The screw-up-billionaire, quantum computers, and the skewering of Zuckerberg

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway, your quantum computing co-host, Quantum.

I'm going quantum, Kara.

You are so not quantum in so many ways.

We're back from California, actually.

That's what we're back.

I'm in New York, and God knows where you are.

I don't even want to hear you.

I'm in the only place in the world that doesn't have a spectacular fall, Florida.

Worst weather in the world during fall.

All right.

I'm so glad you're there.

Listen, you've got something to brag about this week.

Let's go for it.

Take your lap, little dog.

What's my lap?

I want you to call it out.

I'm going to act humble here.

I have no idea what you're talking about, Kira.

It's the biggest story of the season, the stunning conclusion to the Adam Newman WeWork saga.

Yeah, but you know what?

And trust me,

I'm not someone to be humble here.

I'm getting actually, and I appreciate it, I'm getting more credit than is due.

I think his name's Elliot Brown at the Wall Street Journal.

Amazing report.

Shira Ovide, and I don't know if I'm saying her name correctly.

Yes, you are.

And then a guy named Matt Levine at Bloomberg.

Matt is amazing.

Every time I read Shira and Matt, I'm like so jealous and angry that I'm like, think, I'm so pissed off I didn't write that.

You must get that a lot.

You must get that a lot.

What, being jealous?

No, not usually.

Yeah, but I'm usually up there when I was those guys.

I was usually

nailing this to it.

It's earned, to be honest.

But you earned it.

It's the commentary that really brought it.

It's a combination.

It's like with the Uber story.

There were a lot of reporters involved in that particular one.

But let me go through it very quickly.

SoftBank is paying Adam Newman $1.7 billion to leave and leave his stock behind.

It includes a $185 million consulting fee.

I'm not sure what he's going to consult on.

Partying, I guess.

The company needs the last-minute funding

to afford the severance packages of 2,000 employees it plans to lay off on the 15,000 person workforce.

And they internally confirm layoffs that have not been announced them publicly.

Scott,

go take this apart, please.

So supposedly it's 4,000 employees, but think about this.

You had to give, I mean, he's the equivalent, and I'm going to get a ton of shit for this, but he's the equivalent of an information age terrorist because he realizes he has controlling shares.

So he basically said, and he also correctly, I mean,

this guy is the smartest person in the room, Adam Newman.

He really is.

He realized that

the most important thing to Masayoshi-san was, one, saving face and two, giving Vision I fund any chance of recovering and potentially having a Vision II fund.

So he said, well, look, boss, you fucked up.

You gave me control of this company in the form of super voting.

shares, and I'm not going to improve the deal

unless you convince me.

So they came up with a buyout structure where they're going to repurchase $3 billion of people's existing shares, which is just stupid to begin with.

And then they said, okay, Newman's not going along.

He still controls the company.

He's going to potentially opt for a package, a rescue package put together by his own personal banker, Jamie Diamond, who he gave $50 million to, regardless of whether or not they chose that package.

So J.P.

Morgan walks away with $50 million for creating a stocking horse bid.

And he said, I'm not leaving the room.

I'm not leaving unless you give me X.

And they've said, okay, well, enough shareholders have agreed to sell at this ridiculous valuation of $8 billion because they want to get the hell out of Dodge and they realize this thing's worth less than zero.

But Adam said no, so they had to top it up with another $185 million consulting fee.

So the smartest person in the room is

Adam Newman.

And Adam Newman, you know, the reporting has been that SoftBank has bent over backwards for Adam Newman.

No, SoftBank was bent over by Adam Newman.

I mean, this, we have never seen, we have never seen a founder.

Think about this.

They put $15 or $17 billion now into the company, and he's walking away with somewhere between $2.50 and $3 billion of that for taking a company up and down.

Layoffs,

if 2,000 people laid off, they had to pay Adam Newman.

Think about how just crazy this is.

They had to pay Adam Newman $850,000 per employee they're laying off such that they could secure the funding to then then give those 2,000 people, what, $50,000 or $100,000 in severance?

I mean,

this will go down.

The real loser here is

Saudis.

You know something?

Okay, so this is my theory.

I know I'm babbling on.

The real loser is Masayoshi-san and SoftBank, that have just lost all credibility.

I'm convinced, I'm convinced, and I'm becoming more of a conspiracy theorist as I get older,

that the Central Intelligence Agency decided that the best way to emasculate the power of the Gulf was to bankrupt them.

And what they did was they said, okay, Masayoshi, they got something on Masa-San and they said, you're going to convince the Saudis to, because of this incredibly lucky biggest, best investment in history, your investment in Alibaba, for $20 million, you got like, I don't know, something like $100 billion.

You're going to convince them to give you $45 billion.

We're going to play, we're going to leverage the Jesus complex, the total lack of self-awareness and tone-deaf demeanor of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

And you are literally going to burn $40 billion of their money.

You're going to create war and agata within the families in the empire, in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, because the one thing, you know, everybody.

Okay, that's a conspiracy.

I see where you're going.

And basically, it's worth it.

Masayoshi-san

is

an asset of the central ontology.

All right, okay, all right.

Chris Anderson, he is not an asset.

Chris Anderson, former Wired editor, goes, but if you think of WeWork as a massive transfer of wealth from Saudi Arabia to an Israeli entrepreneur via an ethnic Korean Japanese visionary, it's really a heartwarming story of cross-cultural trade worthy of model UN.

That was the best tweet.

That was absolutely the best tweet of the week.

That was fantastic.

So, where's it going to go from here?

We're going to get to Google quantum

computing in a minute.

Where does it go from here?

He just takes his money and becomes the most like, he's sort of the wandering Travis Kalanick, the next version of having all this money and walking away with it?

Or what happens to him?

He just has his money and he does something else.

Oh, he's about to get some serious hate.

I mean,

at least the people at Uber got to cash out something.

It's still a company, incredibly overvalued.

I mean, to a certain extent, Uber is the reason that we got, Uber was the fire that breached the firewall.

Investors got burned, and they said they saw this other blazing firestorm coming.

They said, no, we're not close the doors.

We're not letting this happen.

I don't know what happens to him, although I think it involves lawsuits, but he's played this, I mean, beyond perfect.

There'll be case studies on what a disaster this was and how he showed a certain level of crazy and bravado to get the best deal in the history of business.

But the big

okay, so what do you have here?

You have a company, if they can cut costs fast enough, it'll be a nice differentiated co-working company worth three to five billion dollars, maybe seven.

So, softbank's not going to get their money back.

This is the most expensive face-saving move in history.

This is the most expensive kicking the can down the road because this thing still could involve a restructuring in Q4 of 21.

Obviously, the losers here, the people being laid off at

1,4,000th of the seventh payment their their

leader got.

You're going to have every private market unicorn over a billion dollars has lost 30 to 70 percent of its value in the last 45 days.

But

the good news that might come out of this is what this really is, is a cautionary tale around dual class shareholder companies.

Because

effectively the investors.

That is my column next week for the New York Times.

I just keep banging against it.

I keep banging against this idea of why they need to have total control.

Well dual class shareholder companies don't matter until they matter.

As long as everything's fine, they're fine.

But the problem is when you give one individual total control, he can be someone who's responsible for the destruction of value.

He can be someone who's...

Well, they always matter, Scott.

I don't think it matters until it matters.

I think it always matters because it always, like, look, look, with Facebook this week, and he just flummoxed it in Congress.

We'll get to that in a second.

But, you know, they get to do anything they want and then they get to do anything they want.

Yeah.

Anytime.

Including burn the village to save it and show up up and say, I'm crazy, and I got a bomb strapped to my vest, and I'm going to blow up the whole thing unless you give me exactly what I want.

Let's move on from the terrorist

company.

I'm watching too much homeland.

Yeah, I'm going to get a lot of shit.

Okay, all right.

They're not nice.

All right, we're going to move on to the next story.

Google unveils its quantum computer.

The big brain strikes.

What does that mean?

Let me explain.

The sycamore solved a 10,000-year problem in seconds.

Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, compared the achievement to building the first rocket to leave the Earth's atmosphere and touch the edge of space.

So what does it mean?

What does it mean?

What does it open up to?

This is what the New York Times says.

A quantum machine could one day drive big advances in areas like artificial intelligence and make even the most powerful supercomputer look like toys.

They could compute everything.

There's so much data in this world.

They could just compute the hell out of things.

Yeah, but what my question for you is, as a tech journalist, is I understand it's a big deal.

I understand the notion of faster processing speeds.

And everyone says, oh,

the ultimate test here is the ability to predict the weather because no one can do that.

But what does that mean?

Bring it down to you and me.

Does it mean better autonomous driving?

Does it mean sky net?

That's a very good example.

I'll give just, we don't know.

Like, here's a lot of examples, like the calculations.

Quantum computing needs to be used.

I did a really good interview with the CTO Ford.

If you're going to have autonomous vehicles all over the place, it's a massive computing problem that is so complex and so many variables.

You need quantum computing to be able to make the calculations necessary for those systems to work.

That's a highly complex

that people are applying it to.

But there's all kinds of cancer research,

weather is another thing,

all kinds of things.

It has lots of inputs of data that are random and stuff.

And so it just can make these calculations in ways that are heretofore not like toys, like they are.

And again,

it's a further downgrading of humanity.

That's what I say.

It's the upgrading of computers and the downgrading of humanity.

My question for you is, and I have a view on this, but a lot of people think at some point, processing speed and quantum computing that turns into artificial intelligence, that there might be an actual point

where these machines become sentient and they make a decision in about a billionth of a second that other than In-N-Out Burger and Breaking Bad, the species adds no value and it turns on us.

Do you think that's a No, it doesn't.

No, it doesn't turn on us.

Here's what I have interviewed Elon Musk about this and many other people.

He compares it to, you know, I just saw the new new Terminator movie with Linda Hamilton and it's so good.

What it is, is they, he called it, they treat us like house cats.

Like they don't want to kill us.

It's not a Terminator-like future.

It's more that we're like house cats and that's why he's moving into this putting computers in your brains and things like that.

And recently when I saw him, he compared it more towards if we're building a highway and we run over an anthill, we don't really pay attention to the anthill.

We just, but we don't purposely go, let's run over that anthill.

It just is in the way.

And so anything in the way is what would do.

But them becoming like these robotic terminated things seems far-fetched.

Okay, that made absolutely no fucking sense what you just said there.

I'm more confused.

It's anthill.

Like an anthill.

Like when you cross it, when you cover, walk over an anthill, you don't think about it.

It's in your way.

But you don't like that.

It depends if I just got out of my yoga class.

All right, but you don't seek out.

You might seek out an anthill, I'm guessing.

But most people, when they're building a highway, they just plow on through and they don't think of the ants or anything.

It doesn't have to do with supercomputing, quantum computing?

Because it will plow on through.

It doesn't, it won't, it won't think, oh, I'm going to get the humans.

Humans aren't a problem to the computer until they're a problem.

I'm literally more worried.

Your explanation has scared the shit out of me.

They don't care.

They'll either feed us, and if we don't feel like feeding us, they don't care.

They don't care.

They don't care about you sideways.

What they don't have,

my understanding is what they don't have, and no amount of processing power can provide is intention.

Somebody programming it has to have an intention.

They don't care.

They're indifferent.

What they always will have and never have, and the difference between them and indifferent, is they have no intention and they have no, what they are is they're indifferent.

It's like, I'll just do what the program tells me.

Indifferent, the way I feel about you sometimes.

Oh, God.

Come on.

Come on.

All right, listen.

We're moving on to Elon Musk.

We're moving fast this week.

All right.

Tesla with the earnings report.

The release marks the first financial report from the company without co-founder and former CTO J.B.

Strobel at this helm with Musk.

This quarter showed revenue of $6.3 billion versus an expected $6.33 billion.

Back in April, you said it was about to become undone and fall apart, especially because a bunch of key players left the company.

But what do you think?

Where are you with Tesla?

This prediction you made back in April.

There's just no getting around it.

I got this wildly wrong.

In March of this year at South by Southwest, I said that this was the year that Tesla was going to come undone.

The stock was at 300 and immediately dove to 200, and I thought the dog

was about to earn a

pig's ear.

I thought I'd gotten this one right.

And then all of a sudden,

the stock started recovering, and their earnings yesterday, there's just no doubt about it.

They blew away everything except for production metrics.

The profitability was up.

It looks like they're getting scale.

So there's just no getting around it.

I got this one wrong.

Congratulations.

So,

where do you think it's going?

So, I have just been so wrong on Tesla.

But I, you know, you know what it is?

It's confirmation bias.

And that is, as someone, I do value corporate governance.

And I feel like the corporate governance is so bad here.

I keep kind of hoping it'll catch up to them.

And it's so far

it hasn't.

And I'm reconnecting with an old mentor of mine from San Francisco, a guy named Paul Stevens, who founded the investment bank Robertson Stevens, and is just a very...

a very decent man and is one of these guys I really benefited from as a young man who for whatever reason took an interest in me.

But he always said to me, he's been listening to my kind of my bearish views on Tesla, and he said, Scott, never bet against a company that has a great product.

And that kind of stuck with me.

He told me that about a month ago, and he's right.

It does have a great product.

It does have a great brand.

I still think the company is wildly overvalued, but there's just look, this is their day.

They blew away the earnings.

The millions of fake Twitter accounts all being run by Tesla Longs.

I'm going to hear from them, and they're going to rub it in my face.

And to a certain extent, I deserve it.

The stock is back.

All right, good.

Oh, so your, you're taking your licks.

I deserve it on this one.

Well, here's the deal.

You know, they still have, you're right, the corporate governance thing is just incredible.

And I do hear from, I ran into someone at our event from in, in, in, in, at Stanford who worked there.

And it was like, he's such a jerk.

Like, it's still the, it's still a really, he's really quite a, quite a piece of work there at Tesla.

At the same time, it's a great product.

People love it.

My brother has one.

He drove it down to Stanford.

So it really is.

It's a great product.

You're right.

And so the question is, can he keep it on on track, really?

That's really, but it's tough.

It's tough.

You know what we should do?

You and me and Elon should go see Porsche Porsche versus Ford.

That will be with the family.

I told you, I'm done.

My new motto is,

because I know you, I keep getting contacted by what I'll affectionately call all these powerful old white men who want to meet with me because

I'm saying negative things about them.

So they think, well, if I could just meet Scott, he would love me and stop trashing me.

I've decided I have spent too much of my life meeting with powerful white men.

I'm going to start, I'm spending all my time meeting with young and the possible.

I am done meeting with the old and the powerful.

So, no, I have no desire to hang out with you, Lon.

I'll do that for you.

All right.

Okay, fine.

It's just a movie, for goodness sake.

It's just a movie with some popcorn.

It's fun.

Oh, by the way, because I know you, just literally because I know you, I got invited to the premiere of that new

Apple Tackles Me Too series with Jennifer Anniston, Rhys Ruthersman.

Oh, yeah.

Good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good.

You're going to that?

You should go to that.

Oh, yeah, I'll go.

Definitely.

The dog likes to put on his nice outfit every once in a while.

It's going to, yeah, I'm really excited.

Yeah.

You know, the thing you do now is you don't go to them after you're invited.

Let me just thumb it into your mind.

Oh, you're showing what it's like to be really important?

I'm sort of new money.

I'm new money important.

Is that what you're saying?

I'm new money important.

Yeah, exactly.

You'll go.

You'll show up and be eager at these parties.

So here's how I'm going to teach you a little thing, and then we're going to go to break.

I'm going to teach you a little thing.

When you get invited to important things, you go like this.

You go, no.

No.

Like that.

You go, no.

That sounds like it's important.

Yeah, you go, no.

And then they're like, oh, are you busy?

And you go, no.

No.

And they go, you don't want to come?

And you go, uh-huh.

Like that.

Okay.

We'll be right back with more pivot and God can take a break in Florida.

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Welcome back to Pivot, Scott.

We're going to hear from a pivot friend.

We have so many smart pivot friends before we get to wins and fails.

So, by this time next week, November 1st, Apple will have launched its own streaming service.

They're debuting with their own content with some megastars like Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Anniston.

This is the said party you're going to.

Please try to leave them alone, Scott, when you go.

We asked Peter Kafka, senior reporter of Recode and host of the Recode podcast, Recode Media, to sum up the state of streaming wars as things start to ramp up.

Everyone is chasing Netflix.

Netflix is not, they're not ahead of the pack.

They've lapped the pack.

They're just around the track many times.

They're at 160 million subscribers worldwide, right in front of the big media companies, and they haven't answered back.

This is the year they're doing it.

This is the year that Disney says, all right, we're changing our business model and we're going to compete directly with Netflix.

This is the year that Apple, who's been dancing around TV for years and unsuccessfully trying to get into it and false starts and stops, says, all right, we're going to try it too.

And by the way, even for Apple, it's kind of a toe in the water.

It's billions of dollars, but it's just a toe in the water for them.

So everyone's chasing them, everyone's trying to compete with them.

They're so far ahead.

Even though they're under a lot of pressure, it's going to be a long time before we actually see any sort of effect from Apple and Disney, et cetera, going after them.

Kara and Scott, you guys are smart people.

You're also people who like to watch TV.

You like to watch videos.

Where are you going to spend your money and who do you think is going to win?

Wow.

Wow.

Scott.

So you start, Karen.

All right.

I'm going to start.

I'm going to start.

I spend it everywhere.

I don't pick.

I do it on the show.

Like, I watched, I do get HBO because I love Succession.

I tried Watchmen, which I didn't like as much as I thought, but I'm going to stick with it because I love Regina King.

You know, so

I watch Hulu if the thing is on Hulu.

I don't think about it at all.

Like, I just don't think about it at all.

I'm not brand sensitive to it.

And I think I will buy each of each of the individual.

I have a Hulu account.

I I have a Netflix account, I have a HBO, and I might have a Disney if they have the movies I want.

But if they happen to be on Comcast for free, wherever I can get the content is where I get them.

So that's how I feel about it.

But I do like Netflix, and I'm always interested in the shows they put up.

And whenever I see something cool, it always turns out to be a Netflix thing.

That's interesting.

There you have it.

Yeah,

so first off, with respect to the Watchmen, it's just cool to see DJ.

That's what I call him, Don Johnson, working again.

I know him, you know.

Do you know him?

I get the sense he's a nice guy.

Is he a nice guy?

He's a lovely guy.

He was the parent of friends of mine.

They were all in school together, and I've been to several parent-like type things with him.

And he's just fantastic as a partner.

Oh, that's nice.

That's so nice to hear.

I may give you his E.

And you know what?

I think he's also a good actor.

Anyway, so

you're right.

I think a lot of this is additive.

People, for five bucks, just some of the

big name high-production value you can expect from Apple, I think a lot of people will add on.

Everyone's saying that Netflix Netflix is going to be the big loser here, but what people fail to realize is the majority, Netflix is going to live and die by their international growth, because the reality is domestically, everybody already has Netflix, and it's unlikely you're going to swap out Netflix for Apple or Hulu or Amazon Prime.

The bigger picture story here, and arguably Tim Cook, who's added $600 billion in market value, who's taken a ton of barrage for not coming up with the iPhone, but the reality is the iPhone 11 is just a different product than the iPhone was five years ago.

So I would argue he's innovated like crazy.

But what they're doing here is if you think Netflix has 150 million members,

I think Amazon Prime, I don't know how many Amazon Prime, it's 77% of households.

I don't know what that is.

It sounds like it's in terms of people, but potentially with Apple TV, it's not an attempt to go into the streaming wards, as much as it is an attempt to change the complexion of their business and move from a transactional company to a recurring revenue company.

And if they take Arcade, Apple Plus,

their news clipping service,

Apple Music, they killed iTunes, and then they add an Apple Plus and figure out a way to give it to everybody for a year, which they're doing with every purchase of an iPhone and then get people to renew.

They could have the mother of all recurring, what's the word?

What's the word, Kara?

Rundle, Rundle.

There's my girl.

They could have a corporate membership program with a half a billion people.

And

that would be second only to the ultimate Rundle, which is Microsoft Office, which has even more than that.

So, what is Tim Cook, probably the smartest operator in the world right now, saying?

You know what?

We're at a point where everyone has an iPhone.

We've

tapped out on all the globally affluent.

So, we're going to take the same level of top-line revenue with modest growth, and we're going to transition it from a transactional business to a recurring revenue business, and we're going to increase the stock price 50%.

By the way, Fang,

not performing that well except for the

Apple.

Apple is up like crazy this year.

I think Apple's up 56% 56% this year.

So Tim Cook,

Apple TV Plus is not a streaming thing.

That's the small picture.

The big picture here is another piece in the puzzle to move to the second largest Rundle in history, just behind Microsoft Office from Apple.

All right, but doesn't it...

Doesn't it depend on the content?

I think one of the things we have to think about is the actual content and where content creators want to go.

So Netflix attracted Shonda Rhimes, has attracted

Ryan Murphy, all kinds of people.

So I think it's where the content is created.

And look, Amazon has Jennifer Salky there, who they hired for NBC.

They've got their stuff.

You have all kinds.

And Google sort of isn't, YouTube has not really entered the picture in any significant way, although they've certainly tried around the edges.

I just don't think they've jumped in in quite the way that others have.

I think it's still going to be hard to beat Netflix at this point, although Disney certainly, I think Bob Iger is super aggressive

in these efforts.

I think this is super important to him.

And I do agree with you on Apple.

I just, again,

their culture, even though they've hired some really interesting people to do this stuff, is not interested in this stuff.

That's the only thing I would say.

But the delivery system is great.

And you certainly would use it if it was there.

But I do want to give kudos to Netflix for constantly innovating and being just like having everybody, like Peter says, everyone is chasing them.

And they deserve the kudos they get for what they've created.

I think Reed Hastings is one of my,

I really admire what they've done there.

Yeah,

it's absolutely incredible.

And you said, where does the talent go?

The talent goes two places.

It goes to Benjamin's, in other words, goes to the highest bidder, or it goes to HBO.

What HBO has done that's so impressive is a fraction of the budget, they continue to attract.

the best talent because it's almost like what PBS used to be.

People used to do stuff at PBS for a lot less money because of the prestige factor.

HBO is now the new PBS, and that people will take a huge cut in salary, or they'll always show up.

Al Pacino isn't going to Netflix.

I don't care how much they pay him.

He'll do something with HBO, though.

I don't know.

There's a lot of people over at Netflix.

You'd be surprised how many people go over Netflix.

In any case, it's a good time for content makers.

We should have a show.

We should make a show.

It's a good time for

content consumers.

Consumers.

Oh, you're right.

Yes, 100%.

I mean, even you, like, I know we're bragging out.

You and I have been approached about doing a TV show, which shows you how much money is out there and how many leads they're chasing down.

Yes.

We're like the we work of content, though.

That's how it's going to go down.

There you go.

I like it.

There's going to be parties.

I still haven't read about these sex parties that someone mentioned in Stanford.

Yeah, I haven't heard about that either.

I didn't drop on that for me.

I don't remember.

I didn't either.

Yeah, we're not doing those.

Anyway, by the way, Peter Kafka is hosting his annual code media conference in Los Angeles in November.

We have a link to tickets in our show notes.

Now, let's skip back to wins and favorite.

That guy, Peter Kafka, is going to be

like, I'm going to be found in a hot tub with my Kabbalah spiritual advisor and that person will be Peter Kafka that guy could that guy just makes me feel more calm every time I talk to him I feel like I just feel more zen about everything do he he's so calming seriously that guy's like a really that guy's like a giant foot rub collided with a priest oh I don't know I've never heard anyone describe Peter Kafka that way but okay okay I'm glad that you find him very okay all right okay relaxing all right good well you know what we all find our people you know that's a really important thing

I'll see him and he'll be like they'll be like Scott I love your work.

And how are you, buddy?

And I'm like, oh, Peter.

Hold me, Peter.

Wins and loses.

Go to his conference.

It has great people.

John Stanky is there.

Tig Nataro is there.

There's all kinds of really cool people he's brought together in Los Angeles.

Anyway, listen, wins.

I'm going to go first with wins.

The women of Congress, I'm going to say the ladies, but, you know, Representative Katie Porter, AOC, asking Zuckerberg stuff

at the event.

I just have to say it's a huge win.

He really got owned by Representative Ocasio and Representative Porter.

Let's

play each of them.

Do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of fact-checking on political advertisements?

Well, Congresswoman, I think lying is bad.

And I think if you were to run an ad that had a lie, that would be bad.

That's different from it being

from it from,

in our position, the right thing to do to prevent

your constituents or people in an election from seeing that you had lied.

So we can

so you won't take down lies or you will take down lies.

I think it's just a pretty simple yes or no.

And now here's Representative Katie Porter asking Zuckerberg if he would spend one hour a week moderating content on Facebook.

Would you be willing to commit to spending one hour a day for the next year watching these videos and acting as a content monitor and only

accessing the same benefits available available to your workers.

Congresswoman,

we work hard to make sure that we give good benefits to all the folks who are doing that.

Mr.

Zuckerberg, reclaiming my time.

I would appreciate a yes or a no.

Would you be willing to act as a content monitor

to have that life experience?

I'm not sure that it would best serve our community for me to spend that much time.

Reclaiming my time.

Mr.

Zuckerberg.

I spent a lot of time.

So I think this was just, these were really great questions.

I think they zoned in very quickly, zeroed in, excuse me, on the problems, and he is unable to answer it.

I found him incredibly unprepared for this hearing because I think he thought it was going to be about Libra, which he couldn't talk about, and he was going to sail out of there like last time.

And he could, you know, he could,

these people were prepared and ready to rumble, and I thought it was great.

Yeah, and here's the thing:

it wasn't that he did poorly, it's that there is no right answer for doing something that is blatantly wrong.

And that is their argument is that by allowing people to post false advertisements with misinformation, and misinformation has ramifications, that they are, their argument is they're creating discourse.

And that's just a ridiculous argument.

What they're creating is discourse that is unproductive, false, misleading, and divisive.

And there's just, it's indefensible given their history that they would not.

And she absolutely kind of saw this, saw this, this open, gashing wound of hypocrisy and inconsistency.

And here's the bottom line.

Every decision, every narrative, every talking point, we want to give people voice, we want to create discourse is created by a corporate communications department of 750 people with one objective, and that is say whatever we need to say such that we can continue to cash anybody's check.

That's all it is.

Every

and by the way, the other interview that got kind of overshadowed by this was Katie Couric's interview of Cheryl Sandberg.

You make that your win then.

Well, she promoted, she promoted,

Cheryl Sandberg promoted this junk science that said when people go on Facebook, they end up being exposed more to both sides.

24% of the content they see is from the both sides.

That is such junk science.

Every piece of academic research shows the more time you spend on Facebook, the more polarized you get, the more you enter into your own filter bubble, even if it's false information.

And the algorithms recognize you don't want discourse, that we're tribal, that you want to go to one pole or the other such you can get angrier and angrier, and it's terrible for society.

And my win, it's literally as if you kind of read my mind.

We're of one mind on this.

My win was, or is Representative Maxine Waters, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

And also a shout out to the ranking member Patrick McHenry from North Carolina.

But I thought the hearing was exactly what it was supposed to be.

I thought it was respectful.

I thought, it's interesting, the Republicans kind of took the side of

the idolatry of innovators.

Leave him alone.

He's an innovator.

Although most of them can't actually describe what innovation is.

In my opinion, there needs to be more innovation at the Department of Justice and the FDC.

And I thought these,

like you said, this hearing did exactly what it was supposed to do.

And also,

I thought Mark Zuckerberg did as good a job as he could, given that he has to lie and he has to support a corrupt organization.

I do know.

I think he, yes, he did as good as he could, but the fact of the matter is these people own that.

He couldn't answer.

That's exactly what I'm, I have a column coming out right like now in the New York Times talking about they think in a binary term, which is

they cannot,

that's why that speech last week drove me so crazy that he did at Georgetown.

It was like either free speech or China or free speech or chaos.

And I'm like, it's so complex.

And what they did, which I think Porter did when she was talking about content moderators, AOC,

when she was talking about ads, Maxine Waters, any of them.

And it was fascinating.

It was all three women doing most of the really hard questions.

They were pointing out how complex this is.

And the same thing last week with Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King.

Mark used a quote by Martin Luther King in his speech, and she was like, Oh, no, my friend, that is not what my father said, and that is not what he meant.

And he was very hurt by disinformation from other politicians.

So I think it's the complexity is what's hard for these people, making it because binary is the way they like, reductive and twitchy is what they like.

And so, you know, that's what's hard here: that it is complex.

And they have have been hiding in the complexity by saying, well, it could go this way, it could go that way, when you can just make simple decisions and

just pick a lane.

And this is the way we're going to be.

And so that's what they were pointing out.

I thought that was great.

Yeah, I thought it was.

So this feeds right into my failure.

What is your

failure?

Well, I just want to highlight, we always talk about Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, but this company has a board of directors.

So Peggy Alford recently joined, I believe, the board of directors.

So Peggy,

your refusal or your continued enabling of this company's perversion of our democracy that you have clearly benefited from, I see above you're on the board of Facebook.

Mark Andreessen, you are in fact attacking or ripping at the fabric of our society by enabling these twos.

Ken Chennault, who I know and I think is a very decent man.

Ken, I'm incredibly disappointed that you have not done anything

to encourage these people and the organization to take this cycle off, given the fact that we already see a perversion and damage of our democracy happening again.

Susan Desmond-Hellman.

What are you thinking, Susan?

Not or enabling or continuing to be a co-conspirator in the slow erosion of our democracy by enabling these two to continue to take money for false ads.

Peter Thiel, I don't even know what to say to Peter,

you know, par for the course here.

Jeffrey Zince, I don't know who you are, Jeffrey, but you are on the board of a company, former Obama person.

Way to go, folks.

You are, in fact, going to, this this is what we know what's going to happen.

It's already happening.

They're going to find out that either voter suppression or misleading ads, and what do you know, it was a net negative for

what is a key component of our society that all of you have benefited from, and that is safe and fair elections.

We know it's not going to go well.

And rather than sitting out this election cycle, you've decided to cash that check so you can get a little bit richer.

And I think all of these people are absolutely complicit in what is one of the most outrageous infractions of justice, something that at some point in retrospect will be seen as a crime by sitting on your hands.

And then they all throw up their arms and say, well, we couldn't do anything.

Why?

Because Mark Zuckerberg had super voting shares.

All it takes is one of you to say, I am leaving the board unless we decide to not take political action.

That sort of happened.

What they do is they go quiet.

I think Reed Hastings and Erskine Bowles just left.

I think what they do is they try to do this, and we got to then wrap up for another ad and then get back with predictions.

But what they try to do, and I just did an interview with Gary Cohen, it's like, you don't know what was said in the room.

I didn't say something I was talking to him about Charlottesville, and he's like, I maybe hypothetically said something in another private room.

And I'm sort of like, I'm done with private rooms, like saying being angry at Mark Zuckerberg in a private room.

I think public is the way to go.

Anyway, we have to take a break.

We'll be back after this with predictions.

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I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, and on my podcast, we've been talking about the future of AI in media for what seems like forever.

But what if I told you that future is already here?

So at what point, if any, does a human get involved before it gets sent to my inbox?

Not at all.

That's Warren St.

John, the CEO of Patch, the local news network, telling me how he's producing thousands of newsletters every day just using ai you can hear our entire conversation on channels wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts

okay we're back let's get to predictions scott obviously you predicted a whole lot about we work what else have you got what have you done for us lately scott yeah you know now that you have this vaunted position as a predictor other than be wrong uh

but yeah you're right more than wrong but go ahead so yeah the the what i'm doubling down you have

You have 50 points of share between Bernie Sanders and

Joe Biden.

And I think that that is all going to go somewhere else in the next 60 days.

So I'm doubling down.

I think in the next 30 days, and I don't know if it's going to be,

it'll probably be Warren, but I think there's a decent chance that the frontrunner in the Democratic primary is going to be a name we're not talking about a lot.

And I said the same thing in our podcast last week, or earlier this week.

but I think Mayor Pete is about to surge and/or

we're going to have a new entrant.

I mean, even Hillary Clinton's talking about getting back in the race, Mayor Bloomberg, or an unknown.

But this thing is a lot more wide open than

people think.

Because the reality is a lot of us watch the Democratic debates and we just sort of go, meh, it's just, it's, you know, there's a lot of interesting.

So who of those people, you discussed this last week, who, I want you, a person, I want a prediction.

Which of those, who's going to enter if you had to pick one and i will shall pick one and we'll see who's correct

so

the the i'm i'm not i'm the the reality is i don't know um i i'm not willing to make a prediction that's not an answer okay i need you to make my prediction my prediction is the the biggest winner of the next 30 days is going to be mayor pete

Okay, and then who would enter if you had to pick?

So I'm going with other.

I think Hillary, I think the Secretary Clinton,

I think she's going to get...

Carrie?

Oh, gosh.

Someone even said Al Gore.

I want to flip this to you.

You're obviously pregnant.

You're pregnant with a prediction.

Pregnant with a prediction.

I have told you.

I already made mine with Bloomberg, but I think he's going to choke.

He's a choker.

But when you say choker, you mean someone who decides not to do it, right?

Yeah.

He likes mulls, mulls, mulls.

He does polls, and then he doesn't do it.

He did it seven.

On the other hand,

I don't know if it's a choker to be worth $60 billion, be 77, spend half your year in London, and decide, you know what, I don't need this.

But he was mayor of New York.

He loved it.

It was the best time of his life.

He'd have a great time to be president.

I hope you're right.

He'd have a great time.

He's not going to be a good person.

So who do you think is getting in?

Someone's going to, the new person is going to come in.

Nobody.

I think none of that.

I think you're wrong, and I think nobody is.

I think this is the field.

This is the field we have.

And so

I think Biden is going to have a surge.

That's what I think.

Do you think Biden's going to have a surge?

Biden.

I'm going with a Biden surge.

Yes.

Yeah, that's just because lucky your mom likes Joe, right?

No, no.

I just have a feeling that Biden's going to have a surge.

That's all I'm saying.

Huh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we should revisit that because I think he's going to give up a lot of share.

You think he's going to gain share.

So we should time stamp.

I think it's going to be Biden Klobuchar.

Thank you.

Wow.

Amy, Senator Klobuchar.

There you go.

Okay, we're going to go.

We got to go.

I'm getting a look from the producers.

I just want to share with you.

Do you want to shoot us an email at pivot at voxmedia.com?

And we're hiring a new producer for Pivot also.

And you don't have to interview with Scott.

That's the most important thing.

Well, you don't have to be qualified.

Please apply at voxmedia.com slash careers if you think you're the right person to join this crazy team.

There's all kinds of fun.

We are a fun gang, and Scott really is a quiet, introspective person.

All the Chipotle you can eat.

All the Chipotle you can eat.

Anyway, Scott, please read the credits.

We have credits.

There's other people involved in this.

Today's show was produced by Rebecca Senanis and Eric Johnson.

Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks also to Rebecca Castro, Drew Burroughs, and Nishad Kurwa.

Make sure you've subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts.

And if you liked this week's episode, leave us a review.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from Box Media.

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