Roblox IPO, Facebook doesn't think it has an antitrust problem and a listener question on PlayStation5

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

And this is Piers Morgan.

No, it's not God.

Fat you.

I need a job.

I need a job.

He never shuts his pie hole.

The new co-host.

Well, yeah, that's the problem.

He actually speaks his mind.

No, he doesn't speak his mind.

Give me a break.

He was like ghosted by her on a date, which he talked about extensively, and then got to talk about it.

Oh my God.

He was ghosted by who?

Megan Markle.

Oh, really?

I did not know that.

He was trying to keep up with this shit.

I did not know.

Let me tell you.

He talked about it.

Like, he was like, oh, I'm not going to do it.

I got all my news from Fox and CNN.

Listen to me.

He doesn't get to speak his mind.

He's like a weird.

He does this constantly, attacking women.

He's like, this is really?

You really think

it's

a weird obsession with her?

He goes all out on her.

And it's really...

He was ghosted by her.

That's what he said.

He said in an an interview.

He's used, I think he used the word ghosted.

Yeah.

So, and that's what that guy was referring to.

He doesn't speak his mind.

He's, he's a pig in the way he talks about people.

It's just gross.

Actually, it's an insult to pigs.

It's an insult to pigs.

Tell us how you really feel.

I just find it like ridiculous that like, that you like immediately run to saying he speaks his mind.

Like anybody, any drunkle can say anything like at a dinner party and it's a-okay with you.

I just don't think it's the case.

I'm sorry.

I would draw the comment.

Pierce, you know, this is outrageous.

Outrageous.

He's looking, you know what?

If they don't bring Alan Alda in as the new daytime host, I'm going on strike.

Listen, who am I on the show with right now?

You get very smart.

Someone who's only ridiculously fucking liberal instead of wants their statue cemented in the history of wokeness.

No, he is like, he has a history of doing this.

He has a history.

This is like

angry white man continues to be a trend that's always.

I am all of those things.

I am all of those things.

They're always at the top.

They're always aggrieved.

They've always victims.

They never get to say what they want.

Well, he has like whatever million people on his Twitter feed.

He's got a TV show.

He's got a column.

And then he claims victimhood.

It's exhausting.

It's exhausting.

I agree.

This is exhausting.

What's our next story?

Our next story.

BuzzFeed announced massive layoffs of the Huffington Post.

BuzzFeed acquired the Huffington Post from Verizon Media last month.

And of course, it announced layoffs.

A lot of the stuff they did was people are very good reporters, you know, who are more focused on reporting.

A lot of the people that stayed are more who,

not the people that stayed, but they're focusing more on, obviously, numbers and things like that.

So what do you think about that?

That's just.

I don't know about you, but I have just had it with angry, white, aggrieved media companies.

I have just had it.

By the way, these are pretty.

It's going to have like you yelling at me about being a liberal.

It's like, it's like, it's like the

one of us is yelling at the other.

That's clearly where this is headed.

This is like SNL.

You remember Jane, you ignorant slut?

This is the first time.

Yeah, I remember that.

I'm glad you said that.

It's okay.

That was a great.

That was a great show.

So anyway, what do you think of these consolidations of media companies?

It's just going to continue.

Well, look,

kids, and when I say kids, I mean students will come into my office hours.

They never want to talk about the topic.

They want to talk about careers.

And they talk about digital media and digital marketing as if it's...

this robust ecosystem.

And digital marketing is an outstanding career as long as you go to work for Facebook or Google.

And

if you look at media companies,

we tend to think that the proxy or the forward-looking indicator of success is old media versus new media.

And that is, we go, oh, it's legacy as a newspaper, which means it's going out of business, but it's online, which means it's going to accelerate.

And the reality is that Huffington Post and BuzzFeed are much less durable than the New York Times company or even Gannett.

Right.

And that is, they have not figured out

a customer acquisition model.

They haven't figured out retention.

They are constantly getting gamed by Google and Facebook, who starch all the margin out of the traffic that they try and get there.

And basically the internet is all flowing through a couple of touch points.

And if you aren't one of those touch points, you just slowly but surely leak value.

We're seeing a huge consolidation.

There will be probably one or two winners that are able to consolidate, lay off people, and get to profitability.

I think actually our company, Vox, it looks like it might be the last woman standing, so to speak.

But BuzzFeed and Huffington Post, quite frankly, lists.

I've never understood the attraction of HuffPo.

I never understood its positioning.

I never understood its differentiation.

I never understood its kind of.

Well, it was sort of first out there with a lot of this stuff.

I mean, you know what I mean?

But what is, in your mind, what is Huffington Post's editorial view?

I don't know.

BuzzFeed has lists.

I'll give it that.

They have lists.

I know they have more than that, but they have some very excellent reports.

But what does the Huffington Post stand for in your mind?

I don't know.

I think they bought it for traffic, I guess.

I guess for traffic is what I assume they bought it for for at the time, at that moment, because of that.

And then, but they did manage to acquire some, you know, I think Ariana went all over the world opening Huffington Post Canada, which they closed down completely,

and some other things.

And I didn't, I understood it in a bigger sense, but not in an actual sense.

It didn't make any sense to me to be opening outposts all over the world just because.

She's a visionary.

But the thing is.

A company that's able to raise cheap capital, which the Huffington Post is able to do,

what you want is promise and then performance.

And the reality is a visionary like Ariana

and the notion of having journalism on the web and having celebrity kind of journalists every once in a while, although those two are oxymorons.

The bottom line is the performance hasn't matched the promise with BuzzFeed or Huffington Pro.

That's a good way to put it.

That is an excellent.

It's going to be hard.

I think probably there's news around a SPAC around BuzzFeed, of course,

as there is around Fox and others.

But there's definitely a lot more noise around BuzzFeed right now.

So you wonder if they're trying to clean it up for a SPAC situation.

Yeah, I'd say the momentum,

and we're pretty critical.

We're not afraid to throw, you know, bite the hand that feeds us.

But I would argue that the momentum at Vox is different than the momentum at BuzzFeed.

It is different.

I think our momentum is actually ⁇ I think we actually have momentum right now.

And I would argue that the ⁇ and it may be just the media coverage of BuzzFeed, but I would say the momentum, at least the perception is the momentum is not good.

And you want to go into any public offering.

The one thing SPACs aren't doing yet, and they probably should, is going after distressed properties.

You would much rather be a shitty growth company.

When I say shitty, I mean buying growth in non-economic terms than a company that has real assets but is declining in revenue.

Interesting.

So, anyways, I don't, but SPACs will get there eventually.

SPACs will start going after distressed properties.

Yep, 100%.

It's just an interesting time for me, once again.

But I think you're not going to see the end to consolidation as these things sort themselves out.

Maybe they can make their money via NFTs or some other way.

I'm joining Pierce Morgan's SPAC.

I want you to

be aggrieved white male SPAC.

You're not like him.

Let me just say.

Let me just say.

Well, thanks for that.

Thanks for that.

But

in any case, just watch him for 10 minutes.

I like Chelsea Handler.

He and her got into it.

I always thought she was great.

She's great.

I never understood why he picked it up.

Watch him for 10 minutes and you'll get the whole point.

Anyway, I will stop with the agreed white men thing, although there was an interesting story.

Oh, yeah.

I'm sure we're never going to hear that talk track again.

It's just

glad that's over.

Every day it's glad that's over.

God, and they go on and on about Dr.

Friggin' Sue's, these people.

What is their problem?

Can we talk about that for a moment?

Yes.

That's just a capitalist move.

Yes.

The publisher has just decided we will sell more of these books if we get rid of certain shit that offends people.

It's just a capitalist move.

And then Fox has decided we're going to offend those same people because there's money in it.

Both are capitalist moves.

They're using it as a thing.

You saw the, whatever his name is, Kevin, whatever the heck, the minority leader that keeps liking and disliking Trump, who's such a like a stupid windmill.

Anyway, he was really stupid windmill.

Just he went back to the bottom.

That's very good.

You should be in journalism.

A stupid windmill.

I don't think I've ever heard those two words together.

Listen to me.

I'm just saying.

Well, you're a charming nuclear reactor.

Okay.

You know what I mean?

That's good.

That's why you put up with my aggrievedness, my whiteness, and my maleness.

The one thing that's nice about your aggrieved white maleness is you're often right on certain things.

Let's go to the big story.

Just because I'm angry doesn't mean I'm wrong.

That's true.

Here's the big story.

Roblox went public this week.

Let's talk about the company and what's next for the video gaming market.

The Silicon Valley video game company, it's an indie video game company, opened its first day of trading at $64.50, a share that was up more than 43% from the reference price of $45.

That valued Roblox at $41.9 billion, up from $4 billion just over a year ago.

And you were talking about it, Scott.

In the last year, $56.9 billion was spent on gaming in the U.S.

That's up 27% from 2019.

Not a surprise.

A lot of people at home.

So what up?

Talk about it.

Well, I don't know if you remember, but a certain podcast in Q3 of last year said this thing was a gangster when it was valued at $3 billion and said it was going to be a monster IPO.

So why did you talk about your,

walk us through your thinking on that so people can learn about it?

Well, it's not even a video game company.

It really is a platform.

And what they have done is they've learned from the sins of the father and they've recognized that okay

what does facebook uh do really poorly one they lie to us and try and feign concern about the well-being of our children and this company actually has made substantial investments in content moderation they have indeed it is truly a platform where it tries to more than just stroke their fingers through the hands of their creators and then put a bullet in their head and starch all the margin from their creators.

A third of their revenue is going to actual

business plan.

Yeah, okay.

go ahead.

I mean, they are a quarter.

I believe they paid out to their creators a quarter of a billion people, and they're not actually in the business of development.

They're in the business of creating a platform.

And then it's more dispersion.

It's like, okay, the people at Activision or Blizzard shouldn't get to decide what 11-year-olds want, what video games they want to play with.

If you're an individual who comes up with an idea for a fun, cute little game involving pigs and farms, and 11-year-olds love it, we just get it out there.

We disperse, we leapfrog the traditional video game industrial complex, and we give you a portion of those rents.

No one video game, I think, has more than 10%

market share.

And the numbers are just staggering here.

Over 50%.

There are more people under the age of 18 on Roblox than there are not.

So this is our.

Taking the sins of the people before them and making it a safe gaming platform for kids.

You know, it is important.

You know, it's absolutely important.

I had the longest time struggle with my kids and the video games.

And because these large, you know, whatever the large platform was that put them out,

it just creates something that it's interesting, any of these companies taking the mistakes made, like a Shopify to an Amazon or that is exactly the right analogy.

Thank you.

Exactly the right analogy.

So

they're up 12% again today.

So

how does this whole space, not just Roblox, but what what else should be,

you know, hey, we're watching this happen.

Let's make this.

Well, there's what I call the immunity strategy or the zag strategy.

And that is when a huge player, a huge player is creating hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization and it's zagging.

For example, it is using massive investment to create so much traffic, no one can compete with it.

And then slowly but surely partnering with its retailers on its platform the way a virus partners with a host, and that is keep it alive just long enough so you can soak it dry, i.e., Amazon.

And then Shopify comes in and says, you know what?

We're not going to be quote unquote

obsessively focused on the consumer.

And as a result, basically treat our customers, our retailers like shit.

Our partners.

We steal their data.

When their business becomes too profitable, we vertically integrate into it.

We decide what goes in the box.

You don't know who the consumer is.

And Shopify said, we are absolutely going to focus.

We're going to zag.

We're going to let the retailer control the customer.

We're going to give you the data.

We're going to give you the branding.

We're going to let you decide what goes in the box.

What is public doing?

Disclosure, I'm an investor.

All right.

Robin Hood, the number one player, has created $30 billion, supposedly market capitalization.

If Goldman Sachs is willing to be a total fucking hypocrite and take this company public, what do they do?

Public says, we're not going to sell order flow.

We're not going to be broey.

We're going to have 40% women.

There is an enormous strategy of shareholder value creation around what I call the zag.

And that is when any one company creates the type of slipstream or air cover that creates hundreds of billions of dollars,

look at the externalities, look at the viruses it's creating and saying what immunities could we bring to market that are totally different than what's happened here.

There's going to be TikTok is zagging.

That should be TikTok zag.

TikTok is zagging against social, against video platforms.

It's trying to be cleaner.

It's trying to be more optimistic.

It's not allowing people to start insulting each other in the comments section.

So there's, anyway, but your analogy is exactly the right one.

Roblox is saying.

Talk about where this goes because, you know, this idea, just again, it's up 12% again today.

I think it likes creators, is what you're saying.

That's the second part, is that the respect for creators get tired in a system that's more

predatory, I guess, is the right word.

It's an abusive relationship.

YouTube is very good at publicizing the 15 people that make a million dollars on YouTube.

But there are 15 million people, creators on YouTube making less than a dollar because YouTube figures out a way to starch almost all of the margin out of the relationship.

And they have been just incredibly fucking greedy.

And Roblox is saying, okay, the key here is our partners, our creators.

So even, I think even TikTok's trying to be more generous with their creators and say, all right, how do we get the secret sauce here is leveraging other people's creative talent.

And so where I think it heads is I think there is what I call a zag in every major market.

Your guy from Neva, he's creating a zag to Google.

Yeah, he's trying.

He's saying, okay, what's the problem with Google?

Google started out as the best place to get to the right information, and slowly but surely, Google has become a place that takes you to another place they can further monetize.

Why?

Because the advertising model is the tobacco to nicotine.

It's the shit that gives you cancer.

And so your buddy at Neva said, I'm going to make it subscription-based and I won't have the temptation.

Then my focus will be to take you to the best place based on your query.

That is a ZAG strategy.

By the way, I think that company is going to be a monster.

They just closed their seed round, I think.

And he strikes me as incredibly interesting.

Yeah, he did just cover it.

He did.

He did.

He's a really interesting guy.

And he knows.

I think

I had him to a class of mine and he was talking to the students why he did.

He said, I I felt like I was part of something very menacing, essentially, which was interesting.

All right.

So, what's next for the video game industry?

What happens to these, the big ones that, you know, sort of it was sort of like the record industry, and then they pick winners, you know, and then shower them with attention and also take a lot of their value, essentially.

What happens?

That's how the video game industry have these big video gaming companies that then publish these things.

Same thing with the book industry, everything.

This dispersion, bring it home to dispersion.

Well, effectively, dispersion is kind of a pedantic, aggrieved white male way of saying

when you leapfrog the traditional players.

So Warner Brothers and Wonder Woman 1984 have leapfrogged traditional movie theaters.

And they've said, look, it's better for us.

We'll create more shareholder value if

we pulse HBO Max by creating value and not taxing people by saying, all right, you either got to see a movie as a wait 12 weeks.

So these guys have said, all right, we're going to leapfrog the traditional gatekeepers.

What would be interesting is if Sony or Microsoft create their own platforms and piss off the big game developers and say, we're going to let individual creators have access to this platform.

Yeah.

So I think it's really exciting.

Roblox at this valuation, I'm not a buyer.

I think it's an amazing company.

But you know who else is zagging that just filed to their IPO?

It's Coursera.

Coursera.

Coursera said, okay,

there's this traditional...

enforcer of the caste system called elite universities and we're going to zag and try and bring the cost down and they went to moocs and then they went to short form courses.

They, according to their S1, I think, or they just filed to go public, they did a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue.

So anyways, my point is, and I think this is the lesson to young people.

When you see,

for example, Tesla, Tesla now has, even with its, Tesla has sold off 35% in the last like four weeks, which is extraordinary.

But even with that sell-off, it's had a sell-off because there's lots of reasons, but go ahead.

Yeah.

But it's still, it's unfair to say it's a sell-off because it's worth a half a trillion dollars.

It's worth the entire automobile industry, even after its sell-off.

That is going to attract competitors.

And I think an interesting analysis, if you're in the automobile industry or you're just a young person trying to think through strategy, is to say, what are the externalities or what are the negatives of Tesla and what automobile company could zag?

Because everyone's zigging.

Everyone's saying.

Because of the difficulty of the technology and the 100%.

But it's an interesting exercise to go through.

And I'm just using this as an example.

Because by 2030, Volvo said they're going all electric.

By 2035, GM said.

So everyone's zigging.

Is there an opportunity around something else?

But anyways, my point is, as a species, what a giant gas guzzling car.

What do you think?

Well, those were, that was what saved Detroit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, do you remember the first time you saw a Hummer and you thought, oh my God, the species is going to go extinct?

Yeah, but the Ford 150s, you're right.

That was extremely exciting.

So I think, anyways, it's, it's, I love the Zag.

I love the Zag.

The most innovative company companies of the last 10 years, I think, have been companies people don't talk about.

I'm going to going to call you Zag from now on.

You're a Zag.

Zag?

You're Zag.

You're a Zag.

That would be your superhero name.

You just Zag all over the place.

You'd be like, Scott, calm down.

Slow down.

I like that you're looking at me in the context of a superhero versus the aggrieved white guy.

Many superheroes are, if you think about, you know, the nemesis.

Iron Man's pretty aggrieved.

He's always mad.

That guy's not aggrieved.

That guy's a gangster.

He is, but he's often like

mad.

There's a lot of mad superheroes.

I would say Hulk is an aggrieved white guy.

Oh, yes.

He's basically a scientist that didn't get tenure.

The majority of my colleagues at Stern are the Hulk minus the muscles.

Oh, man.

Nothing like a mad professor.

Madam.

Oh, yeah.

It gets scary.

That's it.

I'm going to throw my PBS tote bag at you if you continue this.

That was good.

I just thought.

You don't like tenure, so they must love you, right?

They must love you.

Yeah.

No, I'm very popular around those parts right now.

Yeah, someone mentioned that to me.

I was in an NYU class

about how much they don't like me?

No,

they were using euphemisms.

Like, well, Scott's an interesting character.

Scott's, you know, he causes a lot of discussion around here.

They were trying to write around what they were.

I was like, what are you trying to say?

He's a pain in the ass.

Is that what you think?

No, he's a breath of fresh air.

Right.

He's a breath of carbon monoxide when the garage door has been closed.

Oh, it was funny.

No,

I got to give it to them.

They are so much generous and patient with me than I would be with me.

Yeah.

Fortunately, the deans have been like wonderful, generous people.

Anyway,

what are we talking about?

Where are we?

Bring us back.

Scott, you're talking about Scott again.

All right.

We're going to go to a quick break.

When we come back, that was a very good call on Roblox.

I'm going to give you credit there.

There you go.

Is that what you need to do?

Road to the blocks.

Road to the box.

Road to the blocks.

Before we go, you know what?

The most exciting news.

What?

I got a video, a text message video of a kid dunking.

Uh-huh.

And it was like, oh, my son.

Yeah.

Your son is dunking.

I know.

He's like, right.

I have like 20.

He's like,

he made me go.

I actually had fun.

I didn't think I would have fun because I'm so little.

And last time I had a basketball

sixth grade.

Basketball's great.

You know what?

He had a great time.

He goes to the local neighborhood court here in Shaw and plays with all the kids there.

And they were all wearing masks.

It was nice.

The mean streets of Calorama.

Is that what you're trying to get?

It's like getting out and meeting people in the neighborhood.

It was nice.

Can you just not take a nice- I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

There was no one.

Green white mail coming out.

Sorry.

I never think there are mean streets here.

There's lovely people who live in this neighborhood.

So

anyway, he had a great time and it was nice.

And he does.

he throws down i saw that video i watched it several times he does i have lots of fun that's exciting it's really he like can reach the top and throw the ball in he's very that's called a dunk cara that's what it means to dunk i know reach up and throw it down i know i know you know what i did i tried to pull his pants down that's what i tried nice i was trying to beat him

actually you know you you never listen to my other things because you uh uh you ignore me completely uh but i interviewed spike lee today and we had a long discussion about basketball you're kidding yeah how was he great funny it's a really fun it's a fun easy interview NYU.

NYU.

That's right.

He talks about NYU.

He did not talk about Scott Galloway, though, just so you know.

Okay, we're going to go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk more about the legal battles in big tech and a listener mail question.

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Scott, we're back.

Facebook is asking a federal judge to dismiss antitrust lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission and the state's

attorneys general.

The company is arguing that the government has no valid basis for alleging the social media giant is suppressing competition.

This is the first legal move in the company.

It's going to be a long time, I think, since antitrust charges were handed down in December.

Meanwhile, this week, a bill that would allow news outlets to bargain with tech platforms over the distribution of their content was introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers so what's happened in australia is coming here it's called the journalism competition and preservation act that sounds sad i have to say and it's being tout as a way to say local news uh and so it looks a lot like what happened in australia so what the things are a moving what do you think what do you think what's going on here obviously facebook's got to slap back

it's going to be interesting i see this as It's coming down to a battle between a lot of the judges that were appointed by the Trump administration

that never, you know, I are probably more sort of bork antitrust.

They're more about let the markets go where they go.

Although we'll see, this has been a bit of a bipartisan issue versus two total gangsters, Professors Tim Wu and Lena Khan.

And they've both been appointed to posts within the administration.

And you do not have to do that.

Lena's at the FTC.

Let's say Lena Khan is going to the FTC or allegedly.

I mean, she's got to get through the, be approved and stuff.

And then Tim Wu is joining the National Economic Council.

That's right, right?

And you see?

Yeah, I've had both of them.

I think we've had both of them on the podcast, and they're both just incredible.

She's an inspiration.

You know, she's like 17 and is a legal scholar.

And Tim has the ability to just bring stuff down to kind of very basic, like you listen to him say something, you go, well, that makes sense.

So I think it's super exciting that both of them are in the administration.

I think

they're exactly the kind of people.

that you want wrestling with these issues such that you can trust that they will come up with really thoughtful decisions that are somewhere between, you know, the recognized the grays and the importance and the need for capitalism free markets, but at the same time recognize the concentration of power that's occurred here.

I think that the signal, Tim is joining the technology and competition policy at the National Economic Council and Lena at the FTC.

They're considered anti-tech.

Like if you had to put them in a position, well, I wouldn't even say, I don't know.

They're not anti-tech, they're anti-monopoly.

Right.

And I think that what we fail to realize is that breaking up monopolies will be really good for tech.

It just might not be good for Facebook or Google CEOs.

I think it's going to be good for their shareholders.

I think it's going to be great for their employees to have

more organizations bidding or trying to rent their talent.

I think it's going to be great for the markets, great for job growth, great for taxation.

So I would argue that professors Wu and Khan are very pro-tech.

I just think they're anti-monopoly, which, by the way, is a very Republican capitalist.

positioning although Republicans are not saying we just don't shouldn't mess with success is often their argument.

They They seem to be less sympathetic.

This feels like a bipartisan issue to me.

Yeah, it does.

It does.

I think it would be really interesting to see what kind of influence they'll have and that the road to confirmation because

when there was a report of Khan's nomination, whether it was true or not,

Mike Lee, who's, I think he's really one

many cards short of a deck,

he said that Khan's nomination, if true, was deeply concerning.

And he criticized her youth and experience.

It's just ridiculous.

She's really, you know, saying.

She's a kid, essentially.

Ms.

Kahn, no doubt, has a promising career ahead.

What, he's saying that like it's a bad thing?

But for God's sake, we're talking about technology.

I know.

I was like, you know,

we don't want to have Strom Thurman figuring out how to regulate.

Let's get Strom Thurman dug up from the grave and ask about search.

I know, right, right.

So, anyway, so, and then he said her views on antitrust enforcement are also wildly out of step with a prudent approach to law.

I mean, honestly.

She's fucking John Travolster in step.

Yeah.

She is literally on the disco floor with that young woman's step.

She's got step, Kara.

She's got step.

I think he's just, he's really lost the narrative, as they say.

And then David Cicillini, who she worked for during, worked with Khan during the tech investigation, said it was a major victory for locally owned businesses, workers, and everyone who's been negatively affected by the dominance of big tech.

She worked for him on the anti-best congressional hearing I have ever witnessed.

Absolutely.

She was in the background, and

Representative Cicillini put on a masterclass.

Masterclass.

Agreed.

Agreed.

He's young.

Are you kidding?

They wouldn't say that about Mark Zuckerberg when he was 24.

What a brilliant person he is.

No, he's an innovator.

He's an innovator.

It's just ridiculous.

No, you're an innovator.

You've got another job.

If you're young and worth a billion dollars, you're an innovator.

Yeah.

And you're a great American.

But if you're young and a woman, you're inexperienced.

Yeah.

Yep, exactly.

And a woman of color.

So

Tim's book, his 2019 book, was The Curse of Bigness, Antitrust in the New Gilded Age.

Obviously, there's a lot of books in the book.

That's a great book.

Yeah.

That is a great book.

I read like two books a year, and that's one of them.

That was an outstanding book.

Yep.

And also, Biden's being very careful not to put any tech, too many tech people in big positions, like big prominent positions.

You know, they don't want to do,

you know, there was a rumor that Eric Schmidt was going to be in the administration role, and I think progressive groups were like, mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm, like that kind of thing.

I think that's a tough one.

Yep, yep.

So this is going to be interesting.

So Facebook's obviously going to

fight back hard here.

They're going to hire every lawyer that they can get their hands on and try to push back on this.

But I do feel like this is the worm has turned.

The worm is turned.

Worm is turned.

We'll see.

They could have some wins.

They could have some wins.

They're very clever people.

There's some really books that are coming out that are not so pretty.

There's Shira Franklin and Cecilia Wang, who are from the New York Times,

have a book coming out in July that I think is not.

It's called The Ugly Truth, I think it's called.

Facebook, that's the name of the book.

So I think there'll be a lot of reporting on what happened within there just right when

this stuff

is coming out.

So we'll see.

We'll see.

I think it's going.

I'm going to look it up.

Anyway, we're going to move on to listener mail.

All right, Rebecca, please play the question.

It's for Scott, I think.

You've got, you've got.

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

You've got mail.

Hi, Scott and Kara.

Scott, this is a former student of yours leaving a message here.

My name is John based in Los Angeles.

And I have a question for you about what's going on with Sony's sale of the PlayStation 5 console.

It seems like there's a significant violation of the Consumer Protection Act here.

The Consumer Protection Act is clear that we have the right to be informed about the quality, quantity, potency, purity standard, and price of goods to protect the consumer against unfair trade practices.

Sony and its retail partners have done nothing to stop bots from buying all the stock.

How is this not a violation of the Consumer Protection Act?

Thanks.

So first up, John, it's great to hear from you.

I love hearing from my 5,500 alumni.

So thanks for reaching out.

Wait, have you affected 5,500 young minds?

Infected or affected?

I said infected.

Infected?

Yeah.

Keep going.

Sorry.

Thanks for that.

Anyway, so

scarcity value is really interesting.

And essentially, like everything, it's linked to instinct.

And that is

previous generations or in

olden days, you were really smart instinctively, or it was an instinct to become obsessed over scarcity.

If you sensed a scarcity of food, supposedly we have a third of the spinal ganglia of our brain is in our gut, you became obsessed with finding food the moment there was a scarcity of it.

You became obsessed.

with finding a mate if there was a scarcity because survival and propagation are really important.

And that is still with us.

This notion that the moment we perceive whether it's artificial or not, and it usually is artificial, scarcity, the value, the perceived value of that product skyrockets.

So in this case, so you go buy a Panerai watch and you go into any Panerai store and they're going to tell you, we don't have that model, or there's only seven.

And it's not because there's a supply constraint on the parts and movements.

It's because luxury has mastered or tapped into the instinctive need of scarcity.

And they create artificial scarcity to increase the value.

The latest real gangsters around perceived scarcity are these new NTFs that are trying to convince you that if I create just one digital application of this video or a piece of art, that it might be worth millions of dollars.

That is really tapping into what I'll call instinctive overdrive around scarcity value.

And in this instance, what Sony has decided is if some people, some actors, whether they're good actors or bad actors, move in with bots and create the illusion of scarcity, It drives up the value.

And all of a sudden we become very focused, even obsessed, in getting the PS5.

The problem is the person that pays for that is just the average household that just wants a PS5 when it comes out.

So do you, you know, what is the trade-off?

Schools, universities, higher education have massively tapped into this bullshit notion of scarcity.

Harvard has the endowment, the supply, the technology to increase their freshman class tenfold.

But they want to create scarcity because they're they're drunk on luxury and believe they're Hermes, not public servants.

So, scarcity value and understanding it and understanding how to leverage it and trade off short-term revenues to create an obsession, instinctual,

an instinctive obsession with getting more of that product is an incredibly deaf business strategy.

And that's all that's being applied here.

The question is: whether or not, does it violate FTC or does it violate antitrust?

I don't know.

At what point does a bot become a person?

If I leave my computer and program something to notify me,

is that a bot or is that a person?

I don't know.

But I think the interesting thing here is how great brands and companies leverage scarcity value.

Yeah, yeah.

And yet, not powerful for consumers.

Well, there is some psychic reward to believing that you got something that has scarcity value.

I don't even know.

We still have to talk about NFTs at some point, which we will.

You know what?

It's been seven minutes.

It's been seven minutes, and I want to trigger you.

Pierce Morgan, he's my hero.

He's my hero.

He's my hero.

I think he makes a lot of sense.

A lot of sense.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

We're going to take one more quick break.

That was an excellent answer, Scott.

I'm going to be really nice to you today because that's the only thing that seems to work.

Today.

Today.

Today.

Well, that's a great goal in a partnership.

You know what?

We're in a long-term partner.

Is that what you say to your wife?

Tell you what, I'm going to be nice to you today.

Here's the situation.

I think we've just struck a long-term partnership, and you're like, what?

Just a minute.

You're like, no, oh, no, oh, no.

I'm stuck with this lady for a while.

You're the future ex-Mrs.

Galloway, just in a professional sense.

We will delve into that situation later, but right now, we're going to take one more quick break and we'll be back for predictions.

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Okay, Scott, prediction time since you're just so good on Roblox.

And one thing I will note: I predict you're going to be on Bill Maher's show.

Go on.

I hear you.

I don't know what you're talking about.

What did you say?

You've been invited finally to the Bill Maher Show.

Tell me about how you feel about that.

What are you going to talk about?

I think I'm, at the end of the day, I think I'm like Lyle Lovett, and that is they bring me on a talk show hoping that Julia Roberts will come on.

I think that they're using me to get to you, but I don't care.

I'm not a talking show.

I know.

I think I'm much back on.

Anyways, anytime I meet someone who's nice to me, I'm like, does this person want me on their podcast or are they just trying to get to Kara?

Anyway.

You're my gator.

You're the gating mechanism for Kara, Swisher.

Anyway, tell me what you're going to talk about.

What do you think your themes are?

I don't know.

I think my guess is we're going to talk about Megan and Harry, and there's a one-in-three chance I'll be canceled.

Oh, yeah.

And we're going to talk about

Piers Morgan before you nailed off about him, but go ahead.

Go ahead.

The honest truth is, I don't know what we're going to talk about.

I imagine we'll talk about my book, Post-Corona, from Crisis to Opportunity.

Yes, good idea.

But Larry Whitmore, who's, as you said, is lovely and funny, is on the show, as is Anna Gerwich.

Is that her name?

She's a wonderful author that talks about family dysfunction, which is redundant.

That's our wheelhouse.

That's right.

Yeah, there you go.

That's right.

So I'm going to be able to get a good time.

That's going to be good.

Everybody's coming in for Scott.

Is this week?

It's tomorrow.

I got to be honest.

It's a dream of mine.

I love Bill Maher.

I think he's courageous.

I think that's a dream of truly spark.

You're of the same mind in many ways, I have to say.

You have all of that.

Aggrieved, angry old guys.

No, but I think you'll both feel like you'll bond.

I think you'll bond.

I think you'll bond rather well.

Are you going to do it long?

Are you going to Los Angeles?

It's kind of fun to be on.

Yeah, I'm flying out there this afternoon.

Unfortunately, it's not as much fun.

They are very responsible and it's inspiring.

They do.

testing, rapid tests the same day, no congregating, studio audiences distanced.

They're taking it very seriously.

As a matter of fact, they have two panelists instead of three, so everyone can sit more than six feet apart.

Yeah, you'll have fun.

It's a great set.

It's a really fun set.

And also, there's two bed and shooters.

There's usually a party afterwards, and you're not going to get to go to that.

That just sucks.

That just blows.

Maybe you could have a slow down for the party.

You and like, who else in it?

California is having real troubles getting everyone, although some people are getting it.

It seems rather disorganized everywhere, of course, as I've discussed.

Okay, what is your actual prediction?

So I look, Roblox,

gangster,

kind of re-engineering or dispersion of video games.

I think the IPO to watch, and I need to dig into the S1, I need to understand the pricing, but I think the term Coursera and Coursera IPO are going to be terms

that are going to be in the business news and on CNBC a lot.

And I think the Coursera IPO, I'm not going to predict what the IPO is going to do until I dig in and understand the numbers, but

their consumer pickup here and revenue here, and the company's still losing money.

But Coursera,

if the IPO cements and the lead up to the IPO cements their brand is sort of the leader and the pioneer in the dispersion of campus to online learning, you could have a company that could really rocket on its IPO and pull the future forward with that additional capital.

So anyways, my prediction is that just as no one had heard about Roblox four months ago and now everyone's talking about it, we're about to go through the same upward cycle of awareness and value creation just through perception around Coursera.

Did you notice that Sundar Pachai answered our question about Google Courses?

He did?

Yes.

Sunder himself did.

Yeah.

He's so likable.

I know, isn't he?

Did he tag me or he just tagged you?

He did.

He tagged you.

Don't worry.

He tagged you.

I missed that.

He said it was a response and he said, Professor Galloway and Karis Wisher,

we just announced, Sundar, we just announced, is now open for Google career certificates in data analytics, project management, and UX design.

And then he specifically tagged you and me.

Wow.

Isn't that nice?

Yeah.

So okay, don't break them up.

I like them.

I like them.

I mean, that's how easy it is, right?

I'm like, well, maybe Google isn't that bad.

That's either so likable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He answered your question.

You were said was wondering about the same thing when someone asked, Ryan Merrill asked, whatever happened to Google certification program you and Karis Wisher talked about nearly a year ago.

And then soon our answer answered.

Weighed in.

He weighed in.

So

a little bit more.

50,000 plus have graduated from our IT support certificate and have prepared for careers in IT.

We're now adding Google career certificates in data analytics, project management, and UX design, expanding our consortium of employers

of hiring graduates.

There you go.

Well, that's nice.

50,000 people.

Yeah.

There you go.

Serious.

There you go.

You're making an impact, Scott.

You're having a...

Oh, yeah.

This is all about me.

Thank you.

You seriously, you play me like a fucking fiddle.

You're like, okay,

I've smacked them a little too hard.

You're like, oh, I heard you going on Bilmar.

You literally play.

I'm so happy for you.

You're going.

You'll enjoy it.

I think you'll be great.

And more people should have a little Scott.

Two things.

Two things.

The first is I feel very manipulated.

And second, I like it.

I like it.

Thank you.

I like it.

The whole world will get to see

the world of HBO Max, at least, will get to see the Scott Galloway.

We all know.

Okay, that's the show.

I will be excited to watch you on Bill Maher.

We'll be back on Tuesday.

You can tell me about how it went and how Los Angeles is.

I love Los Angeles.

I love LA.

As soon as I get vaccinated, I'm flying out to LA.

I'm going to go to Cobb salad at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

I'm going to go to Kearney's.

I'm going to go eat an Outburger when we land at the airport.

Oh, that's a good idea.

There's a good one on the way to Bill Marshall.

Yeah, I love L.A.

There's a there's a great lunch place.

It's so inside, though.

I don't know what I don't know what their rules are right now, actually.

See, my fraternity brothers at dinner at a place called Massas or Mastos?

Mastos.

Yeah, yeah, it's Mastros.

Mastros?

Yeah.

Wow, you're so down in L.A.

I love L.A.

I spent a lot of time there.

I miss it.

I miss it much.

I have many friends there.

Anyway, go to NY, have a good time, at nymag.com slash pivot to submit your questions for the podcast.

The link is also in our show notes.

Scott, don't forget to wear your mask too, because that's the new season.

100%,

even though you've been vaccinated.

Anyway, read us out.

Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanas, Ernie Intertot, engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Hannah Rose and Andrew Burrows.

Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

We're an Android user.

Check us out on Spotify or frankly wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you like the show, please recommend it to a friend.

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

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

Kara's son can jump really high and push that round thing down.

It's called a dunk.

Dunk.

Throwing down.

The Swisher children, the Swisher boys, throwing down.

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