Twitter's Lots of Bots, Netflix Isn't Joking With Employees

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

You want to hear my COVID story?

Sure.

Yes.

Okay, so I thought I was going to advance to the next round.

By the way, you're in a bad mood.

You need to let go of the badges.

I'm in a bad mood because I've got a million things to do.

I did an Uber with all the children and Amanda this morning, and I have to get on a plane to Germany, which you're not.

And explain why.

Because I tested positive for COVID about, I don't know, 10 days ago.

And I thought it was my squid games.

I thought I was going to get past it.

Of course, I went to Formula One and thinking that if I was surrounded by fabulous people, I wouldn't get it.

And I should have stuck to the uncomfortable introvert, hate people, don't do anything.

Anyways.

One serious note, I'm not giving medical advice.

I'm just saying I was prescribed because of our wonderful producer, Lauren Amon, said, go get the antiviral Paxlovid.

Within 24 hours, nothing.

I felt

back to normal.

So I'm just saying that is what happened to me.

Check with your doctor, but

asymptomatic.

My ex-wife did the same thing.

She was quite sick and she got it.

She also lost the squid games, as you called them, and the COVID squid games.

And she was well right away.

So I'm alone and I'm bored.

And what do I do when I'm alone and I'm bored?

I start texting profane things to people.

So I'm texting profane things and funny jokes to you guys.

And it's like, I don't know,

it's like late night, like 12:30 a.m.

We must have, all of us have very unfortunate lives.

Of course, everyone is on the pivot chat on text.

And I text something to the extent of, I think it was, or my boyfriend's over here, but he's really needy.

He keeps asking me to take out the gag ball and unbind him.

And then, and then I write, actually, I'm not needy.

It's going to be easy, but go ahead, keep going.

And then I write, I'm not needy, I'm wanty in quotes.

Yeah.

And then what I get back is that stupid thing where people go, ha ha, you know, above it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm like, our pivot team is much saltier, more profane, and clever than that.

I'm like, that makes no sense.

So I look at my text message and I look at the top of the screen of my text message and it says Brian Chesky.

Yes, yes.

And I'm like, oh my God.

I've been sending profane texts at 1230 a.m.

to the CEO of Airbnb.

Yes, he was.

And so I immediately go, I immediately say, Brian, sorry about this.

I was texting with my team at work.

And then the moment I said that, I'm like,

what stranger that I'm texting my colleague.

Brian will be brought into testimony.

From work.

Anyways, Brian being the gentleman he is like, yeah, I figured these weren't for me.

But that's my COVID story.

Yeah, I texted him right after and I said, I'm so sorry for all of the pivot team.

And he thought you were funny.

There's no coming back from this.

There's no coming back from this.

He's like, oh, he's so funny in the way he is.

I'm like, that's how we make the money.

But nonetheless, apologies.

He was very lovely about it.

I think he was bored too.

He was bored that night, too.

Anyway, you cannot have Scott by himself for very long.

By the way,

did you see Brian's

Chesky's thing with Obama they announced today, Voyager?

Kind of a Peace Corps kind of thing.

It's wonderful.

He always is doing wonderful things.

And they also announced a new redo of the app.

It's quite good, actually.

Anyway, that is our time with COVID and Scott.

That's my COVID sport.

Yeah.

I am so glad you ghosted me the other night because I would have possibly had COVID, but I do not.

And so I'm on my way to Germany and Scott is ghosting me in Deutschland.

They're piping me in live, though.

Little pork, little pork, little beer, little dog.

You were supposed to be, we were supposed to hang out and discuss our future together.

As usual, you skipped it twice, once in New York, which I didn't get COVID, and this time in Germany.

So I'm hoping that Russia doesn't invade Germany during this time because that's exactly what will happen when you're not there.

They're not that.

Anyway, today, Netflix tells its employees to zip it.

There's new data about Twitter bots, and we'll take a listener question about Airbnb and the peer-to-peer economy.

But first, CNN mistakenly sent welcome baskets to employees who were laid off after the CNN Plus shutdown.

Scott, did you get any fruit?

No basket for the dog.

No basket for the dog.

And so first off, I just want to acknowledge this is this is kind of a dumb story and probably someone made an innocent mistake.

But what's interesting here, and this feeds sort of into the Netflix story, is that you're about to see, I don't call them baskets, but if you look at what Netflix said, like either

sign up for our content or get the fuck out, you're about to hear that said about a million times across corporate America in the next six months.

We're going to talk about that next, what we're going to do.

But did you get a welcome?

Did you get any fruit?

Did you get any fruit?

No fruit.

I got something really nice, though.

I can always turn this back to me.

What did you get?

I did, I went back to my high school to film an episode, which was really rewarding for me, university high school charter.

And then the next day, the whole thing was unplugged, and my team, my team

went ahead and on their own time, produced the episode for me and said, this is for you and your family.

Isn't that nice?

Oh, my God.

That is nice.

Can you air it anywhere?

Or you not have the rights to it?

I don't know, but the assumption is they can't, but they took time and they spent, and these things are not easy to edit.

Isn't that nice?

That's literally the nice, I think that is the nicest gift I've received from a non-family member.

You should air it at the school.

You should air it.

I will make sure it happens.

How about that?

I will

intercede on your behalf.

Anyways, that was my basket departure.

Here's a good news, bad news kind of thing is Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, who I know a little bit.

I did a sway episode with him last year, 2019 actually, is recovering from a stroke today.

Fetterman is also the favorite to win Pennsylvania's Democratic U.S.

Senate race.

The Pennsylvania primary is today.

Fetterman first went to the hospital on Friday, but he says he's feeling better and that doctors assure him he hasn't suffered any cognitive damage.

I had the similar thing happen to me.

His wife was very fast in terms of getting him to the hospital.

And so that was great for him in terms of how quickly.

And again,

I started pivot after my stroke.

I got married again after my stroke.

I had two more children.

So

it doesn't stop you from doing anything.

It hit home, but I have to, I wrote him a note and said, you'll be fine if you get the right treatment.

Treatments have gotten so much better, especially among younger people.

Yeah, I don't think the story is about uh lieutenant governor.

He's going to be fine.

He's a big, strong guy.

Sounds like they caught it early.

Absolutely no reason that this is going to be a speed mump, nothing else.

I think the opportunity here is for a bit of a learning moment.

I would love for you to describe a little bit about what happened such that people.

I don't know what happens at the beginning of a stroke.

Can you talk a little bit about what happened to you and how people can recognize it and seek help?

Well, when you think of strokes, you think of older people, but actually, more of the strokes are happening to younger people.

I was, it was seven, eight years ago, I think it was something like that.

And I was flying to Hong Kong.

So you were pretty old.

You were still pretty old.

Yes, I was pretty old.

Yeah, I wasn't that old.

Anyway, pretty old.

Pretty old.

And it might have been longer.

I can't remember.

Anyway, I was flying to Hong Kong and I sat in an economy seat next to two very large men and I didn't get out of it the whole flight.

And I didn't drink enough water, the typical stuff, everything that, you know, that you talk about.

And I turns out.

I have a hole in my heart, which is, it's a PFO, it's called.

And the dog filled it.

Sorry.

I know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what happened.

That's what many of your ex-girlfriends have told me is my joke for that.

That one, my little stroke joke.

A little stroke joke.

You have a hole in your heart.

Yeah.

Lots of people.

When you're born, you have a everyone has this hole, but then it gets covered up by a flap of this flap that seals.

Mind it, a lot of people don't seal.

25% of the people have a hole in their heart, which is interesting.

They just don't, nothing ever happens.

And so a blood clot went through it from my leg into my brain.

And when I was working on a story about Yahoo at this hotel, I just arrived in Hong Kong.

And first, I was eating a strawberry and it fell out of my mouth.

And it was weird.

I couldn't, I couldn't manipulate my lips.

And then I got a tingling.

That's all, slight headache.

And

then I had aphasia, which is I couldn't speak.

I was like garbled.

I couldn't, it was weird.

I would, I went to the mirror and I tried to say, I know it sounds crazy, my baloney has a first name, you know, that song.

I started to sing that.

I don't know why that popped in my head, but I started to do it and it came out all garbled.

And then I, so I couldn't reach anybody because I couldn't talk.

So I texted my brother, Jeff, Dr.

Swisher, and the time difference was such that I think he was sleeping or whatever.

And so

I was like, this is weird.

Huh?

I had a little, my migraine, I had migraine series.

You weren't scared?

I would have been terrified.

No, I thought I had a migraine.

I thought I had a severe migraine.

And you couldn't speak.

You thought you had a migraine?

You're in a Hong Kong hotel and you can't speak and you weren't terrified?

I know that sounds crazy.

And I went upstairs for breakfast.

And by the time I got upstairs, I could speak.

It was like as if I had,

you know, dental surgery.

I was like, hello, how are you doing?

And then in a half an hour, I was like this, like talking like this.

So the phone rang.

I was at this beautiful breakfast looking over Hong Kong Harbor.

And my brother said, get to the hospital now.

And I was like, what are you talking about?

It's just a headache.

And he said, could you please get yourself in a cab, go to the hospital?

You need an MRI, not a CAT scan, or whatever.

I don't remember which one it was.

And get there right now.

You're having a stroke.

And I'm like, you're crazy.

Young people, you know, youngish.

I was just way too young to have a stroke.

That's the nuttiest thing in the world.

So I went.

And as it turns out, I was having a stroke.

And it had already worked its way around the clot, which was

to look at it, was kind of beautiful in a way because

the blood had flown around it.

And so they got me on anti, you know, the medications, the blood thinners.

And I was in the hospital for seven days, but I was perfectly fine within an hour.

It was crazy.

And then they wanted to operate in China.

And then US people didn't think that was worth it because all these days.

So I still have the hole in my heart.

I just, you know, that's why i have my my for my trip to germany i'm wearing my little leggings my leggings

you know we've all everyone close to you has been so desperately trying to fill that hole for the longest time

no um it's uh it was very you know it changed my life it changed my life i have to say because i didn't like there was a woman who wrote about strokes that embraced it like she was sort of embracing of it and i was like no this was terrible but i'll tell you one thing my dad died when i was really young and so i i all i could my kids were pretty young at the time.

And,

and I thought, oh my God, my kids.

And they're going to have no parent.

Like one, one of their parents is going to be gone.

Obviously, Megan was there.

But it was really,

I, it's the only time I cried when I thought about my kids and me and me not being there.

And I think I was crying for myself, obviously.

And so

anyway, so it was good.

And then I took medications for a while and then I stopped.

And I'm just taking aspirin now.

Blood thinners are really, really hard on the body.

But now today they have all this stuff.

They have all this, you know, lots of younger people are getting them.

If you feel like you're getting a stroke, immediately go to the hospital.

Don't assume it's a good thing.

It's called fast.

I forget what it stands for, but you got to get there fast.

I did.

John Fetterman did, and I wish him a good recovery.

Yeah, you can be just fine.

I, I, I, you know, I think about it every now and then, but that it could happen again, but I, you know, I could also get hit by a car.

The thing I take from this is it clearly means you're going to be senator.

Yeah.

i don't know that would be fun i don't know i would definitely be your legislative agent for sure oh my god no because as usual you text like nancy pelosi dirty text by accident when you're texting the staff which would also get us into trouble

anyway the thing is you can believe that happened right yeah i can i totally can i literally brian could have been worse could have been worse no i don't know it could have been elon that's what i said could have been elon could have been elon if i'd given him if i gave you his cell phone number anyway um so just just acknowledgement that this turned out well.

It did not turn out well for the people in Buffalo.

A terrible shooting over the weekend is raising new questions about content moderation and online radicalization.

Once again,

a man, I'm going to call him a man because he's not a teen.

I mean, he is a teen, but he's a man, went in and shot and killed 10 people.

It's so depressing.

We'll get to this on a later episode.

We have more information, but we wanted to acknowledge the awful event and extend our

condolences to Buffalo.

It's a wonderful city.

It's a wonderful city.

And this is just beyond depressing.

Yeah, when we saw it last night, I said, what are we going to say that hasn't already been said?

But I do think there's

these things have so many second-order effects.

There will continue to be a needed conversation around gun control.

And one of the great lacks, you know, great tragedies of our leadership is their inability to go where most NRA members are now.

And that is, we need some sort of sensible gun control.

But where I go is,

I could tell you who this was before before i heard who it was and that is a young man like you said last week who is not connecting to work not connecting to school i really think that men have a responsibility and our communities have a responsibility to be more engaged in boys lives and and i'm not i'm not forgiving him i'm not blaming it on society or other people but you you also

Also, social media,

did you notice like mass shooters aren't being inspired by video games or podcasts or streaming original scripted television?

They're being inspired by shit they're seeing live streamed on Facebook.

They're being inspired by manifestos that are allowed to sit and fester on these social media platforms and they see other men agreeing with these manifestos.

And fucking Twitch comes out and says, as if it was a good thing.

Well, we took this down within two minutes.

I'm like, what?

How the hell did this thing ever get started?

How the hell did you ever let this start?

They're open platforms.

They're open platforms.

That's the problem.

They could absolutely stop this shit.

They're open platforms.

I think you're wrong.

I think they can't.

I think that's the problem.

You don't think there's a technical solution here?

No, and I think it proliferates everywhere.

It gets copies.

And like people were looking at this thing.

I, by accident, came across one when I was reading about the news.

It was right there where he said he was sorry to a white guy because he looked like he was going to, sorry, I didn't mean, I wasn't going to shoot you.

It was obviously targeting black people.

And the other thing that makes me think about, I want to move to a little bit of solutions, and I want to be part of the solution here.

I really do think that

people and also, especially young men, you need to take the temperature down.

So I want to reference something that happened on a Twitter spaces that you did the other night.

By the way, I thought it was really productive.

I thought you did a great job.

We had someone basically,

you know, I don't know, photo bomb or crash the session and start calling someone.

His exact words, this is a well-respected or, you know, a famous person.

Call some guest on your, a fucking coward, a fucking shithead, a fucking piece of shit, screaming at him.

And this guy has millions of young men following him.

And then I went on, and then I started getting, and I, of course, and I want to, I want to say I handled it poorly.

I immediately got angry and said, you're right, one of you is a piece of shit.

That doesn't help either.

I thought that was okay.

Well, anyways, if you're going to take the temperatures down, you can't respond to shit like this.

And I was angry at myself for taking this bait.

But then, all of a sudden, my twitter feed starts getting all this foul

and i reverse engineer to this individual's two million followers and they're all saying put scott galloway on the list

put scott on the list all of these things i'm what's the list this individual has a list and it's called people i hate

and it's a video showing in animation all the people he hates.

Now, what does that do?

His 2 million followers start harassing these people.

When you start assembling lists with the implicit or explicit notion that people, your mob should start harassing those people, that has serious fascist vibes, dude.

And what I would say to the 2 million people following this individual, he is making millions of dollars tapping into a very ugly side of this.

And ask yourself, are you being a real man by engaging in this?

When you start harassing people, when you start being this obnoxious, this incendiary, this foul, this is, I want to be clear, this isn't a mass shooting, but all of this leads to the atmospherics where young men start believing that hate and violence is somehow masculine.

Young men have an obligation.

They're dunking on people or dunking on people.

And it starts at a very innocent level.

And I want to be part of the solution.

I am no longer responsible.

Unless someone is much more powerful to me, I'm not going to say anything bad about anybody.

I'm just not going to go there.

Okay, you're just going to send sex notes to them.

Okay.

Well, why don't you do that?

That's a little bit of a message.

I'm filling people's hearts.

I'm filling the holes in people's hearts.

Anyway, you were absolutely correct.

In fact,

one of my sons, Alex, was asking why I was sort of irritated with a lot of the Elon tweets.

I'm like, it's just, he's just now doing the dunking thing, which is just exhausting.

Like, he's so much smarter than that.

And like, why?

Because it gets response.

And

it's like a seal collapping for fish.

It's just depressing.

But it leads, if letter Z is a mass shooting, it's letter B.

You're encouraging.

These people go, this is the most impressive.

A lot of young men, for a lot of good reasons, say, this is the most impressive man in the world.

I want to be like this.

And

I need to go after people who don't agree with me.

I need to insult people.

And guess what?

All of these communities, they're overly male.

They're much less likely to believe in climate change.

They're much more likely to believe in misogynistic content.

and if you're a young man

say no to this

just say no my god i can't believe i'm being nancy reagan yeah this young man didn't just happen let's just say let's just say anyway let's get to our first big story

disney is poised for a big upset in the streaming market Last week, it reported that Disney Plus added nearly 8 million subscribers in Q2.

Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in the same quarter.

Still, Disney is losing money and streaming.

It announced an operating loss of nearly $900 million.

That's more than triple its loss from the same quarter last year.

Now, analysts at Lightshed Partners are suggesting that Disney buy Netflix, maybe even sell its stake in Hulu to make that happen.

They've suggested the game platform Roblox is another acquisition target.

The mouse sort of roared over Florida, by the way.

What do you think of all these ideas?

Bob

JPIC, who's the CEO, who's gotten into some trouble recently, has said that Disney Plus will add 100 million subscribers and achieve profitability by 2024.

Wow.

He surraped prices, I guess.

But I have to say, Disney's a must-own on my network for sure for all my kids and their ages 20 to six months.

I mean, the six-month-old doesn't watch it, but it's a must-own

as a subscription.

What do you think about this?

Should it buy Netflix?

I don't, I personally, so Disney has $190 billion market cap.

Netflix is 80.

They would have to pay $120.

So they basically would have to give, I mean, with a combined company, they'd have to give Netflix shareholders 40% of the company.

And

I think Disney has a much more diverse revenue stream.

Right now,

they're not only nipping at Netflix's heels, they've taken the leg into its mouth.

They have momentum.

They have an unparalleled library.

I mean, you're talking about Star Wars and Dumbo.

I mean, they have

actually, they're franchising it, whether it's Mandalorian or if you look at the difference between Hulu and Netflix, there isn't a whole lot I mean

Disney is singular in terms of its positioning it's family it's singular there's nothing that's even close to it in terms of that positioning around every fan every household can kind of say I'd like to have Disney Plus there's some folks on the far right and the far left that don't like different streamers for different reasons everybody anyone with kids and even who just loves great entertainment is going to love Disney so I don't think Disney needs to acquire

Netflix the the broader learning here is that, and I'll backward integrate in my statement, to not be watching a lot of original scripted television right now is to ignore the defining art form of our generation.

And that is somewhere between $140 to $240 billion a year, depending if you're looking at domestically or globally, of resources are being poured into the art form of original television.

It's unlikely there's several billion dollars going into what's number two, I don't know, cable television or modern art.

This is the defining art.

The most talented people in the world, back by more resources in the world, are creating this content.

And guess what?

They've way overinvested.

And you want to talk about a lot of baskets that are going to go off?

Go ahead, go ahead.

I want to know if you think, what about Roblox or Roku merging with Netflix?

I think Roku and Roblox are both outstanding

acquisition targets for different reasons.

Roku offers a vertical distribution to Netflix and or Disney and is way off its high and now has a $12 billion market cap.

That is a very interesting acquisition for Netflix or Disney because they control so much of the distribution.

That's an outstanding acquisition.

And they've been doing some original content, but go ahead.

And Roblox, immediately overnight, 50% of people under the age of 16 are on Roblox.

I think Roblox would be a gangster acquisition for Disney.

So Roku would, I think, would be an incredible acquisition for Netflix for vertical vertical content distribution or vertical distribution, which Netflix lacks.

And Roblox would immediately sent among their core audience, Disney,

incredible, incredible gaming.

It's got a $20 billion market cap.

Netflix, too.

Netflix could buy that too, since they're getting into gaming.

That isn't as obvious to me because it's not as good.

And then do more children's programming.

Although, I have to say, the other night I was at home and I was doing folding clothes.

It sounds crazy, but I picked up four different shows on Netflix I could find.

I cannot find stuff on Disneyland.

I want to rewatch Marvel.

So they can live together,

but Netflix needs more heft for sure.

I think if Netflix were going to acquire a company, it should be Spotify and be the ultimate content subscriber.

I've always thought that.

Yep, that's a great one.

That's a great one.

Well, we'll see what they do because they are also giving its employees a content advisory and an update to the company's culture guidelines.

Netflix tells employees they may have to work on content they disagree with.

The spokesman said the change was meant to help prospective employees make better informed decisions about working for Netflix.

This is obviously around the Dave Chappelle thing.

You know, it had been, it's also been cutting its marketing staff, not enormously, but it made cuts.

What do you think of this?

It's just given the warnings?

Is it doing a

base camp kind of thing?

What do you think?

There's a this is a big story.

And the reason why this is a big story is it indicates a much bigger trend that is a tsunami is forming offshore, Cara.

A tsunami?

Okay.

All right.

And this is a tsunami.

Just as there's work from home has been the biggest, one of the biggest trends in 2021, one of the biggest trends in the last half of 2022 is unemployed from home.

And

that is all of these growthy companies that hired hundreds of thousands or millions of people because as long as they were growing, their stock prices went up.

Their stock prices are off 60 or 70 percent.

And I can tell you, and I have personal experience with this, in every boardroom and in every executive management meeting, there is behind drawn curtains or drawn blinds, charts of every department, and they're going through layoffs.

You are about to see hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in the part of the economy that has been the gift that has kept on giving basically since 2008, start massive layoffs.

And this is the first signal, and that is, you know what, guys, you want to work from home?

You want to bring your full self to work?

You want to tell us your political views?

I got an idea.

Stay at home and watch MSNBC or Fox all the time.

You're out of here.

Because this is, and you know what was really interesting?

And I thought, telling what they had a product for Twitter got fired.

I forget his name.

Yes, Kayvon Beckpoor.

And he immediately went to Twitter and said, I was disappointed this happened during paternity leave.

He was indignant.

No, he wasn't.

That's right.

I know Kayvon really well.

I'm going to, you're mischaracterizing it, but go ahead.

No, I'm not.

He immediately brought up that he was fired during paternity leave.

He's just making the point.

He didn't.

Yeah, he's being indignant.

No, he wasn't, but go ahead.

Okay.

I'm going to disagree.

The last time there were layoffs of the information age, you know, nice people with college degrees in engineering was in 2000.

We didn't have paternity leave.

Right.

These,

these, literally, these individuals are

under the impression that the universe owes them a job and snacks.

And I'm going to push back on Kayvon, but go ahead.

Go ahead.

Make your larger point.

You're about to see a lot of people say, oh, you you want to work from home?

Good for you.

You're now unemployed from home.

All of a sudden, the pendulum in the place where workers have aggregated more and more and more power over the last 20 years is about to swing back.

I think it's going to be a big fight because I don't think there is still leverage on the part of a lot of employees in this case.

Like, look at Apple, the guy head of machine learning there.

Big job left because he doesn't want to go back

to the spaceship.

All kinds of things.

See, I see it differently.

I see it as he was fired.

Fine, you want to stay at home?

Stay at home.

Huh.

Okay.

I don't think they would have said that six months ago.

You're about to see a lot of people decide, well, maybe I should go into work.

Maybe I should have some FaceTime.

Yeah.

All right.

Okay.

That's interesting.

I have to say, just from dropping everyone off today, because Kara is now an Uber driver, the roads are packed.

People were walking downtown because I had to drop Amanda off downtown.

She's working there.

And it was felt like, oh, my God, people are going back to work.

At the same time, long story,

she got in a car accident and we had to rent a car.

You can't reach people at any, there's so, and they were telling me it's because of no unemployment.

Her parents were going back to Boston last night.

They delayed or canceled trips.

You know, I mean, it's just people aren't working too.

Like they're having a real employment crisis in a lot of places

that are pretty good jobs, I would say.

But go ahead.

But that's the nuance here, and that's exactly the correct point.

And it's going to be a tale of two worlds.

And the market, to be fair, the market is responding to this.

For the last 30 years,

people have had to bring you your Cobb salad, you know, wash your car, whatever it might be,

board you to your plane, bring you your ginger ale in aisle 17B.

And those people have been underpaid for 30 years, and there is a vicious and overdue snap back.

I was at, I went to, for the first time, one of those customer service desks at an airport the other day,

and they can't find anyone to work there.

And clearly, the training is so tough.

They just can't find anyone.

There's just no way out.

They're going to have to dramatically raise compensation.

And then this is a good thing

among frontline workers.

The other side, recessions have different impacts.

Some recessions are bad for blue-collar workers.

Some recessions are bad for white-collar workers.

This recession is going to be really bad, not only for white-collar workers, but white Patagonia-vested workers.

And that is information age workers.

All of the people who are used to bringing their dog to their living room to work, all the information age guys, all of the techie unit, the unicorn, the unicorn stable is about to get so ugly and foul.

And this generation has never seen it.

They've never seen it.

This is correct.

This is correct.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens because

when I do talk to, I don't feel like working at the office, you know, someone I was talking to.

I was like, hmm, that's a bad choice for you, for a young person, I I have to say.

But I didn't say anything, of course.

Anyway, it's a really interesting time.

I think that Netflix is doing this because they just don't want to go through the headache and then they can point to it and say, we told you, if you don't like it, you can protest all you want, but we told you, and it's a problem for us for you to do that.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.

I like this production, Scott.

I think it's a really interesting, a white collar with a Patagonia vest recession.

All right, let's go on a quick break.

And when we come back, we'll talk about Twitter bots and we'll take a listener question about Airbnb, who is headed by a man who has incredible patience with my co-host.

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Surprise, surprise, Twitter is full of bots, at least according to one survey.

The study looked at 44,000 accounts and found that nearly 20% were likely bots.

The same survey found that a majority of Elon Musk's Twitter followers were likely bots.

So this is something Elon has brought up for his deal pause, which he really can't pause a deal on this thing that he needs some more information about scams and bots.

So bot has a negative connotation also.

Some bots can be useful, like my favorite Elon Jett.

What do you think of this?

This is this, it's still, I don't know what's going to happen in this deal.

I mean, it looks like,

you know, I talked to a lot of Wall Street people this weekend and they were like,

you can't pause a deal.

You could try to underprice it, but it's bad form.

And he's just going to be sued.

That was sort of the takeaway.

So, but in terms of bots, he's correct.

It just doesn't matter from what I understand.

Well, okay.

So

I'm, I want all my money back.

I've been using a shower wash for 20 years

and it hasn't regrown my hair.

And I've just realized that.

And so I want all my money back.

I mean, the notion when Musk put that deal on pause and claimed it was because all of a sudden he's shocked that maybe more than 5% of Twitter followers are bots, he might as well put out a tweet that said, I think you're all fucking idiots and will believe anything I say.

Yes.

Because that same analysis you referenced reflected that 72% of his followers are fake or spam accounts.

And those people have all been pumping up Tesla and attacking anyone who in any way

wants to discuss.

But oh, he's shocked.

Kara, he's shocked.

He's just shocked that more than 5% of Twitter followers are spam.

He also curiously focused on the timeline thing, which was one was the algorithmic one and the other is chronological.

And as your home, and he was like, look what they're doing.

i'm like they put out a press release months ago everybody and their mother wrote long stories on it it said it was sucks he was showing everybody a magic trick and i was like this was not you might not have known it but it was written like and nobody paid no one wrote about it i'm like everybody wrote about it it was it was an interesting like he's doing this like the big reveal there are bots the big reveal you're being conf you're being controlled by an algorithm the big reveal that kind of stuff okay this is so this is what's going on it's the big reveal go ahead yes when he started acquiring shares, the stock was at 32.

On average, any peer stock is down between 20 and 40 percent.

The natural level of Twitter right now would be 22 to 25 bucks without the stock.

That's the stock right now while you're talking.

Go ahead.

Okay, it's down.

It's at 38.

The acquisition price is at 54.

It's off 33%.

Typically, you expect like an 8% return in the markets.

This is supposed to...

The deal is supposed to be done in six months.

The stock should be trading if, in fact, the market thought this deal was going to go through.

You get a discount.

Right?

The stock should be trading at 52 or 53.

It's trading at 38%, which, if you do the math, says that the market, which absorbs millions of points and emotions, says that the deal, the likelihood of this deal not closing is now 70 or 80 percent.

And people say, well, he's negotiating for a lower price.

He will not be able to negotiate a price low enough to reflect the actual value of Twitter or anything that makes any economic sense.

So, all of this is right now, Kara, is him trying to strategize

the least damaging exit wound, the least damaging breakup payment, the least damaging court settlement against him when he breaks the purchase agreement and doesn't show up with $45 billion, which he is legally obligated to do.

But again, I don't see practically how you force him to do this.

So, all this is, is a group of lawyers saying, under his direction, figure out a way to create as much confusion, somewhat legitimate reasoning to get me out of this fucking Vietnam right now, taking as few multi-billion dollar bullets as possible.

Yeah, we'll see.

I mean, what's interesting, he actually interestingly stepped it back.

A lot of us were like, it was well covered and everybody knew it, but okay.

I'm not suggesting malice in the algorithm, but rather it's trying to guess what you might want to read and in doing so, inadvertently manipulate, amplify your viewpoints without you realizing what's happening.

This is, you know, go over to TikTok.

Hello, sir.

It was just interesting.

he just figured that out you know you know

neli patel wrote back wait till you try tick tock that'll really bake your noodle uh and then he wrote back tried tick tock but it's not winding my clock um but you know i i agree i think he is funny trying to figure out

you got to go tell me he is really good on

then he just wrote iconic laconic platonic with an exclamation point i don't even know what he's doing i tell me you do edibles without telling me you're doing edibles right no i agree no i agree it's interesting and then he's attacking california which has a budget surplus.

I mean, honestly, it's just ridiculous.

So it's interesting because in this bot area, Power

Agrawal, who's the CEO of Twitter, responded to Elon, obviously, saying, let's talk about spam and let's do so.

He just did this 35 minutes ago with the benefit of data, facts, and contents.

In other words, you dumbass.

First, let me state the obvious.

Spam harms the experience for real people on Twitter and therefore can harm our business as such.

We are strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can every single day.

Anyone who suggests otherwise is wrong and then he goes on and uh and does say we suspend over a half a million spam accounts every day um we also lock millions of accounts we suspect may be spam the hard challenge which look fake superficially actually real people blah blah blah blah it goes on and on and on and on and on and it's like 10 or 12 or something like that uh for there's lots of details very important underneath the high-level description we shared this overview and estimation process with elon a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him and all of you.

So, I'm not sure what he's doing here, but he's doing something.

It reminds me when Cheryl Sandberg said that trust is our most valuable asset.

And why would we ever intentionally violate the trust of our users?

And the answer is because what's incorrect about that statement is no, he actually has a financial incentive to create false flags or false signals around user engagement and bots that create more and more impressions such that they can sell Nissan ads

and claim to Nissan that this ad was seen by X millions of people and not say, well, actually, it's only being seen by one out of third people that we report.

So the financial incentives are there for them to ignore this, except for the most blatant.

They could enforce identity.

The bottom line is, right now,

with that statement, he's the second most full of shit person in the world regarding Twitter, just behind Elon.

And I'm sorry I'm hopping around, but I can't help it.

You know what has become super interesting to track?

Every time Twitter stock goes down because of the likelihood or the reduced likelihood that the acquisition gets closed, Truth Social goes up.

Truth Social is now trading on whether or not they think Elon will get control of Twitter.

And

if he gets control, it means Trump goes on there.

If he doesn't get control, it means Trump stays on Truth Social.

So every time the likelihood of a deal with Musk going

separate from this, yeah.

So True Social is up in a down market substantially today today because the likelihood that Musk gets Twitter and Trump goes on Twitter has gone down.

It's really, it's so interesting.

The likelihood of this deal going through is now controlling True Social stock.

Anyway, it's a bit of a digression.

Anyhow,

the bot issue is a big issue, and it should be cleaned up by all these people.

Let's move away from Elon part of it.

This has been a ridiculous problem, including getting people all jazzed up about in a good way and a bad way, right, about things.

And especially

young men getting them all excited because they think everyone's in on the joke or let's all pile on and be assholes.

So it's a real, bots are a real problem, except when they're useful, which is sometimes.

So I'd be willing to give up those cute little bots to get rid of all of them.

I really think it's the sewer of the internet.

It is.

It is.

You know what it is?

It's one thing if someone disagrees with you, but when they have a mask on

or they create hundreds of fake people to yell at you outside your house.

They're being all over the place, yeah.

And they're anonymous, and you don't know their true intentions.

It really is.

And the sales team at Twitter and the CEOs there for a long time have all ignored it because that way they can lie to their advertisers and say, Look at our daily active usage.

Yeah, yep, I agree.

I think you get particularly attacked by bots.

You can just see it.

I'd love to have someone look at your feed, like who's attacking you.

Oh, I have a lot of bots.

I have.

Yeah, bots, bots, bots.

I know this sounds paranoid.

It's a mix of

troll farms sponsored by Russia, and it's bots sponsored by venture capitalists whose septic tank they call their portfolio.

I have questioned.

All right.

Okay.

Well, in any case, big deal, but not to this deal.

Anyway, Scott, let's get to a listener question.

You've got, you've got.

I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman.

You've got mail.

This one came from email, Bill from Vermont, so I'll read it.

Hi, Jungle Cat and Dog.

I enjoyed your podcast.

Thank you for the useful content.

You both praise Airbnb, but I was hoping to get your thoughts on its destructive impact.

In Vermont, there's a housing shortage for middle-class housing, while many houses are basically vacant, except for one to two weekends a month when rich people from Boston or New York come up and rent them.

This allows owners to pay the mortgage, but actually damaging the community.

Regular Vermonters are priced out of owning a house.

Communities are hurt because many houses are primarily vacant and then they're occupied.

Often it's a party of a dozen of people for a weekend, which is annoying.

Hospitality businesses are hurt because they lose customers.

I assume assume many communities are dealing with this.

How can Airbnb be structured in a way that doesn't remove the huge swaths of housing from inventory for long-term renters?

Bill, that's a very good question.

It's been the longest question for Airbnb forever in cities mostly.

I have to say on Vermont, I'm going to push back.

People have owned their homes there and not rented them for and rented them forever.

Rich people coming from Boston and New York.

And so I don't know that you'd be owning this house if they weren't but for them.

So I think they've always been doing it.

And just Airbnb makes it easier.

So

I don't think people were staying at hotels except to do this.

They were renting places up in that area.

I don't know.

What do you think?

Yeah, I have a bias here.

Airbnb is my largest holding and I'm an enormous, I like Brian Chesky so much that I send him dirty text messages at 12.30 at night.

So I have a bias here.

But

one, you can, there's, it's a nuanced argument.

There's a lot of people that can afford their house because they Airbnb it.

So it actually makes housing more affordable for some people.

Now, having said that, when somebody,

what I do agree with, when somebody goes into the business of Airbnb and they rent 10 apartments and then they turn them into full-time Airbnb and they don't pay taxes, the hotel taxes that support our infrastructure.

But they do.

Well, they've started, but

it's still spotting.

They do.

No, it's not.

It's not.

It's not.

It's not.

You're saying that in every state, Airbnb is...

I think in every state they're required to.

Yes, 100% they hit that that was water under the bridge for them okay so there's the tax issue and it sounds like I'm going to defer to you on this because it sounds like you're more knowledgeable on that but there's also an issue around I I buy rent I buy properties and rent them out and I've been doing that for over a decade and there are developers now who say we need these homes in the community so investors can only buy a certain number and I think there's some legitimacy to that that if you're in the business that certain cities might say if you own the home fine you can airbnb it or if it's your primary residence, you can Airbnb it.

I do think it makes sense to limit the number of units like.

It's an opportunistic Airbnb unit.

Yeah, that can be taken off the market for the sole purpose.

Because what you're doing is basically converting

residential into rental.

Or possible residential.

But I would argue that this company, based on, if you look at any company that's reached $100 billion in tech, I would argue the emissions and the externalities are as low or lower here than any other company that's created $100 billion in in shareholder value.

And also, I think Brian,

I'm a total sick event here.

I think Brian is very attuned to this issue and has tried to be responsive to it, but I think it's a legitimate question.

Well, they still have the party issue thing and what he's talking about, 10 people who are in the house.

I party in hotels.

What's the difference?

Yeah, I get that, but I'm just saying parties in the houses and neighborhoods.

I try to have orgies.

No one shows up.

There's a difference between having a party in someone's neighborhood versus in a hotel setting, but that's okay.

That's fine.

I think one of the issues, this is going to be their issue forever.

It's sort of a push-pull between people who are using their homes as capital and in a capitalist way, which they should be able to, and people who live in neighborhoods who don't like people tromping through with their pulled suitcases, often in just cities.

And in this case in Vermont, Vermont is a vacation state.

I think tourism, I don't know if it's its biggest, but it's got to be right at the top.

I think people have been doing this for years.

They just people have more of an opportunity to rent them than they used to, maybe.

And maybe there's more in and out.

And that could help the whole community if more people go visit places.

I know that Brian talked about

people living in places longer, rural areas that are relatively close to the city.

But I think this is going to be a problem no matter what, as people exercise their real estate for capitalism if they want to.

But Scott's right, if there's sort of a people that would have otherwise built homes for regular people who are living there full-time, it could create a screw-up in the marketplace.

You're going to see more stories on this because we're with one and two bedroom apartments across America on average up year on year 20 and 28 percent.

You're just going to see a housing crisis.

You're going to see a lot of people living out of their cars.

This is going to be,

this is going to be a

really big issue.

Anyway, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions.

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Okay, Scott, let's hear some predictions.

You kind of made a couple of the tsunami thing with the fleece people.

No, my prediction comes from, I'm parroting the founder and CEO of this great, this kind of hot VC firm, Activent.

And the guy who started is a guy named Steve Saracino.

And I spoke to him over the weekend.

He said, you're about to see

inflation's heavy hand.

The only means of controlling inflation or that will inadvertently help inflation is he says, you're about to see the great layoff.

And it's going to be amongst the unicorn folks that we have been just hiring everyone for so long.

And it didn't matter.

Just grow, just grow, just grow, pay them what they want.

These companies now are going to go into a room and go, we need to reduce SGNA by 20 or 30%.

And they're going to, I mean, it's just happening.

It's happening everywhere.

And they're in the planning stages right now.

People are being thoughtful.

You're going to see every 24 hours one to three stories.

You know, that, that,

this is mostly tech.

You're talking about mostly tech.

Oh, no, it's the, it's, it's across.

It's the slang of the unicorns.

Call it whatever you want to call.

Frontline workers, our employment's going to be really strong.

You know, Panera, we just can't get, we can't find people fast enough and we need people and people have money.

It's going to be the slaughter of the unicorns and or the jockeys.

I don't know what the right metaphor is, but you're about to see the great information age layoff over the next six to 12 months.

That company, that site layoff tracker is about to get really, really active.

All right.

All right.

And the meanwhile, Panera, can I get a job there?

I would like to make sandwiches.

They're really nice people, by the way.

The management team are really nice.

How are they keeping, how are they getting people more money, right?

More they're paying more and they're also very serious about um worker training and trying and offering uh healthy food and trying to fashion a career they lift people out of their cafes into management uh they're they're they're really like anyways i'm i i i i am i'm biased i was i served on the board there but the management team there is willing to sacrifice profit they're gonna have to for um they're gonna have to they're not gonna but by the way just so you know their business is killing it yeah Killing it.

People can't wait to get out of the house right now and order everything.

Every restaurant business.

Crazy.

Everywhere I go now, it's packed.

And you want to hear another great stat?

Over 50% of their orders start digitally.

Ah, sure.

Isn't that crazy?

Same thing with Starbucks.

I go to the Starbucks, but I do it digitally.

No, not at all.

I think it makes perfect sense.

Okay, Scott, let's go for today.

I'm going to get on a plane for Germany.

I love fly routing.

How are you getting to Germany?

Where are you?

How are you getting there?

Through Frankfurt.

Going through Frankfurt.

Lufthansa?

That's Lufthansa, yes.

Lufthansa, yes.

Yes, wind dancer.

Wind dancer.

That's what's right.

That's what it is, wind dancer.

Yes.

Are you going to do a German accent to the Germans?

Please don't.

We have.

Please don't.

The Economie Komfort, where we call it Poland and we invade it mid-flight.

You know what?

I'm so glad you're not on my flight in any case.

They love me in Germany.

I'm big in Germany.

Perhaps, but not with a fake German accent.

By the way, the big rumors, Lew Vandowski is coming to Chelsea.

That is big news in this household.

I don't know what that is.

Okay.

Supposedly, Lukaku might be going to Bayern Munich.

This is big news.

I don't care.

I do not care.

Do you know who I'm going to see in Germany?

You're going to miss?

Ashton Kutcher.

Oh, that's right.

You're interviewing Ashton Kutcher.

Ashton's very handsome.

I met him once.

Yep.

God, I couldn't stop looking at him.

Ashton is very handsome.

Yeah.

And he's a tech investor, too, right?

Very successful one, yes, actually.

He is.

He's a lovely person.

What else are you doing at the conference that I can't go to?

Oh, I'm cleaning up a lot of your mess is what I'm doing.

You better bring a big shovel, my darling.

That's a lot of cleanup on Isle Dog.

There better be a check, a Kara Swisher check headed my way.

I'm sorry, you got us invited.

You did, but you're not there.

It doesn't matter.

That's right.

I'm literally like, well, I must bring my wife, Carol.

And they're like, oh, we love Sakara Swisher.

All right.

Get it out of your system.

Love Germany.

I'm going to the Royal Premiere of Top Gun in London.

I'm going to fly to London for one day, just so you know.

That's pretty awesome.

Is Tom Cruise going to be excited?

I'm going to totally like, should I, yes, I'm going to totally bear hug him.

You think that'll work?

I would bet Tom Cruise would really like it.

I've always had a soft spot for Tom Cruise.

Something about him being a great actor and really handsome and a leading man.

I guess.

I'm just can't get past the Scientology, but nonetheless.

Okay, everyone has their, everyone has their issues.

Okay.

Well, that's a biggie.

Okay.

Can you get a selfie with Tom Cruise?

I'll try.

I'll try my best.

I'll try.

I don't think they're going to let me near him.

Anyway, that is the show.

We'll be back on Friday for more.

Scott, read us out and please don't do it in a German accent.

Thank you.

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

Ernie Ingertott engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miles Severo.

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

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

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

Lou Vandowski coming to Chelsea.

Swisher going to Hamburg.

The world has been turned upside down.

Farfennugen, Kara, Farfennugen.

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That's this month on Explain It To Me, presented by Pureleaf.

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