Elon Bets It All, Apple Grows Out of China, and Guest Kate Klonick

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

It's the dog.

By the way, shouldn't we all give a shout out to the paleolithic people who started petting these small furry animals?

I'm getting so much joy from my dogs.

Okay.

Yeah, I was on Christiana Mapour last night.

She's lovely.

Yeah, she is.

She's very impressive.

I think she should be prime minister.

Do you you think?

She's really a lovely person too.

You know, she came through a cancer scare and everything, but she's just one of the best interviewers.

I love her.

She's so sweet.

She's very friendly, too.

She really made me feel at ease.

And it was one of those things where I'm turning into like the catch-all,

you know, surprise secret Santa guests.

They don't even tell me what they're going to talk about.

They're just like, oh, global economy, Elon Musk, Twitter.

And it's like, there's no way to prepare for these interviews.

There's no way, literally.

I'm what you call filler.

They're like, we got an extra seven minutes.

Here's Claire McCaskill.

She talks about anything.

You're that woman.

Yeah, it's like, we got an extra seven minutes.

Bring in that guy.

Bring in that guy that's about to be canceled.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let's see if we can make it happen.

No, you're very smart on a lot of things.

We talk about a range of things.

I also saw that you're in need of Uggs this holiday season.

Why is that?

Why is that?

I have two pairs of Uggs.

I like them.

They're very warm and toasty.

Yeah.

People love Uggs.

I like them.

So you reasonably brought it up.

It's the hottest shoe of the season, right?

Is it?

No.

I've had mine for for 20 years.

No, I didn't.

Oh, tell me about it.

Sorry.

I don't.

I'm sorry.

Keep up on the UG information.

Yeah.

What?

The platform Ugg, you know, that has like a three-inch or four-inch heel.

Not that I'm making a suggestion.

I'm not making a short joke.

Let's just get that out there right now.

I'm not, as a 6'2, perfectly heighted male.

That's like one of two things I would not change about my body is my height.

But, anyways, a lot of people, it's like the hottest shoe.

You can't get them.

They're totally sold out for

months on ends.

And by the way, did you hear that a pair of Steve Jobs old Birkenstocks

sold at auction for $220,000?

And in other news, Kara, tech plays by different rules than the rest of the world.

Oh, my God.

I wouldn't buy a pair of his old shoes.

Yeah, well, someone did.

I don't think he would like that very much.

That's weird.

Why?

How did they get that?

That's a little weird.

I didn't want to know.

I don't want any details.

You know where I am?

I'm in San Francisco.

It's early there.

What are you doing in San Francisco again?

Well, I went to visit the Silicon Valley Archives, which is this really cool new,

it's an actual facility in Silicon Valley.

And they built this amazing library, which is stunning.

And a lot of the archives of Silicon Valley is there.

So I was talking to people there.

And then I'm also here, and this is going to make you feel bad, for the premiere of

the L-word, yes, with Jennifer Beals, who asked me

and moderate, because I'm the premier lesbian to do these things.

I'm the exact right lesbian.

Jennifer Beals?

Yes,

is there a number three?

Is there a plus one?

Yes, my friend Eileen Chaikin, who created L-word, and we're going to do an event at at the Castro.

It's the premiere of the, they've continued the L-word, the L-word, the next generation.

And so they're premiering it to probably a room.

I mean, this beautiful theater, the Castro Theater, probably an enormous theater full of screaming lesbians and us.

That's going to be great.

They're not going to be looking at me in any way whatsoever, but that's nonetheless.

I mean,

you get Emily Radikowski and Jennifer Beals.

And I'm like hanging out with guys from the Brookings Institute.

Like, what's wrong here?

That's right.

Nothing, nothing.

It's all right with the world.

George Hahn, I get to hang out with George Hahn.

He's sucking.

I might wear my Uggs.

I might wear my Uggs to do it.

I think it would be fabulous.

What do you think, George?

What's in the news?

What's in the news?

Today we'll talk about Apple's move to Arizona, what it means for China.

Also, Americans are done with hustle culture, but Twitter's new owner didn't get the memo.

And we'll speak with law professor Kate Klonick about what Elon Musk and everyone else gets wrong about social media.

She's an expert.

She's terrific and very smart.

First, Donald Trump is officially running for president again, and that means he's off limits for Facebook fact checkers, according to an internal memo from Meta, obtained by CNN, quote, political speech is ineligible for fact-checking.

Though the former president is currently banned from Facebook, the rules apply to any statements he or the campaign make.

This is not a new rule.

It's been in place in Facebook since 2019.

It applies to all politicians, not just Trump.

They can lie away.

Although I don't think his rollout went very well, the New York Post

really is trolling him in the way.

Only right-wing people can troll right-wing people, essentially, which is Florida man makes announcement, and then inside was this short article that was so mean, it was crazy.

So, I'm not sure it might matter.

They're really running away from Donald Trump.

But this coming January, Facebook executives are going to decide whether to let Trump back on.

That will be in the hands of Nick Clegg, who recently talked about at an event.

And they're trying to figure out whether to let him back on again, if he's the nominee.

And if at all, they've got two years.

So, in January is when he gets looked at again.

So, what do you think about all this?

I was actually happy to hear him announce.

I don't, I think that the world has a very positive trend, and that is every day, I shouldn't say every day, over the medium and long term, every year, more people live under democracies than autocracies.

And we took what we felt were the most democratic countries for granted, or thinking that their democracy was sort of cemented or locked away.

And we started flirting with autocracy.

And I don't think we need to say goodbye.

I would like to see him embarrassed.

I would like to see all of his supporters lose elections.

Many of his most ardent supporters, in my opinion, should be on trial for insurrection and sedition.

I think the media has played a role in this, in this rampant, out-of-control both sidism.

He is someone who mocked the disabled, who tried to tear at the peaceful transfer of power, is a terrible father, doesn't pay his employees.

So let me be clear.

I am ready for this person to be shamed.

I am ready for his political career to be buried and have a bunch of us show up and dance on it in a red and blue dress.

I think this is a bipartisan effort now.

Well, it's interesting because all the money people, Steve Schwartzmann from Blackstone, seems to have abandoned him.

Ivanka's not going to be part of it.

Well, that was strange.

And I think a lot of people are running away from him.

The problem is the Republican Party doesn't know how to do it.

There wasn't any big Republicans at the announcement.

Fox News cut away and the whole Murdoch Empire.

I mean, that New York Post piece was mean.

It was really super mean.

They said he did it at Mar-a-Lago, which is a hotel and document storage facility.

They were making all kinds of jokes in that thing.

They have done this before, walked away from him, but now they're full-scale trolling him.

And then Fox News people were suddenly being negative on Trump, which was interesting, and had Mike Pence on and have been pushing DeSantis.

It's interesting.

Let's see how long that lasts.

If he pulls ahead, the problem is they can't win with him and they can't win without him.

And I think that's really a difficult in terms of pulling away from him.

if he wins the primary which is the way these things are set up they're stuck with him as the candidate and so they somehow have to rely on say merrick garland to pull him into an indictment or something else but even if that will work so people i want to include in you in this because i think you've been more measured about it and i think you actually have your finger more on the pulse of american politics than i do i get too emotional about it but

a lot of people including myself have predicted five of the last uh zero ends for trump and that is i've said several times this is it.

This is the end.

And I've been wrong.

This does feel different.

There was an analysis done.

There's lots of polls about.

But it showed that Trump-endors candidates on average being endorsed by Trump took five points from you.

That if you had just run and not been endorsed by Trump, I mean, a lot of people, there's a decent chance if Trump had just said, like most presidents, and is sort of decorum for presidents, I'm not going to get involved in elections this close to me being out of the presidency.

They would have taken the Senate and dominated the House.

It was Trump-backed candidates that screwed over the party.

And these are fair weather friends.

A lot of these people are not, you know, these are like, I don't know, what I would call Musk friends.

The moment Musk really steps in it, you're going to find out who his real friends are.

I think these people are turning on him fast.

I don't trust them to do so because they have.

They did it after Charlottesville.

They did it after the insurrection.

Kevin McCarthy it's his fault.

Oh, no, no, no.

This committee is ridiculous to investigate it.

You know, and look at Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gates are fighting.

These people have no honor whatsoever, and they will go wherever.

They may be just, they must.

They may be just stuck with him is the problem because this group of electorate may not accept another candidate.

They've got to do a real job and get behind one candidate.

And one of them's a sacrificial candidate in some ways if they can move past Trump.

And I don't see any of them.

They've all gotten taken down a peg by Trump.

And he's not as fast.

And the speech was not energetic.

MSFAC didn't even cover it, which was good.

But Fox cut away.

So did CNN cut away.

It was a dull speech.

If you watch it, it's an embarrassment.

But he's been there before.

He's done this before.

So I'm just,

they have to really all, and they said things.

Chris Sununu,

who won big in

New Hampshire, was quite demeaning.

Chris Christie and a group of governors, Doug Ducey, all the big Republicans have been very clear.

And so the question is, will donors pull away?

He's got a lot of money himself and he has fundraising capabilities.

So I just sit there and I'm like, they'll be done with him when he's gone, but not until then, because he still has power, even though he seems wounded.

But let's talk about that money.

He has a ton of money.

He has tens of millions of dollars.

I mean, he's the gift that keeps on giving.

This election was so important.

It played out so much.

It was so easy for them.

It played out so well for us because even it's not that terrible American Carrie Lake lost.

It's how she lost.

Because the race was close enough and dragged on long enough such that she just couldn't come out and say, oh, there's clear election fraud.

Because occasionally she was within striking distance of winning.

It was like, oh, this is a great.

I mean, it was exactly that SNL.

I'm still considering a lawsuit.

Good luck with that.

The protest she tried to foment got a big, massive turnout of 20 people.

I mean, it's just, it couldn't have worked out better for us because it painted her into a box that said, okay, clearly you're a liar.

Clearly you're willing to sacrifice this basic decorum of democracy for

your own personal gain.

And it's not working out for you because you can't come right out and say the election has been stolen when there's a chance you still might win.

Well, it's definitely good for the Democrats that crazies are still around.

And that's going to happen in the House.

There's Marjorie Taylor Greene getting power.

And Trump's screaming all the time.

I think people are tired of the screaming.

Just make it go away.

Just a prediction.

I actually don't think you're going to see the same Donald Trump here.

And the reason why is I don't think he wants to run.

I don't care what anyone says.

Biology takes a toll.

He's getting older.

I think at some point this stuff does take a toll on you.

And also, I think the reason, the primary reason he's running, I believe.

Jail.

That's exactly right.

Or more specifically, the avoidance of jail.

I think his lawyers have said on a risk-adjusted basis, if you are seen as a viable candidate, you are less likely to be hauled in front of a judge and jury.

I think this is a prophylactic move to try and keep him out of prison.

Yeah, that's what that's what they say.

Anyway, it's not going to work.

He still can be indicted.

Lots of people are.

The new head of Brazil was.

In any case, here's a story that's more interesting to you.

Yale and Harvard law schools will no longer participate with U.S.

News and World Report's annual rankings of top law schools.

Officials from both schools say reports' methodology discourages universities from admitting low-income students.

Yale Law School has taken a number one spot every year since 1990.

Harvard most recently took the number four spot.

These rankings overall, this is something, you know, you talk about the way the school rankings have hurt the way people think about schools.

I'd love to get your thought on this particular situation.

I don't think these are bad people.

I think they tried to do a good job of this.

It ended up being, these rankings ended up being a menace that have not only hurt higher education, they've hurt the middle class.

Explain why.

Well, okay, so they are enormously important.

When you're at the age of 18 and your parents are, say, 48 and they're really not in touch with the inner workings of universities or what's a good school and what's a bad school, all they know is the ultimate symbol of their success or lack thereof as a parent is not only if you go to college, but the prestige of the college.

And that's kind of sad, but it's true.

And our society reinforces that notion.

And also we look for kids to peak at the age of 17.

It's the chatter, your last half of your senior year, where you're going to school.

And it is the self-expressive benefit about your success or failure as a young adult.

And so they come up with a methodology.

And here's where the methodology turned mendacious.

They decided that that acceptance rate, the lower the acceptance rate, the higher you went in the rankings.

So it encouraged schools.

First off, we all study to the test.

Every elite university started studying to the test.

We started making decisions based on what we thought would move us up in the rankings.

We started allocating capital and decisions.

And where do the rankings take us?

Where does the test take us?

Lower admissions rates take you higher.

in the rankings.

So what do you do?

You don't use money or endowments to broaden opportunities for young people.

You use money to create a Rolexification or an amresification, more beautiful gyms, more beautiful centers on leadership and ethics, centers on diversity and inclusion.

If you wanted more diversity and inclusion, you'd let in more students, quite frankly, rather than just think big thoughts about it.

And so what they do, what they've done is they have fomented an artificial restriction in supply, which has been terrible and also enabled us to raise rates faster than inflation, which has resulted in a transfer of $1.5 trillion from middle-class households to endowments and faculty.

Another criteria they came up with, the number of faculty to students.

So don't let in more kids, have smaller classes, be Dead Poets Society.

Well, you know what?

Who does a real job for who is a public servant?

The University of California, who occasionally says, you know what, this class, we can have 300 kids in this class, and we need to keep costs down.

So we're going to force.

our best professors to get better and our average ones to get better such that we don't have these little eight and 12 person classes straight out of the movies.

So everything these rankings do fomented a rejectionist, exclusionary luxury position that has been bad for America.

We need some sort of well, you know, let me just interject here.

People depend on rankings a lot.

I mean, that happens everywhere.

You look at those things, whether it's hotels or here's the 10 best hotels of the years.

I always look at those.

I don't know if it informs my thinking or whatever, but

humans like a list, right?

We're going to have to these things.

We're going to have lists.

And, you know, what would would be more helpful is is to be able to figure out what schools are better for what kind of kid right what this is a school that's this to have more reporting and instead of when you start to reduce it to numbers um like the class size and i agree with you i was in all 300 person classes at georgetown my economics class my history class i don't think i was in a i was in maybe one small class um at the time when i went 109 years ago but uh my son is looking at colleges and it's applied to a whole range of colleges actually i think schools have gotten better better in figuring out how students can do this and the numbers they can.

But, you know, he, I wouldn't let him near any of those magazines because then it starts to get into like you're picking a movie of something like that, which seems wrong.

It should be, it should fit the kid, the school you're going to go to.

But to your point, there's always going to be lists.

We love lists.

So, but what I believe it was Forbes that said, one of our criteria for ranking universities is going to be the percentage of kids in the freshman class that are Pell Grant kids, recognizing that diversity and a university's role in society is to help lift people up.

And there's so many dimensions here that have

added up to just an unintended higher education system that is enforced with the CAS system.

And one of those is that our accreditation system, which is run by the incumbents, won't let new entrants in, meaning that you don't have an ecosystem like the auto industry where a lot of people buy Toyotas because they're a good value, because they cost less money.

Tier Tier two universities charge the same amount as Tier 1.

And Tier 1 benefits from this because everybody, their applications go crazy and they can raise rates faster than inflation.

And then kids get arbitraged down to a Hyundai, but pay a Mercedes price.

So it's not just the rankings.

It's not just administrators and faculty that wake up every morning and ask ourselves, how do we reduce our accountability while increasing our compensation?

It's not a rejectionist, exclusionary culture just by alumni who like the fact that admissions rates go down.

But it's a confluence of all of these things.

And the opportunity was to take half of that $600 billion,

and I've gotten a lot of shit for this, but that student debt forgiveness legislation was bad legislation because all it did was shrink the tumor, and then tomorrow the tumor begins to grow again.

We had an opportunity to invest in infrastructure and technology to dramatically expand freshman seats.

And this would have provided more opportunities, maybe come up with new programs, certification one and two.

And it would have passed politically, Scott.

Oh, I think it would have, Kara.

I think actually there would have been more support for this.

I think that two-thirds of people who didn't have the opportunity to go to college would have supported a program that said, my kid can go for a one or two-year program in cybersecurity, and we're going to take college education costs down 50% and double freshman enrollments.

I think that would have gone over really well.

And we could have done it.

We could have done it.

All right.

Well, this is a very important topic.

Now, it's only these two schools.

We'll see if the others cooperate.

It's probably very, just like Republicans leaving Donald Trump, it's very hard to leave these lists and not cooperate with them behind.

In any case, let's get to our first big story.

The Grand Canyon State might get an orchard.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees the company will source chips from a plant in Arizona currently under construction.

The manufacturing facility would open in 2024.

It will be operated by TSMC, the Taiwanese chip making giant.

It's the latest move to disrupt American tech companies' reliance on Asian manufacturing or Asian-located manufacturing.

Last month, Micron Technology announced it will build a chip making plant in upstate New York, actual Apple country, lots of delicious apples from there.

So Apple's trying to reduce its dependency on Taiwan in China and moving in India across the world.

Obviously, China and U.S.

have been in a more difficult state in terms of that island.

Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, for example, in August.

President Biden said multiple times the U.S.

will defend Taiwan.

Biden just saw Xi Jinping.

Historically, Tim Cook has had a close relationship with China.

In 2016, he signed a deal with Chinese officials worth an estimated $275 billion.

But they're starting to do lots of things.

And of course, going to take advantage of tax incentives, like $50 billion in the Chips and Science Act for domestic chip manufacturing.

So it's a Taiwanese company, nonetheless.

Most of its chips come from Taiwan, 60% of the world's process supply.

And Cook has said that's probably not a strategic position.

I think he's correct.

So what do we think about this?

I think it all comes back to portfolio theory.

And I think this is an important lesson.

I wish I learned it earlier.

And that is the only asset class you ever want to be highly concentrated in is yourself.

And that is, it might make sense to borrow money to get a degree or graduate school.

I still think in certain instances, it makes sense to leverage yourself to improve yourself, spend a little bit extra money to find a place you like to work out.

And if you identify a relationship that is good for you, somebody who is loving, someone who makes you a better version of yourself, someone who lets you love them immensely, you want to overinvest in that relationship.

Outside of that, you constantly want to look at your investments.

And when anything becomes too great a part of your portfolio, you need to look at it and think about diversifying from it.

And that's exactly what Apple has done here.

Apple has looked at a two and a half trillion dollar asset, specifically their market capitalization, to the most valuable company in the world, and they have said, where are we too concentrated?

And it all comes back to one word, China, both in terms of demand and both in terms of supply chain.

And they are so vulnerable.

In some ways, I think it's a good thing.

I think China is less likely to invade Taiwan, one, because the Ukrainian army has pushed back on a much bigger force and is probably letting the game theorists and the generals in China and the CCP rethink what it would mean to try and take over Taiwan.

And two, they say, okay, we're less likely to go to war with America or really getting a shooting match because Apple is really important here.

And Tim Cook looks at China and goes, we have too much of our portfolio concentrated in China.

Yeah, I think what was interesting with the meetings between Biden and Xi were, they were in Indonesia.

Nothing really came out of it.

The U.S.

said the meeting was productive, and China had no near-term designs on Taiwan.

But it's inevitable there's going to be these two countries are going to be at a crossroads at some point and in a much more difficult diplomatic and military situation.

And I think it's really,

this has always been Apple's Achilles heel, this Chinese situation.

And I think any, they've been taking plants, more specialized plants like Gorilla Glass and doing them here.

It's going to be very difficult to recreate.

Now, the way they're making chips, I'm not an expert in this, has changed quite considerably, but in order to do this here affordably, it's really a big, it's a big mountain for this company to climb because the system there is so well done, both in Taiwan and in the manufacture of iPhones in China itself.

That they're doing this now is important because they're going to have to, they're anticipating a clash over Taiwan, and meaning affecting both manufacturing in China and the chips.

And so that's, it's going to be hard.

This is a very difficult thing for Tim Cook to do, but he's always very good at this kind of thing, logistics and operations.

And he does understand probably if there's anything you can do now besides having, what is it, 10 times

the value of the company, it's this, is put them on much more firmer ground for manufacturing.

Well, it also reflects a shift in general business strategy and what

from the pandemic, yeah.

Coming out of World War II, it was all about manufacturing, technology, and scale.

Then, for a hot minute, it became the finance guys, and they were guys, became the CEOs because it was the deconglomeration of these things.

And then, for a hot minute, the CMO of Intel became the CEO.

We had the brand age.

Now, it's the supply chain age.

And Tim Cook, who has added more shareholder value than any person in history, is a supply chain person.

And the evolution of supply chain itself has gone from when I was running running an e-commerce company, supply chain meant finding a tilt-up warehouse on the Kentucky, Ohio border that was built on a FedEx runway because all we cared about was how do we get a gift from point A to point B in a certain amount of time for as low a cost as possible.

And then it turned from an expense into a feature and said, well, what if we distribute the product through these temples called stores instead of through Comp USA or Egghead software?

What if we can get people anything we offer within 48 hours?

All of a sudden, supply chain became a point of offense, as a point of defense.

And that point of offense or vulnerability, if you will, maybe it's point of defense, is supply chain heterogeneity.

And that is, and I think I told you this, I'm on the board of a specialty retailer that has 5 billion in business.

And we wake up in June of 2020 and realize that 90% of our tops are coming out of one region in China, where more specifically, they're no longer coming out.

And 550 stores in the U.S.

don't have any tops.

No tops.

So, you're going to see some winners here.

I think Mexico is going to be a huge winner because

they have some of the lower cost manufacturing, but they have more geopolitical stability.

And also, and my colleague at NYU, Pankash Chemawat, who's a total gangster, did this breakthrough research in the 90s and odds, basically showing that distinct of all the talk about globalization, almost always your biggest trading partner are the nations that border you.

That proximity is really powerful.

So I think Mexico is going to win.

I think Canada's going to win.

Vietnam's going to win.

It's not just the cheap stuff.

It's all stuff.

Another thing that was interesting is FBI Director Chris Wray told lawmakers, and we'll get to this another week, told lawmakers that he's extremely concerned about TikTok operating in the U.S.

Said that.

A couple months ago.

Yes.

But it'll be interesting to see what's going to happen there.

They definitely, it'll be interesting to see what the government does does in this situation with TikTok because it remains.

What does Kara Swiss think they should do?

You know, I wrote a column three years ago about this saying I use it on a burner phone.

I'm concerned with, I was concerned with China many years ago on TikTok.

I'm not sure.

I don't know if it can be.

I think it should be bought by a U.S.

company, probably, like Microsoft.

I also think Microsoft should think about buying Twitter at some point, but I would think something like that.

You know, TikTok has a lot of amazing technology,

algorithmic technology, et cetera.

So it's going to be very difficult for them

to be operating in the U.S.

more and more.

Anyway, we got to go on a quick break.

And when we come back, Twitter's new boss is about to run right into the great resignation.

And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Kate Klonik, about how to moderate a social network.

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Scott, we're back.

Elon Musk has a message for Twitter employees: go big or go home.

In an ultimatum issued via email, a midnight email, of course, Musk told employees to commit to a new, quote, hardcore workplace with, quote, long hours at high intensity or leave with three-month severance.

What a choice.

Huh, I wonder what I'd pick.

We're taping this on Thursday.

Employees have till the end of the day to decide.

Some could be making up their minds as we speak.

Hustle porn, hustle porn.

It's really interesting that it was so pre-2020.

People are still quitting their jobs in record numbers, but lower than the peak.

Union organizing is up.

Worker productivity rose just 0.3% in the third quarter.

Parents are missing work in record numbers as they deal with RSV.

Hello.

Welcome to Karen Swisher's Life and closed schools and daycares.

Can Elon single-handedly prop up hustle culture along with his minions who always say, I'm going to ride or die with you?

That's their kind of attitude.

What thinks you of this?

I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter or several companies like this through the pandemic got, for lack of a better term, a bit soft and a lot of employees became somewhat expectant.

I don't doubt that a certain amount of shock therapy to the culture there is probably warranted.

And I don't, I think that's part of capitalism.

And I'm that guy, that founder that

used to go in on Sunday just for FaceTime to make the people who were in there on Sunday feel better about being in on Sunday.

And I realize that's, there's some unhealthy attributes to that.

Now, the flip side is

a small company, you can do that.

Everyone's here.

We all have big equity stakes.

You need to act like an owner.

This is Vietnam.

It's hand-to-hand combat, but you're the Navy SEALs going in first or the Marines in a small company.

But typically, what I found is in order to scale a company, I don't want to say you need B players, but you need to make accommodations for people who are a little bit older,

who have different needs and maybe can't devote 60 hours a week, or maybe are taking care,

maybe are taking care of an aging parent, or have three young kids at home and are a single parent.

The bottom line is that it's different.

There's a difference between running a startup and running a mature company like this.

But on the whole, I'm sympathetic to the notion that he needs to EpiPen this culture.

I was thinking about it last night.

I literally think the guy's coming undone.

And I thought more about it.

I thought, how could he not be coming undone?

Imagine, if you will,

people don't understand the scale of how much money he has spent here.

He spent $45 billion.

So imagine this.

He buys every football team in the Premier League.

He buys Chelsea, Mann City, Mann United, Arsenal.

We're going with sports again.

Tottenham Spurs.

Then he buys the Yankees, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Los Angeles Lakers, and he has enough money left over for the Denver Broncos.

He owns all these teams.

That's what he could have bought with $45 billion.

He shows up to the first game.

He shows up to a Los Angeles Laker game and they they say, okay, halftime, it's the Laker girls doing their rendition of Elon Musk Sucks.

He is paid and then he goes to a Broncos game and on every jumbotron, it's a picture of him and it says, this guy sucks.

That is literally what he has bought here.

He has spent $45 billion to be ridiculed and have his inconsistencies and lack of misunderstanding or lack of understanding around media on full display.

It's like, how could he not come undone?

I'd be a chocolate mess as well.

It's just, what's gone on here is so deliciously weird and unfortunate for him.

Yeah, well, he's trying to, he's trying to shed the company.

He's very into this idea, these ultimatums.

As I told you, he tells people I'm the law, and several people I've heard say that, and they were just laughable.

And he doesn't like people pushing back.

He's fired a dozen of staff this week who are critical of him on Slack and Twitter.

You know, even if they were just explaining you're wrong about something, Twitter had this culture where you were supposed to do this.

It was actually encouraged by Jack Dorsey.

Obviously, he's not a free speech absolutist when it comes to his employees.

Of course, he's keeping that in the news by doing that.

And, you know, you live by what you said before.

And he's like, I'm a free speech absolutist, except for people who don't like me.

And again, he's a private company.

If you want to.

have that kind of culture where everyone is careful about what they say.

That's the kind of culture you're going to get.

Now, one thing he was forced to say on a trial that has to do with Tesla and his CEOship there, there's some lawsuits about that, how he's conducting himself.

He said he won't remain CEO of Twitter forever.

He wants to find a new leader for Twitter over time.

He didn't come out and say right now, but he also is saying he's going to be there a lot.

He's kind of in a squeeze place if he has a lawsuit at another one of his companies where it's sort of the Jack Dorsey problem, except he's got three companies and more, three big, problematic and complex companies.

So it's an interesting time for him.

You think this is good.

You think this is good firing people because they disagree with you or you have saying you have to be hardcore it seems kind of ridiculous publicly to make people do this but i don't know there's a lot there i was on the board of a publicly traded computer manufacturer gateway computer which i realize is the the weakest flex in the world but uh like two ceos before i got there he had every manager sign this statement saying they would make their numbers and like this big deal blood oath and i'm like that doesn't work boss there's too many exogenous factors that just doesn't work the inconsistency here is the problem, and that is all this blather around free speech and First Amendment.

And if anything, he has restricted speech.

Specifically, he blocks people, he fires people.

There's what has he done that in any way lives up to this blather he's been talking about?

He's actually gone the other way, if anything.

Having said that, I don't, I want to be clear.

You said you don't, or I have an issue with people disagreeing with you.

I try very hard to surround myself with people who push back.

And I also try to temper myself with.

I don't accuse you do.

I think he does.

But go ahead.

Go ahead.

It's important to surround yourself with people that occasionally push back, even if it embarrasses you or even if they don't do it elegantly.

It's important.

Hence our entire relationship.

But go ahead.

Well, but we're partners.

I'm talking about people who work for you.

And on a regular basis, I have people who say something and it personally offends me.

And I think that's a lack of respect the way they said it.

And what I do is I calm down and I realize that's important.

And I'll go back to them and I'll say, I just don't like the way you said it.

But I try and appreciate that it's important to have people to push back on you.

Having said that, if someone at Vox was shit posting Jim Bankoff, I would probably say we should fire that person.

They were not shit posting him.

They were disagreeing with him.

Some of them were shit posting.

They've been shit posting.

No, no, no, no, no.

You're wrong.

I've read a lot of them.

You're incorrect.

You're incorrect.

He's just saying a lot of incorrect things.

And they're like, that is.

Well, then

he should send a memo to them.

Look,

you are a fiduciary for that company.

You're trying to help the company.

Here's the thing.

A lot of these people, I think, have effectively decided, I don't need this job.

I'm not down for this.

Yeah, they want to get fired.

They want the severance.

On the way out, they're sticking up the middle finger.

And I understand the temptation to do that.

By the way, just so you know, that's a dumb move.

You have to resist the temptation to stick up the middle finger on the way out.

I think we enjoy it.

It's fun to hear some individual go, Elon, kiss my ass.

I'm out of here.

Or to say,

this, what was the word, has no fucking idea what he's doing or talking about.

That's not how they said it.

I read almost all of them but go ahead go ahead maybe one or i didn't read all the slacks but look you embarrass the ceo and you're cashing now his checks it's his money just know just know

you will likely be fired and okay right or wrong this it's it sucks to be a grown-up when you start disparaging incorrectly or correctly the individual or his or her actions and continue to cash their checks there's a good chance you will no longer be able to cash their checks the only thing i would disagree is is he has fomented this mood.

He is by insulting them, by creating.

He's not been respectful the other way.

Jim Bankoff's a class-friggin act, right?

He'd never do that, right?

Publicly.

If Jim started saying that, fucking Scott Galloway, what a horse's ass.

And you got, you know, this and that, which he might do quietly because

yes, exactly.

So if he did this publicly and sort of insulted, like, has layoffs and is like, those lazy pieces of shit, I got rid of them.

This is what he's doing and creating this.

And he's also, he actually did a tweet where he brought in the people who pretended to be fired and said, I made a mistake firing these people.

And then, and then if you go down lower in his responses, he was standing between them and said, you don't, you look like the sandwich.

And he goes, actually, I'm the taint, which I was like, wow, I haven't seen a taint tweet in a long time from an adult.

And it was stupid.

It wasn't even funny.

And so he's going out of his way to be disrespectful to

his employees, even if you're letting people go,

not, they were not, they didn't start this, let's just say.

They did not start this.

The lesson here is the following.

First off, if you're ever in a position of power across anything, your family, whatever it is, a private company, a public company in a public situation on the road with other drivers, always there on the side of grace.

And this guy...

is so far from that.

He, one of the most blessed individuals on the planet, decides to demonstrate absolutely no grace whatsoever.

Whatever the opposite of grace is, a total vulgarity in terms of his own personal behavior.

Having said that, as a young person, my advice to you would be, regardless of how inappropriate the situation is, if you are fired for reasons involving harassment or bigotry, then lawyer up.

But when you leave an organization, when you've been laid off, resist the temptation to stick up the middle finger as you head for the elevator because your entire reputation, 50% of it is all the good work you did over three, five, 10 years, and half of it will be how you leave.

Demonstrate more great.

I would agree.

I would agree.

Demonstrate, regardless of the temptation, regardless of how good it will feel, regardless of the applause you'll get from other people whose censors you will tickle, you do the following.

I've loved being here.

I appreciate the opportunity.

Let me know how I can be helpful in terms of transition.

I wish you all the best.

Peace out.

I get it.

I get it.

I get it.

That's how I leave.

Believe me, I have many stories of places I've left but I don't say them publicly um but at the same time when someone is saying ridiculous things on Twitter about your work and it is wrong I

think these are very um

you know like he's saying he's doing all sorts of nonsense the people who know about it are like no that's not right and I maybe you should resist but he's doing his whole I know best because I'm the best techie in the world and he's simply not in certain areas and all many many many areas not just certain areas and so I think it's very hard when you've worked at something when someone's stealing your ideas telling you're an idiot he's reaping what he sowed that's yeah but you'll do their bidding for them Kara Kara Swisher will highlight those issues call me and these people point it out these people need to go on and get a great job and live their lives and the way they do it is by creating a reputation that shows they're just bigger fucking people than he is and the way they do that is they demonstrate more grace what he needs is a new CEO that's what he needs he's he was sort of forced to say it on the stand uh because that's got to be the position in that particular case.

And I think if he brought in a CEO, and you know, I was at the Washington Post the other day, um, and they were like, Jeff Bezos has been a good, you know, steward of this.

And I said, Well, why is that?

And they said, He, he never

bothers us, resources

alone

out of the way.

That's exactly right.

And he will step in if they mismanage them, I'm sure.

But he definitely, they that was the one thing is he leaves us alone.

And he's, and why shouldn't he if he hired them?

Anyway, um, let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

Kate Klonick is an associate professor at St.

John's University Law School and a visiting scholar at Harvard.

Her research focuses on private platform governance of online speech.

She joins us to talk about content moderation and its challenges.

Welcome, Kate.

I'm glad you're here because you know a lot about these platforms and the Facebook Oversight Board you've written a lot about.

You've written a lot about these moderation and censorship issues or alleged censorship.

Tell me where you think we are with content moderation.

Obviously, Twitter has been in the news, but in general,

it continues to be a thorny issue for all these social media companies and has obviously entered politics in a really significant way.

Yeah, so I think that we're kind of at an inflection point, and specifically with Twitter.

I think that in the last five years, the public has kind of awoken to the issue of content moderation.

I don't think that it was super visible before then.

There were

a few moments that kind of caught our attention.

But I think that people are seeing that there is this kind of massive private power over public rights of expression and that

they're going to kind of walk with their feet to a certain extent.

And I do think that there will be like a decline in engagement with places like Twitter.

I do think it opens up and disrupts the industry quite a bit and the centralization that we've seen and a few big platforms.

And so it's unclear whether this is going to mean that there is quote unquote better moderation or people are happier with it.

But I do think that there are going to be more options for people to kind of talk to.

And I do think there's going to be kind of a little bit of splintering for a while before people coalesce again.

Scott?

Nice to meet you, Kate.

So I want to put forward a thesis and you validate or nullify it and provide some color.

My sense is these free speech absolutists have gotten it wrong.

and that they see moderation as an enemy.

And as far as I can tell, there's a very strong correlation between more moderation and profitability.

And these are for-profit private companies.

And

that moderation is somehow seen as this boogeyman, when in fact, it's a key business trend.

More moderation, more money.

Your thoughts?

Yeah, this has actually been proven in a recent paper from a couple of people at the Wharton School

that I think is excellent.

It basically tests different revenue models and technology content moderation strategies.

And you're exactly right.

Basically, what they found is that the more moderation happens, the happier people are with platforms and the more time they engage in the platforms and the wealthier the platforms become.

And so this is actually a good reason that if you're talking about a subscription revenue model versus an advertising revenue model, but advertising revenue models for large populations of user bases are actually much better.

better at doing moderation because they have to engage in all these kind of heterogeneous uses of the platform and all these conflicting uses and so like they have to moderate them i i will say really quickly this one thing that you said about at the at the top about like kind of the free speech absolutist free speech absolutism is just like kind of like this app this boogeyman there has never been an absolutely free speech open place like there is no such thing as an unregulated public square.

Like people regulate a public square by where they stand in it, like physically, their reputation that they're attaching to themselves, even in the real world.

And so these are all things that kind of happen.

A good free speech environment is one that has regulation around the edges so that the most people can speak and someone isn't kind of, you know, just screaming with a megaphone at all hours of the night.

So you said something really interesting, and I hadn't thought about it, and that is large, broad-based, ad-driven platforms end up having decent moderation.

And I can see that because Nike doesn't want their ads next to controversial or questionable content.

But at the same time, it's a double-edged sword because when you're in an ad-supported environment, and tell me if you agree or disagree with this, it becomes about attention.

And unfortunately, attention is a function sometimes of very

poor instincts, you know, rage,

being drawn towards violence, et cetera.

So isn't it a double-edged sword?

Don't ad-supported platforms oftentimes take us down the wrong road?

No, I think that that's exactly why people think that this is counterintuitive.

But in fact, people,

there has to be a fine line right

there has to be a line between wanting to be engaged and getting your attention and if you get too angry or too upset you know you just stop signing on at least I do I think most people do you kind of limit your amount of time that you're spending there are people in the margins of course that are always going to spend get angrier and angrier and be the reply guy and kind of like get in there all the time but I do think that most people and this is actually the fine line that content moderation draws like you have to kind of hit it in the middle.

You can't just take everything down and you can't keep everything up.

You have to kind of hit this like sweet spot.

And that is kind of this constantly moving target, this shifting Overton window.

And it's very difficult.

And so I think that it's, it's, I think that actually, to your point, like that the advertising revenue model really does

split the baby, as it were, between kind of like just intriguing enough and not making people too upset.

Upset.

Now, Elon Musk said he wants Twitter.

This has been an issue at Facebook, everywhere else, but he wants it to be warm and welcoming.

And he also talked about it being fun and not a waste of time.

And you feel bad at the end of using it, an hour, for example.

But he also wants to be a place where you can say just about anything.

Almost impossible, correct?

There's no middle ground here.

No, I mean, like, I mean, we're seeing this already.

Like, I mean, there's also no middle ground.

I will also add, he's also kind of had this war against bots.

And it's kind of like, well, why bots?

Why are bots the exception to your free speech absolutism?

Like, all of these types of things.

Like, I don't think that that makes any sense.

And I think that people are kind of seeing that.

The other thing is that I don't understand what was so broken about Twitter in the first place that had to kind of 100%.

It like had to.

What couldn't they say?

What couldn't they say?

No.

And there's like, there is a not safe for work pornography Twitter.

It's very actually kind of like it is still like, I mean, there are places you can find and express most things on Twitter.

And so it's just kind of very unclear what it is that he's trying to fix.

I just, it's like has been baffling me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, what would they benefit from an oversight board like the one at Facebook?

You've written quite a lot about that.

He says he wants a moderation content moderation council.

I don't know who'd serve on it, although he says he's lots of people.

Just this week, the oversight board overruled Facebook decision that banned posts comparing Russian soldiers to Nazis.

Didn't they design the oversight board so it could work at other social networks if needed?

How do you look at the success of the meta oversight board and whether Musk should or could create one here?

Yeah, I think that there's nothing that he's given us in any of the statements that he said that makes me think that he's actually serious about setting up or even copying or even cribbing off the model of the meta oversight board.

And it's also unclear to me whether he realizes that Twitter has a trust and safety council already that rules on a lot of these content moderation issues and has been for a while.

It frankly sounds like he's trying to set up like a corporate governance type of board with his friends and then basically kind of decide when to listen to it and when not to.

So I don't think that it's a super serious commitment on his part.

And I think right when he took over, he saw it as a way to appease the people who wanted him to immediately let Donald Trump out of Arkham prison to use Casey Newton's comparison.

And

yeah, and I think he just punted by mentioning a council.

It was just a PR thing.

Let me follow up here because you tweeted in October 20th, actually.

No good speech, governance, or trust and safety on Twitter equals bad product.

It means less people will engage, less avenue would be made.

People will silo in like-minded communities and increasingly radicalize.

We've been there before.

This is not rocket science.

Very funny, by the way.

Yeah, I think that that's right.

It goes to what Scott was saying.

And I do think that we're going to have, we are seeing people walk to places like Gab and Truth Social.

We're seeing people go to Mastodon for whatever that's.

Like yourself?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I like Mastodon.

It's fine.

It's very Usenet.

It's very,

it is, it is very,

it's very like old school.

There's a reason that we centralized and brought legibility with like algorithms into a lot of con into like a lot of speech into user generated content.

Like I think that this is, we're kind of seeing that what it looks like when you don't have any algorithm and it's pretty makes it pretty unusable.

And so I think that it's, it's going to be an interesting inflection point for public education on this stuff.

We've been talking with Noam Barden, who has a new thing.

We'll bring him on next week to talk about it.

There's going to be a lot of on, I've heard from lots of entrepreneurs who are trying new, fresh things that are more consumer focused.

Scott, next question.

Recognizing that everyone as a consumer gets to pick kind of their approach and level of moderation, when you look at private or public companies that have tried to tackle this very difficult problem, do you have role models and think that they're getting it mostly right?

And we should look to them for insight into moderation?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think that it really depends.

The really one thing that has emerged, I think, out of the last 15 years of content moderations consolidating is that like everyone has learned to fly, but it's like there's bird wings and there's bat wings and there's like dragonfly wings.

I think that it's a different type of like, it's a different type of

evolutionary structure for every different type of thing.

Reddit does it differently, but really well.

Wiki does it in a completely different way, but really well.

The,

you know, I actually think that for all of the product and diversity of product that Facebook kind of brings into one space in a walled garden kind of thing that they do it fairly well.

Twitter was doing it about as well as you can imagine.

Pinterest does a decent, really great job, I think, actually, too.

But those are all like, I'm just talking about like, like I just named five or six platforms, like they're all completely different platforms for different types of things.

And they all have slightly different ways of doing moderation, slightly different revenue models, but mostly kind of still ad-based.

And they figured out a way to kind of match it with their product.

If you had to make one, what would it look like if you had to create a social media, you know, if Elon made you CEO of Twitter, for example, or you did something from scratch with a new entrepreneur, for example?

Yeah, I'd kind of probably recreate a lot of the people and the talent and like the structure of Twitter.

I thought it evolved from, you know, kind of its dumpster fire lowest point in 2014 after Gamergate and Leslie Jones and all of the things that were happening.

I thought it really actually over the last eight years had gotten very usable and a much safer place.

And that was in part not just because of content moderation, but because they brought in tools like mute buttons and got better at taking content moderation and governance seriously.

And I think that the only people complaining are the people like Elon Musk and his cronies who feel like, who have this misconception of what free speech really means.

Scott, last question.

What role does identity play in moderation?

My question is pregnant with a comment, and that is more absolutists around anonymity.

And I've always thought, if you want better moderation and more responsible civil platforms, just enforce identity.

Here's something.

I think this way kind of lies madness.

For one, we're not really that great at verifying identity

in the first instance.

For the second, there are a lot of people that engage and feel safe because of anonymity.

So it is truly kind of this double-edged sword where you

do something like kind of enforce some type of verified policy.

And you've actually, they've done a lot of studies on this, that it really, it doesn't actually make it safer.

It just kind of, or better, it just actually excludes certain types of populations from the platform, typically minority populations and women.

And I think that those are important voices.

And so I kind of don't think that having real identity attached to your name online does that much for content moderation.

I actually have one more question because Facebook just announced that it's not going to, this is from 2019, to fact-check politicians.

And they have to decide whether to let Trump, who just announced his attempt to become president again.

If you were there, there, Nick Clegg is apparently deciding this, not Mark Zuckerberg, but he's going to consult with a lot of people.

What would you do there and also on Twitter, which permanently banned Trump, but now probably will not,

whether he comes back or not, and whether it matters or not, because he didn't have such a great launch.

How do you look at those two decisions?

To not fact-check politicians anymore.

Yeah, yeah.

And then whether to bring on Trump again to remove the bans on him.

Yeah, I mean, I think that those are still prior, I think that they're still hard decisions and they're still kind of in the hand.

I think that like it will really be up to kind of how the platform decides to keep identifying

politicians.

And I think that one of the reasons that you're moving away from a fact-checking process is because it's kind of impossible to decide who's a politician and who isn't.

Like, is Donald Trump a politician since he left office?

We've always known that he's going to run for 2024 again, but like, you know, we've kind of punted that because the oversight board gave them a two-year window.

And I think this is kind of like a moment of stepping back and

the platforms realizing that they're an ecosystem and they don't have to do all of these jobs themselves.

There is a rise of third-party fact checkers.

There's a rise of other types of industry that are doing this type of fact checking and making people aware of this stuff.

And I think that that's really important.

I also think that it's kind of indicative and brought about in part by the New York Post Hunter Biden story that the platforms took down.

And I think that, yeah, a huge mistake.

And, you know, I said so at the time.

And it was, you know, I think that you can't just roll over the third parties that already existed or the new third parties like fact checkers that are coming into being.

I think that's what those part, what those industries are there for.

Well, may you make a prediction?

Will they bring Trump back on either of these platforms?

Yeah, I think that they will.

Yeah, me too.

I agree.

Anyway, Kate, thank you so much.

You're such an intelligent voice in this.

And you can find her on Mastodon, clonic at mastodon.social.

You're still on Twitter a little bit too.

But I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

It's fine.

Bye, guys.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions.

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Okay, Scott, let's hear some predictions.

Come on, I want something good.

I want something good.

I think Bezos is going to come back to Amazon as CEO.

Oh, whoa.

Yeah.

And I have absolutely no insider information.

Why do do you say that?

I just think he was here in Washington having parties when I was, I'm not in Washington, but he was last week having some parties there.

I think he's going to have a three to five year

midlife crisis meets human growth hormone, meets

rockets,

personal and private rockets.

I think he's, you know, he's going to run out of ED drugs.

Yeah.

And then meanwhile, he's going to wake up and go, my wealth is down.

by two-thirds if the stock keeps its stocks off 45% this year.

And I think a guy like that

has a tough time being out of the game this long.

I also think he's arguably, maybe with the exception of Tim Cook, the best CEO of the last 50 years, he's still got a lot of tread left on his tires.

Also a tough cookie, but you don't see him insulting his employees.

He's a very tough cookie internally, but go ahead.

Very smart.

And also, I mean, granted, timing is everything, and Andy's come into kind of the perfect storm of, or the perfect shit storm, but the company's underperformed.

I mean, there's just no getting around it and uh so i i just think the moons are lining up for him to do a howard schultz and if the stock's off another 10 15 i think he'll come back in for one to three years wow that's a big one you remember that's how we met your big call on whole foods this is a big amazon call interesting you know to be fair andy's hand been handed a sack of you know

timing is everything bad timing not his let me just say he's got the pan end of the pandemic and oversaw what i believe is going to be the most valuable company in the world.

Let me expand on it.

Bezos will either come back or they'll spend AWS.

The company, keep in mind, Amazon is the first company in history to shed over a trillion dollars of market cap.

But part of the reason they got there, in my view, and so I'll condition, you know, I'll put a condition on this.

Either Bezos comes back or they spin AWS.

And Andy built AWS.

I think AWS is now worth more than the entire company.

based on its current market cap.

They might spin it.

Something's going to happen.

Something big is going to happen at amazon 46 percent over the past year uh amazon stock and you can compare that to apple stock one year three percent down three percent over the last year and then uh meta stock is also way down meta stock

that's an interesting prediction scott that'll be interesting to see if he'll do that i think he's enjoying his life so we'll see we'll see but you know they love to get back in there and i can only i can do this which is very much in keeping only i can fix this i can only fix this the thing is you will not be seeing him slag his employees.

And again, I don't know of any CEO who has more of a not so nice reputation internally as Jay.

He's a tough motherfucker inside those companies.

You know what one of the first rules

literally one of the first rules you hear around management is you publicly praise and you privately criticize.

You sit people down and say, look, you got this wrong and this is why and this is what you need to do.

You don't embarrass people because you create emotion and you create resentment.

And all you're doing is saying I'm more powerful than you.

If you do that to me, I fire you.

But when I do that to you publicly, I think it's leadership.

I think it's weakness.

It's weakness.

If you're saying I am the law to people,

it's really, he doesn't have to.

Jeff Bezos doesn't have to.

I'm very surprised that Elon feels the need to do it.

It's a weakness.

It's a weakness versus a strength.

He doesn't need to.

He has enough of a reputation.

He doesn't have to slag people.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.

That's a really, that's a really interesting prediction.

I'm fascinated by that.

I have, can I do a little prediction?

Of course.

If they put it into bankruptcy, for example, Twitter, and they don't have to, I don't think the bankers are come down on this guy.

But if they did, if I was Microsoft, I'd be sharpening my pencil for this one.

It's cleared out enough.

It's been cleaned up enough in terms of wreckage that this would be a beautiful acquisition for them.

That's my prediction.

That's an interesting thought.

Yeah.

That's what it occurred to me.

I was like, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

So that's my prediction.

If it, it's, no one wanted to touch this thing, now you can say, oh, well, I'm going to come and clean it up in a way.

And I think they have, they have LinkedIn.

They're good on this stuff.

I think there's a Microsoft would be a really interesting owner for this and TikTok, by the way.

Anyway, we want to hear from you.

Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51 Pivot.

Okay, Scott, that's the show.

We'll be back on Tuesday.

For more, please read us out.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Andretat engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burroughs and Meal Severio.

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

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

Publicly praise, criticize privately.

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