London gives Uber the boot, the billionaire's 2020 strategy, and streaming wars continue

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Sky Galloway.

Kara, you sound low energy.

I'm not low energy.

It's just Thanksgiving exhausting time for me, especially now that there's a war on on Thanksgiving, apparently.

Did you hear that?

Did you want to say more?

Oh, God.

President Trump last night was acting like there was a war.

Remember the war on Christmas, which wasn't really a war?

There is now apparently a war on Thanksgiving, which said nobody, never, anytime.

In any case, happy Thanksgiving, fall harvest, and all the seasonal holidays.

I am so grateful to be here with you, Scott.

How can you not love Thanksgiving?

No malls, no Jesus.

Pies, everywhere.

Pies till the end of time.

Amanda's mother cooks like nine pies.

I'm a little bit nervous for tomorrow.

Do you have a lot of family?

Who's in town at the Swisher boys?

No, the Swisher boys always go on a crazy trip with their other mom, and they're in Tokyo right now sending me pictures from like

Tokyo.

That's where they are, sending from Mount Fuji.

So they always go to somewhere.

They went to Cuba last year and I am in Boston with Amanda and her family, which has about approximately 412 people.

So here I am.

Wow.

That is literally, that's crazy.

You're in a lot of cities.

A lot of news, though.

A lot of stuff.

A lot lot of news.

We've got a lot to talk about.

I mean, first of all, obviously one of the biggest this week is London is ending Uber's license to operate.

The city is Uber's biggest in the EU market.

The London Transportation Regulator stripped its license to operate in the city, although that's under appeal.

They said the company is not fit and proper, I love the British people, to run private

ride hiring service.

And there's a pattern of failure that puts passengers at risk.

It's an identification system that allows unauthorized drivers to game the system.

So it has 21 days to appeal the ruling, and then the decision puts 45,000 licensed drivers out of work in London.

And so what's interesting here is that Uber was the first place Darik Khosrashahi, the new CEO, went when he became CEO because he had so many problems in London, and it was such a critical market.

What do you think about this?

It's just another thing for Uber, correct?

Yeah, and what's happening here, they're basically saying that a bunch of people are claiming to be Uber drivers that aren't Uber drivers, and that's a bit of a red herring or a false flag.

The same thing happened.

I don't know if you saw it, but I think it was yesterday.

Chicago announced a new density tax.

But it's not really a density tax.

Again, that's another kind of head fake.

What it is, is it's a tax.

The density tax only applies to ride-hailing firms, not to taxis.

So what you have here is kind of overdue kind of...

Governments are fed up.

They look at this organization that's come in.

They didn't

so much as apply for a business license.

It's not paying their fair share of taxes.

And there was an interesting article in Business Business Insider basically saying that the value creation at Uber is a function of regulatory arbitrage.

And if you think about New York, where at one point it used to cost $1.4 million to get a taxi medallion for the right to have this unit of delivery called a taxi, and someone borrowed money, a driver borrowed money to finance that, they were paying $100,000 to $140,000 a year just in interest, whereas Uber doesn't pay that.

So if your unit of delivery has $100,000 a year advantage, you literally just can't compete.

You can't compete.

Yep.

Yep.

And so my uncle, my Uncle Michael in London was my family from London, was a

black cab driver.

And he probably made, he put a daughter through school.

They had a nice middle-class lifestyle.

He was the sole income earner.

He probably, I would guess he made $60,000 to $100,000 a year.

He had a nice middle-class life.

He spent two years learning every crook and cranny of the London red driver.

Those London black cab drivers are fantastic.

Yeah, they're the real deal, right?

And they're charming and they're sort of almost like the best kind of PR spokespeople.

Yeah, they're tour guide.

Yeah, they're wonderful.

And I think it's expensive.

I'm still getting over that you have an uncle who drives black cabs in London, but go ahead, keep going, continue.

There we go.

Okay, sure.

Wonderful guy, Uncle Michael.

Anyway, so

these

this is municipalities pushing back on Uber.

And what you're about to see, and I'd like to, I actually looked, I watched the video of you at the Deal Book conference asking

the economically feasible question.

Yeah.

Yeah.

By the way, you are fearless.

I mean, I always really appreciate you getting up there.

Thank you.

Well, Andy Ross wanted me to do that.

They wanted, you know, I'm there to be like, I'm the mean lady in the audience, essentially.

But I was, you have to ask that question, the economically feasible question.

You're one of those things.

Yeah.

Not just.

Not just Uber, but Lyft and the others, this feasibility.

And I think there was a great piece in the New York Times this week about the Amazon, like sort of the advantages they've gotten through taxing and through other things that they don't have to, that these retailers can't keep up because of the constant innovation that's paid for elsewhere or through no taxes or blank, blank, blank, whatever it is.

That's right, anti-competitive behavior.

But I was fascinated by your question.

And basically, Dara said that ride-hailing is the core business.

We don't need a flywheel, and this will be profitable.

And so I dug into the earnings call and tried to understand the economics of this thing.

And I do believe that they could get to profitability by their state of 2021.

But here's the thing, between governments deciding, well, you should be subject to a fraction of the regulatory and tax burden as every other transportation company, they're coming to that realization and they're coming up with, you know, concentration or density taxes.

They're coming up.

They're basically banning them from cities.

So you're going to see more taxes

levied against Uber.

Yeah, and then there's the driver stuff.

Then there's the driver stuff like in California, AB5.

And then they're going to have to raise prices.

So

that's what I was getting at with Dara.

You're going to have to raise.

These prices are just false.

100%.

And so what will happen?

So on Monday night, I have a board meeting in Philadelphia on Tuesday, and I'll take an Uber from New York to

Philadelphia late Monday night.

Yeah, I take Ubers everywhere.

What?

Yeah, I take Ubers everywhere.

Okay.

Yeah.

What's that?

400.

What does that do?

What does that do?

If you take Uber X, it's like $250.

If you take a black car, it's $450.

Can't you get on like a mega bus?

What are you talking about?

Really?

A mega bus?

Yes, get on.

But I don't work for Google.

What's a mega bus?

It's a bus that's $10.

It goes to $200.

But anyways,

I literally take Uber absolutely everywhere.

I think I spend between $1,500 and $250, $100 a month.

But here's the thing.

It's probably not good for the environment.

It probably should cost more.

It probably,

the fact that drivers can't, they can't figure out a way to get drivers' minimum wage across the board.

I mean, there's just a lot of externalities here that the government has decided, okay,

we're going to move in.

So what will happen?

They could get to profitability.

I think Dara was being honest there.

But the problem is for them to get to profitability, they'll have to withdraw from certain markets.

They'll have to take their growth way down.

And their current market capitalization.

It's smaller.

What you were talking about before.

100%.

Smaller.

Their market cap.

Their market cap reflects a company that maintains the current growth rates and gets to profitability, and they can't do both.

So yes, the good news is, yes, I do think this company can get to profitability.

The bad news is it's going to be a nice little profitable company worth $10 billion, not $50.

Right.

I get once again, which is this idea that, you know, there were a lot of, there was one question there at that thing, whether, you know, does Dara lack the vision?

I just think Dara understands this.

You know, like he's not like Travis.

He's not killing in every city.

It's very easy to kill in every city if you're not actually making money.

And so it was an interesting question is that he's, you know, he's actually doing the math and seeing the problem that it faces him, I think.

And I think that's disheartening.

to a lot of people who was were really hoping this was like the golden ticket to everywhere.

But the one thing that is problematic is this driver fraud, whether that's going on.

And they certainly have got a tamp down on.

They've been trying to fix those issues of safety and everything else.

And they introduced a taping that you can tape your ride, which seems unusual to me.

But they're trying all kinds of things to fix that issue.

It's just a question of how they treat two things to me, how they treat drivers and whether they get the money they deserve.

And then secondly,

you know, the smallerness.

You're right.

They're going to have to be smaller.

Juneau closed.

The ride share folded last week.

And their parent company get partnered with Lyft.

I mean, this is going to be, you know, there's one issue.

Maybe if there's just two of them, they can do something like that's more, more economic, but it's difficult.

It's difficult.

Anyway, thinking of economics, are billionaires pricing themselves out of democracy?

Michael Bloomberg, he's pissed off everybody.

Like Elizabeth Warren's hair is on fire, essentially.

He announced he's joining the crowded primary.

His net worth is $52 billion.

He's not doing any grassroots fundraising.

So he's not going to qualify for the Democratic Democratic primary debates.

He doesn't care.

He won't appear on the ballot in early states, but he's about to buy like tons and tons and tons of ads and television ads all over the place.

So what think you of this candidacy?

It's sort of the, I'm going to buy my way into it.

That's what some of the other candidates are saying.

$31 million on ads in 25 media markets.

What do you think?

Yeah, and he also gets cheaper ad rates because he's buying those ads as a candidate as opposed to a PAC.

And for some reason, broadcast outlets have different,

they're mandated or they're regulated into offering the lowest possible price to candidates themselves, but not to PACs.

So it's sort of the law of unintended consequences that a billionaire is getting lower rates on his

campaign ads than, say, an Elizabeth Warren or somebody else.

Well, actually, she's not taking PAC money.

But it's just, there's a lot of strange things going on.

Look, I think billionaires buying their way onto stage as

Howard Schultz.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, as Howard Schultz tried to do as, or was thinking about doing, and as Tom Steyer has done.

I mean, Tom Steyer wouldn't be on stage unless unless he was a billionaire.

Having said that, I think with Bloomberg, I do think that running what is ultimately one of the 20 largest economies in the world for 12 years,

I think that he does have some, I think he is a legitimate candidate.

The fact that he's worth $52 billion, that being a huge asset, look, Citizens United has made it such that money is seen as kind of this democratic voice.

And you have a huge,

we live in the ultimate capitalist Darwin Hunger Games.

And that is, we've decided that people with

get to do a lot of things, including be a viable candidate for president by sheer virtue of their wealth.

And these TV markets are going to love it.

The TV marks that

the money that they're spending.

Interestingly, he hired to be his digital director Facebook's chief marketing officer, which is sort of like fascinating.

But do you think these attacks by the other candidates will work?

Like you're buying your way in,

you gave a lot of money to Republicans.

And then the controversy around people from Bloomberg that they won't cover Bloomberg himself and they won't cover the Democrats, but they will continue covering Trump and they won't do any investigations.

I think every talk about heads blowing off a lot of people internally there.

You know, I wrote to some people who used to work for me.

I'm like, wow, that's something else.

That's, you know, well, this is your bag.

You're a journalist.

What do you think of this?

I think it's awful.

I think it's incredibly bad media ethics.

You know, I'm not surprised necessarily, but it certainly is.

If I was working at Bloomberg, I'd be horrified and I don't know what I would do.

I would quit.

I would quit.

I would quit.

But here's the thing.

This is a question.

If I saw that memo from John Micklethwaite, I would quit.

Right.

But

here's the issue.

How do we get back in the White House, we being Democrats, without taking our gloves off?

Well, this is

more than gloves.

This is unethical.

Yeah, you've got to be unethical.

Fox television.

Rupert Murdoch is unethical.

Fox television has basically become totally ⁇

there is no journalistic integrity there.

They've just decided they're going to defend the president regardless of what he does.

So do we just stand by and just complain and bark at the moon about it?

Or do we take our gloves off?

I'm ready for shit to get real.

But it's just, it seems like, I get it.

I get it.

I get it.

I get the

any way to get there is the way to get there.

And I just don't think that's the case.

I don't know.

I think Democrats are different.

I think Democrats are different.

Not all the time.

But certainly at least aspire not to cheat, aspire not to lie, aspire not to lose every ethical consideration.

And of course, that might mean you lose, as usual.

That's sort of the issue.

So we can sit around and console our loss and our woke nature.

I mean,

I think we got to get in there and we got to mix it up.

We got to make deep fakes.

Let's make some deep fakes.

Except now they're kind of real.

They're like, deep fakes don't even count.

Like everything that comes out.

Did you see the whole turkey back and forth with Trump?

I mean, I was like, insane.

Like

every day it's a lie.

It's just, the thing is, every day it's a lie, like a serious lie that they're like, yeah, I lied.

You want to see some lies come on our way.

I mean, I bet your concerns around the ethics around Bloomberg are going to dissipate pretty fast when we see the conspiracies that come out after a Jewish billionaire who owns a media company.

What kind of conspiracies they're going to try and get him with?

Yeah, that's true.

It's going to be, it's going to be crazy.

So I'm like, my viewpoint is buckle up.

It's about to get rough.

Yeah.

Do you think he has a chance, though, or is he going to do the Howard Schultz and

cha-cha off to the left or right, so to speak, right, I guess, for him?

I'm too close to it because I really, I appreciate the man.

I lived in New York.

I thought he did a fantastic job of threading the needle between economic growth and having concern for the unions.

And

I think Chris was stopping Fris, which he tried to walk away from.

You know what's scary about that?

It was absolutely the wrong thing to do.

I think it helps him nationally.

I think that there's a large part of America that, quite frankly, has become the key critical voting group that is tired of this insufferable, woke attitude they perceive from the left.

And I think that actually helps him among those voters.

And I think it was wrong.

He's apologized for it.

I think it's a terrible policy, but in a strange way, I think it actually helps him with that middle, kind of middle of the race.

You really want to appeal that that's the kind of candidate you want you to appeal to that?

Shh, quietly.

I mean, attacked people of color unfairly.

I want our ass clown out of office.

I want someone different in Pennsylvania.

I am willing to go there.

I think that we would

have been ripped open for the middle.

A sociopath beats a socialist seven days and on Sunday, which is what Stephen Schmidt said, and he's absolutely right.

We need someone, a centrist is the only way.

It's so hard to unseat a one-term president when the economy is doing well, and you're just not going to do it with a construct of socialism, which he will paint Warren, which he will paint Sanders with, if in fact the economy is doing well.

That socialism is a different economic model, and that's kind of the one thing that's working right now in America, or you could argue that it's sort of working.

And instead, working for a lot of people, Scott.

100%.

I agree with you.

But most of America thinks that the one thing that is doing okay is the economy.

So if he paints the far-left candidates as someone who wants to move us, totally upend the economic construct of capitalism, take away their health insurance, boom, he takes 37 or 38 states.

It has to be, I hope it's Bloomberg, but one thing's for sure, I believe, and I think Democrats are coming to this realization, it has to be a centrist.

If it's not Bloomberg, it's not Mayor Peter.

Obama was right up there with that, right in there with that.

When did he, I mean, he literally looks like a Republican right now, if you've seen what he's been saying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's

coming out early and often and saying, guys, the folks from the far left, that's just not where America is.

Anyway, I hope, I'm curious, what do you think?

You're sort of, you have a little bit more distance from it than me.

Do you think he has a shot, or this is just sort of...

I don't know how he muscles his way in there.

That's the thing.

But, you know,

you never know.

It's a really noisy left.

It's a fed up, you know, African-American constituency is fed up of just grab our vote and then ignore us kind of thing.

I think that's definitely a thing.

I think that women are just like, what do we do?

Like most women are tending towards anybody but Trump, you know, that kind of thing.

And you can see those numbers.

So it's going to be a crazy election for sure.

It's absolutely going to be crazy.

And I do think we do get like sort of this boogeyman scare every time he has one of those stupid

rallies and things.

That's what everybody thinks.

I don't think that's what everybody thinks.

I think that they are.

I think in the way that there was the quiet group of people that was for Trump before, I think it was a quiet group of people that are like, he's horrible,

which is interesting.

I was with somebody who was from Kentucky, a doctor, recently, and he can't stand Trump, but at the same time, he can't stand the whole healthcare thing, the Medicare for All.

So it was really fascinating to listen to him because he really didn't like the Medicare for All.

And I think most people are really interested in a couple of things: issues around healthcare, issues around everything else.

Everything else is just noise.

And I don't, not to say that this Ukraine thing isn't, isn't

these people should go to jail, many of these people involved in this.

uh, and so I do, you know, what they've done is just uh horrible.

Um, but I think when most people are thinking day to day, like, yeah, that's horrible, but I can't pay for my health care, that kind of thing, is really where it's at.

Healthcare, um, raising your kids, even as things as addiction, tech addiction, things like that.

I think people care about that kind of stuff more than anything else.

So, we'll see who is able to appeal to that group of people.

It's going to be tough, it's definitely going to be tough.

Um, so we're going to take a quick break now.

Uh, and I probably, if Bloomberg's uh running mate is Jeff Bezos, I think that will be a problem except everything will be delivered perfectly right at the all in our packages sometime they are amazing i just had like a back and forth with fedex and i'm like you're

a closeted amazon file

i don't love them i hate them and love them at the same time did you see the controversy around all birds shoes yes of course they're away says the same thing they they're just

egregious

that letter from the allbert ceo it literally reminded me of every long-term relationship i've had it was the most passive passive-aggressive letter in the world.

We want to help you rip us off, and we hope you'll be at least environmentally sound.

It was just such

a good thing.

Everybody who makes innovative products are just horrified because Amazon does rip them off in seconds.

It's like, really, literally.

Look,

there's our own version of the Chinese, like, remember years ago, and everyone's like, everybody does it.

We've just never seen anyone that's good at it.

Yeah, they're really good at it.

Anyway, we have to take a quick break.

We'll be back after this.

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Welcome back to Pivot.

Let's hear from a friend, Scott.

We have a lot of friends, a FOPS.

We call them FOPs.

So this week, Google fired four employees who are active labor organizers within the company.

At least two of them were outspoken internally about Google's contracts with customs and border protection.

Google sent a memo to employees saying the firing happened for clear and repeated violations of our data security policies.

We reached out to a friend of Pivot to to get some perspective here.

Meredith Whitaker, who you've heard on my other podcast, Recode Decode, is the co-founder of the AI Institute, but was a Google employee for 13 years.

She was an organizer of the Google walkouts about a year ago and later resigned from the company under a lot of duress.

This week, Meredith tweeted that she thought the recent four firings were actually illegal.

All four of these people have been involved in organizing, have been involved in this pushback against unethical decision-making at Google.

And Google chose the week before Thanksgiving, when the news cycle dies down, to terminate these people.

So I think we have to read this in the context of Google's continually clamping down on organizing and in the context of Google as a company that is famously

open access, right?

That has as a value in their orientation, accessing documents,

exploring prior art, understanding best practices at the company by reading up on how other teams and other projects are doing things.

So this is an interesting issue about these, Google still continues to be

in the midst of these struggles with employees.

And it may be true.

I mean, they're going to have to prove this, obviously, in the firing, that these people accessed information that they shouldn't have accessed and, of course, gave them the excuse.

But these people are on high watch by Google, would be my guess, in terms of uses of anything in the company.

But these were all very active users.

And do you think this has an effect?

Like that these, you know, they hired a union buster.

They're obviously not on the great side of employees here.

Employees are their bread and butter.

Where do you think this ends?

I think this falls under the auspices of or the banner of it sucks to be a grown-up.

I don't think private companies have an obligation to put food on your table as you organize to make them look stupid.

Just as Facebook, in my view, keeps hiding behind this bullshit First Amendment.

They're not the town square.

They're a private company.

They have the obligation and the rights to take down content.

And at the same time, on the other side of the other side of the coin, is that I don't think Google has an obligation to get let people express their rights to organize.

I think there's some union protection around organizing for unions, which I think is valid.

And obviously, that's a legal question.

But I think the employees at Google, for the most part, have come under the impression that they have the rights to do whatever they want.

When I leave a company or a company of mine gets purchased, I sign all these agreements that basically say I can't say a goddamn thing about the company.

And granted, I was given a lot of money to sign that thing, but the folks of the good folks at Google make a shit ton of money.

They get free lunch.

They get that mega boss you're talking around.

And you know what?

It sucks to be a grown-up.

If you decide to start organizing against the company and quite

embarrass them, you know, Google has been

except Google's been famous at this for years.

It's been the DNA of this company, this open access attitude.

They actually change the meetings now,

these talk back.

If you would have been at those, this is how they raise them.

And then they're surprised surprised they're behaving this way.

So I don't know what you do when the DNA of your company is like this.

And you talk that talk like we are here to talk about it.

And there is real pushback from these workers who don't want to be making this.

And they've sort of involved them and now telling them, you're not so involved.

So I think there is a bigger management issue to deal with here.

And maybe they want to become, I don't know, palantir or whatever, sort of a more top-down organization.

But

these people are not going to stop talking.

And I think you're going to see that.

Again, soul cycles the same way.

I think there there was a lot of pushback from the instructors.

Like you have a problem.

Companies, companies that are built around your part of the solution and your part of the management are going to face this.

They're not going to like it, but they're going to face it.

And they deserve to face it if that, if that's the company culture they've created.

Look, I don't deserve Google deserves scrutiny.

More power to these people.

But they decided to be martyrs.

And when you decide to be a martyr, you usually end up dead.

And that's what's, I just don't,

I hope these people go on to live great careers.

I hope that Google learns from this.

I hope that we learn what Google is doing.

I think all these things are happening.

But you embarrass your own company that's paying you two, three, four hundred thousand dollars a year and you get fired, you know, spoiler alert.

No, you know, of course,

to me, that's like a fucking IQ test.

If you are working for a private company and you are taking time to embarrass them, they're probably going to try and figure out a way to fire you.

It sucks to be a grown-up.

I think it's shocking for given this particular company, but you're going to see it all over the place and Amazon.

You're going to see it everywhere else.

Now, those companies had much more top-down, they never really did promise them a rose garden, but Google did promise these people like that.

That's interesting.

So, I've never,

you know, them much better than me.

You're claiming that internally they have actively said, say whatever you want.

They do.

They have meme generator.

They do.

They like let everybody say what they, you know, let it all hang out.

And then they're like, oh, maybe not so much on that part hanging out.

It was like, it's so interesting.

What I'm more interested in is how you became an old Republican man from Montana.

This is really fantastic.

It's really interesting.

Everything but the Republican part is.

Oh my God, it's fascinating.

You're like, ah, these young people talking.

What's going on?

Where's my metamusal?

Anyway, we're going to take a quick break.

That Hannity's a hoot.

That Hannity's a hoot.

Bag of rage.

Oh, my God.

Audience Tuesday.

It's time to big time.

That's right.

All right, Scott.

We're going to take a quick break and we're going to be back after this.

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Okay, we're back, old man.

Listen, we're going to talk wins and fails.

And it can't be anything about your hip, okay?

Like, we can't.

What is your win this week?

What is your failure?

You and I, just finding common ground here.

I think you and I have the same win.

No, we do.

We do.

You go ahead.

You go with your win.

My win is Sasha Baron Collin.

All right.

Pound for pound.

I do love word for word.

All right.

Tell me what.

Pound for pound, word for word.

But go ahead.

That was the best speech of 2019.

He's actually channeling us.

I feel like he's.

Well, you know what?

Occasionally, I don't know if, you know,

occasionally someone comes along and they just organize everyone else's thoughts.

Remember Chris Hughes did that big op-ed in the New York Times and basically parroted everything

yours truly and you have been saying for the last three years?

My feeling is, when I first read that, I'm like, well, no shit.

Like, we've been saying that for three years.

But I'm like, welcome to the Resistance Brother.

He was incredibly articulate.

It was an American Defense League speech.

And he made some good points that in the 1930s, if Facebook had existed, Hitler would have started talking about his solution to the Jewish problem on Facebook.

And Facebook immediately responded and said, well, that's not true.

Our policy is that if anything could potentially incite violence, we take it down.

But the reality is Hitler didn't wake up and just murder 12 million people.

He worked up to it.

And Facebook is letting people work up to it.

And that was his point.

so he's going left

let's play a little bit of that speech let's listen to it this is not about limiting anyone's free speech this is about giving people including some of the most reprehensible people on earth the biggest platform in history to reach a third of the planet freedom of speech is not freedom of reach Sadly, there will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites and child abusers.

But I think we can all agree that we should not be giving bigots and paedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims.

Okay, he also,

that was great.

He also wrote an op-ed expanding on the ideas for the Washington Post.

He called them the Silicon Six, the CEOs and former CEOs of Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter.

So you like this.

You like this.

But is it chic to do this, celebrities speaking out the way they speak about the Trump?

That's not been very effective.

But you haven't heard celebrities speak out like this.

Yeah, this guy though, you know, it's sort of a negative forward-looking indicator on the age we live in where the most credible, reasonable voice is borat of 2019.

He's really brilliant though.

Come on, he's

brilliant.

And I thought he summarized very eloquently.

And anything that gets more oxygen to this issue, I mean, the latest ridiculous statement from Carolyn Everson when she claimed that nobody here wants us to be the arbiters of truth.

And everyone in the audience was going, yeah, actually, we would like you to have some, at least some input onto regulating false content.

But I thought he was so eloquent.

I thought it was so powerful.

And Facebook probably should have ignored it.

Instead, they jumped into the fray and they just made it worse.

But anyways, my winner is Sasha Baron Cohen and the increasing anyone who gives oxygen to the fact that Facebook is the most dangerous organization run by a sociopath that is one of the greatest threats to

democracies and just peace and prosperity worldwide.

Also, 2020 is not going to be better for Mark Zuckerberg.

And actually, that's my fail this week, which was it was tweeted by an ex-employee of mine, Kurt Wagner, who's now working for Bloomberg, who of course has got ethical problems there.

But Mark Zuckerberg has completed his 2019 personal challenge of hosting a series of public discussions on the future of tech, which were pretty limp, I thought.

But he spoke to eight men and one woman, all white.

Just like,

who does the advance work for this guy?

Like, honestly, like, that was just like, come on, really?

You're not even trying to pretend you care about other people's opinions.

It was really, I didn't even, I had looked, oddly enough, I had looked on the podcast.

I was noticing it was on Spotify.

And I was like, wow, this is a funny crew of people

that he talked to.

And then I realized it was that.

And it was sort of a surprise.

Again, I just, I wasn't paying attention, but then it was pointed out.

I was like, oh, God, really?

This is all just

PR bullshit.

That's what I kept thinking.

And badly done PR bullshit.

So I was pretty disappointed by that.

Because I do think he's meeting with people behind the scenes.

I've run into three or four people he's had over for dinner, all of whom he should have over for dinner.

But I think he's just much more comfortable with men than women and people who are white than not white.

I just don't know what's going on.

Like why.

And maybe I would love it.

Maybe

he released the whole list of people he had dinner with, for example.

I would love to see that list.

That would be interesting to me.

It's not us, obviously.

Neither of us have been invited for dinner.

Unless you have.

But is a lot of it, you know, hate the game, not the player, then unfortunately, the game is still mostly run by old white dudes.

I guess.

I just think you could try.

Yeah, but there's so many people.

You could be like, look, you don't have to have eight white guys and one white woman.

You just don't.

And like, you know, but the dinner things are more interesting, these secret dinners he's having all over the place, these quiet little dinners.

And I think I would love to see that list.

And,

you know,

he doesn't have to necessarily publish it, but I'd love to have him write something after each one.

I think he's got a bigger job than other people, and he needs to be more transparent.

I think that would be my thing.

What is your fail of this week?

So my fail is,

it's going to sound strange, but

Harvard and Anand.

Harvard.

Anand Girdadatta, sir.

I don't know how to say his name.

I thought he just had

the line or one of the lines of the last year.

He was speaking at Harvard and he described Harvard as the world's largest drive-through reputational laundromat.

And what I get,

I constantly get a lot of resumes.

And something that is disqualifying for me or that disqualifies the person immediately is at the bottom when they say that they've completed some Harvard fill-in-the-blank exec ed program.

And they always, you know, and typically it's like driving up in, you know, a canary yellow Ferrari.

It's basically saying, I have a little dick because anyone who feels the need.

I'm taping.

They're going to cut me off.

I'm taping from Harvard right now, but keep going.

Keep continuing.

Anyone who feels the need to put that they went to some ridiculous Joey Bagadonins three-day weekend exec ed thing from Harvard that their company or they were willing to pay $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000 so they can put the Harvard logo on their LinkedIn profile.

It means you're radically insecure about your educational background and

you're looking for this drive-through reputational laundromat.

And I thought he just summarized it perfectly.

Yeah, he's great.

He also went at Brett Stevens' Plutes Gonna Plute.

Did you say that?

That was really Plutes Gonna Plute.

Anand is a one-man wrecking ball.

Sometimes he's right, sometimes he's wrong.

But boy, do I enjoy watching him

kind of going through the rich failure?

He's your fail.

My fail.

I told you, it's Mark Zuckerberg and like not

doing that.

I think he's, you know, I think, I don't know, I was going to buy you the Harvard t-shirt for

Christmas, but I guess not.

Yeah, that's just not my birthday.

Yeah.

I don't think I can wear that t-shirt.

I see people wearing them, not here.

Here, it's fine, but I see people wearing them elsewhere.

And I'm always like, hmm.

Well, you know, I like the pictures of Jeffrey Epstein and his Harvard sweatshirt.

Yeah, that's really my favorite image of 2019.

Yeah, that's true.

Any predictions, Kara?

Predictions.

I predict that.

No, I don't.

No, you're the predictor.

I don't have a prediction right now.

I do think it's going to be interesting to see the shakeout over because it's going to be a quiet time over Christmas, even though it's been a crazy news year of what shakes out in January with these with these political with these these political things.

And I do think the focus on tech will continue and at the same time not be part of the election whatsoever.

I think nobody cares.

Nobody cares that these people are

doing all this stuff, except in the aftermath if they continue, if there's a problem.

And so as you said, the pressure is not going to really continue on these companies as long as they keep making money.

And that's really the...

the horrible truth is that a lot of these things are important.

Teddy Schlieffer had a really good piece this week on Recode about this, about that nobody, she's talking a lot about tech, but her people don't even, people who follow, who like her don't even care about it.

I thought it was a great, I thought it was a great piece.

Although I really enjoy her speaking up about it, but I think it doesn't, it's not going to touch them in any way,

her continued attacks on them or anything else, even though it makes for great discussion for us and things like that.

All right, your prediction.

So speaking of Making Bank, you know,

which podcast is the 97th most popular podcast in Singapore this week?

Us.

You and I.

That's right.

The dog and the jungle cat are just rolling into whatever the single.

My prediction, Carol.

I have a prediction.

Yeah.

Okay.

The initial kind of the first and second innings of the Streaming Wars with all these different players, I'm declaring a victor.

Okay.

And that victor...

Well, the victor of the Streaming Wars so far.

Everyone came out of the gates.

Right.

Anyways, Disney Plus is just killing it.

And just some data here.

They're signing up nearly a million new customers each day.

Yeah, but

16.

Oh, yeah.

Are you kidding me?

Did you pay?

Oh, my God, the Mandalorian?

Did you?

Yeah, I paid.

I did not pay.

I got a year free.

Did you not?

Verizon.

For buying a phone?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Verizon just gave me an offer and I took it.

Like, I didn't, I read through it.

I didn't have to give my new baby up or anything like that.

And I took it.

It was a year free.

But that's like getting a free iPhone for signing up from ATT.

Apple still gets it.

There's no coin.

Yeah, I know that.

I'm just saying I didn't have to pay.

I was worried I had to give something for it, but it was a good thing.

Oh, trust me, you're paying.

You're paying one way for it.

No, but but it was interesting that a lot of people aren't paying.

Like, lots.

You're the only imbecile who's not getting a freebie.

But go ahead, move along.

But I'm a Republican white man and imbecile from Montana.

All right, so go ahead.

Keep going with your discussion.

I'm going to Montana.

I'm going to Big Sky for the Holidays.

Of course you are, because that's where you go.

That's where you go.

I've never been there before.

I can't wait.

I hear it's really cold, though.

Anyways, next stop, prostate cancer.

Move along.

I'm going to see Ted Turner.

He's one of my heroes.

He's sort of, I think.

He's struggling, I think, I suspect.

Yeah, he is struggling.

Anyways, did you see that Jane Fonda film?

You would have loved that.

It identified her life by the five men she's with.

I'm like, wow, that's how you identify her life.

You know, I almost went to lunch with her the other day and I declined because I had to do something else.

You turned down Jane Fonda?

Well, I couldn't.

I was, I don't, I can't go into it.

She was speaking at the Washington Post, and there was a breakfast before, and I couldn't.

I just couldn't do it.

I just couldn't do it.

I couldn't get it.

Show up in leggings.

Show up in aerobics leggings.

Yeah, I'm wearing them right now.

All right, finish your prediction, Scott.

We have to go.

I have to go have some pie with Amanda's giant.

16 million mobile app downloads.

They've made $5 million million

through in-app purchases in its first 13 days.

And there's also what is that, like baby Yoda dolls that they're trying to keep out of the market that people are trying to keep out of the market.

Oh my God.

Have you seen how cute that baby Yoda is?

Yeah, they're taking down gifts to protect their copyrights.

They don't want anyone touching it.

I have never felt maternal instincts like I feel when I see baby Yoda on The Mandalorian.

Anyways, I'm getting in touch with my maternal side.

You have to marry the Mandalorian.

Listen, okay, go ahead.

Have some actual analysis that people expect.

Back to me and my prediction.

So there's also a flywheel effect here.

This is really interesting.

Hulu downloads, which is being cross-promoted with Disney Plus.

ESPN are up close to

55% in the past two weeks.

And ESPN has seen downloads increase by more than 50%.

We had 26 million daily viewing sessions over the past week.

So I don't know if we're in the first or the second inning, but Disney Plus,

we always thought I predicted that the mother of all wars was coming between Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

It looks like the war that's shaping up is between Netflix and Disney Plus.

And I think over the next 12 months, you're going to see Disney probably grab some market capitalization from Netflix.

But anyways, in some, Q1, and this isn't really much of a prediction, you're going to see more and more articles around saying what Disney Plus did right and X, Y, and Z did wrong.

But Disney Plus is out to an early lead.

So what happens then with Netflix?

What is the impact on Netflix, et cetera, et cetera?

Well, I think Netflix, so the war.

Because that's the only one that counts here, right?

I mean, you know.

Well, there's a lot of them, right?

HBO Max.

Of course, you took that apart in pieces.

You like ripped that to a little bit.

I heard from so many people from HBO who are like, right on, brother.

I mean, literally, tons of people right on, brother.

So how does it impact Netflix?

Netflix largely wins or loses by international growth because in the U.S., everyone already has Netflix.

And

I believe that the way it impacts Netflix is that if their stock goes way down, a point of distribution, a Google or an Apple or a Disney buys them, if their stock goes way up, they go acquire distribution, either Roku or, I don't know, maybe the PlayStation.

Sony is probably too expensive.

But Netflix is either Netflix at some point in the next 24 months will be vertical, either through being acquired or through an acquisition.

If things get scary for them.

That is really a big, that's a big prediction.

I like that prediction.

You know, I wrote a very lovely piece about Disney, about how much they struggled for years and years.

And I did a history because I'm old about how much they struggled.

And then this is finally their thing.

So I got some little stuff.

Well, you had the best line.

I'm now, I've started.

You know, this is one of the downsides of working with you: I feel an obligation to read your stuff.

And so I do read your stuff in the New York Times.

But you did have, occasionally, you stumble upon a pretty good line.

And you had a great line in there about Disney.

You said, the best way to describe it is the empire finally strikes back.

Yes.

I thought that was a great line.

That is true.

Also, in any case, now I've got to go do some more baby things and eat some pie, and therefore you'll never hear from me again.

Anyway, Scott, soon we're going to be going, what, twice a week, aren't we?

Soon.

TK.

Two X a week.

Two X a week.

We have a lot of news.

There's less of a bad side.

It starts this Tuesday, double dog for the holidays.

That's right.

Here we go.

Also,

tweet at us at

hashtag Pivot Podcast and email us at pivot at Voxmedia.com.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, Scott.

Now say happy Thanksgiving to all our fans, please.

Happy Thanksgiving.

And we appreciate,

I appreciate, I know you do too, just how generous and how much goodwill we get from our, you know, quote-unquote dozens and dozens of fans.

It's been a really nice thing in my life.

I know it's a nice thing in your life.

It is.

It's really nice.

And we across the globe, we are a global entity.

Me and this GOP lover over here.

We're a phenomenon.

We're like Nutella.

Go have some turkey, Scott.

Go have some turkey.

No, lots of turkey.

Have some turkey.

Have a great Thanksgiving.

Best to you and yours.

Get ready for twice a week.

We will run out of things to say to each other, but we're going to try.

Anyway, we're grateful for everyone who makes Pivot happen too.

Today's show is produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

Eric Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks also to Rebecca Castro and Drew Burroughs.

Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend.

Thanks for listening to this Pivot podcast from Vox Media.

We'll be back next week for another breakdowns of all things tech and business, except two times as much.

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