomplish most of the time. And guys get

30:35

tons of why guys get tons of

30:36

credit? Sorry. It's just the way it is. It's it

30:38

was irritating to see. I

30:40

channel women every day. I imagine a man

30:42

and I take away

30:43

reason and accountability and boom, I'm a woman. Oh

30:45

my

30:45

god. That's from that's a

30:46

Jack Nicholson as good as it gets.

30:49

Great movie. Anyway, why don't know why these guys can fix

30:51

something? They've been busy like having

30:53

people peel them a grape for so long, very

30:55

smart people, but come on, can't

30:57

they find some new young,

30:59

fresh people to think of her

31:00

old, fresh people. I don't care, fresh people. Young

31:02

and fresh? Not the

31:03

not old,

31:04

young, or commercial? Weird.

31:07

Young and fresh people. And I also like

31:09

the governing force of activists, by the way.

31:11

I do like that the activists are bugging. I like

31:13

Bob Boyer, but I like that activist are bugging them.

31:15

And

31:15

now

31:15

it's sales force. Activist investor Elliott

31:18

Management. I mean, good activists. It's not

31:20

irritating ones that just want green mail or

31:22

black whatever, blue mail, whatever. They

31:24

put up billions of dollars. It could be a bid

31:26

for board seats. Salesforce has had its own

31:28

layoffs. The stock has say Marvin,

31:30

there's been this shift to people just so you

31:32

know, Salesforce is a sponsor. But we give them

31:34

the same treatment as any other company. They obviously,

31:36

they they're right for the thing. I'm fascinated

31:39

that Salesforce, of course, you could see

31:41

this stock sort of in a place where

31:43

an activist might come in. But

31:45

I'm curious why nobody's come into Tesla

31:47

yet probably because if you blow him up,

31:49

you're looking for a world of hurt and there may be

31:51

not much upside. But I think activist investors

31:54

are suddenly really out and

31:55

about. Are you getting calls? I've

31:58

talked to a few of these guys or I've I've

32:00

I've heard from some funds or they when

32:02

they call me as they

32:03

say, we have this idea. What do you think?

32:06

Yeah. And

32:06

but these ones I don't wanna say they're

32:08

easy, but Salesforce I

32:11

mean, Disney is just a great play. It's an

32:14

unbelievable unbelievable assets.

32:16

You know,

32:16

this company is enduring the downside.

32:19

It's just so much more If you

32:21

think about Disney that its stock would double, then it would

32:23

get cut in half again. If you really

32:25

look at the value of their assets and their

32:27

cash flow and I mean it's just that's

32:29

a great activist

32:30

play. Salesforce is at

32:32

basically a five year low. Mhmm. And

32:34

I think the play there and the

32:36

way Elliott

32:37

most

32:38

likely go about it and it's a guy named Jesse

32:40

Cohn is an incredibly impressive young

32:42

man. Now that's one of those moments when you meet with someone

32:45

so much younger than you and so much smarter than

32:47

you get press. You're like, Jesus, really. Anyway --

32:49

Mhmm. -- they've got they'll

32:51

go in. They'll be they'll just hang

32:53

around the hoop. They'll be

32:54

supportive. And

32:55

they'll say, clearly, we can all agree the company's undervalued.

32:58

Mhmm. And they'll wait a year. And if things

33:00

don't get

33:00

better, they'll move in with quote unquote

33:03

suggestions. they

33:04

did the same thing. They're not afraid. Their

33:06

the way I would describe them is they're forceful

33:08

yet dignified. Mhmm. But they won't

33:10

be afraid to make, you know, suggest management

33:13

changes, but Salesforce, you

33:15

could say, alright. It's an incredible company,

33:17

incredible client relationships, probably

33:19

have overpaid for some acquisitions, probably

33:21

haven't been as

33:22

tight. Mhmm. Around expense control.

33:25

Which is what they're saying over at Disney with

33:27

Peloton. Go ahead. Yeah.

33:27

Yeah. So but you're gonna see

33:30

activists everywhere because here's the problem and this

33:32

is the reason why there hasn't been an activist play

33:34

a Tesla. At the end of the day, what

33:36

you want is regardless of whether your

33:38

suggestions make any sense or not, you want to stock

33:40

whose natural trajectory should be up because

33:42

it's

33:42

undervalued. Yeah. And

33:43

the reason

33:44

why you don't have an activist at Tesla is not

33:46

as much around Musk. Maybe that's it. No one

33:48

wants to get into a pissing match with him because he's crazy

33:50

and that's a hundred and

33:51

you know,

33:52

the crusaders behind him, but also the stock

33:54

is overvalued. Yeah.

33:56

So that's that's what I

33:57

was thinking.

33:57

Yeah. So the reason you're seeing so many

34:00

activists right now is not because these

34:02

companies are so incredibly fucked up,

34:04

but the management has made bad

34:04

decisions. It's because the underlying stock

34:07

is probably I mean, these companies have been cut in half. You're right. They

34:09

can't really there's no upside at

34:11

Tesla. Right, necessarily. And then you're buying a lot

34:13

of trouble. It's now back at a hundred and forty

34:15

two. It was down at 101.

34:17

You know, it's it's going up and

34:19

down. It's just it's not gonna go to the four hundred or

34:21

five hundred range that they would like and it doesn't possibly

34:24

deserve that. Right? And especially with all

34:26

the competitors, so you wouldn't be

34:28

winning anything.

34:30

Presuming But what's

34:30

the activists? What's an activist gonna say? What's the argument? And what

34:33

are they gonna do to unlock that

34:35

value? Yep. That's correct. That's

34:37

correct. Sell I guess Sell it. I don't know.

34:39

Who knows? I mean, they certainly have the market

34:41

share. What would you do? Okay. Activist investor. What

34:43

would you do at Salesforce right now? You get

34:45

two seats on the board, what do you advocate

34:47

for? Do you wanna

34:47

change management?

34:48

Do you wanna have them to divest of Slack

34:50

or whatever what's they bought? I think they've I

34:52

think you have to start, why is

34:55

the stock more been compared to

34:57

stocks like it? You have to start

34:59

talking about that. You just have to stock talk about

35:01

just like at at Disney or else who's the heir apparent and why is

35:03

that unable to happen? And then you'd

35:05

sort of lean into what

35:08

the future of your what what's gonna really off your which seems

35:10

like it needs a

35:12

fresh look in terms of management. That's

35:14

I don't know. That's stuff like that. There's

35:17

a lot there. It should be worth more. It's a very

35:19

it's a very valuable

35:20

company. It should be more valuable. Thank you.

35:22

No. That's not a very

35:23

compelling argument. You've

35:26

just failed first us, isn't that okay? That's fine. Well Although, I think you could be

35:28

cozy of

35:29

Netflix. And by the way, I

35:31

just I just to correct the record, I said that it

35:33

was at a five year low.

35:36

It's actually thirty eight percent over the last five

35:37

years, but my guess is that's under purported tears or the That's

35:39

correct. That is correct. Anyway, which state I don't know.

35:41

I'd have to prep That's why

35:43

I need you along until I then knife you in the

35:45

back, something like that. There you

35:47

go. Alright. Let's bring in our

35:49

friend of pivot to talk about something

35:51

we actually do know about. Corey

35:58

is an author activist and special advisor to the Electronic Frontier

36:01

Foundation. In his latest book with

36:03

co author Rebecca Giblin,

36:06

he argues an Internet that is fair to content creators, it's

36:08

called chokepoint capitalism, how big tech

36:10

and big content captured creative

36:12

labor markets

36:13

win them back. Welcome, Corey. How are you

36:16

doing? I'm very well. Thanks.

36:17

How are you? So

36:19

explain chokepoint capitalism for us.

36:21

Isn't that just capitalism? You

36:23

know it's a cousin of Monopoly

36:26

capitalism. It's -- Ten. -- panoxony

36:28

capitalism. Monoxony

36:30

is the the word nobody

36:32

knows because we don't have a a family

36:34

destroying board game with that name.

36:36

Mhmm. But Monopoly is when you have a

36:38

seller who controls a market rather than a buyer who

36:40

controls a market. And creative

36:42

labor markets are really susceptible to this. If you

36:44

can find a way to corner

36:46

an audience, say by buying all

36:48

the radio stations or by locking all the audiobook listeners into a DRM

36:50

format or through an other

36:53

mechanism that allows you to to to

36:56

have control over how the audience

36:58

meets the artist, then you

37:00

can impose all

37:02

kinds of conditions on the artist as they pass through the chokepoint

37:04

to reach their audience --

37:06

Right. -- and those conditions

37:09

can include and and

37:11

today do include just giving up whatever

37:13

copyright they have, which is why, in

37:15

particular, artistic markets are a problem because we

37:17

have this idea that we can unrig our

37:20

artistic markets or make them fairer through

37:22

copyright. But if there's only

37:24

three record labels or four studios

37:26

or five publishers or two ad tech companies or

37:28

one ebook company. Giving an artist more

37:30

copy. Right? It's like giving a bully kid extra

37:32

lunch money. There's just, like, not an

37:34

amount of lunch

37:35

money. That will get that kid lunch. To the

37:37

audience, but isn't that the way it has always

37:39

been done with audiences, whether they controlled

37:41

venues, whether they controlled

37:44

radio stations, etcetera etcetera. I mean, in movie theaters, he's always

37:46

been Chuck chokepoint capitalism for

37:48

artists. Whether they shoved into a movie

37:50

system or a

37:52

music

37:52

system, It seems like that to me. Well, the difference is the number of firms

37:54

that we bargain with. So when I was a baby

37:56

rider, there were twenty five houses in New York.

37:59

Now there's five. There were

38:01

dozens of record labels until Universal

38:04

Warner and Sony went on a buying

38:06

spree and bought all

38:08

of them until seventy

38:10

percent of all the recorded music was controlled by

38:12

three labels. We've never had a situation like

38:14

that. Also because we allowed for vertical

38:16

mergers, they were able to buy all

38:18

the publishers So sixty five percent of all the not just the recording

38:20

copyrights, but the composition copyrights are

38:22

owned by those three firms. You know,

38:24

certainly, it was never the case that

38:26

a single file format, except

38:28

for maybe Microsoft Office,

38:30

was the only file format

38:32

that a single genre

38:34

existed in, but Audible DRM is like

38:36

ninety percent of the audiobook market. One company controls

38:39

ninety percent of the audiobook market. And

38:41

and as we document in the book, you

38:43

know, it's not like they use that in

38:45

a benign way. There's there's writers who

38:47

credibly accused Audible of hundreds and millions of dollars in Wage

38:49

Theft, and who, you know, they if

38:51

they left Audible's

38:53

platform, their audience couldn't follow them because their books are

38:56

permanently locked to Audibles.

38:58

I'm just really curious what you're thinking this is

39:00

something that both Karen is sort of near

39:02

and dear care in my heart

39:04

is, have you looked at the publishing

39:06

market in books? Because it strikes me

39:08

that that feels like

39:10

an oligopoly and it's as a as an author, so

39:12

opaque. I still don't understand

39:14

the economics, how it

39:18

translates to creators or not creators or but having

39:20

and I know the merger was just blocked,

39:22

but having a few players

39:26

Is it similar to the to the music publishing market?

39:29

Have you what are your thoughts on it?

39:31

There are big differences between the the

39:33

particulars of music and books but

39:36

they're both monopolistic or or, I guess, oleg opportunistic

39:38

because it's a small number of firms.

39:40

And and they both have similar

39:44

structural drives to become

39:46

concentrated. So the thing about monopoly is that

39:48

it replicates. When you have a monopoly

39:50

somewhere in the supply chain, it's

39:52

able to exert excessive buyer

39:54

power on its suppliers and excessive

39:56

seller power on its customers. And that leaves

39:58

both of them vulnerable. So here's an example from

40:00

books. About a

40:02

decade ago, Amazon was using its investors capital

40:04

to sell ebooks below price

40:06

below cost, which meant that you'd be an

40:08

idiot to buy your ebook

40:10

anywhere else, but every one of those ebooks was locked permanently to Amazon's platform with

40:13

DRM, which would give a total control

40:15

over the e book market. And

40:18

the publishers wanted to force Amazon

40:20

to stop dumping ebooks to

40:22

stop selling them below price because they didn't

40:25

wanna get they didn't want this control being exerted

40:27

over their market. So they illegally

40:29

colluded to rigged the price of

40:31

ebooks with Apple and to set a minimum

40:33

price and to withdraw their books from

40:35

Apple or from Amazon. And the FTC

40:37

just clobbered them. And

40:40

after that, they went through even more mergers

40:42

and acquisitions. So Penguin bought random house. Now

40:45

If if the CEO of Penguin and

40:47

the CEO of Random House sit down at a table

40:49

to set the price of ebooks, that's

40:51

a crime. If Penguin and Random

40:53

House merge end up President of Penguin and the President of

40:55

Random House sit down at the same table

40:57

to rig the price of ebooks. It's not

40:59

a crime anymore. Because that's

41:02

one company setting a corporate

41:04

strategy, not two companies colluding to rig the

41:06

market. And so, you know, we

41:08

have one distributor one trade

41:10

distributor left in this country and Grim bought

41:12

out Baker and Taylor's

41:14

distribution business. You know, when the when

41:16

the mass market started. And science fiction is a

41:18

mass market genre. I'm a science fiction writer. When

41:20

when the mass market hit its

41:23

peak, there were three hundred distributors

41:25

for mass market books, and now there's one. And the

41:27

disc the the crunch in

41:29

distribution was driven by mass

41:31

market retailers when Reagan deregulated

41:34

retail, and we got the big box national

41:36

chains. Walmart came our

41:38

Costco, Sam's Club, and

41:40

so on. The distributors were getting clobbered by these super

41:42

powerful buyers. And so they all

41:44

merged until there was just one of them. And now

41:46

they're putting the screws to

41:48

the publishers. So the publishers

41:50

are all merging. And, you know, whenever

41:52

there's agents well well, they

41:54

they have merged down to five

41:56

firms. Right? The the formal name of

41:58

Penguin Random House. Is actually about it about I did yesterday a

42:00

podcast. It takes about seven minutes to

42:02

read if you list all the companies that

42:04

are actually Penguin

42:06

Random

42:06

House. It's a it's a couple

42:08

of pages long. So they have done

42:10

a lot emerging. One of the reasons that

42:12

deal collapsed is because there was emails about

42:14

them colluding on prices and stuff like

42:16

them within the company when they an agents were shocked, shocked, that it was

42:19

happening, authors were surprised. But when when

42:21

it was when For

42:23

example, idea of Spotify when it first launched, there was

42:26

hope it would help smaller to find new

42:28

fans monetize the long

42:29

tail. How has it

42:32

worked out? Say in music, pick music first. Yeah. So

42:34

it's Spotify definitely

42:36

was died of mourning. Right? So Spotify in

42:38

order to have

42:40

any success would need access to the seventy percent of music recordings that were

42:42

controlled by the big three labels. And the

42:44

condition of those licenses was

42:46

huge equity stakes for the big three

42:48

in Spotify So the big

42:50

three are major shareholders in

42:52

Spotify. Now, this puts them in an

42:54

irreconcilable conflict of interest. Because on the one hand,

42:56

they're sort of fiduciaries for their artists.

42:58

They wanna them most the biggest royalties at a Spotify that they can

43:00

so they can pass them on to the artist. But as

43:02

shareholders, they wanna pay as little

43:04

royalties as

43:06

possible to the artist because the then they get bigger dividends and

43:08

their shares are worth better in the business that their

43:10

partners and has a better cost structure. Mhmm. So

43:12

they negotiated a rock bottom price.

43:16

For streams, but with a minimum monthly guarantee. So

43:18

that meant that if you were

43:21

like Sony, you were getting say

43:23

ten million dollars a month, but

43:25

because the price per stream was so low, you could only

43:28

attribute five million of that.

43:30

So the other five million that was

43:32

just

43:32

yours. You could give it to some artists,

43:34

no artists, you could put it into development, you could pay it to your

43:35

executives sticking on the mattress. It was

43:38

just yours. They also

43:40

negotiated something called most favored nation

43:42

status, which is also a feature of

43:44

Amazon agreements and a lot of other big retailer

43:46

agreements, which

43:48

meant that Spotify could not pay anyone more than they were

43:50

paying the big three. So if you were one of the

43:52

artists who were in the the thirty

43:54

percent of music that wasn't controlled by the

43:56

big three, The big three set up

43:58

your compensation scale, but

44:00

you didn't get this guaranteed monthly

44:02

minimum and you didn't have shares

44:05

in Spotify. So you didn't benefit from this. And

44:07

this got to an absolute kind

44:09

of zenith of absurdity on the

44:11

the night of Amazon of

44:13

of Spotify's IPO. Now if you're Sony or

44:15

Warner Universal and you've got your

44:18

label hat on, then you're like,

44:20

okay. Well, Spotify is about to

44:22

go public. Our deal has just

44:24

expired. If that deal isn't

44:26

renewed, Spotify is not gonna have a

44:28

successful IPO. We could

44:30

hypothetically request a a new

44:32

royalty structure that was like

44:34

everything that Spotify has

44:36

minus what it cost to operate whole

44:38

margin is ours for the taking. And instead

44:40

on that in that negotiation, they

44:43

negotiate a lower

44:44

rate. Per royalty because

44:46

that made the IPO bigger because --

44:48

Right. -- Spotify

44:49

went into the IPO with a better cost

44:51

structure and not only that, everybody

44:54

else's deal got worse too. So

44:56

the other thirty percent of labels all got a

44:58

worse deal. So here's this example where

45:00

we have copyright that has

45:02

gotten longer. Right? These copy rights endure for ninety years, which

45:04

industrially might as well be

45:06

forever. And that copyright

45:08

getting longer did make the industry

45:10

significantly more profitable, but

45:12

it actually reduced the share of

45:14

income accruing to artists.

45:16

So, you know, this is why in the in the book. We

45:18

we devote the first half of the book to kind of unwinding these

45:21

baroque accounting scams. It's a kind of John

45:23

Oliver service journalism thing. But the second

45:25

half of the book, it's all very

45:28

detailed technical

45:30

policy proposals. Not individual solutions because, you know, you're not gonna recycle your way

45:32

to climate change, you're not gonna shop your way to

45:34

Monopoly

45:35

capitalism, structural solutions.

45:37

Can you go to those in in brief the these

45:39

-- Yes. -- solutions you think? Just a couple So I'll

45:41

give you one that's a kind of one weird trick.

45:44

Mhmm. If you're a if you're a

45:46

creative worker, Chances are

45:48

your contract guarantees you

45:50

royalties, and that royalty

45:52

contract allows you to audit the royalty

45:54

statement because otherwise, you're just taking their word

45:56

for it. Right now, there are lots of ways that

45:58

you can rip people off with

46:00

with royalties. And,

46:03

you know, we spoke to various auditors who work

46:05

on this. We spoke to a firm or we cited a

46:08

firm here in Los Angeles that has done tens of

46:10

thousands of record label audits over

46:12

three decades.

46:14

In in every instance in which they found an accounting discrepancy except for

46:17

one, the money was going

46:19

to the artist labels instead of the artist.

46:21

The artist was getting ripped

46:24

off I have no explanation for this. I assume it's some kind of very vexing

46:26

localized probability storm that's just centered on

46:28

the accounting departments of record labels must

46:30

make their jobs very hard. But

46:33

if you're one of those people who's been stolen from and you go back to

46:35

your label or your studio or your publisher and you say,

46:37

hey, you stole my money,

46:39

they're gonna say, artists

46:41

are adorable, but you can't do math, you're

46:44

wrong. But because we don't want any hard

46:45

feelings, we're good nature slobs. We'll give

46:48

you a discounted share of what you think

46:50

you're owed. And all you have to

46:52

do is sign this nondisclosure agreement

46:54

to

46:54

get out. We're gonna pay you off rather than the

46:56

the exhaustion of doing it. And you can't tell

46:58

anyone else. You can't tell anyone else how we

47:01

ripped you off. You can't tell the other

47:03

artists we're stealing from. How we ripped

47:05

them off. And your accountant has to agree

47:07

that he will never audit us again. Right?

47:09

It's like that it's like that that

47:11

accused murderers saying that the forensics team dig anywhere

47:13

you like in my garden except for that one corner.

47:15

I'm very sentimental about it. So all

47:17

of these contracts because of monopoly, they're all

47:20

settled in four states. New York and

47:22

California, obviously, Seattle, Washington

47:24

rather because of games companies, Amazon,

47:26

and then, you know, Nashville, Tennessee. And so if

47:28

we were to amend the state contract laws of

47:30

four states or any one of

47:34

those four And remember, state laws are a lot easier to change than federal law federal

47:36

regulation to say that as a matter

47:38

of public policy, nondisclosure cannot be

47:40

enforced when it pertains to material shortfalls

47:44

or omissions in royalty statements, at the stroke

47:46

of a pen, you put more money in the pockets of more

47:48

artists all over the world. You can't

47:49

make a deal. Just as you can't

47:51

make a deal around sexual harassment. There's

47:54

been a big movement on that. Pete or -- Yeah. -- I'm not

47:56

gonna be FTC saying no more

47:58

non compete. So four four state constitutions, or any one of

48:00

them, would or state laws rather, would

48:02

would would would just

48:04

throw money

48:06

at artists. In a way that forty years of copyright term extension has failed to

48:08

do. It's like this this crack in the

48:10

machine, we can stick a crowbar and wiggle it around

48:12

and money just pours out of it into

48:14

artist's

48:14

pockets. You

48:16

know, copyright term extension is the right to feel angry at your audience.

48:18

This is the right to buy groceries and

48:20

put braces on your kid's teeth.

48:23

I'm curious, I would imagine

48:25

you're paying attention to the

48:28

class action lawsuit brought against mid

48:30

journey and stability AI. Basically

48:32

a a group of

48:34

designers and artists have said that AI is

48:36

only as good as

48:38

the images Yeah. Fed

48:40

into it. Mhmm. And we're not getting

48:42

paid. And all you're gonna do is put us out of

48:44

business with no royalties. Have you followed this at

48:46

all? And do you think it has any

48:48

impact on the broader creator creator

48:49

economy? I have to say I'm

48:51

I'm very conflicted about this and I haven't yet

48:53

figured out where I land on it.

48:55

Here's the thing.

48:57

Another way of talking about

48:59

training AI is studying art.

49:02

So, like, I I became a

49:04

writer by reading a bunch of books and thinking

49:06

really hard about how those

49:08

books were written. Right? Every painter

49:10

becomes a painter by by looking

49:12

really hard at and

49:14

analyzing art. Computers are doing it with math. I don't think that that is

49:16

foundationally different from doing it with your

49:18

brain. And I think that if what

49:20

we say is

49:22

that it's a copyright infringement to think really hard about art

49:24

and learn lessons from it, that

49:26

that is gonna be very bad.

49:29

I think that it's it's similar to when

49:32

we saw the lawsuits like blurred

49:34

lines about the groove of

49:36

music, the the feel

49:38

of music, where Martin Marvin Gaye's estate soon

49:40

over a song that had no

49:42

melody, no rhythm section,

49:44

nothing from Martin Gaye, but

49:47

sounded like a Martin Gayish kind of

49:49

song and one. And at the time, it was

49:51

hailed as a kind of victory for for

49:53

artists that maybe they could go after people who

49:55

are unjustly profiting from them. But, you know,

49:57

the the structure of that market is such

49:59

that the the big three labels

50:01

alter their contracts, so

50:04

that it says you're signing away your groove rights as well

50:06

as your other rights. Then now it

50:08

gets even harder. Like, you can't even make

50:11

music that's recognizably in

50:13

a genre. Without permission from one of the labels. And that permission is

50:16

gonna be conditioned on you accepting a very bad

50:18

attitude. Sounds like sounds like --

50:20

Yeah. -- is and borrowing

50:22

from it. So in that

50:24

regard, platform operators have to make

50:26

money -- Mhmm. -- for their networks that

50:28

they build. If they if they have

50:30

to give contributors all the money, what incentive do they have

50:32

to do it in the first place besides

50:34

controlling them? I mean, if they can't they want they

50:36

presumably, if you're a platformer, you wanna control

50:38

every cost

50:40

center. Right, and get the most for yourself. So how do you create

50:42

a situation where there

50:45

is more ability for

50:47

operators of these networks and the creators to make

50:50

money. Pay for social media

50:52

subscription. What what's

50:54

what do you do

50:55

that? So every because at some point, you want everyone to because why would they vote in

50:57

the first place? Well, I guess, III don't I

50:59

I

50:59

think that

51:02

the premise is that

51:04

if artists were able to

51:06

bargain fairly with a a desperate

51:08

sector that had to bid on

51:11

their work, that the margins would be so thin that

51:13

the sector would collapse. I think if that's true,

51:15

then then the sector doesn't exist, but I also

51:17

think it's kind of a historical

51:19

like one of the stories we tell in the book is how the writers

51:21

got gilled here in Hollywood struck for twenty

51:23

two months against the big four

51:25

agencies. So big four agencies.

51:27

Right? Yeah.

51:27

They need to make a living. Right? You need to

51:30

agents do good work. My agents are

51:32

awesome. They need to make a living. But once

51:34

there were four of them, two of them owned by private

51:36

equity firms, they

51:38

got rid of the traditional ten

51:40

percent commission deal where they'd negotiate the best

51:42

deal they could for you and then take ten percent

51:44

of it. In favor something called a packaging model -- Mhmm. -- where they would

51:46

sell a studio, a writer, a

51:48

director, and a star as

51:50

a package. And

51:52

take a a cash bonus out of that. So the

51:54

bigger the payout was for the artist, the less money

51:56

there was left over for the agents, and

51:58

so they were incentivized to strike bad

52:01

deals for artists and better deals for themselves, show runners discovered

52:03

that instead of the split being ten ninety, it

52:05

was ninety ten, where ninety percent was

52:07

going to the agents. The

52:09

agencies were building studios so

52:11

that they could negotiate with

52:14

themselves on behalf of their

52:16

clients. It's very hard to understand how

52:18

this could be a fair arrangement, the

52:20

argument that the agencies made

52:22

when the writer's guild issued a code

52:24

of conduct prohibiting this and ordering them

52:28

to stop was that this was how they were gonna make money. And

52:30

the writers the girls said, yeah. This is how you're

52:32

gonna make money by not paying us. So

52:34

we're going on strike, and the seven thousand

52:36

writers follow fired

52:38

their agents on on day one of the

52:40

strike. Twenty two months later, all four

52:42

of the big agencies caved. And they're all in

52:44

business. So III

52:46

what we're talking about here is not the size of the It's the distributional outcome.

52:49

And I don't believe that the pie

52:51

gets smaller if the distribution

52:54

has changed. I think the pie there's

52:56

nothing at priority that says

52:58

that if Jeff Bezos gets

53:00

to harvest all of the surplus value

53:03

from every platform

53:04

seller, on Amazon, that Amazon runs out of money and ceases to

53:06

be a going concern, and then all of those sellers

53:08

have nowhere to go.

53:09

We're just

53:09

talking about changing the

53:12

the mix. And one of the ways

53:13

you change the mix is, first of all, by

53:16

prohibiting unfair

53:18

contract terms. Right. And then the

53:20

other thing is by prohibiting unfair

53:23

merger. So that firms are are

53:25

not able

53:27

to, you know, skew the market in

53:30

this way. So there's always gonna

53:32

be attention around the relationship

53:34

between the creator and the

53:36

distribution. Mhmm. You know, both are gonna

53:38

try and leverage, do whatever they

53:40

can to get that, you know, Tom Cruise

53:42

does a really good job of leveraging his star power against the distribution.

53:44

And Big Tech has always

53:46

been criticized for getting more than their

53:50

fair share. Of the creator of the,

53:51

you know, the value the creator creates.

53:54

When you look at if you were to stack rank, can I

53:56

realize you can't do this for every distribution and create

53:58

a relationship? But

54:00

where do you think are the worst

54:02

relationships between distributors and creators? Where are

54:05

the best ones? And also,

54:08

I'm just specifically your thoughts on TikTok

54:10

as it relates to their relationship with the

54:12

with

54:12

creators. So I think that the

54:15

way to understand this is

54:17

that when firms can impose switching costs on

54:19

creators and audiences, more more

54:22

broadly on business customers

54:24

and retail customers.

54:26

So eBay, you can think of there being bidders and sellers or Amazon. There's

54:28

been buyers and sellers. Or in

54:30

their Kindle program, there's writers and readers.

54:32

When they can impose high switching

54:36

costs, on those entities so that if you leave the platform,

54:38

you have to give up something important.

54:40

That gives them the economic

54:44

power to shift surpluses

54:46

away from both buyers and sellers

54:48

to the platform operator.

54:50

And so there's a kind of life cycle of a traditional

54:52

platform, which is they start by allocating a

54:54

lot of surplus to users.

54:56

So Amazon upsetizes

54:58

shipping. They give you free returns. They make

55:00

everything easy to find. They do all kinds

55:02

of things. And then once there's a critical

55:04

mass of of customers locked

55:08

in, and business customers need to reach

55:10

those those end customers, those

55:12

consumers, then they shift the

55:14

surplus to the business customers. To

55:17

get them to come in. So TikTok, you mentioned there was a great

55:19

story last week on Forbes about

55:21

how TikTok has this

55:24

heating tool.

55:26

And when a video goes viral on TikTok, it's not because algorithm liked it.

55:28

It's because someone like just turned a dial.

55:31

And instead of showing you

55:33

the TikTok user, the thing that

55:35

the algorithm thinks you're gonna like, it shows you this

55:38

just shows you this video. But if you're

55:40

the artist, it looks like

55:42

you are making the kind of art that TikTok loves. You

55:44

are good at TikTok because suddenly you got

55:46

twenty million views on your video. This

55:49

is an incentive to shift your production to

55:52

TikTok. TikTok has an idiosyncratic

55:54

format that makes it

55:56

hard to do

55:58

TikTok production that works well on other

55:59

platforms. And so you end up being a lot of them. They

56:01

yes. So they give you, like they give you an

56:03

end cap deal and you don't

56:05

even know it. Right?

56:06

Right. That's right. You know what I you know what I think of it as? It's like

56:08

you go to the carnival in the morning and there's a

56:10

guy with a giant teddy bear who thinks that he's really

56:12

good at throwing balls in a peach

56:15

basket. But actually the Carney just didn't knock the ball out

56:18

with the scissor thing under the bucket when

56:20

he threw it in. Mhmm. Because he wants one guy

56:22

walking around all day with a giant

56:24

teddy bear because that gets other

56:26

people to line up and give them five bucks to try and

56:28

throw three balls in

56:28

the bench basket. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So

56:31

which is

56:31

once the artists are

56:34

locked in, then they can start shifting surplus to themselves. So,

56:36

you know, this is Facebook or

56:38

Twitter these days. Twitter, if you're

56:40

not blue, your post

56:42

just don't get shown to the people who

56:44

subscribe to you. This is something Facebook

56:46

did a long time ago. YouTube has done this

56:48

as well. And and this is just a

56:50

way of saying, like, You have

56:52

consumers who want to see something and they gave us an

56:54

explicit directive. Tell me when there's a new

56:56

video or a post from this person. You

56:58

have business customers,

57:00

performers, creators, who have

57:02

produced the thing that they that that

57:04

those consumers wanna see.

57:06

It is not to the benefit of either the consumer

57:08

or the producer. To interrupt that relationship.

57:10

And yet the firm does, you

57:12

know, the first five screens of any

57:14

Amazon search now are fifty percent ads.

57:17

Okay. And their stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It's

57:19

all in-depth. It's all in-depth. Plus their

57:21

stuff. Fifty percent has plus

57:24

their stuff. And and that is this this process

57:26

whereby the surplus has then shifted to

57:28

the to the shareholders

57:30

of the

57:32

platform and and this is bad for everyone. I would argue that it's even bad

57:34

for the platform because if you're shaving

57:36

the surpluses down so that

57:38

it's just barely worth it, for

57:41

your consumers and your producers to keep using the platform. Then any

57:43

exogenous shock that makes it less worth it, people get more

57:45

read about

57:45

it. Alright. Let's send let's finish

57:48

on that

57:50

Twitter exodus. Right? I'm not using it as much. I know I'm not getting

57:52

a suddenly, you know, I'm not getting shadow band.

57:54

I'm not being like those ripening people that

57:56

scream about it. But definitely it's becoming

57:58

less and less useful because you can sort of start to see

58:01

the changes, right, in terms of use.

58:03

What's the alternative to things like redefining the

58:05

universe? There's this metaverse

58:08

hundred is, like, mastodon. There's all kinds of different ways.

58:10

What like, someone was saying, what happens

58:12

to my audience here because it's gotten so

58:14

quiet?

58:15

Yeah. I

58:15

call this

58:16

the Anna Teffka problem. You know, that

58:18

melancholy scene at the end of fiddler on

58:20

the roof. Well,

58:21

we're all finally leaving this village where the caustics

58:23

have been riding through every three scenes

58:25

and kicking the shit out of us. But I'm going to Chicago. You're

58:27

going to New York. He's going to Crackle. We're

58:29

never gonna see each other

58:32

again. Right? The

58:34

Federal Protocol, the Activity

58:36

Protocol, and the Mastodon

58:38

application that's built on it,

58:40

has a built in freedom of

58:42

exit. So with one click, you can export

58:44

all the people you're following. And with another click,

58:46

you can export all the people who follow you.

58:48

Mhmm. And then you can quit the service and

58:50

you can go somewhere else. And with one click, you can upload one of those files. One click, you

58:53

upload the other, and everyone just shifts

58:55

over. This is also built into RSS.

58:57

You know, you just passed

58:59

the tenth anniversary of the death of Aaron Swartz, who's one of the co

59:02

creators of it, and very early on,

59:04

the people who made RSS realized

59:06

that that protocol needed a

59:08

redirect button. Where you

59:10

could you could issue a code in

59:12

your RSS feed that says from now on

59:14

permanently, this RSS feed is

59:16

somewhere else. I have RSS

59:18

feeds in my reader that I've been following since

59:20

before Google reader existed, and

59:22

after it existed, they're not the same

59:24

address anymore. I've never changed them. a

59:26

redirect, and my client just as

59:28

well behaved and does it. Now if

59:31

you were a mastodon server

59:34

owner, you could in theory just kick someone

59:36

off and not get them the chance to export

59:38

their data. And and

59:40

what's interesting about this is if we

59:43

came up with a rule like the GDPR arguably already

59:45

does or CCPA already does, that you

59:47

have the right to request

59:50

your data, we could say to those firms or those

59:52

individuals or cooperatives or small

59:54

businesses, hey, even though you don't like

59:56

this guy and he was obnoxious and you kicked him

59:58

off, you

1:00:00

still gotta export those files and email them to them and give them to

1:00:02

them. Right. And that is a a very

1:00:04

administratable remedy. Like compare this

1:00:06

to, you can't have trolls or

1:00:08

hate speech. Right? We have to define what a troll on hate speech is. We then have

1:00:10

to figure out whether they're doing it. We have to figure

1:00:12

when they fail if it's a best

1:00:14

faced effort. It's

1:00:16

so expensive that small companies or individuals can't do it, so

1:00:18

you only get big firms. This is an

1:00:20

administratable remedy that's easy to

1:00:24

comply with. And so if we're gonna say, okay, we're just gonna have, like, a

1:00:26

golden rule of the Internet, which is

1:00:28

the right to exit. Right? The right

1:00:30

to leave and go somewhere else without the

1:00:32

Anatovy problem.

1:00:34

That's something that we could equally impose on a

1:00:36

hobbyist who's hosting ten of their friends

1:00:38

and falls out with one of them.

1:00:41

Or on a multibillion dollar company, we can figure

1:00:43

out whether they're complying with it and complying with

1:00:45

it is really easy. Mhmm. And

1:00:47

so it's a it's a rule that would

1:00:49

preserve these communities. And it would

1:00:51

guard against this surplus

1:00:54

harvesting that is, ultimately,

1:00:56

the death of the firm. I call it, the

1:00:58

insidification problem. Where just things get

1:01:00

worse and worse over time, you know,

1:01:02

because of this surplus harvest, this

1:01:04

this this unstoppable temptation

1:01:06

to harvest the surplus. And in part, it's because, you

1:01:08

know, on on a digital platform unlike,

1:01:10

say, on the floor of Sears, you

1:01:13

just turn a knob and

1:01:15

you're moving surpluses around. And it's

1:01:17

just so easy. And you get

1:01:19

those users, but they're not gonna let

1:01:21

you do

1:01:22

that. Twitter's never

1:01:22

gonna let me take my followers. Twitter's unlikely to be big enough

1:01:24

to attract any real antitrust scrutiny, although they

1:01:27

might under section five, which

1:01:29

is the deceptive practices, if

1:01:31

they were really obnoxious enough. But, you know,

1:01:33

if there's a very large firm and and when

1:01:35

we think about the very large firms

1:01:38

Google Facebook, Apple and so on. They're just incapable of not

1:01:40

cheating. Right? Like, they all just break the

1:01:42

rules all the time. And when they cheat,

1:01:44

it just never goes to trial. They always end

1:01:46

up just

1:01:48

settling. One of the things about settlements is they can have arbitrary terms. Right? I

1:01:50

mean, not -- Mhmm. -- like, they still have to

1:01:52

be agreed to by all parties, but they can have an

1:01:54

art but one of the terms that we could

1:01:57

set as a condition of a settlement is you

1:01:59

have to do this. But we could

1:02:01

also say, you know, under CCPA, you have the

1:02:03

right to request your data from

1:02:06

a firm. Right? And under GDPR, even under the

1:02:08

failed and not very great

1:02:10

privacy bill that was up federally in the

1:02:12

last session, they all have this.

1:02:14

It's kind of a bedrock. Right? It's like, it's the

1:02:16

koopa yaw version. Like, nobody

1:02:18

seriously disagrees that you should be able

1:02:20

to get your data from someone who

1:02:22

has

1:02:22

it. But

1:02:23

that's more than that. It's their audiences. Alright? But it's

1:02:25

it's your data about your audience. Yeah? Yes.

1:02:27

That's correct. Yeah. Alright. This is fascinating.

1:02:29

I could talk for hours about this. Okay.

1:02:31

The book is chokepoint capitalism,

1:02:34

how big tech and big content captured

1:02:36

creative labor markets, and how we'll win

1:02:38

them back by Corey Dottro and Rebecca

1:02:39

Giblin. Thank you, Corey. Thank you so much. Thanks.

1:02:42

It was a real pleasure to

1:02:43

talk to both of you. Thank

1:02:45

you.

1:02:45

Thanks, Corey. Alright, Scott. One more

1:02:48

quick break. We'll be back for wins

1:02:50

and fails.

1:02:56

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1:04:06

Scott.

1:04:07

Let's hear some wins and fails. I'm gonna go first.

1:04:10

Is that okay? Yeah. Can I go first?

1:04:12

Well, it's just This there was a

1:04:14

story about Peter

1:04:15

Till, the the encrypted where

1:04:17

he was having the remember when he was

1:04:19

having all those events where he was

1:04:21

insulting Warren Buffett, etcetera. And everybody else, he

1:04:23

was going on and on about everybody should get

1:04:25

heavy into Bitcoin. Well, while

1:04:28

he was doing this, he sold off a majority

1:04:30

of its portfolio

1:04:32

before everything got crossed, and he

1:04:34

made one point eight billion dollars

1:04:36

in returns. It was just it

1:04:39

was crazy how insulting he was being to people who thought

1:04:42

Bitcoin was ridiculous. But he was

1:04:44

acting like he was he was

1:04:46

optimistic, he was pushing at, he

1:04:48

called people stupid and idiots.

1:04:50

So that's a I don't know if it's a winner or

1:04:52

fail. It's a win for Peter Till. It's a fail

1:04:54

for everyone else who

1:04:56

believed

1:04:56

him. Same thing not telling the truth publicly. That just drove

1:04:58

When you raise a really interesting point, and I

1:05:00

wonder if at some point, if you own

1:05:03

enough of an asset class so you can move the market with

1:05:05

your visor sales that if you go into a public

1:05:08

forum, you go on CNBC to talk about

1:05:10

your latest piece of shit back you

1:05:12

are literally

1:05:13

selling? Yes. And

1:05:14

saying

1:05:15

and and also using your

1:05:17

Twitter following and your reputation

1:05:19

as a

1:05:21

very bright successful person to intimidate anyone

1:05:23

who questions whether

1:05:26

Bitcoin is going to be at a

1:05:28

million dollars by twenty thirty as

1:05:30

Kathy would

1:05:31

and her, you know, her loyal band of

1:05:34

crypto crypto talent. It it

1:05:36

brings up an interesting point because a lot of

1:05:38

people are going

1:05:40

on CNBC and talking up space tourism companies and and

1:05:42

things that didn't make any sense as they

1:05:44

were selling. And so

1:05:46

at

1:05:46

some point, do

1:05:47

you have an obligation to

1:05:50

have some sort of disclosure around what you are actually doing with

1:05:52

your own securities when you own above

1:05:54

a certain amount. Mhmm.

1:05:57

It's I I think there'll be no

1:05:59

repercussions for this. No. It's probably right. But on top of

1:06:01

it, he had to just, like, like, drag

1:06:03

someone like Warren Buffett, whoever, like,

1:06:05

who were right or who are correct or at least were

1:06:07

reasonable enough. You know, look, you can like or dislike Warren

1:06:10

Buffett, but the the the

1:06:12

cynicism while you're doing one thing and doing

1:06:14

another I

1:06:16

just am always like, really.

1:06:18

Really? Aren't you fucking rich enough? You

1:06:20

know? Yeah. I always

1:06:21

say, you're so poor. You all

1:06:23

you have is money. It's almost like a almost as

1:06:25

bad as a public company CEO saying it's taking a company private at four

1:06:27

hundred and twenty dollars a share when there's no

1:06:29

veracity of

1:06:29

that. But I have a win. Can I

1:06:32

do that? Jared Butler,

1:06:34

who is an action star whom I love. He's

1:06:36

been in so many different things.

1:06:38

And I I just love him. He does

1:06:40

like Olympus' fallen.

1:06:42

London has fallen. He's been in all

1:06:44

kinds of movies where he plays an action star, and a

1:06:46

lot of these action stars go into sort of shitty

1:06:48

versions of their firm,

1:06:50

former careers. And this movie is scoring big. It's called plane where he plays

1:06:52

a pilot who has

1:06:54

all bad things happen to the plane and then he saves

1:06:57

the day. It's getting actually pretty good reviews.

1:07:00

I don't know this. What is this? Oh,

1:07:01

it's a new movie called Plain, and

1:07:03

he's he's right up there with Russell Crow for

1:07:05

me. I love I love those kind

1:07:07

of action movies. And a lot of these sort of

1:07:10

action heroes like Bruce Willis, who unfortunately

1:07:12

has gotten very ill and

1:07:14

has some

1:07:14

issues. Or so let's just loan they get paid a

1:07:17

lot of money to be in these shitty action movies, all of

1:07:19

which I watch are Liam

1:07:21

Mason, etcetera, etcetera. Joe

1:07:22

Butler once again has made one called Plain, and it's so good.

1:07:24

I love these movies. He's Scottish. That's all

1:07:26

I know about

1:07:27

him. Always in three hundred. Yeah. He's just real I

1:07:29

just love him. I like

1:07:31

his whole thing. And I'm happy that he's I would recommend it to anybody.

1:07:33

I you know, I have this weird for Calinity to watch

1:07:36

action

1:07:36

movies, but he does them real well.

1:07:40

My when is inspired by core

1:07:42

in the creator economy? I bought I think

1:07:44

it's called an insta three

1:07:46

sixty, my twelve

1:07:48

year old is really into video. And this this thing

1:07:51

is just incredible. Thank you.

1:07:53

Well, it's a camera. But

1:07:55

-- Mhmm. -- you put it on a stick and it uses AI to

1:07:57

make the stick invisible. So you're just

1:08:00

walking and it looks as if there's a

1:08:02

boom or a --

1:08:02

Yeah. -- a drone filming you. And

1:08:05

it's easy to add it. Looking at it right now. And you can even

1:08:06

put behind you and it's it has

1:08:08

a three sixty view of everything. It's literally as

1:08:12

if looking at There's a boom operator following you and

1:08:13

listening. There's no stick. You're holding the stick and you can't see the stick. The stick

1:08:16

is gone. That's right. Except people have

1:08:18

their hands up. People have their hands

1:08:20

up. But

1:08:22

if

1:08:22

you get a long enough stick, you know, you're popular

1:08:24

in college. I mean, literally, you can have it

1:08:26

in front of you as if someone at

1:08:28

professional crew is following you around.

1:08:30

Oh, wow. And I've I've been doing this

1:08:32

stuff with my son where he talks about

1:08:34

Premier League football teams. Yeah. And

1:08:35

it's totally cool and he's into it.

1:08:38

And Anyways, it's fun, and he's really

1:08:40

into and then just along the same

1:08:41

lines, we went to

1:08:42

into cameras. Which one did you catch there

1:08:45

so many? Just

1:08:45

better than that. I'll send you the one I

1:08:48

got. The one we got was about three

1:08:49

hundred pounds,

1:08:50

which I think

1:08:50

should be

1:08:51

reasonable. Two months invisible selfie sticks. Sticky

1:08:53

lens, all this stuff one. It's totally cool technology. I

1:08:55

mean, it's really wild. My other wind just along the

1:08:57

crater side and then

1:09:00

I'll get might fail. We went

1:09:02

to the royal Albert Hall and saw the most recent circular delay. And it was

1:09:04

just I

1:09:07

was just showing A, my son

1:09:09

just loved it. And you sit there thinking, it's just so inspiring that people

1:09:11

are just creative to

1:09:14

come up with this

1:09:16

stuff. So the anyway, circular circular roll, Albert

1:09:18

Hall, take your kids. It was fantastic. I love circular circular. I was like, how did

1:09:20

he lean

1:09:21

over and kiss his

1:09:23

ass like that? Was I was

1:09:25

always amazed by

1:09:26

the thermostat. I did not see that. Anyways yeah. And then my favorite the contortionist.

1:09:28

The contortionist told him, like,

1:09:31

wow. Do that.

1:09:34

Like, what do we it it's like, finally, we've answered that question on what happens

1:09:36

to Eastern European gymnasts when they they're no

1:09:38

longer going to the Olympics. They gotta

1:09:41

start to select. These people are incredible. Anyway, and then

1:09:43

my fail is that Germany is

1:09:45

being very recalcitrant around sending their

1:09:48

leopard tanks to

1:09:49

Ukraine. Yeah. They won't even

1:09:51

allow other NATO patients who have the leopard to send

1:09:53

them.

1:09:54

They're complementing them in Germany. Won't you? Well, I thought I thought that they were they looked like

1:09:58

they were gonna send them. And this is exactly playing

1:10:00

into Putin's playbook. It shows

1:10:02

that we're not unified. And also,

1:10:07

there's just no getting around it. Once you're in a war with someone and let's be

1:10:09

clear, we are in a war vis a vis

1:10:11

NATO against Russia -- Mhmm. -- appeasement doesn't work.

1:10:13

And if we wanna end this war, we

1:10:15

need to win it. And win it

1:10:17

crisfully. And those tanks could make a big difference. And Germany sitting

1:10:19

on its hands and coming up with a lot of

1:10:21

rational reasons for why they're not gonna support the

1:10:24

war after to

1:10:27

their full capability. And these are amazing tanks, is doing nothing

1:10:29

but providing comfort to the enemy.

1:10:31

So my loss here is the recalcitrant

1:10:33

of Berlin around this

1:10:34

issue, and it's an important one.

1:10:36

Good one. That's very serious. Good to go

1:10:38

back to them. And he's served Desolé. Consolation. Contortionists. There

1:10:44

you go. There you

1:10:45

go. I just they're they're amazing. Anyway We wanna

1:10:47

hear from you. Send us your

1:10:48

questions about business deck or whatever's on your

1:10:50

mind. Go to n y mag dot com

1:10:52

slash pivot

1:10:54

to submit a question for the show or call 85551

1:10:57

pivot. Scott, that's the show once again

1:10:59

another fantastic show in the

1:11:01

can. We'll be back on Friday for more. Please read

1:11:03

us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Newman, Evan Angle, and Taylor Griffin, Ernie Andertott, engineered

1:11:05

this episode. Thanks also

1:11:07

to Drew Burrows, and

1:11:10

Neil Saverio. Make sure you subscribe to the

1:11:12

show wherever you listen podcasts. Thanks for listening to

1:11:14

Pivot New York Magazine and Box

1:11:16

Media. We'll be back later this week for another

1:11:18

break out of all things tech and business.

1:11:20

Kara, have a great rest

1:11:22

of the week. Thanks. You too.

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