TikTok Ban, Sam Altman's Return to OpenAI Board, Fake News Sites

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Welcome, everybody.

We're taping this show in front of a live audience here at South by Southwest, thanks to our sponsor Atlassian.

How are you having a good time here?

Thursday night, margaritas.

Friday, last night, Edibles.

Tonight,

tonight,

maybe an Eastern European sex worker.

By the way, is there four seasons here?

Yeah.

And Monday, no joke, I'm doing ketamine.

So by Tuesday, I'll have moved to Key Largo, started a scuba shop, and identify as Barbara.

I love it here.

Oh, good, then good.

And you haven't, you've seen some people.

You've seen some famous people.

I just got here.

I have seen famous people.

Tell me.

I saw Megan and Harry.

Yeah.

Did you apologize to her after strafing her relentlessly for some unknown reason?

Got to be honest.

First observation, I get why he's acting like such a fucking idiot.

She's scorching hot.

I have done much stupider things for people much less hot than her.

So

all is forgiven, Harry.

I get it.

I totally get it now.

They should have like 50 kids and take over Scotland.

Yeah.

They are beautiful.

Did you speak to her?

No, I was too intimidated.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Who else did you see?

I saw Elon Musk.

Uh-huh.

And?

Who else have I seen?

I'm sorry.

No, and.

What?

And?

Did you talk to him?

No, we did not hang out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm looking for something pithy, elegant, yet putting to say, but I can't think of anything.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

So are you, are you, or is there anyone you're looking forward to seeing here besides me?

Are we going to get to the show at some point?

Yes, we are.

We're having banter.

It's called.

But I want to know how you're enjoying Texas so far.

I'm having a great time.

So tell me, who have you seen?

I just got here at noon.

I was on the bookstore.

You just got here on your bookstore.

Yeah, I was in California with Sam Altman.

You did Sam Altman.

You did Governor Newsome.

Governor Newsome.

Yeah.

And what was your favorite?

Which was your favorite?

Oh, wow.

Don't ask me to choose.

They were all great.

I thought they all did a good job.

I've been having people who aren't journalists do these things just because I want to have different discussions.

They've all been, they've been surprisingly good.

Although, Sam Altman was actually very good at the question asking.

And then he said, you know, I think I'm good.

I think I'm good here.

Like, I'm good at doing this.

And I said, well, don't quit your day job or get fired from it.

But

no, he's now actually back in power.

That's good.

You know, I thought that.

I thought that.

So we're going to talk a lot.

We're going to get to audience questions later.

But let's start.

I think we'll start with fake Russian news sites.

Have you heard of the Chicago Chronicle or the New York News Daily?

Not the Daily News, the News Daily.

And what about the Miami Chronicle?

They're not news organizations, according to a report in the New York Times, which is an actual news outlet.

They're apparently Russian-made sites popping up over the past couple of months, meant to look like U.S.

sites and distribute Russian propaganda.

A media expert from Clemson University says the artificial intelligence has made it easier to create and target this information.

Talk about it because, you know, I had the encounter with fake Kara Swishers everywhere and my books.

Thoughts about about these, right?

This is not a surprise in any way.

No, we've been talking a lot about the threats of AI.

And I think there's a short-term threat and then a medium and long-term threat.

And then the short-term threat, I think, is pretty obvious and the medium and long-term threat, less obvious.

And the short-term threat is just a massive amount of really elegantly inexpensive, tested 3 million times a minute disinformation.

And I think it'll be really subtle.

Video maybe depicting

Biden is a little bit older, shuffling his feet a little bit more, right?

A little less,

the stutter is a little more pronounced.

And I think it'll be so imperceptible and so gradual that you just won't notice it.

Because,

I mean, if you're Vladimir Putin and you're losing, wouldn't you be stupid not to take 10% of that budget?

and some really talented AI engineers, of which they have thousands, and use porous and amoral platforms and platform management respectively to weaponize kind of an Achilles heel of our society.

And that is Americans are much easier to fool than convinced we've been fooled.

We are in the midst of being fooled, I think, by a lot of these platforms.

We'll talk about TikTok.

But I think the first, the first real big threat.

No, they've done it before.

This is not new.

I mean, many years ago on Facebook.

They're going to do it better.

They're going to do it better.

Right.

Yeah.

See, I see something more, I see the imperceptible thing, but I see something more dramatic.

Like on election day, one of the candidates is dead, but isn't, like that kind of thing.

Something really dramatic that would suppress voting or cause panic or things like that.

We're just going to be so propaganda.

I mean, they've laid it all out.

It's not even, they'll just confuse everybody and you'll get so overwhelmed and so fatigued and so tired that swing voters won't turn out or that moderates won't turn out.

So I

don't understand, and maybe you can speak to this.

I don't know if it runs afoul of First Amendment, but i can't understand why we wouldn't be much better at one just shutting these things down immediately as sort of a defensive act and two why we wouldn't mandate or i mean i'd like to think the big tech folks and the ai folks are all going to get together and say this could be awful we're going to put a pause on anything that looks to be ai generated which we can absolutely track or at least watermark it

um I don't think it's going to happen, but I think the long-term solution would be that any content that is AI impacted generation.

Well, they've talked about that.

Meta has talked about doing that.

They've all talked about doing it.

It's just the flood of it.

They've talked about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, they said they're going to do it.

They're proud of their progress, but we need to do better.

We're very sorry for what's happened to you.

Yeah.

That's what I'm saying.

They're going to feel really bad about what happened the day after inauguration and they've cashed all the checks.

No, no, I mean, they didn't last time.

They didn't.

They felt bad for five seconds.

Well, I'm saying it's going to be faux concern.

I think Sam Allman is full of shit.

I know that people think he's really thoughtful.

We're being sandburged again.

Sandburged.

We're being sandburged.

Okay.

Why?

Tell me why that is.

I'm very worried about

hushed, slow, thoughtful, Dorsey-like tones that give you the perception that I care about anything other than the stock price.

And quite frankly, Sam Allman doesn't own stock.

So this feels like someone who's really thoughtful and really concerned.

Guess what?

Unless we elect people who are focused on preventing a tragedy of the commons and the commonwealth,

if we keep waiting for the better angels of these people and keep hoping that this is the new good leader that is going to do the right thing, this is going to keep happening and keep getting worse.

So the option is getting legislators to do it.

But, you know, I literally got a text from Amy Klobuchar, Senator Klobuchar, who both you and I know, and I've interviewed her here, and she was talking about the removal.

She had passed one bill, which was to increase merger fees.

And the money was supposed to go to the Justice Department and the FTC, and they pulled it back.

Now, I don't know if she's been able to push it back in, but it's a very de minimis amount of money.

She can't even get that

kept in the place where it was dedicated to.

Well, we've talked about this.

There's been 40 hearings on the damage that social media does to our children.

There's been zero legislation.

Yeah.

So when

Mark Zuckerberg is forced to stand up and turn around and apologize, the parents should have asked him to turn around and look at the real culprits.

And that's the people we elect who haven't figured out a way to do anything about this.

There's There's a line out the door.

Yep.

Ferrevi, Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg, there's a line out the door of talented, smart people who aren't bad people, but live in a society where you're more attractive, more interesting, can be a better citizen, a better philanthropist if you get really, really rich.

And so you will make incremental decisions on the path to hell to get really rich.

That's their job.

In some

for-profit companies, they're so good.

They do what they do.

No, they're there for shareholders.

They're there for shareholders.

They're so good at making profits.

They're so good at it.

They should be trusted to do nothing else.

Let me just push back on that because they're good at it because they don't pay the costs.

They don't pay the actual costs other people, the society ends up paying for them.

The real costs aren't built in because they have no guardrails whatsoever.

Other companies have all kinds of, including liability.

But one part of the system works really, really well because in the UK, I live in London.

Women's rights, the assault rifle ban,

transgender rights, it's not even a conversation over there.

They're like, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

Of course we don't have assault banana.

Of course a woman has a right to, I mean, it's not, these aren't even conversations.

So that's really liberating.

And you think, wow, what a great place.

At the same time, they haven't grown their economy in five years.

So what you're linking niceness to lack of innovation?

No, what I'm linking is, as a capitalist,

you have to have the fodder and the rain and the wheat to do social programs and progress.

I still disagree with you.

I think they're not paying their full cost.

They can't be sued.

They can't beat, they have no rules on them, and therefore their business looks fantastic, if they're not paying full frameworks.

They're doing their job.

Certainly, no, no.

Listen, when Tom, it was either Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley, I mixed them up together and mulled them into one horrible person.

When he got up and said that, and by the way, Mark's was not an apology.

It's, I'm sorry for what was done to you.

That's what he said.

He didn't say, I'm sorry for what I did caused your pain.

He said, I'm sorry for what was done to you by some nameless person that looks like an MMA fighter, wannabe.

But he,

the, the, the hallies of the world are the problem, ultimately.

And it was so performative and ridiculous, which is what Congress is these days, unfortunately.

But some people that might be able to help, moms against social media addiction.

We all know about mothers against drunk driving, but now I'm the moms of liberty.

But did you know I formed a group called Moms Against Moms for Liberty?

Yeah,

Mammal.

Mammal, that's right.

I like it.

I would like just to wrestle with them, and then, you know, of course, I'd win, obviously.

But can we?

Yes.

I just want to briefly go back.

And then I'd have a threesome with them.

Go ahead, sorry.

They like it.

That mom.

Remember that mom for liberty?

That's both compelling and disturbing at the same time.

That's my whole point.

If we can add $240 billion in five minutes after an earnings call,

we just should be able to figure out legislation that we don't have homeless veterans, right?

We have the hard part figured out.

There are social programs all over the world that figure out a way to give women or give families universal pre-K.

There's a way to get homeless veterans off the street.

We have all the resources, and yet

we plead complexity.

What we do on the right side of the ledger in terms of economic power power and prosperity is literally unprecedented.

Unfortunately, that prosperity doesn't translate to progress because we don't elect people who are moderates who are willing to work with the other side and actually do the hard work of making laws.

So we have the hard part.

We don't get the easy stuff right.

And I'm not suggesting homelessness or that these issues are easy.

But if everyone else can figure it out, but we can figure out how to create trillions of dollars in economic value, then we got the hard stuff right.

Except maybe we're just greedy fucks and they're not.

I don't know.

That's one of the way to look at it.

And I give you Scott Galloway, San Francisco's social justice warrior right here.

But this is mothers, this is really a group of moms on

Mothers Against Social Mothers Against Social Media Addiction.

Mamas,

against what they're calling media addiction crisis among kids.

The name of the group is Mama, which is what my kids call me, which stands for Moms Against Media Addiction.

It's financially backed by Tristan Harris,

whom we both interviewed, is nonprofit at at the Center for Humane Technology.

I think this is a really interesting thing, whether it's going to be a grassroots reference.

One of the most striking things about that hearing were the parents with the pictures of their kids up.

And it's certainly something that's worked in a number of ways,

both positive and negative.

Moms for Liberty are very committed to their, you know, heinous behavior.

But

this is interesting if parents groups can be effective or legislative.

I know I'm much more intense when it comes to things around my kids.

I'd suspect I'd be more involved pressuring legislators.

And a lot of stuff I do is actually because of that.

Because I think about a couple of years last year, I got into a beef with J.D.

Vant.

He was saying that liberals don't believe in the future, right?

He wrote at me, like liberals like you don't believe in the future.

He used to be normal, by the way, everybody.

And then he became whatever happened, Elon Musk, same thing.

And

I wrote back to him.

I said, you know, JD, I have four kids and you have two.

Now, I wonder if there's an issue with you and your wife that we don't know about, but I don't know how lesbians can have double the amount of kids you did.

Maybe you should, I know it was mean, but it was true.

And I believe in the future.

Mother was the one that was going to do ketamine.

Where the fuck are you right now?

What are you talking about?

Mother's against social media.

Yeah.

Okay, so it marks the time and it'll be effective for the reasons you're talking about.

Yeah.

Because you believe in the future with

everybody believing.

Let's just talk about power.

Yeah.

100,000 ex-urban moms are probably going to decide the election

in 11 counties and five states.

So you don't want to fuck with moms for a lot of reasons right now.

One, because the passion they bring, and two, because they're going to be incredibly important this election.

It also marks a time.

When I graduated high school in 1992, 1982,

I'm not exaggerating.

I went to a large public high school in West Los Angeles, University School.

And it felt like every week you'd walk in and there'd be a picture and a wreath, a flower wreath, and you'd be like, oh, no.

And some kid would have died from drunk driving.

Like that was the killer.

No airbags.

We used to get ridiculously fucked up and take to Sunset Avenue.

There wasn't a lot of education around drunk driving.

The steering shafts were basically spears that would impale you.

It was happening every week.

Now,

drunk driving deaths among teens have absolutely collapsed.

Absolutely collapsed.

Now it's suicide.

And so it makes sense that mothers, I think mothers have the right, the right instincts here.

And I also think they'll be effective because arguably this is an incredibly important voter group.

If they wanted to be really effective, they'd say mothers against social media of Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania.

If they just said, we're swing states and this is where we're going to set up operation.

What do they do though?

I mean, what's interesting, you talk, my kids are not as social media addicted at all.

In fact, Louis came off of social media, said it makes them feel bad.

And Alex just watches YouTube videos, but it's actually substantive stuff he watches on there.

You've talked about the addiction of your kids.

And Claire is addicted to Frozen, but so is every young girl or boy, too.

My son loves Moana, but

your kids are more.

You talk about that more.

I have not experienced that with my kids.

Yeah,

I have a.

I'm choosing my words carefully because they're now old enough to listen.

Look, effectively, just to go meta,

the greatest amount of shareholder value, unfortunately, has been is platforms that tap into the following dynamic.

And that is we have Paleolithic instincts, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.

And they can target the weaknesses of young people, specifically young men whose prefrontal cortex is not developed.

So I know I'm going to put gambling on your phone.

By the way, that's a fucking train wreck.

That's a train wreck.

Young men having absolutely no friction to gambling and their risk aggressiveness.

Oh, wait, teen girls who are just coming into their sort of self-identity year, struggling with their own identity.

They're being sexualized for the first time, but they're getting rewards for it on an algorithm that encourages them to propose in provocative positions.

Boys bully physically and verbally, girls bully relationally.

I know, let's put nuclear weapons in their hands so they can really fuck with each other.

They are literally, these algorithms and these companies are zeroing in on the most vulnerable of our instincts.

And then they make massive amounts of money because we have a Congress Congress that's 130 fucking years old and doesn't relate to the problems of new mothers or teenagers.

So they found the white space for economic value, tap into the flaws in our instincts that haven't caught up with institutional production, mustache, technology, and people that legislators aren't focused on.

But I would argue it's actually everybody.

I think people 30 to 50 have addiction to it.

You can see it.

You yourself today.

I was like, get the hell off that phone and look at me in the eyes in a beautiful, meaningful way.

I was hoping for that, but it didn't happen.

He does.

He looks at his phone.

Number two, New York Times.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah.

I'm addicted, but I can modulate.

I mean, haven't we all had that moment, right?

Have you had this moment at home?

My oldest does a handstand on the beach, said, Dad, take a video, do it, post it on YouTube.

Sure, I post on YouTube, gets a like and a comment.

What a great handstand.

And he's like, and then I see the connection.

Oh, can we look again?

And then someone says, you clearly aren't a very good athlete.

And I see that like

disappointment and I see that addiction go like this.

Do you have you had that moment with your kids?

I'm addicted, but I know I'm addicted.

I know I drink too much alcohol, but

I've done the trade-offs and I'm like, I'm in on alcohol.

And

unfortunately, I don't think my 13 and 16 year olds.

I have a different experience because Alex, for example, doesn't let us post anything of his on social media at all for years.

I think he was.

Which is interesting.

And I stopped doing it.

He was like, you're a Sharant.

Stop being a Sharon.

Sharing.

Yeah.

But I think you and Amanda have done a better job with your kids around this than we have.

We really struggle with it.

We really struggle with it.

It's hard.

I've been lucky because they're not interested, which is interesting.

They did like Snapchat for many years, but I got Evan Spiegel to call them and say he'd turn it off if you didn't listen to their mom, which is not many people can do that, right?

So that's a flex.

He did a good job.

It was a flex, but it worked.

It worked.

They're like, really?

I'm like, uh-huh.

See, it's him.

Anyway,

it is a big problem.

I think age gating is something both Scott and I have talked about extensively into doing that.

I don't know why.

See, that's the kind of thing, or lawsuits.

I think every parent that faced Mark Zuckerberg should be able to sue him.

And if they win, they win.

If they don't, they don't.

And that's just the way it's going to be, you know, but they're not allowed to sue him.

It's easy.

Age gate, no one should be on these platforms under the age of 16.

Schools should ban phones in schools, and any algorithmically elevated content is no longer protected by Section 230.

All right.

And these geniuses will figure it out.

Yeah, probably they will.

They'll make money.

It's some other way.

All right, let's get to our first big story because it's related because they are moving to stop some social media sites.

It's the U.S.

government versus TikTok.

What are you looking at?

I'm going to bring this up as part of my story.

Trust me.

All right.

Okay.

You're not just like texting this woman?

What are you doing?

No, no, no, no, no.

I'm supposed to meet my sex worker.

Hold on.

Scott, you need to invest in our relationship.

The House will vote on legislation giving the Chinese company Byte Dance six months to divest from TikTok if it wants to stay on U.S.

app stores.

This is a redo of what happened during the Trump administration.

TikTok says the legislation amounts to a ban.

Congressman Mike Gallagher, head of the House Select China Committee, who is leaving Congress, I just did a big interview with him, says it's not a ban.

It's, quote, a surgery designed to remove the tumor and thereby save the patient in the process.

Oh my God, Mike, Jesus Christ.

Okay, it's a ban.

Got it.

The White House indicated Biden would sign the bill.

He's talked about this too.

Everyone seems to be on the anti-TikTok bandwagon.

You know, they don't seem to be worried about voters.

I don't think voters will get that upset by it.

President Trump was anti-TikTok in 2020, but went about it in kind of a goofy way.

He says the ban would empower Facebook.

He now is against it because it will help Facebook, which is weird.

He did a flip-flop

because apparently people are attributing it to TikTok investor and Republican donor Jeff Yass.

What a surprise for Donald Trump to be bought and paid for.

That's a surprise to me.

I know it's a surprise to you.

But he has done a flip because he was very vehemently.

And at the time he did it,

he

I had written a column saying TikTok's the best social media app I've ever seen in my life, and I'm using it on a burner phone because of the implications of surveillance and propaganda.

And I got a lot of pushback from a lot of people at the time.

And I hated agreeing with Trump on that particular thing.

But of course, he went about in this crazy way, got his friend Larry Ellison, tried to force Microsoft, is still hurting from that experience, tried to get Microsoft involved.

And he wanted a VIG, all kinds of things.

But it went nowhere.

It went nowhere.

And then TikTok is putting ads out.

I don't know if you've seen them saying, you know, our small business exists on the farm in the Midwest because of TikTok, which I thought was weird and brilliant at the same time.

So where does this legislation go?

Because it's back and everyone's on board with it.

It does feel

advantageous to our social media networks.

So I've been wrong on this, but I think this is going to happen.

And the reason I was pulling my phone, did anyone get this message?

No, what's that?

Stop a TikTok shutdown.

And it has a big, it explains what the government is trying to do, explains the ban, and it says call now.

And immediately connects you to your congressperson.

This is on TikTok.

This is on TikTok.

Now, what's interesting is I didn't get this, but my 13-year-old did.

So I got a message.

Dad, should I call?

Alec, his brother, said to ask you, and this is my favorite, don't you own this?

My kids have no idea what I do.

Okay, but here's the thing, just, which was hilarious, right?

Yeah.

Here's the thing, though.

I am not down.

With the CCP weaponizing and making my 13-year-old a foot soldier.

I'm just not down with that.

And here's what happened, and it backfired on them.

And this is why this is going to go through now.

Supposedly, there were thousands of 13 and 15-year-olds calling our representatives in DC

and saying, you're taking TikTok away.

And this has supposedly steeled the resolve.

It's out of the House Select Committee or the Commerce Committee, 50 to zero.

I think this is going through.

What about the Senate?

It'll probably go to the Supreme Court.

But here's the thing.

it words matter they screwed up by calling it a ban

it's not a ban it's not a ban there's too much money what it is is it's regulation that's like saying a speed limit of 55 is a ban on cars it's not they're saying unless you transfer ownership because of the defense risk here to an american company we're regulating this and you're not going to be able to be in the app stores To be clear, TikTok's going nowhere.

There's too much money on the line here.

Some of their biggest investors are Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic Gardeners.

We shouldn't have said this was a ban.

We should have said this was guardrails or regulation because all of a sudden everyone's like, oh, it's First Amendment.

You're taking away things.

No, it's not.

It's a surgery designed to remove the tumor and thereby save the patient in the process.

Just so that's, that's a, that's a quick mouthful there.

Um, but let me, let me go opposite.

If you are TikTok,

what's you, you're, you're now running TikTok.

What do you do?

And what's your biggest, what's your best argument that they would have?

Well, here's the thing: the folks at TikTok,

okay, if you're if you're the member of the TikTok executive management team that's affiliated in charge of the CCP and your family can be disappeared if you screw this up, you're really trying to figure out a way not to have it banned.

And if we, the most- Which they deny, let's be clear, they have denied this, that it's not run by China, that they run it from Singapore.

I'm going to just give them there.

They've denied it.

Yeah.

They would be stupid not to be doing this.

How could they resist the temptation of raising?

They can't beat us kinetically.

They can't beat us economically.

We're killing it.

They've shed $6 trillion in the stock market in the last three years.

Their unemployment rate among people under the age of 30 is 25%.

They're not energy independent.

We are kicking the shit out of China right now.

So what do you do?

If you can't beat them economically, you can't beat them kinetically.

Divide them.

So again, this is going to go.

What's your prediction?

It'll get passed by the Senate.

Biden signs it.

goes to the Supreme Court.

Well, we're already seeing the prediction is much more nuanced than that.

I do think this gets banned.

But by the way, folks, you're not losing your TikTok.

Because right after the CCP realizes, well, we no longer have the ultimate propaganda tool that the CIA, the Mossad, or the GRU would have killed for.

That's gone.

It's off the table, bummer.

Now do we want to lose a third of a trillion dollars?

And this is what's going to happen.

It will be sold to Western interests.

You're still going to have your TikTok.

And who?

Who?

Who?

My Christmas.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I think it'll be a consortium.

I don't know.

But this is the prediction.

Right now, in the secondary market, TikTok or ByteDance trades at a valuation of a quarter of a trillion dollars, despite the fact it has better margins, despite the fact that it has the most valuable consumer savings.

Everybody will make money.

They'll give up on the propaganda.

Here's the prediction.

Not only are you still going to have TikTok,

it's going to be banned, but not only do we still have TikTok, the value of ByteDance is going to double because the only reason it's trading at $250 billion and not 700 or 800 billion is this cloud of uncertainty over it.

What happens if they get banned?

Well, if they get banned and it goes to Western interests.

Listen, I think I have long advocated that they do this, right?

That said,

there's going to be repercussions with China.

And although most companies, Apple is there,

a couple companies are there.

A couple of big U.S.

companies depend on China.

That's one.

You mean they'll start banning U.S.

media companies?

Let me think there's there's zero?

Zero, yes, exactly.

There are going to be repercussions.

Two, I don't think there's going to be a slap back from teens.

I don't, politically.

I don't think at all, in fact, I think very little, because they'll be able to access it in some way.

And they could also go around the app stores.

What'll be interesting to see is whether Apple and Google comply with it too.

I mean, once it's banned, they'll have to, but what happens there?

I'll be interested to see how kids react.

I don't think they're that obsessed with it in the same way.

I do think you're going to see a lot more pushback from China in this area.

I think it's not unwelcome for either the Biden people.

I was surprised Trump made this.

I'm not surprised he made the flip-flop because he likes money.

But I think it was kind of a dumb political calculation, given he was really quite first out there in the thing.

This is a master stroke in the Biden administration.

Yeah.

They're going to reduce

the

wet matter, the soft tissue of raising a generation of American civic nonprofit and military leaders that hate America.

They're going to reduce that risk or eliminate it.

Two, you're still going to have your TikTok.

And three, they're going to increase the value of this thing by a quarter of a trillion dollars.

And four, they're doing their fucking job.

They're supposed to prevent a tragedy of the commons.

I think it's going to happen.

This is when, win, more money, more.

My 13-year-old's not a foot soldier for the CCP, right?

This is, look at this data.

Look what's happening here to,

and the problem is it's kids.

If the Atlantic, The Washington Post, CNN, Canal,

Gannett,

CNBC,

MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, if they were all owned by the CCP, that's still not the dominance that TikTok has

on this age group.

It'll be interesting to see if it continues to accelerate more

legislation around 230, around a lot of this.

Let me ask you, what do you think is going to happen?

I think they're going to pass it.

And I think it might, in fact, go to the Supreme Court, who, you know, they'll have to clear the Trump cases off their desk and get to that.

But I do think it'll probably be a Supreme Court challenge, I suspect, around being able.

Did you read it?

It's much smarter this time.

It's only 12 pages.

That's what I'm saying.

The Trump people did it.

I remember saying it's directionally correct and executionally.

What a bunch of fucking idiots because this is a chance to do something.

But we'll see.

Let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk talk about whether Elon Musk has been good for Texas.

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Scott, we're back here at South by Southwest.

Thank you, everyone, for being here.

Where

Where our BFF, Elon Musk, has made an appearance the other night at an Amazon Prime thing.

Since we're here, we thought it might be a good time to talk about his relationship with a lone star state and who's getting the most out of it.

Just to recap, Elon moved to Texas in 2020 after criticizing Silicon Valley and the Bay Area for having, quote, outsized influence in the world.

I will point out he moved his Tesla headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin, although he has a huge facility in California still all over California.

Just Just last month, he moved as SpaceX's state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas.

It has a large testing facility here.

He did that also because of the case

against him when they took Delaware, took away all his Bennys, so to speak.

He'd like to reincorporate Tesla here too, but of course that requires shareholder approval.

So he's done that.

But he also has been involved in lots of things in Texas.

He urges Tesla employees to vote out far-left Austin DA apparently didn't like the incumbent in this local race and emailed staff saying vote for a new district attorney in Austin who will, quote, actually prosecute crimes.

It didn't work.

His guy lost.

It was kind of a Ron DeSantis moment for him.

Another one.

And then who did he back?

I don't know.

He keeps back.

He's allegedly going to back Trump, but I'm not so sure.

Elon Musk, SpaceX, is poised to acquire protected public land in a swap with Texas.

Elon wanted 43 acres to expand SpaceX's rocket launch facility.

In exchange, Texas will get 477 acres somewhere else.

The Sierra Club isn't happy.

Some 60% of the public was opposed, but it's happening.

At the end of the year, he's apparently going to spend $100 million to open a new university in Texas.

He's talked, of course, he is doing this.

He's talked about establishing a tuition-free school called the Texas Institute of Technology and Science, or TITS.

Kind of a guy that you kind of like.

Coursey calls it that.

I don't know why he didn't call Twitter just instead of x call it titter that was my thought um

it works for him it works for him because you know people he's 52 and boob jokes are really funny at 52.

um thoughts prayers so so that look i i think one of the actually one of the productive things about the united states let me be clear if you make if you create

$600 billion in economic or shareholder value using the infrastructure and the roads and the University of California and the great great Cal State system.

I think when you recognize that capital gain, you should pay California taxes on it.

So I think we need some sort of

I think we need some sort of interstate tax agreement similar to what we've done internationally under the with Janet Yellen, where basically they've said, okay, it's no longer a race to the bottom.

We're going to put you out of business, Isle of Man or Ireland, if you don't institute a minimum 15% corporate tax so Apple doesn't issue its IP and engage in tax avoidance.

I think we should do that.

Having said that, one of the wonderful things about America versus Australia or the UK, I think it's good that states compete.

I think California, quite frankly, is not getting its money, or California taxpayers, quite frankly, are not getting their money's worth.

When if they can come to Texas and Texas can figure out a way to manage the state, and as far as I can tell, distinctive politics, I'm just talking about day-to-day operations.

I would argue, a lot of people.

I live in Florida.

I live in Florida.

You know, when I call the fire department, not that I've done it, or the cops, the public schools, you know, I would argue they're putting pressure on high-tech states.

I think that competition.

I'm going to push back on this completely because you're wrong, frequently wrong, but never in doubt.

I do think California, by the way, right now I was just there, vibrant.

San Francisco was cooking with gas.

I have to tell you this because of AI.

All the AI companies, there was just a story in the Wall Street Journal.

All these tech bros that left, we're going to Miami because it's better, are back.

They're back.

I saw them.

I'm like, oh, you again.

But they're there.

AI companies are tearing up.

The city is alive, really alive.

Every restaurant, not everything, the homelessness is still issues, but they just addressed it with two new,

they just passed some relatively conservative statutes in San Francisco to protect people more.

I think they're handling it.

I think they're doing it.

You have, you know, Governor Newsom is a very exciting politician, suddenly.

And

I think they are correcting it and way ahead of other cities are suffering from the same thing, same same issues and and they will deal with them i think it's great that elon moved to texas see ya i'm thrilled goodbye or mars would be even better but um but it and he should he should go it's his dream um he said he wants to die on mars i'm saying great see ya um but I do think that that it's easy to bash on California when it's just not true.

The crime statistics aren't true.

It's just, that's the Fox newsification of things.

I'm going to go to L.A.

Tuesday morning, hang out at the Beverly Hotel, go down to the beach, put on big sunglasses, have an unlit cigarette in my mouth.

And anytime anyone walks by me, I'm going to go, Jackie, marry me.

I make you a very happy woman.

That's Aristotle Anassis for anyone under the age of 50.

I love L.A.

Hottest Uber drivers in the world, by the way.

I love L.A.

This isn't an argument over how good or bad California is.

It's correcting itself.

I think it's great that states compete with each other.

I think it's a good thing that some state says, you know what?

We can't compete.

We don't have Zuma Beach.

We don't have what, you know, we don't have the Bay Area, but what we have is low taxes.

And

we'll do whatever you want.

And I think that's going to be a push and shove issue around with because he wants to do that.

That's great.

No, but I'm saying in the state, the reason Elon or people like Elon and Elon McLeod is because he gets to do what he wants.

And there, he got so angry.

One of our biggest fights in an interview, and he tried to walk out, but he never does because he always says that and then doesn't do it.

Was over the closing of the plant.

Remember, during COVID, and he, he, we were talking about it, and he said, there's going to be 15 deaths from COVID, Kara.

I've read all the material.

But he was very angry about, and that's where our beef was, about California shutting down that plant.

And it was one of the motivators of him moving.

I mean, you and I are

in violent agreement on Mr.

Musk on a variety of dimensions, but the idea of an entrepreneur coming down to Texas, investing, doing cool things, I think he is going to be good for Texas.

I don't know.

Mike Dell or whoever was here.

It does create a good job growth.

By the way, some inside baseball, about two and a half years ago, I got a call from a friend of mine who's involved in this university.

And he said, would you get involved?

I said, why do you want me involved?

And he goes, well, to be honest, it's gotten some pushback.

You're a progressive.

And I'm like, you're going to use me to wallpaper over a conservative university.

That's exactly what they're doing.

And that's what they were doing.

And I had, and I'm like, so who are the founders here?

Like, who's funding it?

And he was very, very

opaque.

And it was this thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I couldn't.

You could have worked for Technology.

I could have been on the faculty for most.

That would seem to be a university you should belong to for your jokes.

We'll see.

We're thrilled he's here.

We're thrilled he's not in California.

It's great.

It's fantastic.

He's in California a lot, by the way.

I think just my issue is they all have to trash it.

Just live where you live.

And especially the Miami crew, when they were trashing it, they never stopped talking about California.

I was like, your girlfriend broke up with you.

Stop talking about her.

Like, just go away and God's going to be aware of it.

Yeah, it's like, tell me you have an unrecognized capital game without telling me you have an unrecognized capital game.

Yes, exactly.

That's exactly right.

Anyway,

I want to talk about one more alien thing, and then we have a couple things that we'll get to questions from the audience.

Elon Musk is creating a YouTube competitor.

You know what?

It's not going to succeed, so let's not talk about it.

It's bullshit.

It's going to go the way of blue or whatever the fuck that was.

That business is dying slowly.

It's off 30%, according to Forbes.

It's not going to work.

Sorry.

Sorry, Linda yaccarino not gonna work good try

um electric car maker rivian made beautiful car have you seen this thing it's gorgeous the r3 um uh you haven't are you gonna get the r3 now no i

have one on order but i haven't outfitted it or get the r3 and give it to me okay teal they're having they're still having trouble they're they're the amazon back company rolled out three new vehicles and announced two billion dollars in savings by pausing construction of a plant very hard to make money the cash burn yeah uh should apple buy rivian Rivian?

You know, they got out of them.

We talked about this.

It's an interesting idea, but Apple probably won't.

They don't like to make acquisitions.

It's a beautiful car, I have to say.

I also think they've just decided that

that's not the future.

I think even Apple has the cool truth of capitalism is you have finite resources.

I think they've decided that their capital is probably better spent around consumer applications for AI than getting into a manufacturing intensive and low-margin business in auto.

Yeah.

And the last thing is OpenAI said it's reinstating Sam Altman, who you think think is a liar, apparently, to its board of directors.

No, I just think Sam is going to do what's for-profit companies are there for, I think they do their job.

We're not doing ours by regulating people who will increase, force a progressive tax structure on them and then redeploy that capital and make sure there's guardrails in these companies.

Yep.

They're doing their job.

We're not doing ours.

So anyway, the outside investigation where he's fired and rehired in a matter of days.

The employees supported him.

The company now says it has full confidence in his leadership.

Probably he wrote that press release there.

I have full confidence in myself.

I think I'm fantastic.

No,

you know, the investigation revealed that it was a, quote, consequence of a breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust between Altman and the board.

Absolutely.

It was a power play.

They lost a few board members who were in the middle, like Will Hurd and Reid Hoffman, and then it was two sides against them, and the other side had more.

It was a power play, the whole thing.

They're not releasing the full report.

You know, there were some reports that he was aggressive and difficult, which is like another Tuesday with almost any

entrepreneur I know.

It's adding three women to the board.

There's more coming, I think.

Dr.

Sue Desmond-Hellman, a former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I know her quite well.

She's terrific.

Nicole Seligman, a former, also high note, Sony general counsel, and Instacart CEO Fiji Seimo.

Interesting choices.

I do know

this is slight scoop.

They had asked Bob Iger to be on the board.

They want a big media executive.

He couldn't do it because he needs to stay neutral in the AI wars, I think.

I think that's their interest.

I do think, I think he should have gone on it, but I think they need a big media executive.

Is there anybody you would say?

I would put Jeff Buchas on the board.

I just came to mind.

Jeff Buchas.

Anyone else?

I don't know.

Kara Swisher.

I don't know.

How about Kara Swisher?

I just said that.

Oh, oh, you just said, I thought you said, I don't know, Kara Swisher.

Like you were just using my full name for some odd reason.

But me, Kara Swisher.

I'd be good.

Yeah,

100%.

Anything else you're doing?

I would be the worst board member and good in many ways.

Don't you think?

Would you put me on a board of your company?

In all honesty, you don't get enough credit.

You're actually a capitalist.

You appreciate the economics of business.

You're a pragmatist around business.

So, yeah,

I would put you on the board of a company soon after I left it.

Okay, good.

All right, Scott.

One more quick break.

We'll be back from questions from the audience.

We're excited about your questions.

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off.

Okay, Scott, let's get some questions from this very attractive audience here at South by Southwest.

Are you guys ready?

All right, let's get to some questions.

We've got about 10, 12 minutes.

Let's go.

Where are they?

I cannot see.

Hi.

Oh, okay.

I wrote it down because I'm really nervous and English is not my first language.

Okay.

I'm just going to say that.

You sound perfect.

You sound perfect.

Thank you.

Oh, my God.

I'm so excited.

You guys were just talking about platforms that need regulation because they are actually harmful to kids and teens.

But while institutions do not get to a conclusion, brands are spending millions, I mean hundreds of millions of their ad budget directly onto these platforms, sometimes even targeting young people.

And that's not just in the US.

I mean, I'm from Brazil.

And all the most of the marketing budget from companies has been going to not only TikTok, but all the other things.

Google and Facebook dominate.

My question is, what are your thoughts on this particular dynamic?

and what role can brands play on advocating for kids and teens?

Because aren't they somehow funding all that?

They are, of course, but that's what they do all the time, right?

I mean, I think ultimately it's the platforms themselves that are responsible for the safety of platforms.

Now, brands can pay with their money.

They tried in different ways.

Remember when they pulled back from Twitter?

From X, X, right?

Twitter.

But we haven't seen anything like that.

No, you don't, but they're not selling.

These people want to sell pizza or whatever, or

sialis or whatever they want to sell.

They want to sell it and they're not going to do anything else.

They're just not.

If you're waiting for big advertisers to save you, good fucking luck.

I'm sorry.

It's not going to happen.

But these platforms could be safer.

They could do a lot of things that are very easy that they don't want to do.

And again, when I saw Mark not do that, I thought for a second he would.

Just one second.

He looked at those parents.

He's a very good parent, from what I understand and I've seen.

He looked at those parents.

I could see it in his eyes, and then he couldn't do it.

He couldn't say, what I, if anything I did caused this pain, I am sorry.

Couldn't do it.

So I think the platforms have to be forced into these safety things.

Advertisers are going to go, you know, why do you rob banks?

That's where the money is.

And why do you advertise on these?

That's where the audience is.

And Scott had said something the other day where social media usage was going like this, and advertising was down here, and broadcast advertising was up here.

And the numbers shifted.

They're going to go there.

That's where they want to sell things.

And so that's the way it is.

I don't think it's up to brands at all.

Brands didn't leave Twitter because they don't, they think it's bad for kids.

Doesn't work.

They left Twitter because it's ineffective and they don't want the brand risk of showing up next to a swastika.

So in addition, because Meta...

Because Meta, I don't think any one advertiser is more than like a third of a percentage point.

So they just don't have the power.

When one company controls two-thirds of social media, but

no advertiser essentially has more than 1%,

boycotts are totally ineffective.

So, I mean, I'm against coal-fired plants, but I turn on my lights.

I'm not going to disarm unilaterally.

Every company I have advertises on meta, and I hate them.

Because guess what?

I like me more than I like my principles.

Is that?

Anyway.

That's accurate.

That's accurate.

Look, you have an obligation as a brand manager to within legal confines to get your brand out there.

It's easy to be a purist when it's other people's money.

So brands have an obligation to build shareholder value.

But when you have one company that has two-thirds market share, one company has 93% share of search, these aren't companies.

They're taxes.

The greatest...

tax cut in history would be a thaw in the relations between China and the U.S.

The second biggest tax cut in corporate history would be if we broke up Alphabet and Meta such that there were more people bidding for your brand's precious dollars.

Right now, you have no choice.

In addition to actual economic costs, the costs have skyrocketed on parents because we have no choice.

Our kids have no choice.

If there was a choice of a brand-safe social media platform that didn't send tips on how to get to 90 pounds to a 5'7

16 year old woman, advertisers would decide to advertise there.

But they don't have that option.

So antitrust right now, theory, is based on economic costs, and they're having a tough time establishing that precedence.

But if they incorporated the costs on parents, on our self-esteem, I mean, in some,

these, the cost of these platforms has skyrocketed for us, for parents, for teens.

It's just they're not economic.

But we absolutely

need more options.

It's similar to cigarettes.

They advertised, and was it the advertisers' fault or the cigarette's fault?

And eventually the government just came in and said, no more cartoons and label the things.

That's what has to happen.

You can't put it on these private companies.

Next.

Hey, thanks for the great show.

My name's Angela Hoover, and I'm working on an AI search engine.

And I found the conversation really interesting because you guys touched on a couple of things.

You touched on surveillance capitalism, AI misinformation, and

what it's going to take with regulation to disrupt Google.

And I just want to get your guys' thoughts on that.

What it's going to take to just specifically.

Yeah, like one of the things that we've realized is that Google's an ad tech company, not a search company.

And so, kind of my question is: what do you guys think of misinformation and AI answers?

And do you think that there can be like another economic model for the web that's not based on that?

Absolutely.

I think this is something Sam talks about, like, because it's a subscription service.

That's always better.

You know, one of the things that Steve Jobs and one of the interviews I did with him toward the end of his life is he hated social media.

Not because he wasn't in it.

They tried to do it with Ping, and it was a disaster.

You don't remember it.

It's good.

They shouldn't have done it.

But one of the things he said is the business plan suggests real problems in society.

He did.

It wasn't because he was selling plenty of iPhones.

He just was selling them specifically.

So he hated the whole business model because he said it led to things like this.

And he talked about this.

It's going to lead to misinformation.

This was 15 years ago.

He talked about this before he died.

And I do think there's lots of business plans.

There's tons of like creative ways to do it.

It doesn't rely on advertising.

The biggest thing that happened is Google was search.

Okay.

You search it, you get it.

It's speed.

It's viral.

It's not virality, excuse me, it's speed, context, and accuracy.

When they moved it to social media, it became virality, speed,

and engagement.

And as I said over and over again, I wrote in the book, engagement equals enragement.

And it just does.

It's just the way it is.

It's like casinos are there because we want to stay there and because they keep us there.

It's also addictive.

And so there's all kinds of new businesses.

This is an opportunity for new kinds of business plans that don't hook us on cigarettes, you know, and that we say thank you for it as we die from it.

That's the kind of thing, Scott.

The analog I would use for the search wars or the emerging search wars or traditional versus the AI-driven search is retail.

And that is you had the Walmarts, you know, everything, massive selection at a low price, really well done.

And then it moved to the greatest shareholder creation, value creation, even though it never got to the revenue size, was specialty retail that said, we're not going to give you 80 toasters or 3,000 answers.

We have someone more talented than you with better taste who's going to pick the best two toasters, an Electrolux and a Dulet, right?

Love kitchen appliances.

So that's what AI is.

AI says we're not going to give you every choice.

We're going to do our best to give you the best one decision.

And there will be a market for that.

It It will have more, create more shareholder value in the short run, as specialty retail did.

But Walmart will still be there.

I think traditional search will still be a great business.

What will be interesting is to see if you have the Empire Strikes Back with Alphabet, which is now trading at a lower PE multiple than the S ⁇ P and is the only one of the magnetives in seven that's trading at a lower multiple.

Because as we discussed last year, literally overnight, Alphabet has gone from hero to goat.

They look flat-footed.

But I think that there's going to be room for both would be my guess.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it can.

We can pick.

We can pick the two things right here.

Hi, I'm Rick Cutter working on a climate change documentary about the mood of renewable energy.

President Biden's done some great things for us the last three years, moving us in the right direction.

Donald Trump's obviously going to win the Republican nomination.

I expect he'll take us out of Paris Court day one or two.

What are your thoughts?

What are we going to do to mitigate that?

He's not going to win.

I hope you're right.

Presumably.

I am.

Look, I know all the polls.

I think he's going to get beaten like a drum.

I think women in this country have fucking had it with this fella.

And I think they're not saying it out loud.

I have a lot of Trump supporting relatives.

And quietly, every

men are like, Trump, he says it like it is.

I'm like, oh, God.

All right.

Fine.

And all the women.

All of us say that, just so you know.

Yeah.

All of us.

Not all of us.

I'm talking like Trump relatives.

And all the women quietly is like, that fucking asshole.

Like, really, I'm telling you.

So that's how we do it.

He's going to pull us out of it.

You're right.

That's correct.

That's what he's going to do.

And

we'll have to vote them out.

I don't know what else to say.

This is not going to be settled by courts.

It's not going to be said as much as you might like it.

And you're waiting for this story to finally, you know,

we're waiting for him to John Gotti, this guy.

He's not going to be got.

He's going to have, we're going to have to have the voters do it.

And therefore, you're going to have to stop bellyaching about like everything

and just vote, like organize, organize, organize.

That's really it.

And stop with the young people don't vote.

Make them vote.

I told my sons, if they didn't vote, they're not going to college next year.

So

that's my thing.

They're going to vote, though.

Scott.

Perfect.

All right.

Over here.

Thank you.

Hey, my name is Ray McCarthy Bergeron.

I work in innovation and audience engagement.

Listen to you guys.

Look forward to your podcast every week.

Thank you.

We do too.

Don't we?

Yeah.

Don't we?

I do.

We do.

I heard someone in the audience last night and they were like, oh my God, they're the only people on the podcast that make me laugh.

And I'm like, yeah, I concur.

So the Amy Webb, who you're probably aware of, she does her digital trends reports, and she just reached that this morning.

And she talked about tech messiahs.

And, you know, Scott, I know you have opinions as well as

tech messiahs.

Tech messiahs.

You know, like these people who are going to save the world.

Yeah.

Must be a favorite.

And that's basically what she's saying.

We don't need saving.

But what she did say is we do need accountability.

Scott, I know you talked about perp walks, but let me get through this question.

All right, quickly because you want to get to one.

we're going.

Currently, we are incentivized in a capitalist society to basically pump out as many products as possible without the accountability considered.

So I have a big question of how can we ever build an incentive that is going to build accountability for these companies prior to releasing products?

And could that ever exist?

We have models.

I'd like to inside trade.

I'd like to be an insider trader.

I get access to insider information every once in a while.

I would love to trade on it and buy a Gulfstream 650 ER.

But guess what?

The likelihood I get caught times the penalty is greater than the potential upside.

So you know what?

I don't engage in insider trading.

We have models for this everywhere.

It's the algebra of deterrence.

Algebra of deterrence, simple.

Likelihood of getting caught times the penalty has to be greater than the upside.

And the algebra of deterrence has been flipped on its head in tech because the fines All right, there's no criminal prosecution.

There's civil cases.

And the fines,

most of them.

The fines are perfect, except they lack a zero.

That $5 billion fine against Meta for violating the consent decree was perfect, but it should have been $50 billion.

And I use this analogy over and over and over.

If you had a parking meter in front of your house that costs $100 every 15 minutes, but the parking ticket was 25 cents, you would break the law.

The algebra deterrence is not in place here.

The fines need to be bigger.

And

I come back to this.

This is an emotional argument.

But when you have platforms that, in an effort to grow their shareholder value massively, which they're great at, don't put in place the safeguards, such that an algorithm picks up on a girl's suicidal ideation in the UK, and there's pictures of nooses, pills, and razors, and that kid is gone the next morning, someone needs to go to fucking jail.

Yep.

And you know,

we're up time for two more quick questions, but you know who's gone to jail?

The blood lady and the weird crypto guy.

That's who's going to to jail and nobody else.

So, I mean, they may deserve it, but honestly, seriously, meanwhile,

I enjoyed the movies about her.

Go ahead.

Yeah, I'm Brad.

Very quick.

Yeah.

First off, of course, thank you, Kyron Scott.

You're welcome.

First time, long time.

Actually, I first heard Scott on Recode also because Scott, that's where I found him and made him.

And he owes me.

I noticed it was a good brand right now.

It's so nice to rejuvenate a flailing career.

Yeah.

It's very, I'm Tina Fader.

You know, your welcome would be fine.

You're welcome.

I am Tina Fadier, Alec Bald.

Thank you, and you're welcome.

Sorry, go ahead.

Sorry.

Thank you, Kara.

That's the thing.

Meet me the four seasons later.

Thank you.

I'm used to that because I was a student of yours in fall of 16 at Lee.

Oh, really?

Yep.

My man, come up here.

What are you doing?

All right, come on.

Two questions, quick ones.

Is there a brand or brands that aren't in the zeitgeist now that you see in five years or so?

And not necessarily a company, you know, because it could be a person or whatever that you think we'll be talking about.

And then also during my time there, you had a couple pretty impressive guest speakers.

And maybe you have since I've been there, but have you thought about or have you invited Kara as a guest speaker?

Invited Kara.

As a guest speaker, NYU, are you a professor there?

I don't think you are.

I've been there more than you.

My son goes there, but go ahead.

We speak in

anyway.

So the question was about brands.

Brands, yeah, you answer that quick.

So the two brands that I'm most excited about that I think will be global brands, and I think about it through the lens of shareholder value.

I mean, we've been talking, my rap has been forever that it's the brand era.

It's no longer the brand era.

It's the supply chain era.

And I think the two brands we're going to hear a lot about in the next three to six months, because I think they're going to have incredible IPOs that will thaw.

They'll be the icebreakers, I think, of what in the last half of this year will be kind of a reigniting of the IPO market, are one, Reddit.

I think Reddit is Reddit is the third most trafficked site in America.

One and two, Alphabet, Alphabet Meta, number four is Amazon.

What, 1.2 trillion, 1.7 trillion, 1.8 trillion?

And Reddit's going out at $6.5 billion.

So I think Reddit's just pop.

It's going to get a ton of global attention.

And the company you probably haven't heard of, Shein, is the most interesting supply chain company.

What's the last thing?

No, they don't like Sheehan.

Sorry, folks.

This brand is going to be a global brand.

30 billion last year, 45 this year.

You've lost the crowd right there.

I don't know.

Do a little bit more.

I like Taylor Swift.

Anyways,

I'm going to save you.

All right.

I'd stop right now.

He likes Sheehan.

That's the way it's going to be, people.

Sorry.

I don't like everything about him either.

Okay, right here, very quickly.

Okay.

Hi, my name is Carmen.

You're literally beaten into submission.

I know, I do, but I'm saving you before they attack you and eat you for barbecue.

But go ahead.

Hi, I'm Carmen.

Very quickly, I love y'all and listen to you falling asleep, whatever.

That's kind of weird, but I do it.

And my question is about the way that you guys communicate with each other, actually.

It's very respectful, but you find ways to disagree with each other in a very poignant way.

Would love to know what the tips and tricks are to do that in a professional and personal setting with the elections coming up.

I would love to know how to tell somebody to fuck off respectfully.

Yeah.

Answer very briefly.

We're going to answer the last question for you too because we're just going to keep you here.

Go ahead.

I like her.

I have affection for her.

I want to set her up for success.

I'm

I

do.

Why are you laughing?

That's the truth.

We have a good thing going.

We enjoy each other's company.

We're friends.

I learned a lot from her in terms of parenting.

And I want to do,

look, everyone has a role.

We go after social media platforms and tech executives and we try and shame them.

I'm constantly shitposting our government for being too old and feckless.

But something I recognized two or three years ago was that I needed to play a role in taking the volume down.

And as you get older and you have kids and hopefully you get a little bit more empathetic, what you recognize is that,

you know, Yashi, are you part of the problem?

I used to be on that guy on Twitter that was waiting for someone to say something stupid so I could weigh in and be like the grandmaster of fucking Guardians of Gotcha and get a ton of likes.

I was playing to the algorithm and then I thought, do you really need to respond to every slight?

Do you need to speed up and honk back at a guy who cuts you off?

You know what's going on.

So I think in general, I'm trying to turn the volume down, but this is easy for me because I have great affection for Kara and the relationships here have been very positive.

So, in my regard, I think it's been the most important part of the show, honestly.

Everyone, you know, not just the chemistry, we've had it since the beginning.

And he's very different than Walt Mossberg, I can tell you,

but with a very different relationship.

But I think people want to understand.

We have a lot of couples listening to us.

You know, I think our Esther Perel interview is really mostly for him because I thought he was much more relevant about his emotions because he is.

He's an open wound in that regard.

But I think that's a compliment.

That's a compliment.

It's a compliment.

Oh, stop it.

That's good.

Thank you.

You keep practicing that.

I think people want to disagree and still like each other.

People are desperate for it.

We're being played by the noisiest members of our society, our noisy and unhappy people, joyless.

And we really learn from each other.

We change each other's minds all the time.

And it's so, and like when he says something dumber, I do, we don't kill each other over it.

We point it out, but we give everyone else permission not to be so mad at someone you disagree with.

But hold on, I never get angry at you.

You text me at like two in the morning.

That is true because you've done something stupid and I want to make sure you're okay, just like a second ago that I saved your ass.

Okay, it's a really good thing.

I think that's the heart of it: people learn to get along.

And again, a lot of people who have earned couples, and not just romantic couples, but work couples.

And by the way, we've never, there's not an ounce of romance here.

What's less than not an ounce?

But I think people really want to get along.

That's why I think Trump's not going to win because we're sick of this shit.

But go ahead.

Go ahead.

Thank you for the question.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for the show.

My name's Maida.

I actually just graduated from NYU last year.

Congratulations.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Undergrad?

Sorry?

Undergrad?

Undergrad.

Yeah, I was in CAS.

Stern minor, though.

Nice.

Anyway, I host a podcast about computer science education.

And so something that I think and talk a lot about with my guests is

how the government needs to change in response to things like crypto and Gen AI.

And you talked a little bit about this, but in an ideal state in the next five to 10 years, how do you see the government changing to actually be effective when it comes to tech regulation?

Younger, younger legislators.

Like, I'm sorry, someone like Mike Gallagher is leaving, but there's all kinds of really great legislators who are really smart all across the country.

Our legislators, it's not an age thing, it's an experience.

It's just we need, and the deleterious effects of tech money on this legislation, we've got to do something about that.

We've got to somehow.

They have so much money, it's really crazy.

And they're going to deploy it.

I'm not angry at them for it.

That's their job.

But we have to really push it back from the deleterious effects of logic.

Ranked choice voting, de-gerrymander the districts, send more final five, send more moderates who get along with each other, national service, so we all serve in the same uniform and want to work together and see ourselves as Americans before anything else.

And then

pay our elected representatives between one and three million dollars a year so they're not total whores to private industry after they leave office.

I like that.

That's interesting.

You've never said that.

I like that.

That's a great idea.

You're really smart.

Always end on a positive note.

Scott,

you're fantastic.

You know, as are you, sweetheart.

All right.

So.

So, thanks for your questions.

Thanks for your questions.

If you've got a question of your own that you'd like answered, send it our way.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551-Pivot.

Okay, Scott, that's the show.

We'll be back on Friday with more Pivot.

Now, Scott, read us out.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Nurtod engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Miles Several, Michelle Bird, and Sky Rubel.

Nishak Kurua is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

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

Thank you, Texas.

Thank you, Texas.

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