Trump Mobile, WhatsApp Ads, and Bezos Wedding Protests

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Speaker 18 They'll put ads anywhere. They'll put ads on Mark Zuckerberg's ass if it would work for them.

Speaker 18 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 17 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 18 Well, welcome live from our podcast in France and cons from Cannes. Con

Speaker 17 Kara Schleischer, it's canned all right. I realize you took French for the eighth time in the 11th grade, but it's canned.

Speaker 18 All right. In any case, we're here taping and we're here in front of a live audience.
So welcome, everyone. Thanks for coming.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 18 we have...

Speaker 18 We have a lot to get to today, but I want to first, how's it going for you? How's your, your, I'm not going to even say the word, can con.

Speaker 17 Look, I absolutely love it here. I'm sincere.
I think it's wonderful. I love the French.
I love France.

Speaker 18 But I heard you're disliked. You're like the anger pillow for the ad business.

Speaker 17 Oh, so this is how I make money here. They basically have me show up to some event and then they say to me, we've heard you believe that brand is dead.
And I do my thing.

Speaker 17 So seriously, the economy, about one and a half percent of the economy every year, GDB goes to marketing.

Speaker 17 And as we've seen over the last 20 or 30 years, more and more of that one and a half percent is going to, for lack of a better term, digital platforms, right?

Speaker 17 Pretty soon, Meadows Beach is going to be San Trope,

Speaker 17 and Dentsu and WPP are going to be in some bad pub seven miles inland.

Speaker 17 So, we know what's happening, but brand still matters. I'm just like it's being built differently.

Speaker 17 If you're banking your career on trying to get a big brand that spent a bunch of money on media, which is advertising, which in my opinion is nothing but a tax inflicted on the poor and the technologically illiterate, your industry, you're in trouble.

Speaker 17 And then they have someone very articulate. This guy, Rory Sutherland, this like really handsome, charming British guy, weighs in about the power of brand.
And the whole audience goes crazy. Right.

Speaker 17 And it's like, thank God, maybe we'll get invited back next year. And this is literally like an award ceremony for the Pepsi commercial.
Nobody is watching. Back to you, Kara.

Speaker 18 Okay. I can see that happening.
So you're like the bad villain.

Speaker 17 I'm the anger pillow.

Speaker 18 No, but you're like wrestling. You're like the villain.

Speaker 17 Oh, 100%.

Speaker 18 You're the villain. And then they come in and try to get it.

Speaker 17 And I tell jokes that offend people, and they're like, oh my God, I hate him. Book him for next year.
Yeah. Book him for now.

Speaker 18 Anyways. In any case.
Good to see you. But it's been a good time.
You've had a good time. You came here and you're zoning.

Speaker 17 You've been here 10 years in a row. Take a moment.
First off, dude, he's dying.

Speaker 18 Why do you keep showing up?

Speaker 17 Because they keep paying me.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 17 You could be the yellow pages. If I can cash your check, I'll talk about the yellow pages.
Anyways, I'm a whore. I'm an expensive whore, but be clear, I'm a whore.
Daddy's a whore.

Speaker 17 I absolutely, if you're in this room, it means you're likely in the top 5% of income earners globally. It means you have rights.
It means you have access most likely to family planning.

Speaker 17 It means you can marry anybody you want and you have the opportunity to hang out in one of the most beautiful places in the world and be carefree.

Speaker 17 You probably have a great job, although it may not seem like a great job.

Speaker 17 And you live in a democracy in an age where there's less measles and rubella for the time being, unless these shit up their, head up their ass, people take over, continue to take over our HHS.

Speaker 17 Don't know how I got there, but I like to take a moment as I I zoom in on a zodiac over the fucking Cote d'Azur and recognize just how fucking lucky we are.

Speaker 17 Anyways, back to you. All right.

Speaker 18 So you get a sense of how this marriage goes. I'm totally thinking of something else while he's talking.
Just, you know, I'm like,

Speaker 18 really need ham at the house when I get

Speaker 18 my house.

Speaker 17 I had two lattes. Not a good idea.
Okay, I can see that.

Speaker 18 We have a lot to talk about. I mean, there's so much going on and we've got, but I do have to give two things.
A shout out. I can't believe I'm fucking saying this.

Speaker 18 Tucker Carlson taking down Ted Cruz was delightful.

Speaker 18 I would recommend you watch it. It was about, I don't agree with Ducker Carlson on Iran, by the way, but the way he showed how incompetent and ignorant Ted Cruz is was

Speaker 18 spectacular, I have to say.

Speaker 18 So I'm going to give him a call out. And the second thing I want to just say is today I was just having lunch with Emma, who runs the Wall Street Journal, and she's an amazing editor.
And

Speaker 18 Linda Yaccarino of Twitter said that their story was untrue. This is not true.
This is

Speaker 18 not factual, what they're saying. And I would like today to just say the Wall Street Journal did an amazing job on that story about X suing advertisers.
I've talked to dozens of advertisers.

Speaker 18 It's absolutely happening. And I want to say Team Wall Street Journal.
So great job by Emma, and she did a great job. So,

Speaker 18 and

Speaker 18 it's truly a heinous thing

Speaker 18 to do a provable lie. I just don't understand it.
And it's ridiculous. And so you either do well by making great products, but you don't sue people into marketing.

Speaker 18 I just, I don't, I didn't understand that. Anyway, just to say that.
But anyway, let's get back to France. We have a lot to go through today.
We'll start with something light.

Speaker 18 Activists in Venice have begun protesting the upcoming wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez. The wedding cost is estimated to be as high as $21.5 million.

Speaker 18 Over 200 guests are expected, reportedly including Katie Perry, Gail King, and Oprah Winfrey. Notably not on the list, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

Speaker 18 Scott, if you had to give a toast there,

Speaker 18 what would the toast be?

Speaker 18 There you are.

Speaker 17 I've given four toasted weddings, which is a humble brag of saying I'm in a lot of wedding parties. I'm being serious.
I give three pieces of advice to the groom. I say, one,

Speaker 17 biggest unlock in relationships is don't keep score.

Speaker 17 Decide the kind of father, husband, friend you want to be and hold yourself to that standard because you'll always inflate your own contributions and minimize theirs.

Speaker 17 And if you keep score, as I did as a younger man, you end up with fewer friends and fewer healthy relationships than you should. You weren't expecting a serious one.
I know, I wasn't.

Speaker 18 I was waiting for that. Good job on the HGH, but go ahead.

Speaker 17 Two, always express affection and physical desire. I think women want to be wanted.
I think that sex and affection, say, I choose you.

Speaker 17 I think it's really, really important to maintain that just out-of-control fire in a relationship.

Speaker 18 Yeah, he's got that one. That's happening.

Speaker 17 It's the difference between friends. Awkwardly.
It's bonding, regardless of what the Atlantic or the New York Times will tell you. We are sexual beings and we want to be wanted.

Speaker 17 And three, never, ever let your wife be cold or hungry.

Speaker 18 Oprah's about to kill you at this point in their toes, but go ahead.

Speaker 17 I would love to go to that wedding. Would you? I'm here for his midlife crisis.
I think it'd be cheaper if he just

Speaker 17 got a canary yellow Corvette tee top and crashed it into a hair plugs clinic. That would be a lot.
I think it's going to be amazing wedding i would

Speaker 18 go to that yes i think it's going to be

Speaker 18 come on summer in venice with oh it's just disastrous it's going to be disastrous we would so go we would so go in a heartbeat we would so

Speaker 17 we would so go we would take pictures we would steal

Speaker 17 the cool party before prompt you didn't get invited to well i didn't want to go

Speaker 17 I didn't want to go. Wadey tagged me in Instagram.
I'm sorry about that.

Speaker 18 Yeah, we should have been invited. Anyway, that's a nice show, Scott.
I thought you'd say something much different, but here we go.

Speaker 18 All right, speaking of your boyfriend, Macron, he says he will ban social media for children under 15 if progress is not made at the EU level.

Speaker 18 France is already making efforts to force social media sites like X and Reddit to have age verification systems by classifying them as pornographic sites.

Speaker 18 Macron's escalation comes after the country had a fatal school stabbing in the suburbs of Paris and says age verification will be imposed on sites selling knives online.

Speaker 18 Greece, France, and Spain are pushing the EU to limit the amount of time teenagers can spend online. Scott, shall we move to France? We're for this.

Speaker 18 We are absolutely for this idea of age verification, even though it's not popular among the tech set.

Speaker 17 Yeah, we've said a bunch of times, I meet a lot of people with kids. If your kids are below the age of 10, that's great.
If your kids are over the age of 22 and got through this mess, great.

Speaker 17 It's the people.

Speaker 17 Unfortunately, I'm one of those people who has kids who are 14 and 17 that had to grow up in an unregulated environment where we had very charming people holding book parties on the beach as they were figuring out business models to encourage young girls to cut more, self-cut.

Speaker 17 Teen suicide is up 62%

Speaker 17 in the last decade. 62%.
And some of that is bulldozer parenting.

Speaker 17 We, as parents, do clear out all the obstacles for our kids such that they show up to NYU and they've never gotten their heart broken, they've never had no, they've never gotten a C, and they literally freak out.

Speaker 17 Some of it is ours. Some of you got a D, but go ahead.
As parents, some of it is

Speaker 17 bulldozer concierge parenting, but there's no doubt about it. When kids express frustration or bullying online,

Speaker 17 the algorithms pick up on it and will literally start sending the message that is like suicidal ideation. And until someone goes to jail, this is going to continue.

Speaker 17 I think the most consequential academic in the world right now is my colleague Jonathan Haidt. I think he's played a huge role in this movement.

Speaker 17 But Greece, Spain, New Zealand are all putting in wonderful age limits.

Speaker 18 Can you imagine the U.S. would do it?

Speaker 17 I think it's coming already, 11 states. I think it's happening.
Europe's leading the way on this. But think about it.

Speaker 17 We age gate alcohol, the military, pornography, driving, but we're letting a 14-year-old go on social media and get bullied.

Speaker 17 And the algorithms pick up on it and love it because it creates more Nissan ads. And it's especially rough.

Speaker 17 on young girls because again, I'm a sexist. I believe typically 95% of people born as male or female are more prone to certain behaviors than the other gender.

Speaker 17 That doesn't mean there should be any less rights or any less opportunity, but till we lean into these wonderful attributes that most of us have an easier time leaning into and some negative attributes.

Speaker 17 I don't think we're going to make real progress. And here's one of those attributes: boys bully physically and verbally, girls bully relationally.

Speaker 17 And we've put fucking nuclear weapons in their hands of 14-year-old girls. Have you checked out your go on?

Speaker 17 There's some really good apps where you can go on. I believe in a police state.

Speaker 17 You can't get your kid off of social media because unfortunately, unless it's a collective action, they become isolated and more depressed. But I go on and I look at my 14-year-old social media.

Speaker 17 And the really crazy shit is amongst the girls because it's tactical and it's smart and it's cutting. The guys are just like, fuck you, jerk their daddy, you know, whatever, and then it's over.

Speaker 17 But the girls are really,

Speaker 17 we are going to look back on this age and we're going to think, okay, income inequality was out of control.

Speaker 17 A slow burn to fascism from the greatest experiment in history of America was out of control, but I'm confident we're going to repel that.

Speaker 17 We're going to really regret, I think, the coarsening of our discourse. But the thing we'll really regret, the thing we'll look back on this age and think, how did we let this happen?

Speaker 17 Because I think we're going to look back and think, how did we let this happen?

Speaker 18 One of the things that is hard to do is regulate yourself when you yourself are addicted. I think the problem is adults are addicted and can't look down and doom scroll or

Speaker 18 whatever.

Speaker 18 They don't regulate themselves and manage to get themselves into whatever hole they're in.

Speaker 18 And so it's not unusual that kids would, although I would say, I think one thing that you're not saying is a lot of kids are rejecting it, like are not taking things off.

Speaker 18 I've told you the story. My son said he took a whole bunch of them off because he felt bad.

Speaker 17 Mine does that and then he goes back. Does your goes?

Speaker 18 No, not at all. No.

Speaker 17 6% of teens are clinically addicted to alcohol or drugs. 24% are addicted to social media.

Speaker 18 Absolutely. I mean, it's an issue.
Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Speaker 18 I think the first step is the school stuff, is getting them out of schools, getting these, and that's happening everywhere.

Speaker 18 Now, an interesting wrinkle, which I was a little bit more nervous about, was they're putting cameras in schools and using AI to watch behaviors and bullying and things like that.

Speaker 18 And then also monitoring the phone, some of the phone chats like you were talking about. I find that to be a little bit disturbing, the idea of monitoring behavior in that way and using AI to help it.

Speaker 18 I find that like a step too far. I think parents should be doing this, teachers should be doing this.
And we shouldn't leave it to teachers to do it, by the way.

Speaker 18 It should be the parents themselves, but it's often impossible because parents themselves, again, are addicted. But these kind of rules, I don't see it passing in the U.S.

Speaker 18 because I think the tech companies, I mean, I was surprised it happened. They're too powerful and they like to pretend that they're all really good for us.

Speaker 18 And that's what they say, you know, they try to like this idea that it's all going to be better.

Speaker 18 States are taking action. They are.
But look, what was in the thing? I mean, again, I'm fucking agreeing with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the fact that states can't, I mean, today.

Speaker 17 Marsha Blackburn's been a leader on this.

Speaker 18 God, I'm on Tulsi Gobbard's side today, too. Like, what in the fuck?

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 18 commonality, trying to bring people together. Civility.
Civility.

Speaker 18 I hate that word, by the way. I'm sorry.
Only straight white men can think civility is our biggest problem.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 17 I'll move along.

Speaker 18 Okay. Anyway, we hope it gets past.
We love Macron and we think he's very sexy, both of us, Scott, more than I. Okay.

Speaker 17 That guy's a tall drink of lemonade, right?

Speaker 17 Hello, daddy. At this point, a few beers also there.

Speaker 18 Did you see the guy online who's putting Trump's words into a gay guy? He's a gay guy. It's the best with the chain.
It's the best with the chain, and he sounds like, well, of course,

Speaker 18 as I've said, Elon and

Speaker 18 Trump breaking up is the first breakup of pride. Anyway, let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, Meta makes some big moves and not everyone is happy. What a surprise.

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Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 20 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 22 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 11 This is where Odoo comes in.

Speaker 2 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 6 Odo is an all-in-one fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 9 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 5 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 27 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 29 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 10 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 32 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

Speaker 12 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 15 Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 20 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 22 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 11 This is where Odo comes in.

Speaker 2 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 6 Odo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 9 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 4 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 26 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 29 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 10 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 32 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

Speaker 12 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 15 Try Odu for free at odo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 18 Scott, we're back live from Con.

Speaker 18 Meta just announced and it's putting ads on WhatsApp for the first time.

Speaker 18 This is something they talked about, and one of the founders of WhatsApp said over my dead body, so I guess he's not living anymore.

Speaker 18 The ads will appear in the updates tab of the app, which is visited by 1.5 billion people a day. Meta says there are no plans to put ads in chats or personal messages.

Speaker 18 I'm sure yet is in there and silently. And all conversations still say encrypted.
Meta shares rose 2.5% on the announcement.

Speaker 18 I think the question is, are they confident about the outcome of the antitrust trial?

Speaker 18 Meta just did a $14 billion deal to acquire also a 49% stake in Scale AI, a startup that supplies training data for AI models.

Speaker 18 Google is Scale AI's largest customer and not happy about the Meta deal. It's probably cutting ties with Scale.
Microsoft and XAI are also pulling back.

Speaker 18 I have heard from federal regulators who feel like this deal isn't going to go through at all, even though Microsoft did a similar thing when it bought Inflection.

Speaker 17 The The deal with Scale AI?

Speaker 18 Yes, it's like that. It's one of those deals where it's sort of an Aquihire kind of situation.

Speaker 18 They're getting the 49%, not control of it.

Speaker 18 It's an acquisition period. And I think the government's, even this government is not going to allow this to happen.
So talk a little bit about these ads in the app.

Speaker 18 Of course, they'll put ads anywhere.

Speaker 18 We'll put ads on Mark Zuckerberg's ass if it would work for them. But go ahead.
What do you think?

Speaker 17 It wouldn't work for them. I'm surprised it took so long.
Yeah,

Speaker 17 it won't be the revenue general. It'll be incremental growth.
It'll add one or two percentage points to their growth each year, which will, which is great.

Speaker 17 But if you look at

Speaker 17 if you look at ads, Meta's ability to monetize a consumer in the U.S., they get about $75 a year in ads if you're on Meta platforms in the U.S.

Speaker 17 Their average, I think, across their whole network is more like 12 or 14 because the market's actually their strongest in with WhatsApp or the lowest.

Speaker 17 It is very hard to monetize attention in India right now because a couple hundred million people in India are not consumers, meaning they they don't have any excess income for stuff.

Speaker 17 So it won't be the revenue boost I think that analysts think it'll be.

Speaker 17 What I think it is, and no one's talking about it, is I think it's sort of an ATT and Verizon killer because it'll give them, you know, my sense is WhatsApp is slowly becoming just the best telco and it's free.

Speaker 17 For the first time, I've thought, wow, I have ATT and somehow they have figured out a way through taxes and me ignoring the bill and not calling and complaining. I pay four to $600 a month for ATT.

Speaker 17 And a couple times recently, I thought, I'll call back on WhatsApp because it's better.

Speaker 17 And if they can figure out a way to make more investments in technology and outpace the technology investments of ATT or Verizon and offer free service to everyone globally, and it becomes a self-expressive benefit where it feels cooler to be on WhatsApp now.

Speaker 17 Yeah. Yeah.
I just think.

Speaker 18 I get a lot of WhatsApp. You know, it's interesting.
They could go back to that terrible phone they did. Do you remember many years ago? They had a phone.
It was like home or whatever it was called.

Speaker 17 Who had a phone?

Speaker 18 Facebook had the phone, and then they got out of it. It was, you know, who was run by? Jamath Palihapattiya ran that division.
It was a huge failure. I know.
Ha, exactly.

Speaker 18 Speaking of HGH.

Speaker 18 What

Speaker 18 explain, I mean, could they do that? Could they go back? Because they had a phone. It failed.
Microsoft had a phone. Amazon had a phone.
They all had phones.

Speaker 18 And that was their move was to sort of go into that business. But ATT Verizon sort of sewed it up along with Google and Apple.

Speaker 17 I saw this as, I thought it was good news for Meta.

Speaker 17 Probably the two.

Speaker 18 They don't need a phone is what you're saying. They just need the WhatsApp phone service.

Speaker 17 I think there are just so many amazing hardware manufacturers now. They're better off just being the operating system that garners money and advertising.

Speaker 17 I don't think they're in that business anymore. But I think I saw, I read this as worse news for ATT and Verizon than it was an increase in revenues for.

Speaker 18 So ad's not a big deal, and ads not just the thing.

Speaker 17 well

Speaker 17 i mean four out of five people are on a meta platform i think every 48 hours outside of china so i my sense is that uh i think the ads will be fairly unobtrusive i think they'll get more and more targeted they'll have more and more data to put into their flywheel you know But it's where WhatsApp is strongest is where they have the lowest monetization.

Speaker 17 So I think it'll be a longer road to the revenue.

Speaker 18 You're very bullish on meta right now. And also the scale AI deal is his, you know, they've been sucking wind in the AI area.
He thinks so, and I think he's right.

Speaker 18 And so he's making a big move, which is very typical of Zuckerberg. Like when he bought Instagram, when he did all kinds of things, he always makes the big aggressive pivot for himself.

Speaker 17 I don't think, I think this one was a rare misstep. He's arguably the best acquirer in history.
Instagram bought for a billion. Later, Marissa Mayer made the worst acquisition in tech history.

Speaker 17 She bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion. And I think seven years later, it was sold for $3 million.

Speaker 17 And meanwhile, Instagram is probably objectively worth $200 to $300 billion if it was an independent company.

Speaker 17 And then everyone thought he was crazy for spending $19 billion on WhatsApp that had no revenue.

Speaker 17 And that's ended up. Now he arguably bought the largest telco globally for $19 billion.
That looks like a genius acquisition. This one's a little bit different because they were trying to be cute.

Speaker 17 When you buy 49% of a company, you're not triggering what's called a change of control, meaning that the SEC looks at it differently.

Speaker 17 And technically, the FTC and the DOJ have a different set of rules to apply to a minority investment. Yes, there was 49 for a reason.
Technically, they're not in control. But this is what happens.

Speaker 17 When you take 49% of a company, you're on top.

Speaker 17 You're in charge.

Speaker 18 They also made its founder the head of their AI now, essentially. He's head of the AI lab or whatever that they're making.

Speaker 17 But they're effectively in charge now,

Speaker 17 Meta. And they thought that, and Scale AI is going now back to all of their other.

Speaker 17 So Scale AI is essentially an attempt to optimize content for generative AI. Remember the SEO world?

Speaker 17 Remember how there used to be companies and people here 10 years ago who had businesses that optimize you for search? These guys are now in the business of optimizing for generative AI, right?

Speaker 17 It's a great company, super smart people. By the way, it's going to go the same way of SEO.
I think in 10 years that whole industry is gone.

Speaker 17 But Meta saw a reason to bring these very smart people in to help optimize content for generative AI discovery. They thought they'd be cute and only buy 49% of it.

Speaker 18 And Microsoft got away with it, essentially.

Speaker 17 Well, but what you're right, but what their clients now, Scale AI, have said, that's fine. Yeah.
But a dog we don't like has peed on you, and we're just not getting near you.

Speaker 17 We're done. Yeah, so Googles out.

Speaker 17 I think this, I think he overpaid for this acquisition. Yeah.
I think this was

Speaker 17 a rare misstep. But

Speaker 18 we'll see what happens with him. It'll be interesting.

Speaker 18 But I do like, I have to say, the one thing Zuckerberg compared to a lot of people is his management style is very, he's a very strong manager.

Speaker 17 He's a brilliant businessman. He's also a sociopath and has done more damage to young people while making more money than anyone else in history.
Well done, Mark. That's it.
Well done.

Speaker 18 But we like your management style. Anyway, brilliant.
Yeah. Next up, a chatbot revolution is killing news publishers.

Speaker 18 As AI replaces Google searches, news sites aren't getting much need of referral traffic. We've talked about this.

Speaker 18 Organic search traffic to HuffPost and Washington Post is reportedly down 50% over the last three years. Google search volume on Apple's Safari browser just fell for the first time in 20 years.

Speaker 18 TV News News is feeling the pinch with social media reportedly now surpassing TV as American's top news source. And over at Amazon, Danny Jassy told employees that AI would come for their jobs.

Speaker 18 What a nice memo to get from your CEO. You suck.
I'm going to fire you. Amazon is the second largest private employer in the U.S.

Speaker 18 It's a huge company, a million people, whatever, the number is enormous.

Speaker 18 This thing, everyone should have seen coming here in advertising. Every publisher that didn't see what they were going to do coming.

Speaker 18 At first, they stole your content by and pushed and got in the catbird seat and pushed stuff to you so you were beholden to them. And now they're just taking your shit and putting it up.

Speaker 18 And I have to say, it's very effective because

Speaker 18 that's the first thing. I don't go any further than the first AI thing because it's gotten increasingly better.

Speaker 18 I mean, what's the point of going, except then I then go organically to people's sites like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or whatever, but it's a real killer for the clickbait websites.

Speaker 18 It's a death sentence for them, much like what happened to Demand Media many years ago when Google did the, when they did that redo of whatever, panda or whatever the fuck they called it.

Speaker 17 Yeah, so I mentioned this probably once a month on the podcast because I'm desperate for your affirmation. But

Speaker 17 I was on the board of the New York Times from my way to 2010.

Speaker 18 They didn't like you, I heard.

Speaker 17 Not true. They kicked me off after 24 months.
Okay.

Speaker 17 Salzbergers, really, really talented, thoughtful people. Seriously.

Speaker 17 Choosing my words very carefully.

Speaker 17 We had something called about.com, and it was essentially a content farm.

Speaker 17 And we'd have somebody who did a whole thing on Southern Cooking, and then we would optimize it for Google, and then Google would send traffic, and we'd split revenue from them.

Speaker 17 And the site was doing really well, and we could have sold it for a billion dollars. And I remember saying, why on earth would we not sell this thing? This is not our business.

Speaker 17 Billion dollars is a lot of money. And they said, no, because the management team wanted to accessorize an analog outfit with digital earrings, thinking it made it look younger, right?

Speaker 17 It was their bell bottoms or whatever it was. They thought it made them seem hipper.

Speaker 17 And then one night, literally overnight,

Speaker 17 Google changed their algorithm and 40% of our traffic went away like that. It's 40%.

Speaker 17 And I had this conversation, and I have this conversation with any entrepreneur. I had this conversation with Jessica Ellen, News Not Noise, which I absolutely love.
She's dependent upon Meta.

Speaker 17 I'm like, the only thing a partner of Meta and Alphabet have in common over the medium and long term is you're going to get fucked. Yeah.

Speaker 17 They will run their fingers through your hair, send you traffic, call you partners, invite you to the cool party tonight, and then slowly but surely, the moment you have anything resembling real margin that they can come from, they will tweak their algorithm and suck it out.

Speaker 17 Google used to be the best place to go. Now the first two or three pages are where they can go to further monetize.

Speaker 17 And the thing that really bothers me about these generative AI descriptions now is if you type in,

Speaker 17 give me the major themes from Carr Swisher's book burn book it'll list links to Amazon where they can buy the book but it summarizes it yeah it does which means they've crawled your content right which means they haven't it are they paying Penguin portfolio random house for Simon and Schuster so this is a moment in time going back to the New York Times I suggested that we form a consortium and stop letting Google crawl our data I'm like they've convinced us that this is good for us and they're sending us traffic to run shitty banner ads that nobody watches, that we get 50 cent CPMs on.

Speaker 17 And they run stuff across the right rail that is much more targeted and they get a dollar for. So they're giving us two pennies.
They're taking a buck from our gorgeous content, right?

Speaker 17 And we're supposed to be happy about it. And they said, no, we're in the business of eyeballs.

Speaker 17 This is before they went to subscription.

Speaker 17 That was a moment in time where we could have pushed back on search, where if we'd all banded together as content creators and said, we're going to license it to Bing, which was still a player at a time, or to Google, we could have extracted a a lot of money.

Speaker 17 We are at that moment in time right now with AI. Yeah.

Speaker 17 And that is, you need, we need very, very aggressive, very intelligent group of people and a lot of money for lawyers to go to every one of these guys and say, we have evidence everywhere that you are crawling our amazing content that includes people who are willing to go to war zones and risk their lives.

Speaker 17 That includes people that spent a lot of money on graduate education such that they can fact check and write reasonably well and compelling narrative.

Speaker 17 And you are crawling their data and running these synopses and not paying them. Right, exactly.

Speaker 18 And the Times and others spent, you made that point about the fact-checking on the article about me that you got called. He's here in the room.
Ben is here, but

Speaker 18 the puff piece? Yes, the puff piece. The puff piece.
No, it was not. It was very hard-hitting.

Speaker 18 Anyway, literally, I got a call.

Speaker 17 Can you talk about her leadership skills? Oh, God.

Speaker 18 Make it stop.

Speaker 17 Puff piece. Now, you're just talking about the past.
Did you see my puff piece in the FT? Yes, they did. Daddy got a little love.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17 That's right.

Speaker 18 It's too bad everybody reads the New York Times.

Speaker 17 Hello, Times.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 17 FT.

Speaker 18 How many people read the FT piece? I love the TV. How many people read the New York Times piece? Everybody, right? Thank you.
Okay. Anyway.
Literally.

Speaker 17 Okay, just so you know, you're all cynical. This is what advertising has become.
Advertising media used to shape culture, now follows me to the fucking urologist on Instagram.

Speaker 17 Congratulations, well done.

Speaker 18 In any way, in any case, they will do it again, and they will do it again and again, and they have no interest.

Speaker 18 I will give you one very quick when I, I was at Google when they started, and Larry Page was taking me around, showing me the office, and there was a room, and I've told this story, full of television sets, and they were all on.

Speaker 18 And everything at Google was weird at the time. You'd turn a corner, and there'd be a tent, or there's something.
It was all, it was a very strange, quirky culture.

Speaker 18 And I was like, oh, a room of television is like Circuit City, essentially. And I said, what are you doing?

Speaker 18 At this point, Larry was carrying a pollution meter around his neck because he was worried about about pollution. And I was like, no matter what you do, Carmen, you're going to die.

Speaker 18 I did the moonstruck line to him. And he was like, what is that? What do you mean I'm going to die? I'm like, you're going to die.
Like, this was the kind of conversation I have.

Speaker 18 But we get to this room. It's full of TVs.
I'm like, what are you doing in there? And he goes, we're taping TV. And this is exactly what he talks.
And I go, taping TV. He goes, yes, all of TV.

Speaker 18 And I said, you're taping TV for what? They were crawling it through. closed captioning so they could search it.
And I said, did you get any of the copyright to do that?

Speaker 18 And they were doing the same with books very soon after. And he goes, why would I need to do that? And I was like, because other people own that content, not you.
And you're a fucking shoplifter.

Speaker 18 And he was like, I think it's going to be good for the world. I said, I think it's going to be good for you because no one's going to do it after.
So we had this big debate right there.

Speaker 18 But this is in the DNA of these companies. Let me tell you, shoplifting and thievery is in the thing.
And Walt Mossberg got it right when he called them information thieves many years ago.

Speaker 18 And I think that's absolutely true.

Speaker 18 And then they serve you the solution for it.

Speaker 18 Like they give you info cancer and then say we have the medicine to cure you of info cancer, which they don't, which is a line from Mountain Head this week.

Speaker 18 Anyway, speaking of things that might cause cancer, when we come back, we'll talk about Trump launching a mobile plan.

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Speaker 18 And we're back live from Con.

Speaker 18 We've got some time for questions. The Trump organization has announced a mobile phone plan for a 499 smartphone they said will be made in the U.S.
This is not true.

Speaker 18 You cannot make a phone in the U.S., but they don't care if they lie about things like that. Trump Mobile will offer plans under $50.
It's like the Bible.

Speaker 18 Will offer plans under $50 a month. The T1 smartphone appears to have a gold covering with an American flag, obviously.
Gold is best.

Speaker 18 For those who haven't seen that, it's a great skit on Apple. Gold is best.
Get the gold.

Speaker 18 This device will run on Google's Android operating system, and a Trump organization says it will be made in the U.S. Again, it's not possible.

Speaker 18 But meanwhile, in the podcasting world, the Boys at Smartless have also launched their own mobile phone company. I don't think we're not going to be doing that, just so you know.
But

Speaker 18 this is ridiculous. Shira O.
V. did a great thing.
She tried to sign up. They charged her immediately.
She can't get her service. It's very confusing.
It's obviously just,

Speaker 18 he probably did, they did a deal with someone. Trump isn't running it.
It's like stakes, except now people buy it, essentially.

Speaker 18 Any thoughts on this, creating a mobile service?

Speaker 17 Well,

Speaker 18 why would we create a mobile service?

Speaker 17 The grift in the criminality and the monetization of the White House has become so outrageous, it just doesn't feel strange.

Speaker 17 If Obama or Reagan or Carter had tried to launch a phone service, Fox News would have had their hair on fire for seven days straight.

Speaker 17 But because we now have a president who opens a Swiss banking account, the Qatar or anyone else can say, I'm putting $100 million in tonight at 12.03 a.m. and nobody knows.

Speaker 17 And by the way, could you stop sending shipments of arms to these people? Or, you know, basically the White House is now for sale. The criminality is just so outrageous.

Speaker 17 that we now see the monetization of something that this should not happen. This is crazy, but it almost feels like, oh, that's not a big deal, right?

Speaker 17 Sending your kids to Qatar, who is the political mouthpiece and funder of Hamas, and then taking a $400 million bribe from them. Well, if you can do that, okay, let them launch a phone.

Speaker 17 So, this, what's so sad about this, by the way, you can get the exact same plans. Someone did an

Speaker 17 overcharged by Verizon and AT ⁇ T.

Speaker 18 So, some of these other plans are terrific.

Speaker 18 Because they basically ride on Verizon and AT ⁇ T. They pay them.

Speaker 18 And some of them are wonderful. And the prices should not be these prices.

Speaker 17 Well, not to get too deep into the weeds here, but there's a duopoly. A small number of companies own the networks.

Speaker 17 And the FTC and the DOJ said came in and said you have to lease them out to people to start what's called an MVNO.

Speaker 17 And a lot of great companies, including Mint Mobile, came in with very fantastic advertising and acquired a bunch of customers. And then they basically sell to one of the big guys.

Speaker 17 They end up being kind of niche customer

Speaker 17 acquisition vehicles for the duopoly that is rising in ATT. But you can get the same plan for

Speaker 17 less money. But

Speaker 17 I like these little niche offerings if people are that crazy about Trump and they want to do it. But

Speaker 17 it's just insane that somebody who has the power of the purse, power of laws, gets to decide the most important decisions globally that sets the tone for the rest of the world.

Speaker 17 is selling a fucking phone. I mean, come on.

Speaker 17 We become so numb to how terrible and

Speaker 17 inappropriate all of this is and just the incredible erosion. I have found, I'm on a bunch of panels and I have found I'm the anger pillow for Cann.

Speaker 17 They set me up, you say brand is dead, and then they have a very articulate British person say, why brand matters more than ever.

Speaker 17 And I have felt, I don't want to say anti-American resentment, but I just think globally, our brand, you want to talk about brands?

Speaker 17 There has never been a brand erosion of a brand as big, fallen as far as fast as the U.S. in the last 151 days.
Well, Tesla, but go ahead.

Speaker 17 Fair enough.

Speaker 17 That's fair.

Speaker 18 And that's still going.

Speaker 17 But if you think about it, we used to be the good guys.

Speaker 17 People said, okay, they get it wrong.

Speaker 17 But generally speaking, the White House has an occupant in there that may be dumb, maybe, not sound fair, not dumb, maybe not the brightest person in the world, may be arrogant, may be imperialist, bad wars.

Speaker 17 But generally speaking, our heart's in the right place. I've always found that.
And what I'm sensing when we go abroad is a certain level of fear.

Speaker 17 Like I think people quite frankly took America a little bit for granted. They sort of said, oh, you're smart.
You're nice. You have more weapons than anybody.
That's kind of nice.

Speaker 17 And then when they realize, okay, our rich Uncle Sam's gone fucking crazy. They're like, wow, we kind of miss our uncle.
We kind of miss the old uncle. That felt pretty good.

Speaker 17 And also, there's a real decent level. I find that

Speaker 17 it's not, I don't want to say there's an anti-American thing in France. We're still wonderful allies.
We push back fascism together.

Speaker 17 But what I notice visibly when I'm on panels, someone makes an anti-American joke, and the people just love it. The people just love it now.

Speaker 17 So that erosion of brand equity

Speaker 17 has an enormous impact on it. It means that one of the largest exports in our nation, U.S.
Education, where we make $42 billion a year, we make $40 billion selling TV shows and movies overseas.

Speaker 17 We make $42 billion getting the richest kid from El Salvador to come to NYU Stern and pay $288,000 in tuition over four years. All those numbers are accurate.

Speaker 17 We get get the best and brightest, the flows of human capital in the U.S.

Speaker 17 People have one aspiration, the best and brightest, typically, and that is to come to the U.S.

Speaker 17 If you're noticing a terrorist cell forming and people wanting to get on planes to DC or to San Francisco, there are a lot of people who say, you know what, Americans are good people and they notify our embassy.

Speaker 17 They highlight security threats. I have always run global companies, small companies, but global companies.
And I always found when I walked into Samsung or to LVMH or Toyota in, you know, Tokyo,

Speaker 17 Seoul, or Paris, and I took for granted, you know what, people generally like Americans. They generally speaking think you're not just funny, but they like us.
They think, oh, you're we.

Speaker 18 Not now, though. We're going to have to.

Speaker 17 Well, that's my point. That's my point: is that that brand erosion, I mean, you're in the business of brand.
Brand erosion means less margins. It means less consideration.
It means less profits.

Speaker 17 The erosion in goodwill will translate to an economic hardship and

Speaker 17 making our soft targets much bigger targets because we're no longer the good guys.

Speaker 18 Which is making out like bandits, and I mean bandits. I'm stressing bandits.
What could they sell next? Then I want to get to questions because we only got a few minutes.

Speaker 17 I have no idea.

Speaker 18 I think erectile dysfunction.

Speaker 17 Well, if you think about advertising, advertising used to shape culture. Now it sells creatine to self-hating people like me.
Anyway, excellent.

Speaker 18 All right. One more quick break, and then we'll take some questions from the audience.

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Speaker 18 Scott, we're back. Let's take some questions right here.

Speaker 17 Do you think Trump and Musk are going to kiss and make up?

Speaker 18 No, I do not. No, I think Trump has he's used his Musk has outlived his usefulness, and

Speaker 18 he's a live wire,

Speaker 18 and he takes away too much attention, and Trump doesn't need him at this point. He's got his billions of dollars.
He's got his presidency.

Speaker 18 He'll probably get off scot-free. Not everyone in that administration will get off scot-free, but Trump certainly will.

Speaker 18 And so I think he doesn't need him. And the only thing is Musk is not, like I said, it's not like Omarosa leaving.

Speaker 18 There'll be, if, if, if Scott, although he has qualities of Omarosa, although I like her a lot better,

Speaker 18 I think that she will,

Speaker 18 I think that he will, he could cause trouble. You just never know what he's going to do.

Speaker 18 So I think that's one of the, he has some power, especially on if he changes the algorithm on Twitter, you could fuck with him there.

Speaker 18 He could fuck with him a a lot of places that said there's plenty of people rushing in to take his place and and trump's got most of tech by the ball so uh for some reason i don't know why because they have they could certainly do damage to him too i don't know very quick

Speaker 17 quick or else

Speaker 17 no no i'm not going quick

Speaker 17 you don't you don't love the homie you don't love bowen yang is waiting oh i'll go quick um

Speaker 17 the gays are waiting to come on they want to see the gays this happens every day i'm a gay this This is a much bigger, bolder, cattier, stupider version of the following.

Speaker 17 And it happens millions of times in corporate America. My company was acquired.
I didn't like working there. They didn't like me.
I didn't like them. That's a little hard.
Shocking. Different culture.

Speaker 17 And they said, okay,

Speaker 17 I said, I want out. And they said, fine, we want you out.
And they gave me a shit ton of money and I signed non-disparagement and non-compete agreements. That is effectively what's going on here.

Speaker 17 They have fired him. He wanted input on CIA, NASA, and IRS picks.
They said, no, you've overstepped your boundaries. We need you out.
He started shitposting them, calling the president a pedophile.

Speaker 17 It didn't seem to bother him when he wanted subsidies. Can you think of anything worse you could call somebody?

Speaker 17 And meanwhile, all the right-wing media that was saying, release the Epstein files. There's all these Democrats.
They're all of a sudden like, oh, that's not true. That's just Trump.

Speaker 17 He just hung out with Epstein for fun. I just love how all of a sudden they're like, oh, conspiracy.

Speaker 17 Anyways, they basically said to him, boss, we're not going to give you extra money, but we're not going to put Tesla and SpaceX out of business, but you have to sign a non-disparagement.

Speaker 17 This is a firing.

Speaker 17 And he's basically been told, okay, if you want us to take SpaceX from $300 billion to $30 billion by losing all contracts and you want us to take Tesla from $950 to $50, you better shut the fuck up.

Speaker 17 Sign here. This happens every day in corporations.

Speaker 18 He's much more leveraged than you really. If Starlink falls apart, he's got a lot of problems.

Speaker 18 And Tesla's on a downward spiral, which has something to do with his Trump support, but a lot to do with his lack of good cars. That's really, I mean, at the very heart of it.

Speaker 18 Hi, I'm Kendra Barnett, Senior Tech Reporter. I'm a Gummy Shoot fan of Oxy.

Speaker 17 Thank you for being here. Thank you.

Speaker 18 I just wanted to ask if you guys could share any predictions about the remedies that we're going to see in both of the DOJ and Google cases.

Speaker 18 I think probably they'll have to break it up. I think they'll have to be spinning something off.
I think that judge is really smart, actually know a lot about him.

Speaker 18 But I think Google's on the ropes on that one. The Facebook one, I'm not sure, because some people felt it wasn't a particularly strong case and Facebook's being ultra-aggressive.

Speaker 18 And they've got some support for the idea that they do have,

Speaker 18 I think it's a better case that they brought back that Lena Khan then resubmitted.

Speaker 18 But I think a lot of people feel that possibly Facebook will possibly, I think the judge will rule against them, but it will go to appeals. It'll go on and on and on.
But I think the Google one is

Speaker 18 probably a significant issue. And it'll keep going.
But the Google one is more, and it's very clear what's happened there.

Speaker 18 And they should not be on every side of every market, including, you know, YouTube is now television.

Speaker 18 You know, they control so much stuff, and it's so obvious that they should be broken up in some fashion. But rolling back the Instagram purchase, I don't see it happening.

Speaker 17 Yeah,

Speaker 17 there's a lot of moving parts here, but I think if Alphabet's stock continues to underperform and for some reason it goes down, I think that they will decide to prophylactically spin YouTube because I think once an asset Alphabet trades at a a P of I think 16 the S P trades at 24 the average S P company is not nearly as impressive as Alphabet at some point the shareholders of Alphabet will go all right the hole is worth less than the sum of its parts so maybe we can kill two birds with one stone go to the DOJ or the FTC and say what if we spin

Speaker 17 YouTube which would probably be worth more than Netflix it captures 11% of viewership Netflix catches captures 7.7 so I think if they see the tea leaves that it would be good for shareholders and potentially

Speaker 17 maintain the wolves, the FTC and DOJ wolves at the door, I think you'll see a spin. Having said that, every prediction I have made around DOJ and FTC over the last decade has been entirely wrong.

Speaker 18 But the Trump administration hasn't pulled back on this, which is interesting. I don't, you know, I think they probably thought they might get a little bit of, but it doesn't matter.

Speaker 18 This isn't in front of a judge, and we'll see what happens. But they don't seem particularly interested in helping these companies.

Speaker 18 But I do think Google's probably going to have to spin something off at some point. Anyway, okay, this is the end.
Okay, thanks. But Bo and Yang is waiting and he's sick of you.
Okay, that's the show.

Speaker 18 Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We'll be back next week.

Speaker 17 Scott, let me give it to you.

Speaker 18 Read us out. You think I'd be able to do that?

Speaker 17 I'm going to wait for you. Go ahead.
Go. All the people we value so much.

Speaker 17 Today's show was produced by Larry Amon, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Earning interest on engine this episode.

Speaker 17 Thanks also to Jibros, Miss Severio, and Dan Shalan, Nasha Kerwa's Watch Media Executive Producer podcast. Thank you to Lauren Stark, Ray Chow, and Jackie Singuia.
Do I get that right, Jackie?

Speaker 17 I've known you for so long. All right,

Speaker 17 she's in charge of events

Speaker 17 at Vox. Anyone in charge of events, it's what I call an invisible until you fuck up job.
Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. I say that with affection.
She knows it.

Speaker 17 Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at wintermindmag.com/slash pod.

Speaker 17 We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Speaker 18 Thank you so much. We love you.

Speaker 17 We love you.

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