Episode 118

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Published on:

24th Jan 2025

Tech Oligarchy

Our tech overlords reported for duty to Washington while Troy perused the powder at Davos. This week, we go beyond first principles to consider the second-order impact of a politicized tech elite. Plus: The Washington Post gets a BHAG and CNN plots a post-TV future.

Transcript
Troy:

You look

Troy:

great, Alex.

Troy:

How you doing?

Troy:

Nice to see you.

Alex:

Nice to see you too.

Brian:

met a super fan last night.

Brian:

I'm going to, I'm going to somewhat anonymize her.

Brian:

Her name is Peggy.

Troy:

is that the name or the

Brian:

That's her name.

Brian:

I, I'm not even, I'm join her

Alex:

You're not even trying.

Troy:

good choice, Peggy.

Brian:

Well, I dunno.

Brian:

There's a lot of Peggy's around, but anyway, she had said, she said, I almost feel like I have a power social relationship with you.

Brian:

I love people versus algorithms and I listened to it.

Brian:

While I'm doing ceramics and sometimes I sort of get lost in it and then I hear something that I need to like focus on.

Brian:

And so I stopped my ceramics and rewind the podcast so I can

Troy:

That's so nice.

Alex:

Well, that's very nice though.

Brian:

Yeah, that is.

Brian:

So

Brian:

please, please keep the compliments and the insults coming.

Brian:

troy, do you want to give us a little quick, report from Davos?

Brian:

why are you there?

Brian:

Is there, is there

Troy:

I have a

Brian:

an SEO panel

Troy:

Yeah, no, I just kind of went on a bit, I wanted to go skiing, and I,

Alex:

Oh, that's a perfect time to go.

Alex:

There's no crowds.

Troy:

There's nobody on the hill.

Troy:

My friend had an apartment in Davos.

Troy:

so, I met him in Zurich, a person I like a great deal, so it was fun to hang out.

Troy:

And, I went to a number of events.

Troy:

you know, I'm not, I'm not like a card carrying Davos person, so I, I was locked out.

Troy:

There's a lot of security.

Troy:

It's like a shitty can as far as I can tell, but I mean, I get it.

Troy:

You trade out the CMOs for the CEOs, right?

Troy:

You it's, it's policy people, you know, political, the political set and CEOs and stuff, so it's.

Troy:

It's fancy, but those people aren't as fun as the marketers.

Troy:

It can.

Brian:

But who are the ad tech

Troy:

there's no ad tech, they don't do

Brian:

no, no.

Brian:

I know.

Brian:

But who are the vert, like ad tech people are the people who are really funding can, right?

Brian:

It can is just presents as a marketing conference,

Troy:

Oh, the ad, the ad tech, the equivalent of ad tech are the consultancies.

Troy:

Definitely the

Troy:

Accenture's of the world.

Troy:

So, you know, instead of the snaps, you know, a house.

Troy:

On the Kwasai, uh, in Cannes, you have the Palantir House.

Troy:

That gives you a sense of the vibe difference, right?

Troy:

One is helping countries do intelligence and military shit.

Troy:

And, the other is making the

Alex:

So what's the vibe?

Alex:

Like, are you guys all giving each other's high five and say, we can finally say what we want to do.

Alex:

Where

Brian:

saying the R word

Brian:

nonstop.

Alex:

all these words we weren't allowed to say.

Brian:

I'm not ready to do the R word.

Brian:

I'm,

Troy:

You know, I went to a nice party last night.

Brian:

it.

Brian:

It's not going over well in my, in my

Brian:

circles.

Alex:

it a lot of Zeke Hying over there?

Alex:

Like is it back in fashion?

Alex:

Seems to be back.

Brian:

Good place

Troy:

I don't, I'm not, I'm not getting, picking up your vibe here, Alex.

Troy:

I,

Alex:

I mean, it is Switzerland, so it's pretty neutral.

Alex:

I don't know.

Troy:

one needs to bring a sense of history to the moment, Alex, and look at, there

Troy:

was other times when, yeah,

Alex:

I really am

Brian:

Yeah,

Alex:

It is very much that.

Alex:

Well, no, but my question was more, it is actually a, a serious question like, what do the, what is the vibe amongst the other powerful, you know, kind of maybe oligarch adjacent

Alex:

people in

Brian:

lite.

Alex:

oligarch

Troy:

listen, in any situation, I mean, I think it's a mix of, You know, you're, you're business people and there's a, you know, a shock to the world

Troy:

and it's very pro business and it's a time of change which brings, you know, opportunity, excitement and apprehension.

Troy:

I think there's a lot of, you know, I think people are really don't even know what to think.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

Because like The last three, four days I've been kind of unprecedented.

Troy:

And so, you know, I think that the people are really processing it, but I think that for those people that think it's great for business and obviously, you know, that's a big part of the Davos crowd,

Troy:

there's, There's excitement about what the future holds, but just to be very clear, though, Davos is an AI conference this year and probably will be next year.

Troy:

And so everything, every discussion, everything is about how we're applying AI in our business, or how we're re engineering processes,

Troy:

or how we're doing, you know, drug development, innovation, what we're doing on climate stuff with, with AI.

Troy:

Every single company is talking about AI.

Brian:

Okay, so that's the ad tech.

Troy:

that's the, that's the ad type for sure,

Brian:

aI is the ad tech.

Brian:

it's very interesting because, you know, this week was the inauguration, here.

Brian:

And all the, the sort of tech oligarchs descended on Washington, not on Davos, which is where they normally are.

Brian:

would be, I don't wanna read too much into it, but it does seem like, you know, Davos is, is kind of on the down slope.

Brian:

It's a thing of the past.

Brian:

It stands for globalization at a time when we're going to, I don't know, mercantilism not even sure where we are.

Brian:

so I don't know.

Brian:

Did you get a sense of that, on, on the ground there, or no?

Brian:

You were just swooshing down the

Troy:

I think it's a new day.

Troy:

Someone said to me, which I thought was funny, that they were going to change their identifier on LinkedIn and take out the they part.

Troy:

so just go with straight up her.

Brian:

We're winning, we're

Troy:

Yeah.

Brian:

The W's keep piling up, you know, and it filters down to LinkedIn.

Brian:

It's, it's for real,

Alex:

But just like, I mean, just to take a breather, this is grim and gross guys.

Alex:

and there's a lot of things to solve, but, you know, like punching down the first 10 items on that checklist is punched down and make sure we make some people's lives hard.

Brian:

Well, I wanted to talk about the, the sort of the, the capitulation, that has continued.

Brian:

it's, it's gotten a little unseemly, to be honest with you.

Brian:

it's across all of the sort of tech oligarch class.

Brian:

and I think that it's becoming more common, right?

Brian:

really to, to view a lot of the, the tech billionaire leaders, the, the Sam Altman, Elon Musk, et cetera, as oligarchs, Jeff Bezos.

Brian:

I mean, we've always used that term for Russians or Ukrainians or other.

Brian:

And I remember my mom asking, what, what is, why don't we have oligarchs?

Brian:

I'm like, well, well, well, they're, they're more entwined with the government and they're pulling strings.

Brian:

And now I'm like, wow.

Brian:

No, we've got oligarchs all our own.

Brian:

And I'm interested in how that sort of resets the view.

Brian:

First of all, how the tech industry operates, because as we always say, this podcast, the rest of the rest of the economy is downstream of that nowadays.

Brian:

and how that like sort of both gives them advantages, but also might constrain them in some way.

Brian:

I don't know.

Brian:

Any thoughts on that, Troy?

Brian:

Please don't say no.

Troy:

well, I'll, I'll start with, I won't say no, but I'll start with a recycled tweet that caught my eye from 2016 and maybe this went viral.

Troy:

I don't know, but it was.

Troy:

I feel bad for our country, but this is tremendous content.

Brian:

Oh, that's Darren Ravel.

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

And that, that made me chuckle.

Troy:

isn't it an amazing acknowledgement of the, you know, the importance of sort of, discovery communication and commercial infrastructure, that is manifested in

Troy:

these enormous companies and AI, obviously that, That they sat alongside the president's family at the inauguration.

Troy:

And really, the Tik TOK ban became really central to the conversation in the, you know, at a huge, you know, moment in history or, you know, moment in certainly in American politics, I

Troy:

guess, in history, and it just shows you that, and, and there was that brilliant podcast, you know, that Where, Ezra Klein, had the conversation with Chris

Troy:

Hayes talking about, you know, the kind of modern requirements of politicians that you, that you're good at attention or that you're good at vertical video.

Troy:

And at the same time, kind of pointing out that, which I thought was really interesting, that.

Troy:

The age old app, you know, kind of concept or, you know, functional purpose of media, i.

Troy:

e.

Troy:

small media companies, aggregate audience, you know, by creating, you know, content, cut that up in, in, in meaningful ways and, and sell it off to advertisers is really becoming.

Troy:

Less and less of a business and the the only things that really matter in the sort of, you know, media industrial complex are like platforms that can generate kind of attention at scale, right?

Troy:

Like, that's why tick tock is such a massive issue or, you know, you know, I mean, I would say that there are, you know, scaled media companies like Disney

Troy:

that, that qualify here, but like, and, and IP entities like the NFL, but like, you know, all of these companies have this formula that it's, it's like you

Troy:

step back and you're like, the creation of audience, for, you know, that, that whole tier of media companies.

Troy:

You know, prospered for decades in America and around the world, you know, magazines, newspapers, so it is

Troy:

a massive, massive struggle for them to continue to kind of execute a media business plan that used to pay the bills.

Troy:

It just doesn't work anymore.

Troy:

And you're competing with companies that have enormous repositories of data, incredible technology and free content.

Troy:

It

Alex:

and apparently spineless malignant leaders that will do

Troy:

well, but I did, I,

Alex:

but you know what, you know what you, the thing is though, like when you guys talk about media, I've been thinking about this a lot, I mean, first of all.

Alex:

know, we used to always poke at people calling out late stage capitalism, but if this isn't a sign, you know, like, I think, I think it's maybe

Alex:

time to stop, calling that out as, as kind of, you know, panicking or, or being overly anxious about the future.

Alex:

But.

Alex:

Here's the thing, like the media pressures are beyond the business model thing.

Alex:

Yes.

Alex:

These guys, these, these companies have massive, spin wheels that allow them to create enormous amount of, you know, free cashflow, based on, you know, mostly free labor from creators.

Alex:

no creator gets too big so that they hold the platform hostage, which is different for media companies, because media companies would have, you know,

Alex:

two or three of their main people that can hold the company hostage and, and then, and then disappear.

Alex:

But on top of that, you have, they're completely at the whim of these like hyper, hyper billionaires, probably the first trillionaires, because they can essentially either be.

Alex:

sued out of like, you know, out of existence by, you know, we've seen these kind of, lawsuits going up against these media companies.

Alex:

Or, one of these billionaires can buy them with, you know, the money they make in a week.

Alex:

and so I don't understand how like our press apparatus and, and kind of media apparatus, the.

Alex:

Traditional media, as we call it, remains because it needs, it needs to like either be subservient or be

Alex:

bought out or, or sued for defamation and apparently whether you're, you're right or not, you know, you're going to.

Alex:

People are likely to settle because they don't want to get in trouble.

Alex:

so I think it's grim times ahead for media, you know, for like

Troy:

Well, you know, I guess, I guess just building on that, Alex, what, what I, what I thought when I saw, the, you know, group of, of, of kind of new media

Troy:

or platform Titans standing there is these are the people that essentially provide the The operating system for the modern world and the only thing and

Troy:

the most the only time that they they bend the knee to the people that can, kind of disrupt their place as owners of the operating system of our world,

Brian:

And it's only

Troy:

that's that's that's the boss, right?

Troy:

And so they've all done it.

Troy:

They've all done it out of self interest and we've seen

Troy:

that,

Alex:

of, on top of that, on top of that, here's the thing is that the trade is that a different scale here.

Alex:

Cause the trade is, you know, let me, let me shoot more rockets into space and I will make sure that I flood the zone.

Alex:

With lawsuits and investment and, and, you know, and attacks against your opponents.

Alex:

because I, because essentially the, you know, however much we say like money is spent on politics.

Alex:

It's nothing for those people.

Alex:

And,

Troy:

but I, I'm just making the point that, you know, you have to reconceptualize media as, as really like a kind of public communication operating system that's owned by five companies,

Troy:

right?

Alex:

but, but, but we're, and we're also noticing owned by five.

Alex:

but they're also very individualized.

Alex:

Right?

Alex:

Like this is, you know, dealing with

Brian:

I think that's a defining feature of this age of oligarchs at the end of the

Alex:

Elon doesn't like what you say on Twitter and he bans you because free speech, you know, of course.

Brian:

but then it's there.

Brian:

So to take the counter, there's something a little bit refreshing is that you have like a person rather than some opaque, opaque,

Brian:

sort of blame the algorithm and all this, like,

Brian:

this is.

Brian:

like very clear.

Brian:

I don't know how they get around, like how their responsibility, you know, because other countries, like I was like hearing last night, I didn't know.

Brian:

Did you know in Australia?

Brian:

You're as a publisher, you're liable for any comments like if left in your commenting system, like if someone like goes into your commenting system and

Brian:

and

Alex:

don't have a section

Brian:

they just, you're liable for it.

Brian:

So, like, every comment is moderated.

Brian:

Australia is a really interesting.

Brian:

They're like, I didn't have, they always been this way.

Brian:

They're like, very like,

Alex:

I don't know.

Alex:

Go to Australia.

Alex:

Seems to be fine.

Alex:

You know, like

Brian:

I've been

Brian:

once I've been there for three days.

Brian:

It

Brian:

was like, it reminded me of like a cross between like London and San Francisco, but with some

Alex:

Yeah, it's California, but it's far away from all the bullshit.

Troy:

it really is a cross between Vancouver and London is really the most accurate,

Brian:

Okay, I've never been to Vancouver.

Troy:

Yeah, it's just it's it's a it's a really crazy time, right?

Troy:

And then what you're seeing is, is it's not only that operating system requires power and compute, right?

Troy:

So we're this 500 billion investment.

Troy:

Yeah, that's, that's,

Troy:

what's it called?

Troy:

Star whip.

Troy:

Well, we'll see.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

Stargate.

Troy:

is a,

Brian:

Masa would never sort of

Troy:

it's an it's an announcement that needs

Troy:

to now be filled in.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

But it's an aspiration with the, with the approval of the government.

Troy:

So go do it.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

And you sort of have.

Troy:

The LLM layer and open ai.

Troy:

You have Microsoft's blessing, you have the government's blessing.

Troy:

You can go build the, the, you know, the, data centers in, in, in Texas.

Troy:

It's, it's really remarkable.

Troy:

And, and, and, and the justification for it all is of course, that if you don't do it, we're gonna, you know, lose this race and,

Brian:

wonder whether this, how, how does this complicate like sort of big techs relations with other power centers, including like their own employee base?

Brian:

there seems to be a growing gulf between what this sort of oligarchs at the head of these companies are doing and they're making business decisions.

Brian:

And.

Brian:

And the sort of rank and file at these companies.

Brian:

Now, a few years ago, we saw that, you know, basically employees at Google put a stop to a cloud contract with the defense department.

Brian:

And that would be unthinkable today.

Brian:

I'm just wondering what the, you know, Silicon Valley people love to talk about like first principles thinking, but there's also second order impacts that

Brian:

don't seem to be like top of mind a lot of times, because there's all sorts of bad shit that happens from, from their first part principles thinking that.

Brian:

Doesn't seem to be like ever like thought about at all.

Brian:

I'm wondering if, what the sort of second order impact of politicizing, tech basically,

Alex:

Well, we don't know yet.

Alex:

I mean, I think, I think it's, It's also somewhat distorted because it's coming, outside the heels of layoffs.

Alex:

So people are not as, mobile as they used to be.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

so.

Alex:

So people are likely to stay quiet and stay in their own job.

Alex:

But the amount of people, that have gotten in touch with me and saying that they regretted working for Metta, you know, that, that meme, that meme

Alex:

is going out, I don't know if you've seen, there's a British show, a sketch comedy, Mitchell and Webb, where there's these two Nazis trying to figure out.

Alex:

If they're the bad guys, you know, they're like, well, we've got skulls on our hats.

Alex:

And at some point one of them goes, Klaus, are we the baddies?

Alex:

And that means been surfacing a lot from people, at Meta.

Alex:

I think there has been also, The thing that has been most resonant is how, quick to turn all of these folks are, because I definitely know some of them permanently who, uh, were very much

Alex:

working in an effort to, pushed, you know, things like DI and the company would walk around with feminism, a t shirt that just said feminism or black lives matters, who today have just, you

Alex:

know, probably in the audience clapping to somebody saying that they're going to, repeal a bunch of laws that, that, that, that, you know, helps people in need.

Alex:

So, it's, it's just that, that turn, where a lot of people are very shell shocked.

Alex:

there is less of a.

Alex:

You know, there's not walkouts.

Alex:

I think walkouts are easier when you know, you've got other jobs, because you don't even know where to walk to, right?

Alex:

I think there's a, there was a chilling effect of seeing all these leaders of industry, sitting at the front row there, looking like Like some weird scene out of, you know, like the hunger games.

Alex:

so, you know, I'm pretty sure we're going to see a lot of people like moving to Alaska and starting to become like foragers or something, but, but,

Troy:

think you're going to see a couple of things.

Troy:

I think that you're going to see more distrust of the leaders of these companies who have just.

Troy:

You know, so blatantly act, you know, acted opportunistically.

Troy:

And I think that, you know, companies, modern companies, sophisticated companies like Google, you know, culture is really, really important.

Troy:

And I think that they're going to become, you know, more hostile environments.

Troy:

The other thing is, is, is I think that, you know, there's so much money swirling around in Silicon Valley right now.

Troy:

And so, for example, at OpenAI, there were dozens and dozens and dozens of engineers that are now taking between 5 and 10 million dollars out of the company as secondary.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

And Sam Altman capped the amount you could take them.

Troy:

Many of them have stock allocations that are worth far more than that, but they're taking out 10 and that gives them several years of freedom to go out and build their own businesses.

Troy:

So I actually think what you're going to see is a lot more kind of, entrepreneurial activity driven by people that have, real.

Troy:

intensely valuable, you know, knowledge sets and a little bit of money in their pocket,

Alex:

and it's and it's and that's that's true.

Alex:

We're just like, I mean, it's gonna take some time to to play out.

Alex:

It just hasn't been much of a big knee jerk reaction.

Alex:

But I also think like, I wonder the game, and I'm just going to focus on Zuckerberg, but you know, we could put a lot of people in that bucket.

Alex:

The game he's been playing, I mean, if you listen to the Rogan interview, he's very much talking, you He's

Alex:

very much talking to a set of people and giving them a lot of kind of, soundbites that they will like.

Alex:

But if you think about them a little, more, you know, then they start kind of, you know, falling apart.

Alex:

And, and the interesting thing is like, when he's talking to that audience, he actually isn't talking to a lot of the people that work at his

Alex:

company because they can, you know, when he says like he wishes Facebook had more, Male energy, when like,

Brian:

Masculine energy.

Alex:

masculine energy, when, when Facebook is like over, like, you know, you know, two thirds men and the entire tech industry, yeah, yeah, it's, it's a ridiculous statement.

Alex:

If you go to Facebook, it's got a lot of male nerd

Troy:

but

Alex:

It, it, well,

Troy:

men and not have masculine energy, Alex,

Alex:

And, and, and,

Troy:

at, look in the mirror.

Alex:

and Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg exudes male energy now.

Alex:

so, I think he was talking about like things to a certain type of audience that is receptive to it, but that really turns off like the people that work for him.

Alex:

I actually don't, I mean, I know a lot of

Brian:

You're actually,

Alex:

at the executive level that probably don't

Brian:

as of 2022, it's 63 percent

Troy:

know, one other thing

Alex:

Guys, guys, there's like, it, part of it feel like a dorm room with 16 year old boys.

Alex:

Like it's the Facebook, it has male energy, you know, depending which one you call.

Alex:

It's not Sparta.

Alex:

It's not a bunch of like people like rubbing yourself in the way I'm punching each other in the face.

Alex:

It's more like the nerd kind, but you know,

Troy:

I

Troy:

wanted to just reflect on the moment in another way, and I was in, I was in, in Davos and I, I turned on.

Troy:

my computer and there was a live feed, on YouTube from the all in boys that had basically set up a studio in Washington and, had a couple of new characters in the cast as well as the doofus guy from Zynga.

Troy:

And, we're had the feed of the inauguration feed running on the side and we're commenting and literally broadcasting like real time for hours.

Troy:

And then had Chamath on the street.

Troy:

interviewing people about, you know, what they were feeling and what they were most excited about and holding his camera up and man, I just want to kind of

Troy:

contract, like to me, that's remarkable and I'll, and I'll just kind of set the context for it is that we used to say that everybody can create content now, right?

Troy:

And that even VCs can go out and create content.

Troy:

Well, that happened.

Troy:

Then they created a podcast and that podcast arguably became a more important media entity than many large established media.

Troy:

And then that podcast, you know, interviewed presidents or presidential candidates and, you know, many influential people, and then, you know, threw their

Troy:

lot in with Trump and then, brought the whole posse to Washington through a big party, and broadcasted, you know, live.

Troy:

For like 12 hours on the day of the inauguration, including live, you know, interviews on the street.

Troy:

And that's remarkable, right?

Troy:

So the two things about one is I just find it amazing that the infrastructure is available for a VC to become CNN.

Troy:

And secondly, That the, the thing about talking about public policy and politics is you've got to know history, you've got to be informed, or you're just blabbering.

Troy:

Like, I don't want to talk about politics on this podcast because I don't want to talk about it, but also because I'm not qualified to talk about it.

Troy:

what you get is, in my view, is like a real lack of expertise.

Brian:

at all in?

Troy:

well at all in or any of the sort of purveyors of

Troy:

information

Brian:

Well, that's the thing.

Brian:

It's like, I wonder, it's like, yeah, switching lanes is really difficult, right?

Brian:

And like, they had a really good lane with tech.

Brian:

And then, This switching into politics, it's not, it's not necessarily for me because like, I'm like, well, I thought the whole point of this was

Brian:

you were going to bring me in the room where decisions were made about tech, like, and this, this, flight of fancy about like talking about Ukraine.

Brian:

And it's sort of, it shows up.

Troy:

only that, I'm not sure that Chamath is qualified to talk about,

Troy:

you know, public policy.

Troy:

Yeah,

Alex:

is not qualified to talk about it, but you know what, what's so it's true, Troy, it is truly impressive how billionaires can succeed at doing stuff.

Alex:

Like, I mean, fact is like, here's the thing, like these people can step into any space, like all the spaces we're talking

Alex:

about don't require, you know, hell, if we could afford a producer, imagine what we could do, you know, but, but, the,

Brian:

Shriram had, had like billboards for his podcast with his wife.

Alex:

I don't know if this is going to, I think that, you know, I, I call it kind of, there's like kind of the U2 effect, right?

Alex:

Where U2 is, you know.

Alex:

objectively like a good, important band that did important things.

Alex:

But at some point, and I think it was when Apple dumped their album on all the iPods, they just became too much and people turned on them because they became too much, because I think a lot of people

Alex:

want to be the underdog and want to be in the new and, and a lot of these folks have managed to, weave an incredible tale, which is that they weren't.

Alex:

that they were the underdogs, and, uh, which is, which is wild.

Alex:

but I wonder how long all that stuff sticks.

Alex:

and to me, I remember the precise moment when I was like all in, when from a podcast that I used to listen to thinking, I like none of these people, but they say interesting things too.

Alex:

You know, Oh, there's a shift in tone here, which, which was when Chamath said, you know, I didn't used to

Alex:

like him, but after thinking about it, I think Donald Trump was a B plus president as far as I think.

Alex:

All right.

Alex:

And you know, when you're that rich and powerful, you have access, you have money, you have a network of things, things just happen easily.

Alex:

It's impossible to lose at this stage in America.

Alex:

Like, you

Brian:

but, but I do think it's, it is a dangerous thing to say, because if you go into

Alex:

Oh, shit.

Brian:

their reviews, it's like needs to go back to basics.

Brian:

So boring.

Brian:

It's become a highly political sized show.

Brian:

and

Alex:

this is the thing.

Alex:

If the culture war, if the if the if the fashion of culture war changes, if culture war becomes out of fashion and class war becomes more fashionable.

Alex:

Yeah, there's a big, big turn that's gonna happen.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

But this was in, in that podcast you mentioned, with, with, Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes.

Brian:

I mean, they really went deep into, and we've talked about it like here, sort of about rules of the information space about, you know, it's just about, it's Rawl amount of attention you can get

Brian:

and like that was and that is the sort of coin of the realm now It's not like a Q score anymore where you want to have more favorables or unfavorables I

Brian:

mean the the knock on Trump was always that his his negatives were too high, right and what you know, he Recognized either rightly or wrongly is if you

Brian:

flood the zone and if you just win the raw attention battle that You Everyone's going to have a lower ceiling and, and you're going to have a higher floor.

Brian:

And I wonder if we're seeing that more broadly, because obviously some of these platforms, most of these platforms reward, I think, you know, getting in there and mixing it up.

Brian:

Again, like I'm down to like very little X time, but anytime I open up that thing and put on the for you, like just to see if I'm like mistaken, I'm reminded like, man, people are doing battle there.

Brian:

And it's like, you say outrageous thing after outrageous thing, and it doesn't matter.

Brian:

You just get like raw attention.

Troy:

It seems to me, Brian, that there's, there's something more than just the raw attention thing.

Troy:

There's a mechanic that Trump has understood and played to his advantage for a long time, and it's this.

Troy:

It's that the more you alienate your establishment peers, the more the people cheer for you because they want to reject, the kind of established power structure.

Troy:

And so you become a way for them to rebel, right?

Troy:

So the more, the more outrageous, outlandish, stupid things that you say, you know, you think, Oh my God, did he really do that?

Troy:

That's, that's crazy.

Troy:

and they cheer him on because it's.

Troy:

They perceive it as him, you know, kind of challenging the things that they hate in, in, in the political world.

Alex:

And Troy, do you think Elon's Hitler salute was a step too far?

Alex:

Or do you think that's going to work for him?

Brian:

It's, it's under dispute,

Alex:

It well, as a as a as a

Brian:

on it, but I believe,

Alex:

a half Austrian person that's seen a lot of Indiana

Brian:

well, okay, if you if you, I'll, I'll, you do have expertise that

Alex:

Yeah, well, you know, it could be some sort of like, you know, people have said, well, he's neurodivergent and in some sort of tick, you know, have you guys seen Dr.

Alex:

Strange love?

Alex:

there's a, there's a scene in Dr.

Alex:

Strange love where he constantly is trying to stop his arm from going up.

Alex:

either way I would have expected him to immediately say, Oh no, no, sorry.

Alex:

I messed up, you know, I hate Nazis, but that hasn't come either.

Alex:

but, but

Brian:

Well, you never apologize.

Brian:

That's one of the rules.

Brian:

You never apologize.

Brian:

You never back down and you never apologize.

Brian:

If someone,

Brian:

if someone punches, you counter punch.

Brian:

And

Brian:

if they

Troy:

No, you, you ridicule the people that are ridiculing you.

Troy:

You, that's what you.

Troy:

do.

Troy:

But you know what?

Alex:

as, as a European who've had, who's had grandfathers on either side of the war, uh, chilling, but either way, I mean, we've, we've seen kind of

Alex:

a response to that apparently, and I don't know how big this is, but it, it apparently covers at least 40 million users, and, Reddit forums have, banned

Alex:

X links after this, which it's the first time that, you know, there's kind of been this mass, reaction on, on, on Reddit, across, across so many subreddits.

Alex:

And apparently, you know, there's like now 40 million people are not allowed to share X links on Reddit.

Alex:

And I, the thing that's interesting to me is that, you know, the, the kind of galvanization potentially of, of different platforms for different political groups.

Alex:

I mean, you know, X has.

Alex:

X is becoming more and more and more single voice.

Alex:

Like I'm seeing more and more people who have, who had kind of kept, kept, kept up there.

Alex:

that are slowly kind of moving away.

Alex:

Threads is definitely becoming something else, but then has taken a turn now with the Zuckerberg stuff.

Alex:

A lot of folks are kind of joining in, in blue sky, but I wonder as, as things goes on, that we're going to have, politically disparate social networks.

Alex:

Like we have, you know, the MSNBC versus

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

But for me though, the, the, I don't know how I think about it.

Troy:

It's sort of like in this kind of exuberant moment, this kind of autistic guy was kind of overwhelmed with emotion and, and, and just

Alex:

that's what you do when you're overwhelmed.

Alex:

It's a very specific, it's very specific guys.

Troy:

I

Troy:

don't know.

Troy:

I don't know.

Troy:

I, I may

Alex:

just happened, had the lighter and the cross was there and then burst into flames and then this towel fell on his head and I don't know, man, it's kind of

Alex:

either way, either way, it is not being, even if you don't apologize, there's certain things you should apologize

Brian:

this, this this

Troy:

Hold it, Hold it, Alex!

Troy:

Turn it around, though!

Troy:

On the, on the flip side, do you really think that he thought before going up there that I really admire Hitler, and this is kind of my opportunity to introduce this

Troy:

idea to America,

Troy:

and I'm going to, like

Troy:

I'm going to appropriate that gesture, that gesture,

Troy:

you know, as a signal of like white power.

Troy:

Like it just seems unlikely

Troy:

that that was his calculus.

Troy:

It doesn't make sense to

Alex:

okay, well, let's just say there wasn't a calculus.

Alex:

There was just some sort of nervous reflex tech.

Alex:

That's an interesting one to have, know,

Troy:

we, it's a nervous tick that you act like Hitler?

Alex:

man.

Alex:

I don't know why we're like saying like, well, it's, it is so shocking that we think it probably didn't happen.

Alex:

I don't want to dwell on dwell on that.

Alex:

What I was trying to say is that there are things happening right now, which are pushing the envelope so much.

Alex:

that, That, that it looks like there's kind of like a galvanization of different groups and different social networks, different platforms, starting to take political sides, which, which, you know,

Alex:

is interesting for Reddit specifically, because there have been mass action like that on Reddit, But I don't know if it was at this scale and I think Reddit has always kind of kept itself pretty open,

Brian:

well, it'll be interesting to see if Reddit can like avoid picking a side, so to speak, right?

Brian:

Because like, I do think the politicization of tech platforms and then the tech oligarchs is, it's all of one piece.

Brian:

And also by the way, the geographical, Reality is in Europe, they're going to have completely different.

Brian:

They're, they're going to be clamping down on all kinds of things that we think of as, as mostly here as free speech.

Brian:

And, you know, the U S will be an outlier to a lot of different parts of the world.

Brian:

I know it'd be interesting to me to see if these tech platforms, if any of them ever just say.

Brian:

Forget it, Australia.

Brian:

Like, I mean, I can see like, you know, quitting Australia.

Brian:

I don't think would be that

Alex:

Man, Australia would be, it's a boon for Australia.

Alex:

You

Brian:

Well, I do, I do think I was having a meeting with like a publisher, actually just this morning and this person was telling me a lot of the,

Brian:

you know, complying with the, the, the, the laws, just on things like recurring payments in all of these geographies.

Brian:

Eats up so much time.

Brian:

There's so many lawyers that have to get thrown at any of the, of, of these American companies, international operations in these

Brian:

jurisdictions because they're basically regulatory states at the end of the day, and they do have an interest.

Brian:

Obviously, it's just a form of taxation.

Brian:

The billions Zuckerberg got a point.

Brian:

The billions of dollars in fines that, that these companies are paying in Europe is just a tax at the end of the day.

Brian:

It's

Troy:

Or you change the way you think a little bit, Brian, and you realize we're moving into an age where we basically have techno nations, nation states, right?

Troy:

And your, your, your, your, your sovereignty and your, and your value and your worth and your.

Troy:

You're sort of strategic capability is tied up in the amount of compute you have, the quality of your models, the autonomous, you know, weapons that are

Troy:

connected to those models and all the communication infrastructure that you use to, to manage, you know, a civilization.

Troy:

And, and, and, you know, China is a distinct group of technology.

Troy:

America's fighting to be the dominant, you know, AI driven.

Troy:

Kind of source of I mean, it's a very bizarre time that we're that we're living in that

Alex:

I think it's pretty, it's pretty rich though.

Alex:

Like, like from, for Zuckerberg to complain about the way Europe's doing things, right?

Alex:

Like there are many rules that exist within, you know, Europe only allows like 25 chemicals in our food chain.

Alex:

America has like.

Alex:

Six or 700, like people are expecting

Brian:

Our are you are you defecting back to Europe?

Alex:

No, I mean, I'm just saying there, I choose to live here.

Alex:

I just say that these are different cultures and different civilizations that handle things differently.

Alex:

And, and, and,

Alex:

and, and and when you have a multibillionaire that runs a trillion dollar company say, Oh my God, making

Alex:

business in Europe costs us a little bit more money, I want to say like, just go fuck yourself then, like, I'm

Troy:

know, but but you know, what's interesting guys is that like When you think When you think about it, like defense, power is a platform, right?

Troy:

It's a platform.

Troy:

And if you're, if, if it's like NATO is a platform, it's like the American kind of, defense system is, is a platform.

Troy:

And now what, if you're Portugal or you're Hungary or you're Sweden, you can't afford to, you know, control, And invest in the next generation of AI platforms to compete at like with, you know, superintelligence

Alex:

unclear.

Alex:

It is, it is unclear if that's the case because we've seen out of China now.

Alex:

And I wonder how much of that is like, there's a fabrication of the messaging that's happening right now.

Alex:

China that has, has been crippled by the fact that they can't get access to the main, the, the, the right GPUs have been consistently launching, LLMs that match or beat, the

Troy:

right, but China's a massive centrally led economy that can invest a huge amount of money in

Alex:

right.

Alex:

But.

Troy:

and development.

Alex:

But what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is a lot of this technology, if the LLMs themselves and even the hyper intelligent one LLMs are open source

Alex:

table stake available to run on machines that, you know, NVIDIA is going to put one on your, on your desktop and you can run the entire internet on it.

Alex:

I think that, that this kind of like, it is different than building nukes.

Alex:

It is different than, than, than stockpiling kind of, kind of weapons

Troy:

Alex, if you can run it on your desktop, why are you putting 500 billion into a data

Alex:

well, that's a good question.

Alex:

That is a great question.

Alex:

And one that I actually wonder, like it is, Oh, look, open AI transcript is still the, like the, the, the product of choice for consumers wanting to use, LLMs.

Alex:

It's a, it's a, it's a great thing.

Alex:

However, we're seeing that more and more.

Alex:

And we're, we saw this thing with Microsoft basically announced that, you know, the, the large language models themselves are going to be kind of table stakes and, and, and readily available.

Alex:

They're not divesting from chat GPT, but they're sending out the messaging that, you know, they're less tied to it.

Alex:

When, when one year ago, they said that their entire strategic move was to, to, to rely a lot on chat, uh, open AIs.

Alex:

Uh, IP and, and technology.

Alex:

the thing with technology is that it, it's, it's a very leaky platform, things leak out.

Alex:

Engineers want to open source stuff.

Alex:

A lot of this technology is, is, stuff that you can replicate.

Alex:

So, I feel like what we're heading towards is maybe like a pretty broad availability and, and who has like, you know, the billions of dollars in data centers, it might not make as much of a difference.

Alex:

the same way the, the U S inventing the internet, like it definitely benefited the U S, but that thing spread across the world and benefited all sorts of societies across and, and,

Brian:

Yeah, but we controlled the regulatory framework with ICANN and various things that directed its Evolution.

Brian:

I mean,

Alex:

But, China, China is still using it to hack our water supply.

Alex:

So like, you know, let's, let's, you know, it's, it's not like what I'm saying is there's a potential where the cat's kind of out of the bag.

Alex:

We're noticing that open source models running on much lower machines can achieve similar effects.

Alex:

We have no idea what generalized intelligence looks like.

Alex:

and a lot of this stuff is accessible to a lot of people.

Alex:

So I don't know if, if this is an arms, because I've seen it compared to an arms race, but I don't know if it's the same type of arms race as, as, as, as nukes, which requires, you

Brian:

All right

Alex:

different

Troy:

Good

Brian:

Can we get it a little just a little media

Troy:

Let's do some media

Brian:

we got into that?

Brian:

We got into this we got into the nukes when it when nukes come up yeah, so this week, a couple of things, one, the Washington Post came out with a new mission statement.

Brian:

They've got a BHAG.

Brian:

I love a good BHAG.

Brian:

It's to reach 200 million users.

Troy:

I don't think people know what a BHAG is.

Brian:

a big hairy, audacious goal.

Brian:

It is a staple of any of those sort of like corporate, like what is our, what is our mission?

Brian:

Exercises you haven't done a b hag before?

Alex:

BHAG?

Brian:

Yeah,

Troy:

don't know.

Troy:

I haven't.

Alex:

No, I have no idea.

Brian:

Oh my god, even I haven't I haven't been in the belly of the corporate beast that much

Alex:

Well, maybe I have, and I just don't remember the acronym.

Brian:

Yeah, yeah.

Brian:

Jeff Bezos loves a B egg.

Brian:

and then CNN, kind of related.

Brian:

I'll, I'll make them, fit, you know, they've come out.

Brian:

They, they just cut, about 6%, about 200.

Brian:

Mark Thompson is now promising a second streaming service that they're CNN max.

Brian:

They already put a bullet in CNN plus really before it launched.

Brian:

And now they're going to

Alex:

Well, I mean, we talked about a CNN plus was a bad idea.

Brian:

Well, it's coming back.

Brian:

It seems

Alex:

Well, I think CNN max is actually what CNN plus should have been, which is just a streaming version of CNN.

Brian:

but they're coming out with another, streaming.

Troy:

but get back to your behead.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

So anyway, the be hag of, of the Washington post is look, it's been going through.

Brian:

All to me.

Brian:

It's like a fascinating story because it's.

Brian:

It's a it's a it's a accumulation of all of these things.

Brian:

you know, they they pivot very hard into the hashtag resistance.

Brian:

you know, democracy dies in darkness, which is not dead.

Brian:

Washington Post sent me an email to make clear that it's not dead.

Brian:

In fact, although I don't think you'll be hearing it a lot.

Brian:

They have, They have a new mission statement that is, riveting storytelling for all of America, as a

Alex:

Oh, it's going to be riveting for

Brian:

it's going to be riveting.

Brian:

Storytelling, I have a problem with.

Brian:

I mean, look, these, these things are always workshopped by like a million people.

Brian:

So anything that comes out, it's going to be kind of, you know,

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

It sounds like bullshit to me,

Brian:

bullshit, but

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

But any, anything that they said, you probably would've called bullshit on.

Brian:

Well, that's what I'm saying.

Brian:

You do the exercise.

Brian:

It's an internal exercise.

Brian:

And then, it, you know, it's in Puck, and it's in the New York Times, or whatever, and these things, it's impossible for it not to come

Alex:

but doesn't it, the reason I say it's bullshit, it's just mostly like I'm putting my brand person on is that it's got no opinion and

Alex:

therefore, you know, at least like there's no, there's nothing, that makes me feel anything about that statement.

Alex:

and so I wonder how you sustain or build out a media brand without an opinion, without something that gets people to react to it.

Alex:

And without something you stand for, there's so much like access to media.

Alex:

I wouldn't even know where to go.

Brian:

Well, you have to choose a lane and they, and they have chosen the lane.

Brian:

And I think it's probably Jeff Bezos related where the gift of the internet is you can reach pretty much everyone.

Brian:

And so to, to deny the gift is a crime or whatever the pre Fontaine quote is.

Brian:

And so, you know, you have to like go with that.

Brian:

Whereas all the currents, that's why I find it very fascinating are go niche.

Brian:

You know, own Washington, buy Punchbowl, et cetera.

Brian:

Those are like kind of obvious things to, to, to say,

Troy:

Washington post yesterday, and I think that they said, if we were going to look favorably upon the BHAG, It would be that we're kind of redefining our goal from being a sort of successful,

Troy:

you know, media subscription company that would, you know, maybe get to half of where the world's most successful, news, subscription company, the New York times is at about 11 million, right?

Troy:

Isn't that the number, that they would have to think about their business really differently.

Troy:

It doesn't matter if it was a hundred million or 200 million, and they would have to think about providing.

Troy:

you know, customers, audience, whoever it is with, just, a different group or a different sort of constellation

Troy:

of services and utility that could enable them to kind of reframe the way they look at the business.

Troy:

And, and not just look at it through the lens of we are a newsroom, we create content every day, and we provide that as a service to the people of, of the city.

Troy:

And, and so they're, they're just trying to kind of look at the challenge really, really differently.

Troy:

And they're starting, you know, I think in some of the same.

Troy:

Territory and I've been in this exercise many times inside of media companies where we say, what else are we going to give the consumer as a benefit as

Troy:

part of a package that will augment our, you know, content delivery value proposition, that might create value for them and encourage them to subscribe.

Troy:

So would that be, you know, discounts to local restaurants, the opportunity to get.

Troy:

You know, tickets to see the commanders.

Troy:

you know, local, like any kind of local event that.

Troy:

would make, you know, I guess living at the most sort of local level would make living in Washington a better thing, right?

Troy:

Where it wasn't just about content.

Troy:

And then how could that become, how could that become the basis for, just like, you know, in other words, they would aspire to be more like Amex.

Troy:

You know, in terms of MX, if you have a platinum card, it's a 700 a year cost and you get a whole bunch of benefits with that.

Troy:

Right?

Troy:

That that's how they're thinking about it.

Troy:

How can we be relevant to people?

Troy:

We have the content.

Troy:

What can we add to it to create a subscription proposition?

Troy:

That's very unlike what media does today.

Alex:

I think it's very hard to get yourself out of trouble.

Alex:

By expanding your audience, you know, in general, it stands that if you're trying to do something for everyone, you make something for no

Alex:

one, and it's especially difficult when you're starting from a place of weakness, like it's way more feasible.

Alex:

It's already hard, but it's more feasible if you own a specific slice of audience and you manage to make that like a very solid foundation.

Alex:

And then you build on top of that.

Alex:

It's, it's very, I can't imagine a strategy like that, which I don't.

Alex:

Fully understand, granted about expanding your reach and broadening your appeal is actually going to succeed.

Alex:

I've never seen it succeed.

Alex:

and I would never recommend anyone do that.

Alex:

I would say, you know, pick an audience built cause you never want to build something outwards.

Alex:

You want to build something upwards.

Alex:

So you, you build a strong foundation and then you stack bricks on top of that, like functionally in a business that always makes more sense.

Troy:

what else?

Troy:

I think it's a great point.

Troy:

And you know what?

Troy:

You know what else people typically do in these scenarios is they look at it.

Troy:

At at at volume of benefits, not the kind of GRA gravity of them.

Troy:

So they're like, what if we could give you this and this and this and this instead?

Troy:

The only reason for example, that that, that I have an Amex card.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

I don't know why you, why you do it.

Troy:

And why do I pay $700 for each of those Amex cards that I have in the family?

Troy:

Is because what?

Troy:

Airport lounge access.

Troy:

Why do I even do it?

Troy:

I shouldn't do it.

Brian:

If it gets you to diamond, if you get, if it gets you to diamond, it's worth it.

Brian:

Just in the

Brian:

math works.

Troy:

but

Alex:

it's, I mean, I think it provides enough utility.

Alex:

I, you know, every year I kind of reconsider it.

Alex:

Yes.

Alex:

But, but, uh, you really got to do like one thing.

Alex:

Well, and, and the more you broaden it out and the more you spread it out, the less of the things you're doing are sticky and the more, you

Alex:

know, you're always constantly going to be fighting kind of, the attrition of, of members and stuff like that.

Alex:

So you want to build a really solid membership.

Alex:

it's the same as prime.

Alex:

It's the same as prime.

Alex:

You start with free delivery and then you expand outwards.

Alex:

I've got to go,

Alex:

so I'll let you guys do a good product.

Alex:

Don't mess it

Brian:

stop.

Alex:

Okay.

Brian:

See ya.

Alex:

See

Alex:

ya.

Alex:

Bye.

Troy:

take care.

Troy:

Bye.

Brian:

All right.

Brian:

Should we get, should we go right into good

Troy:

Well, we can do good product?

Troy:

you know what?

Troy:

I just, before we get to that on the, on the media tip, I, I do find that, that it really is a moment.

Troy:

And, and I was with a media company yesterday.

Troy:

And let's just say that this, you know, good brand legacy media losing money.

Troy:

And I said, let's say you guys own this company.

Troy:

Thank you.

Troy:

And, you know, you, when you, when you lose money as a company, it means that you're paying to go to work.

Troy:

This is an obvious observation.

Troy:

and so, you know, there's an urgency cause it's zero money, to get to a place, you know, to get, to, to, to, to build a healthy business and make some money, what would you do?

Troy:

And, and, and, and the answer was, was concerning to me.

Troy:

Because it was like, well, there's going to be a culling and we're going to have less competition because it's such a hostile environment that there'll be fewer people competing for ad dollars.

Troy:

And, you know, we've, we've, we've upped the number of events we're doing from five to 50 and, you know, on and on.

Troy:

Meanwhile, it's, it's, it's still the, the, the old fashioned mechanics of creating content.

Troy:

Building an audience, engaging that audience is like harrowing.

Troy:

It's a really, really difficult business.

Brian:

Yeah.

Troy:

And,

Brian:

You need, You need, a side hustle.

Brian:

That's your main hustle at

Troy:

right.

Troy:

And then, you know, you, you, you, you wonder like.

Troy:

It's cool.

Troy:

Listen, there's so many of us that love this business that love media, that grew up in it, that, that that want to make it work, but I've just, I've just kind of never seen it at a point where the, the,

Troy:

the, the kind of math for scaled media companies is daunting unless you have an app, unless you have some monetization scheme that's very, very different than traditional media monetization,

Brian:

the last good, I won't say great media company.

Brian:

I'm not sure they're already great media companies, but the last good media company it's Bloomberg because they've got the right oligarch.

Brian:

They have Mike Bloomberg continues to invest in, in the business.

Brian:

They're, they're very ambitious and, And they do really good work.

Brian:

They're not having cullings or any of that.

Brian:

They have a model that works because they're the front for, they do the marketing for the terminal.

Troy:

but, but I actually think that people.

Troy:

Kind of make, make, you know, dismiss them because they're like, ah, they don't have to make money anyway, or they make all their money off the terminal business, actually, yeah, they're kind

Troy:

of a breakeven business, but actually what they're, they're executing and creating a kind of omni channel media presence, that's really impressive.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

So they're all over YouTube.

Troy:

They have really, really good experts in verticals, supported by like really good email newsletter products.

Troy:

They have personalities like Levine and stuff that are, are, are, you know, played by the kind of rules of modern media and that they're, personality driven, their, their video feed is everywhere, right?

Troy:

Like you see it in Europe, you see it on YouTube, you see it, it's, they're everywhere.

Troy:

And,

Brian:

Big events business too.

Brian:

They do it, like they do it all.

Brian:

They touch it, they touch it

Troy:

big big events business.

Troy:

And, and, and actually their on air product isn't fussy.

Troy:

They have like dozens of podcasts.

Troy:

Like they're really, they really are, kind of creating content with velocity and with expertise and distributing it everywhere.

Brian:

I mean, the problem with the model is it's not very replicable as we've seen, like with the oligarchs,

Brian:

there aren't that many that are like, you know, Mike Bloomberg, who's like, Oh, you want to pull out of the Paris accords.

Brian:

That's okay.

Brian:

I'll cover it.

Brian:

Well, we're still, we're still going to do it, you know, it's, it's, it's unique situation.

Brian:

It's a privately held company.

Brian:

everything about it is, is unique.

Brian:

And maybe that's why, I don't know.

Brian:

I've, I've, I've long been impressed by, by them.

Brian:

And, Of all of the, you know, doom and gloom that are around a lot of these, you know, media companies, it's one of the few that doesn't have that, really.

Brian:

Doesn't mean it's

Troy:

Which makes you wonder, what would you do if someone handed you the Washington Post?

Troy:

Fun, fun, exercise, fundamental exercise.

Troy:

Like they'll do the things, right?

Troy:

They'll do M and a, maybe they'll buy punch bowl.

Troy:

Maybe they'll buy a lifestyle publication.

Troy:

Maybe a little, But what I think that they're going to spend a lot of time on is how do they augment the bundle?

Troy:

How do they make a bundle that is more attractive than just local content with national aspirations?

Brian:

Yeah, although I, I don't believe in the adding like ancillary things like discounts to like local, like the zoo and things of that nature.

Brian:

It reminds me of, I always go back to the sports illustrator commercial in the 1980s with the football phone.

Brian:

I mentioned it last night at dinner.

Brian:

it was like, they tick through all of the benefits of getting the SI and you get the swimsuit issue and you get this,

Brian:

and then it seems like they ran out of stuff and they're like, and if you order now, you get a football phone.

Troy:

Well, you know what usually happens, Brian, is that all organizations have their high priests and their centers of gravity and you know, the, At a place like Washington Post, it's, it's the newsroom.

Troy:

And if you really want to build a organization that delights people over and above the content that you create every day, you have to create

Troy:

an extraordinary group of people that's hyper fixated when they get out of bed every morning on how they're going to make your life better with, you know, by.

Troy:

Thinking about the things that are really important to you, getting low friction delivery of benefits to you.

Troy:

That really, really matters.

Troy:

It works really well with a credit card cause it's in your pocket and you use it every day and you get points for using it.

Troy:

And you know, it's an essential and I think it's really, really hard to do it as something that augments a media product,

Troy:

but it's, it'd be fun to watch.

Brian:

But I would just say this and then we can get the good product.

Brian:

You know, you got to fix the product, your main product.

Brian:

It's a journalism product with the, I think a lot of times people learn the lesson of the New York Times success as, Oh, they added all these things to the bundle.

Brian:

They added cooking, they added games and all this thing.

Brian:

But I think if you go back, it would actually be good to do a case study of this.

Brian:

Between the three of us is the New York Times just invested in their core journalism product, and all that stuff was layered on top of it, and they fixed the product.

Brian:

They have good apps.

Brian:

They, the, the, their tech works.

Brian:

They've got like a massive data science team, you know, and they, they really did the foundational work to me that, needs to be done in

Brian:

a lot of these

Troy:

the, the, the technical execution was really important to their success.

Troy:

It's one of the few media products that are founded, like, That I use every day.

Troy:

And I'm like, this is nice to use.

Troy:

I like this product, cooking games and content.

Troy:

It's a really, really good technical product.

Brian:

Okay, well, as that is a segue, do you have a

Troy:

I remember someone, my friend, a guy who makes me laugh all the time, Mark, Mark Howard, brought up the other day that I had actually featured him as a good product once on this

Brian:

that Mark is a good product?

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

I think I jokingly referred to him as a good party.

Troy:

And he also said that.

Troy:

that I had been too hard on time or something like that, or just said that.

Troy:

And

Brian:

Oh, about the chatbot?

Brian:

I think it was Alex that was slandering the chatbot.

Brian:

I said in that reply that I was the one who was giving it kudos.

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

it's fun to be in Switzerland.

Troy:

It's so quiet and chill.

Troy:

But,

Brian:

It's a different life,

Troy:

you know, if you like skiing, the Swiss note, they do it incredibly well.

Troy:

I mean, the train that takes you to the top of the mountain, the, like the, the grooming of the runs, the quality of the mountain, the food at the top.

Troy:

I mean,

Brian:

but you ski in the little villages, don't you?

Troy:

You can, yeah.

Troy:

And the

Troy:

mountain is, it's expansive and you can kind of move from one place to another.

Troy:

Davos connects to another resort and stuff.

Troy:

So it was really, really nice.

Troy:

I mean, skiing, you know, in Davos is a really nice thing.

Troy:

And I think it was a good product, but I actually would, would, have to talk about this restaurant that I just ate at an hour ago.

Troy:

and, and I, I think that it's really nice when you can.

Troy:

Eat at a place that's kind of de defined.

Troy:

The sort of culinary vibe in a city for like a century where the room feels like so many people have enjoyed themselves in it.

Troy:

And there's just, it's an incredible place.

Troy:

1864 in the bar, there's like, there's like, you know.

Troy:

There's a Picasso.

Troy:

It's like a wonderful, incredible vibe.

Troy:

And you, you order what they, you know, you order the one thing that they make better than anyone else, which is something that really appeals to me.

Troy:

And it was a roasty with veal, you know, and kind of, a creamy sauce.

Troy:

with

Troy:

a, you know, glass of Riesling and, it, it feels local.

Troy:

It feels like the thing you should eat here.

Troy:

It's been, you know, it's been fortified, you know, over many, many, many years.

Troy:

And they even do like a little thing where they serve you, they bring a cart to the table, they serve you half the roasty and, and, you know, and the sort of veal, whatever it is, stew or whatever.

Troy:

And then, They come back after you finish that, they heat up the roastie beside the table and then serve you the other hot, which is a nice touch.

Brian:

Okay a little bit of Theatrical nature to it.

Brian:

There's a good roasty places a Swiss place Have you ever been a cafe select and so how they've got a good roasting

Troy:

Yeah.

Brian:

highly recommend it

Troy:

So that was fun, but I'm looking forward to getting home.

Troy:

I got to say, as I get older, the jet lag is harder and harder to escape.

Brian:

Do you have a jet lag secret to try to

Troy:

No, I'm

Troy:

terrible at it

Troy:

What happens is I go to bed and I wake up in the middle of the night.

Brian:

melatonin works just an FYI

Troy:

Do you use melatonin or something more pharmacy grade?

Brian:

I just read that melatonin like works or like three glasses of Riesling.

Brian:

Either one,

Troy:

You do

Brian:

by the way, I just, before we go, I went to dinner in New York, like a few things about New York.

Brian:

One is, cause I got here on Monday.

Brian:

Congestion pricing is amazing.

Brian:

I don't know if people here like recognize it, but I got in at like 5 PM and it took a half hour to get to our apartment, like at 5 PM.

Brian:

Just amazing.

Troy:

JFK.

Brian:

From LaGuardia.

Brian:

The other thing is, I went to dinner, and like, nobody's drinking anymore.

Brian:

Like, nobody in the restaurant was drinking.

Brian:

There was an entire group of people, like, from, I don't know if they were from work, or just friends or something, and they had like, two Cokes out on the table, and like, nobody was, was drinking.

Brian:

I think drinking could become, like, smoking.

Brian:

that's my

Troy:

Well, I'll tell you my observation on that.

Troy:

like I went to the, to the liquor store over the holidays to stock up as I always do and get, you know, hard liquor and wine and beer and stuff.

Troy:

I love my kids and their friends and guests.

Troy:

And you're right, very few people drink.

Troy:

You know, what got drank the most at my house are the, THC seltzers, the five milligram ones, you drink a five milligram THC seltzer.

Troy:

They're available at a place called the interesting side of the times on my block in Brooklyn.

Troy:

There's a place called minus moonshine minus moonshine is like a store that sells.

Troy:

You know, kind of fancy nootropics and THC drinks and all that stuff, no alcohol.

Troy:

And all this stuff is actually fairly priced similarly to alcohol.

Troy:

It's expensive.

Brian:

Well, that's the bullshit part, with the mocktails.

Brian:

I had like an elderflower, mojito for like 16

Troy:

telling you, my kids and their friends just hammered the THC drinks and they can really do a lot of them.

Troy:

Cause I do like a five milligram and I'm getting a little bit like loopy and they, they can hit two or three of those.

Troy:

So So I do think, and the other thing, I'm an investor in a wine company, like a platform for selling wine.

Troy:

I'm very concerned about it actually, because I do think that there's a kind of macro headwind against wine consumption.

Brian:

Well, they're also seeing these GLP 1s suppress, I don't know, every, every week I find that they, they come up with something else that the GLP 1s like do.

Brian:

It just seems like a little suspicious, but supposedly that, that, that Suppresses the, the desire to, to drink too.

Brian:

And then when you see, like, even like I did a dinner last night and I was looking around the table and out of 15 people, I think about like three

Brian:

or four were, were drinking the wine, which sort of upset me because I, these places have like big F and B minimums.

Brian:

I did the outer flower.

Brian:

I was hopped up on the outer flower, but you know, you know, I got to keep the conversation moving.

Brian:

Something that was interesting.

Brian:

It was about like paywall.

Brian:

Technology and then is,

Brian:

from Zuora is like super smart about all the, AI stuff when it comes to like paywalls.

Brian:

And I was like asking him, you know, I was over dessert, like, okay, like three years in advance, like, cause everyone, you know, you're talking about using

Brian:

AI to combat like churn and like, you know, to convert more and having to, and it's like very, I mean, what about in three years with all these agents?

Brian:

And he was saying, you know, That his belief is that you will have agents on the user side and agents on the publisher side that will be negotiating access to like paywall content.

Brian:

So you're just going to have, publishers will be deploying their own agents to negotiate with the agents that are, that are being set out there by,

Brian:

by

Troy:

funny.

Troy:

You know, I, I think any media consumer that consumes media expansively runs into paywalls that they'll never, to products

Troy:

they'll never subscribe to because it just, there's no frequency or depth that were, you know, you just want one article.

Troy:

And I think that if there was an intelligent system that would either take a small toll or let you in more often, or just kind of make the experience better for someone who was.

Troy:

An infrequent user.

Troy:

There's probably business

Brian:

It's Apple News Plus.

Brian:

Like a lot of publishers are relying

Troy:

Why do I hate Apple News.

Troy:

plus though?

Troy:

Because I have to go in through their app and

Brian:

I hate when Alex shares a link to that.

Brian:

I'm like, bummer.

Brian:

I got to like Google this because I don't want to go, but it is very successful.

Brian:

It was a, it was a big, it was a big topic of conversation because they're, you know, they see a lot of publishers

Brian:

see it in, in their, you know, churn reporting and they ask why and they're like, get it through Apple plus.

Brian:

You know, I get, I only need like two articles a month and it's fine.

Brian:

And it's interesting how they compensate publishers with Apple News Plus.

Brian:

It's basically they're like, look, we're not in, we're not in the, we're not in the business of taking risks.

Brian:

We're taking half of the revenue.

Brian:

The other half goes to you guys.

Brian:

And we're going to like cut it up just based on like the amount of time, the amount of time spent on the articles.

Troy:

When the product was being built, it used to be called texture.

Troy:

Apple

Troy:

purchased texture and it was texture was an all you can eat magazine platform and the magazines that had strong independent subscription basis.

Troy:

There's not that many of them, but like the New Yorker were very concerned that the Apple subscription

Troy:

would become a substitute for the direct subscription relationship with the consumer to the New Yorker.

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

But if you use Apple news, right, like you can get a little bit of all the wall street journal, a little bit of almost all of the New York or a little bit of the Atlantic or all of the Atlantic.

Troy:

You can get a lot with it.

Brian:

Yeah, I think the reality for a lot of publishers is that is probably enough for a lot of people.

Brian:

I mean, the, their subscriber bases will be the, you know, hardcore loyalists, but, you know, for, for most people, they're not going to have like 25 news subscriptions.

Troy:

It's true.

Troy:

If you really want the full experience of the wall street journal, you can't get it through through Apple news.

Brian:

Yeah, and

Troy:

But if you want a little bit of it,

Brian:

I spent, I paid like 400 bucks or something for the journal.

Troy:

I went to the FT party last night or night before they were serving a Japanese whiskey was nice.

Brian:

Oh, I bet.

Brian:

They were doing a good thing.

Brian:

They were doing a live, show from, from Davos.

Brian:

I find it interesting, the, the, the like publications that are like big there, the media companies, it's like Bloomberg, right?

Brian:

Like Semaphore is doing like 40 like events there, I think.

Troy:

It's a completely different cast of characters.

Troy:

It's Demophore, Bloomberg, FT, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Time Magazine, Forbes.

Troy:

That's who's doing it.

Troy:

And the Washington Post.

Troy:

That's it for this episode of people versus algorithms where each week we uncover patterns shaping media culture and technology.

Troy:

Big thanks as always to our producer, Vanja Arsenov.

Troy:

She always makes us a little clearer and more understandable and we appreciate her very, very much.

Troy:

If you're enjoying these conversations, we'd love for you to leave us a review.

Troy:

It helps us get the word out and keeps our community growing.

Troy:

Remember, you can find People vs.

Troy:

Algorithms on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and now on YouTube.

Troy:

Thanks for listening and we'll see you again next week.

Troy:

Alrighty, Brian.

Troy:

Great to see You want me to bring you some chocolate?

Troy:

I'll bring you some chocolate.

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

Troy.

Brian:

Well, have a good trip back.

Brian:

I'd love some chocolate.

Troy:

Okay, bye.

Brian:

All right.

Brian:

See ya.

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About the Podcast

People vs Algorithms
A podcast for curious media minds.
Uncovering patterns of change in media, culture, and technology, each week media veterans Brian Morrissey, Alex Schleifer and Troy Young break down stuff that matters.
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