Episode 116

full
Published on:

10th Jan 2025

Zuckerberg’s Capitulation, Rabbit Holes and the War on Attention

This week, we discuss Mark Zuckerberg’s craven capitulation on content moderation, even if it was an inevitable decision; the upside of algorithmic rabbit holes vs the downside of the commodification of attention; and how creator culture is reshaping trust in media institutions. Plus: why the Ninja Creami and IVs are good products.

Transcript
Alex:

usually like podcasts have like a little spiel that they do,

Brian:

know, but that gets so I find that corny sometimes.

Alex:

I don't know but you know shame being shameless is how you build

Alex:

a media brand and being repetitive being repetitive and predictable

Troy:

Okay, hit it out.

Troy:

You mind if I call you Al?

Alex:

What's happening?

Troy:

Hit it, Alex.

Alex:

Hi, welcome to the podcast.

Alex:

I'm Alex Schleifer.

Troy:

And I'm Troy Young.

Brian:

I'm Brian Marcy.

Brian:

good to be back.

Brian:

I had another norovirus.

Brian:

I don't know if it's another more norovirus from the PVA virus.

Brian:

but I'm, I'm feeling a lot better.

Brian:

Thanks for asking.

Brian:

we got a lot to cover this week.

Troy:

also, we should also send our, you know, just acknowledge of what the devastation that's happening in L.

Troy:

A.

Troy:

because it is beyond.

Brian:

It is.

Brian:

It's, the, the picture is coming out of that.

Brian:

The video is, it's pretty shocking and unfortunately it probably will

Brian:

become a bit of the norm, for a lot of areas, and blame games have started.

Brian:

It's been, I mean, we're going to get into this, but like, if you open X.

Brian:

this, it's not,

Alex:

If you open X,

Brian:

it's not a good, like the, the blames, the, like, there's a VC who is, is

Alex:

they blaming DEI?

Alex:

Are they

Brian:

DEI got blamed.

Brian:

Absolutely.

Troy:

But can we just start, we just start by just thinking for a minute about

Alex:

a meteor about to hit

Brian:

know, well, okay.

Brian:

Yes.

Troy:

just just take a minute, just take a minute.

Troy:

People that I know, people that you know, People that have nowhere to go, rich people,

Troy:

poor people,

Alex:

I have good friends that live there.

Alex:

I have, I just talked to one of them yesterday, and they lost their house,

Troy:

yeah, we're thinking about these folks.

Troy:

So

Alex:

and, and, you know, I live in a, I live in a fire zone here.

Alex:

We, we also had like in Northern California, the wettest, winter.

Alex:

So it's, it's surreal to see Southern California on fire.

Alex:

But, you know, we had some, some close calls and just that fear

Alex:

of like not knowing where you, whether you should evacuate.

Alex:

And then actually seeing the flames, you know, over the horizon.

Alex:

It's terrifying some of these videos, and it's so populated there.

Alex:

It's just crazy.

Alex:

but yeah, the discourse has been, as expected, on X, terrible.

Brian:

but let's not start there.

Brian:

let's start with, Mark Zuckerberg's, Turnabout on moderation, and or pandering to the incoming administration this week.

Brian:

he announced a wholesale dismantling of content moderation apparatus that he put in place.

Brian:

Let's, let's not forget it.

Brian:

Although he'd like to us to forget it in 2017, in response to the uproar over Facebook's role, Trump's 1st

Brian:

election, Russian interference, remember Cambridge Analytica that supposedly swung the election.

Brian:

He threw mainstream media under the bus.

Brian:

He threw Biden under the bus.

Brian:

it was pretty clear that this was a, an attempt that we've seen pretty

Brian:

much across the board, to bend the knee, I think, to, the current vibe.

Brian:

Instead of the, the army of content moderators, he's basically adopting community notes.

Brian:

he's even calling it community notes.

Brian:

Yeah, we've seen this.

Brian:

I mean, every tech company and and leader has in their own way accommodated themselves.

Brian:

You know, they've all donated either through the company itself or individually to the inauguration.

Brian:

Trump is swimming in money.

Brian:

I read something in the New York Times that they, they now can't

Brian:

even give, you know, million dollar donors any real perks.

Brian:

Like, they've run out of perks.

Brian:

Like, they just said, like, they have got like fire codes.

Brian:

So, I'm kind of reminded of, of one time I, I went on a walking safari, in South Africa and we came across a

Brian:

lion on a hill and it charged at us, but then the guide fired warning shots in front of the lion and it sort of

Brian:

skidded sideways and retreated because it understood that it came across some, something that was more powerful than it.

Brian:

so I think a couple of ways for us to look at this.

Brian:

I mean, one.

Brian:

Maybe Masterstroke by Zuckerberg as a business operator, and he's, he's done this before, he's, he's

Brian:

ruthless, and he is shameless, or it's just more cravenness, and it's probably a little bit of both.

Brian:

Troy, you want to, give us your, your insights?

Troy:

Well, I wonder if it, if it will really matter.

Troy:

That's what I'm curious to find out.

Troy:

It's sort of like if you read the sort of, sadder commentary

Troy:

from the endlessly pessimistic Ryan Broderick from Garbage Day.

Brian:

Well, he spends a lot of time online, so, like, I can understand

Troy:

much, you know, he's like sad Ryan.

Troy:

but, you know, it's like this will turn, you know, Facebook to even more of a kind of reality bending bullshit vortex

Troy:

than it, you know, seemingly is today and that ultimately will as a society be worse off because of this, because

Troy:

we don't have, you know, armies of, you know, sort of lightly engaged fact

Troy:

checkers, you know, you know, Deciding what content goes on Facebook or not.

Troy:

I think in the end, you know, it, if you look at the information space broadly,

Troy:

you can kind of find places to say whatever you want and not be censored.

Troy:

And it somehow all manages to kind of, you know, make it, make itself

Troy:

available to people, whether it's on X or Reddit or somebody's sub stack.

Troy:

So I think in the end, it'll.

Troy:

It'll be a nothing thing.

Troy:

And, if it is, if it does overwhelm the feeds on Facebook, then Zuckerberg will pivot again.

Troy:

What's amazing about that guy.

Troy:

I mean, more broadly is that he just moves fast and he sees a change in the

Troy:

market and he's done it 10 times and he pushes that company to the next thing.

Troy:

Whether, you know, that was a creation of, you know, the, the newsfeed in the early days or Building the app platform

Troy:

or moving to mobile or copying Tik Tok with reels or rebranding to meta,

Brian:

he copied Snapchat.

Troy:

okay.

Troy:

And now it's, it's, we're going to change moderation.

Troy:

I'm going to put a new face on our public affairs group by getting rid of Clegg.

Troy:

And, you know, this is, this is a Facebook for, for a new administration and a new political reality and let's go.

Troy:

So that's why, He's very successful and that's my take.

Brian:

Okay, Alex, is the sky falling without the content moderators?

Alex:

I don't know, the switching over to community notes is fine.

Alex:

I think the announcement was, I mean, I don't know.

Alex:

It felt, it felt, to me like he was throwing a bunch of people he hired under the bus by calling them

Alex:

biased and political and saying, we're going to move to Texas.

Brian:

Yeah, that was a weird one.

Brian:

We gotta move out of California.

Alex:

I mean, it's, it's so obvious that, he has always been shameless.

Alex:

I don't like him.

Alex:

I was told not to talk about Facebook at my last job because I had a

Alex:

tendency to, say things that were, Pretty negative about the company.

Alex:

I haven't changed my mind.

Alex:

I think he's Parasitic the way he he responds to things and that's fine.

Alex:

That's how he runs his business something successful He had luck once managed to build a big company surrounded himself

Alex:

by people who allowed the company to grow and now he just looks at what's happening in the market and adjust to it.

Alex:

He's pretty shameless.

Alex:

Like I think it you know like just the way he The way that video kind of played out, showed like he was

Alex:

pandering, and also showed like the administration is open for business, guys.

Alex:

Everything's transactional now.

Alex:

And, these giant tech companies are very comfortable being transactional, so it's just gonna happen.

Alex:

And I think, Trump administration is gonna be pretty cheap, like, hey, fuck, we can get rid of a thousand people, a headache,

Alex:

you Under the guise of free speech and and non politicalness And on top of that we get a bunch of goons to like us more now.

Alex:

so I don't know.

Alex:

I don't think

Troy:

Alex, could you tone down the anti Facebook rhetoric please?

Alex:

No, fuck him.

Alex:

I I I talked to a lot of people who are at Facebook, who I don't think would have

Alex:

had any trouble with a shift away from human moderation to, to different systems.

Alex:

look at their leader, with a little bit of disdain at the moment.

Alex:

I don't think that changes anything for him.

Alex:

I think people, You know people need the job and they're going to work there and it's going to be fine but

Alex:

yeah, I I just felt like the whole thing felt kind of nasty to me.

Brian:

beyond the cravenness, let's, let's leave aside the cravenness for a

Alex:

I mean if beyond the craveness

Alex:

elon is a genius beyond the

Brian:

whole content moderation thing and the idea like platforms have

Brian:

been an impossible position and they were put in impossible position.

Brian:

Maybe they put themselves in that of adjudicating.

Brian:

You know, what speech was misinformation and ultimately you are going to have false positives without a doubt.

Brian:

If you're you're just going to right.

Brian:

And so I think the question ends up being like, how do you get out of?

Brian:

Playing the arbiter.

Brian:

Now, they tried to outsource that in some ways, a bunch of different fact checking organizations who he then

Brian:

flew through under the bus as being biased and left leaning, et cetera.

Brian:

and maybe I don't know, but,

Alex:

it's, it's simple, like they, they, they keep telling, I mean, in his, in his little speech, he

Alex:

talked about how the, I'm surprised you're not more upset, Brian, because

Alex:

he talked about how the, the, the press was pushing them to do that.

Alex:

The press, the

Brian:

Oh, yeah.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Well, the press is always, I mean, come on, you were, you attack the media all the time.

Brian:

So I'm

Alex:

um, and, but, but yeah, sure, you know, poor, poor little Facebook was forced by the media

Alex:

to

Brian:

I know, but let's leave aside his craveness.

Brian:

We know the

Alex:

the, here's the only play that happens.

Alex:

It's all about section 230.

Alex:

So the last administration threatens them with section 230 by saying,

Alex:

Hey, you can't have things that are dangerous on your platform.

Alex:

Otherwise you might lose section 230.

Alex:

Wouldn't it be like a problem for you to lose the one thing that allows you to have pretty much infinite cashflow through

Alex:

the, you know, the creation of content by millions of people on your platform.

Alex:

Now the new FTC chair comes in and says, you know what, with all your censorship, and we know what they mean

Alex:

by censorship, The, you know, it would be a shame that you lost section 230.

Alex:

That is their one thing that they don't want to happen

Brian:

So just to recap, Section 230 is, is the law that basically gives them a

Brian:

pass for being responsible for the things that are posted on their platforms.

Alex:

I mean, I'm surprised like the media is not more upset about that.

Alex:

It's the thing that allows these platforms to be a media

Alex:

platform without any, any of, the liabilities that traditional, media

Brian:

just to be clear, the media, the media has been complaining about this, like, forever.

Brian:

I mean, going back to, like, calling Google is Google's a publisher.

Brian:

Google's a

Alex:

They should have done something because apparently they control what

Brian:

Nobody listens to the, the, the media, despite the media pulling the, the, the strings,

Brian:

apparently, in all of society, despite it being in terminal decline.

Brian:

it isn't actually that powerful.

Brian:

It turns

Alex:

it's it's all it's all about 230 You know, like it's all

Alex:

about 230 shit.

Alex:

You're gonna take 230 away So we'll put your friend dana white on the board of meta

Brian:

And Joel Kaplan, who Troy had mentioned before, who is a longtime Republican operative, who has replaced

Brian:

Nick Clegg, as their head of public policy and assuming, I assume he will be their ambassador to the administration.

Brian:

I think it was

Alex:

You know, if if Bernie got elected, I think we would have had a speed from Zuckerberg, how he's forcing everyone into

Alex:

unions, like it's, it doesn't matter, like 230 is such a powerful thing for them.

Alex:

If they lose 230, they lose everything.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

And, and 230 has been the get out of jail free, like, You know Zoom zoom.

Alex:

Let's make as much money as possible.

Alex:

All of these companies have like like no liability It means it's why google is allowed to like advertise

Alex:

shit to children under the guise on youtube under the guise of like well, it's just community content like the

Troy:

that I'm not following, but you guys would, would admit that, as Brian said, I think importantly, that

Troy:

the idea that platforms are put in a position where they have to decide

Troy:

whether content should be viewed or not is a troubling place for them.

Troy:

uh,

Alex:

they have a job, because they have some sort of responsibility.

Alex:

It would be so hard.

Alex:

Oh, yeah.

Alex:

these platforms are always so great at saying, you know what, like, we'd like to figure out a way for

Alex:

not letting children longing on Instagram, but it's so difficult.

Alex:

It's so difficult.

Alex:

Meanwhile, we're talking about, we're building, you know, generalized artificial intelligence by building,

Alex:

you know, by, Oh, let's, let's reignite nuclear power plants so we have power for this shit, but all this other

Alex:

stuff is too

Brian:

honestly, physics is, easier than this stuff.

Troy:

Yes, definitely.

Troy:

Definitely.

Brian:

It is because it's it's it's cut and dry.

Brian:

I mean, like physics is physics, like, whereas, you know, whether the Hunter Biden laptop story was

Brian:

Russian disinformation or not is like, that's hard to figure out.

Brian:

And I don't, like,

Troy:

Or if something that's distasteful to some people should be taken off the platform when it's potentially,

Troy:

you know, some other people see it as legitimate conversation.

Alex:

And this is why Elon did the right thing by moving to community platforms and completely, snuff out the

Troy:

This isn't about Elon, man.

Troy:

Let's, this isn't, I'm not

Brian:

he said a nice thing about it.

Troy:

Well, no, he said that he, he went to community notes and then he censors, personally, which is, is hypocritical and

Alex:

hyper hypocritical.

Alex:

All these companies are hypocritical.

Alex:

It's all about sections 230 though.

Alex:

Like I said, I don't mind that they have decided to move from human

Alex:

moderation to community moderation because human moderation is untenable.

Alex:

Yes, we get it.

Alex:

It's difficult.

Alex:

People are biased, where the political winds are turning can stifle,

Alex:

communication and these platforms want to remain as open as possible.

Alex:

However, they're all hypocritical.

Alex:

The main thing that they want to keep is an ability to To kind of

Alex:

put content in front of people with as little liability as possible.

Alex:

They want to maintain 230.

Alex:

They will do whatever they, they

Alex:

need to,

Brian:

and 230 is the

Troy:

of it all guys is this staggering truth, which I'm reminded of from the earliest days.

Troy:

I remember when, when.

Troy:

We were talking about, you know, Facebook in the early aughts and how it was emerging, you know, from

Troy:

the campus of Harvard into being a generalized social network and taking on my space and all of this.

Troy:

And the dialogue at the time was, yeah, but, you know, nobody wants

Troy:

to advertise on social networking and can this be a business?

Troy:

And now we're in this kind of gilded age period where.

Troy:

You know, a handful of people, not unlike Carnegie Rockefeller and, you know, JP Morgan, you know, control

Troy:

huge swaths of the economy, which is really just tech through systems that

Troy:

have no liability or content costs and make just staggering amounts of money.

Troy:

And the amount of money made by a handful of companies, which, you know, gives them the ability to, you know,

Troy:

really kind of not just influence, you know, politics, but kind of reshapes society is, is amazing to me.

Alex:

the, the, the top, the, the, the magnificent seven of the, in the stock market have a larger

Alex:

market cap than I think 200 of the companies that follow them.

Troy:

400.

Troy:

Well, then 200, then larger, but they, it's 30 percent of the index is

Alex:

Okay.

Alex:

So, so, and, and here's the thing when, you know, if we're talking about Zuckerberg specifically, because I

Alex:

think we can be very impressed with him as a leader, but I think once that that thing had wheels, right?

Alex:

And once Facebook had wheels and created the amount of revenue, free

Alex:

cash flow that it did, it allowed him to make so many mistakes.

Alex:

Like we're saying, yeah, bought Instagram.

Alex:

He could have built Instagram.

Alex:

He didn't build Instagram.

Alex:

These companies are, are, are Their safety net is so huge that they, they can with otherwise like very mediocre

Alex:

strategic decision, decide to spend 20 billion on the metaverse and then

Alex:

go say, whoops, now where I am, and everybody goes like, man, you're so smart.

Alex:

No other companies could spend 20 billion and burn them

Troy:

Oh, it's, I think it's like 20 billion a year.

Alex:

A year, right?

Alex:

And so, so then we look at these

Alex:

people like, like as geniuses, as if the same way we look at somebody that inherited like, you know, 200 million

Alex:

as a business genius when he managed to make a successful bagel shop.

Alex:

Like, it's impossible to make mistakes.

Alex:

It's impossible to fail for these companies.

Brian:

I compare it to the United States, like we can, we can, as a country, the United States can make so many

Brian:

errors and screw up so many things, but because of all of the advantages of

Brian:

geography, of the military, of scale, like, it's, it's, it's going to be fine.

Brian:

Like, I, Belgium

Alex:

we talk about these people like they're fucking geniuses.

Brian:

I don't think, I mean, I don't know.

Alex:

not

Troy:

pretty, they're pretty, they're pretty smart.

Troy:

They're pretty smart, Alex.

Troy:

Okay.

Troy:

So that I

Brian:

Is this because maybe he's like cheating at the, Elon Musk is cheating at video gaming?

Brian:

I wasn't able to open that link in Apple

Alex:

of

Alex:

course he's cheating but like I don't even care about elon musk anymore.

Alex:

I mean that guy's I think even trump's getting tired of him

Troy:

but how did he get so good at that game, Alex?

Alex:

these companies, it is unhealthy when companies are so big that they're like unable to get any repercussions

Alex:

for the mistakes they make and, on top of that, these individuals are, are too, these people are too powerful and

Alex:

it's very worrying when you get into an environment where you know, political apparatus is, You know, it's like, it's

Alex:

ready to trade because these people have an infinite money and I don't want to live in a technocratic, like, thing that's

Alex:

run by people who actually now believe their own bullshit and think that luck had nothing to do with their success.

Alex:

So, like, I'm worried about that stuff.

Alex:

And, Let's see the you know, at least hopefully it just lasts four years and just like brace ourselves

Brian:

don't think it's gonna last only four years.

Brian:

I think that's the new reality.

Brian:

I mean, the, the finance industry is what, like 15 percent of the economy or so.

Brian:

I mean, they're a power center.

Brian:

They've had Goldman Sachs was called government sacks because of the revolving door.

Brian:

You go from Goldman Sachs to the Treasury Department bounce back and you're seeing something similar.

Brian:

happen with tech now and being embedded in Washington.

Brian:

I don't think that's going to change.

Brian:

I mean, when you become a massive power center, you're going to

Brian:

interact with the government, which is the ultimate power center.

Brian:

I mean, that's, that's not going to change.

Brian:

I don't care who is sitting in the White House.

Brian:

you know, tech is, is, I don't see, I mean, AI is not going to, to make this, sort of less important, right?

Brian:

I

Alex:

No,

Alex:

I think what I mean by change is that I think like we're likely going into a cycle where 90 of the population just

Alex:

votes whoever tells them they can fix the economy for them and Neither can so we're going to flip flop between

Alex:

like, you know The different parties and so in four years, it'll just be a different set of of pandering that

Alex:

happens and you know, I think I think that's what we're gonna see right now.

Alex:

It's just feels like this administration is just going to be very very open for business.

Alex:

so like, you know fart coin is up That's great.

Alex:

I don't know if you bought fart.

Alex:

Have you bought fart coin

Brian:

I didn't, I don't have any

Alex:

Uh, that's unfortunate.

Alex:

You could be you could be a millionaire

Troy:

guys.

Troy:

Can we move on please?

Troy:

this is not where I want this to, I mean, this is not a political podcast, okay?

Alex:

Is this not political?

Alex:

I'm not talking about anything

Troy:

Well, it's, it's like grievance.

Troy:

Like, let's just move on.

Troy:

Let's talk about media.

Brian:

No, let's

Alex:

are talking about

Brian:

talk about, let's talk about CES.

Brian:

I miss CES this year.

Brian:

I had been the last few years, but, didn't have anything going on, decided to skip it.

Brian:

Which is a weird thing that the sort of media world goes to CES, but doesn't really engage in the tech part.

Brian:

They just have like a lot of meetings with like advertisers and whatnot.

Brian:

but anyway, at CES, um, revealed, some interesting things.

Brian:

Interesting announcements around a personal supercomputer running its new Blackwell chip, as well as a

Brian:

new partnership involving some kind of driverless truck technology.

Brian:

Jensen, you'd pointed this out, Troy, that Jensen, Huang is, is like an old school, Steve Jobs, because there,

Brian:

there isn't like of all the like sort of tech CEOs, you know, none of them have the showmanship of, of Steve Jobs.

Brian:

I mean, You know, Musk is sort of stuttering and, and awkward.

Brian:

Zuckerberg is, is still kind of wooden and doesn't seem human.

Brian:

Tim Cook is just Tim Cook, the The Google guy.

Brian:

I don't, yeah, he's, he's from McKinsey.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

but he, he's a very interesting, tech CEO type.

Brian:

He's got the leather jacket.

Brian:

Look, he signed

Troy:

Alligator for CES, he had an alligator

Brian:

Oh, you had an alligator one.

Brian:

Oh, that's cool.

Brian:

that's part of the vibe shift, I guess.

Brian:

he signed that boob one time.

Brian:

and he also seems to kind of like an agreeable dad type versus the.

Brian:

The kind of trying too hard cage fighting, you know, approach taken by some of these other CEOs.

Brian:

I'm interested in Alex in in your First of all, like what what do

Brian:

you think about these announcements that made do they matter at all?

Brian:

After the announcements, NVIDIA's shares, were down 6.

Brian:

2%, and some of that is, is just, you know, one, one analyst, said that, you know, there were technically interesting

Brian:

announcements, but at the same time, you know, investors were looking for more, more progress, on this Blackwell

Brian:

and, and when the next generation GPU platform Rubin will be, rolled out.

Alex:

I think what comes across with, with him is that he actually

Alex:

is like, deeply knowledgeable and loves what the company does.

Alex:

I think what we're losing with, with him with Apple's presentation, specifically

Alex:

with Tim Cook, is that, it, he doesn't, there's no, the passion doesn't feel real.

Alex:

And I think the production around it makes it feel even more fake.

Alex:

But having this dude on stage for two hours talk about chips, is

Alex:

more interesting because he seems genuinely passionate about it.

Alex:

And, and, and sure he's charismatic, but a lot of these other dudes are.

Alex:

It just feels like he's somebody he is the comp he is like an integral part of that company rather than just an

Troy:

Yeah, that feels right.

Troy:

That feels right.

Troy:

But Alex, any, any insight on, you know, being able to put the entire internet and

Troy:

a huge LLM on a supercomputer that you can put on, you know, on your desktop?

Troy:

Is that important?

Alex:

mean, yes any of these tools that kind of allow us to do more things with the with these llms is going to allow us

Alex:

to start seeing the creation of like tools and products That are Actually useful.

Alex:

I think we need, you know, a couple of years to kind of, figure out what can be built.

Alex:

But you know, my thing has always been that like right now, I mean, we're mostly

Alex:

just like tapping straight into the chat bot, into the LLMs via chat bot.

Alex:

And we're not really seeing exciting tools come in.

Alex:

I think Brian, you were talking about that Google research thing as

Alex:

being kind of like, wow, that's an expression of these types of things.

Alex:

And And we don't know what happens when you can actually have something run,

Alex:

run locally, like in a business

Troy:

because because

Troy:

Well, maybe I just challenge you a little bit that the tools, you know, maybe applications of them in, in

Troy:

more, in narrower ways haven't manifest yet, but Brian's example that Gemini's research tool could string together

Troy:

queries and match it with a really deep web search could then bring back

Troy:

basically a research report in five minutes is pretty impressive tool to me.

Alex:

No, I'm so that's what I'm saying.

Alex:

I'm saying these are the types of tools that we're It's it's some of the first tools that we're seeing

Alex:

that have like some real use outside of like well It's it's kind of easier to just get to the chat bot.

Alex:

I think a lot of the other stuff we're seeing including in in ios and everything like that is just like summarize this

Alex:

shit and you know here i'm going to help you respond to that message or you know, like ask me a question with my ai agent

Alex:

all of these things feel like you know early internet Experiments that, you know, didn't really hit until we started getting

Brian:

but it doesn't feel like there's been some like killer, like, probably like, Oh my God, I must have this.

Brian:

This has changed

Brian:

my life.

Brian:

And it's

Troy:

I sent this morning?

Troy:

The AI male pleasuring device.

Troy:

I mean, it's water

Brian:

I haven't tried it.

Alex:

Well, yeah, that was at ces yeah, yeah, that was I

Troy:

one of those every year where you

Troy:

you can connect it to video, I think.

Troy:

And so it's it's like, you know,

Alex:

It watches your video and changes the rhythm of it,

Alex:

yeah

Troy:

thank you.

Alex:

Yes,

Alex:

I mean that's you know what I think the nice thing about that is

Alex:

finally technology doing something against the loneliness epidemic

Troy:

Yeah, yeah.

Troy:

I just wonder where you put that when you're done with it.

Troy:

Do you put it like near the small appliances

Alex:

Well, apparently it's not waterproof so you can't put in your dishwasher.

Alex:

but you didn't want to talk about politics.

Alex:

So I

Troy:

No, no, but Alex, I had another question.

Troy:

These are serious questions that are coming up now.

Alex:

No, but let me just

Alex:

finish just before you start with your other question.

Alex:

because it's hard to come up with answers about this is the type of stuff that we're going to start seeing.

Alex:

I'm definitely interested in, in having kind of like an LLM that can run in my house.

Alex:

That sounds interesting as an experiment, but the example I always give is like,

Alex:

you know, There was a, the, you know, the, we, we talked about the web 2.

Alex:

0 revolution, right, which was like a very, technically kind of

Alex:

interesting thing, but it didn't really provide a ton of value.

Alex:

But the main thing it allowed you to do is, is update websites in real time using JavaScript.

Alex:

So now your websites could behave a little bit more like applications.

Alex:

And at, and at, and at first, would see just like interesting things happening, but it would really only satisfy kind

Alex:

of nerds like me and say like, oh, this is pretty cool until, until we

Alex:

started getting, and it took us a while to figure out what that looked like.

Alex:

But we started getting things like Google Maps and, and Google Docs and, and it kind of, Both changed the way people

Alex:

thought about how application could be delivered over the web, but then things like Google Maps allowed for the creation

Alex:

of things like Uber or Airbnb, and you kind of created these like brand new types of tools that that had societal effects.

Alex:

Right, like not just like, oh, this is a slightly cooler version of the

Alex:

thing I used to use, but this is like something I couldn't do before.

Alex:

I couldn't be on the street, press a button, and the car comes, you know, and of course, you needed a

Alex:

collection of technologies like the phone and GPS and everything like that.

Alex:

But so right now, when you're thinking about AI, it is one of it is part of that, you know, part of that core

Alex:

technology, we're gonna have to see kind of like, Technologies that, and products

Alex:

that exist around side of it so that people can start building on top of it.

Alex:

So anything that's released like that, that allows it to be more portable, more localized, doesn't that allows

Alex:

it to run without having to be kind of constantly connected to the LLM, reduces the cost, open sources, these

Alex:

things, it's just going to open up the field for these new type of tools.

Alex:

And I don't think we've yet seen a tool that is the Uber of, of the LLM era.

Alex:

Like we haven't seen the tool that allows us to do things.

Alex:

something that's completely different, a completely different

Alex:

behavior, rather than stuff that we used to do in a slightly different

Troy:

that was good.

Troy:

Good context because it was, it reminded me of two small, two small things.

Troy:

One is the NVIDIA announcement of, I think it's called Cosmos, which allows the robots to essentially

Troy:

train off of images and real world information, which allows you to see a time when actually robots could.

Troy:

You know, be deployed, suck up all the information as to how to navigate the world and, and be useful.

Troy:

And that's essentially what's happening with, with self driving cars using,

Troy:

you know, sensors to, to, to map the world and therefore become.

Troy:

You know, autonomous.

Troy:

So that was the, the Cosmo announcement.

Troy:

The other one, Alex, I thought was cool was to me.

Troy:

It's sort of like, Oh, look, the Alex features coming to, my television.

Troy:

And it was on a Google TV where you could just say, summarize the news.

Troy:

And it would go out, I suppose, to, to YouTube and to the web and to I, I guess any other professional source.

Troy:

give you a couple bullet points on your TV and point you at a couple of clips, which would prevent you from

Troy:

having to watch Baby News and Zero, you know, get you, you know, it's

Alex:

for the new listeners, baby news is what I call things like CNN and

Brian:

So we, we did like stitch together.

Brian:

Does it like stitch together like clips?

Brian:

So it just takes like the video

Troy:

I mean, I, I think eventually Brian, but I think at first it's like

Troy:

a couple of bullet points and directs you to a clip on YouTube, but what.

Troy:

Struck me from that is, when you start seeing all the things that

Troy:

have hijacked publishers via aggregation on the Internet, right?

Troy:

Things that have made it harder for you to, you know, control your surface area as a publisher.

Troy:

And you see that coming for television.

Troy:

That's when media is really going to freak out

Troy:

because.

Brian:

lawyers are going to get involved

Troy:

well, there's a lot more money involved and, and,

Brian:

mess with the text people.

Brian:

That's fine.

Brian:

But when you start to get into closer to

Alex:

I mean, good luck,

Alex:

good luck with this administration and the advisors they've got on because I think that similarly as section 230

Alex:

being Kind of the, the brittle foundation of these massive social networks, IP law is the brittle foundation

Alex:

for all these LLM because, you know, they've been stealing shit, right?

Alex:

And they're continuously stealing that shit.

Alex:

It's essentially Napster, but what if Napster just had all the music

Alex:

and changed it enough, so it didn't sound like the original song.

Alex:

and if, if, if that legal battle doesn't get, you know, one in

Alex:

the next couple of years, it's going to be very hard to untangle.

Alex:

So, I mean, I keep hearing the media say, well, you know, wait till our lawyers hear of this.

Alex:

What's happening?

Brian:

don't, I don't hear that though, honestly.

Alex:

You can ask, you can ask Google, the new VEO, video, kind of generator from Google, which has

Alex:

likely been trained on YouTube, you can tell it to generate a humanoid

Alex:

sponge that lives under the sea and it will generate Spongebob Squarepants.

Alex:

It won't generate a weird humanoid.

Alex:

It will generate Spongebob Squarepants.

Alex:

So that means it's trained entirely on copyrighted, not in part in copyrighted data.

Alex:

And, there's nothing nobody's doing about it.

Alex:

So, I think, any media that's on the internet, it can be behind a paywall or whatever, with new agents, you'll

Alex:

just type in your paywall information, all that stuff can be clipped and reformatted, and brought back, and

Alex:

I don't think there's any legal way to kind of bounce out of that.

Brian:

so I want to move on to rabbit holes and attention spans.

Brian:

this is a good reminder that everyone should sign up for the

Brian:

companion, the PVA newsletter companion, that has been revived.

Brian:

It's a work in progress.

Brian:

I think it's, I think it's coming along pretty well.

Brian:

it's a bit of a, yeah, it's a conversational format.

Brian:

We take five topics, mostly from, You know, what we're discussing here in the podcast and, we go back and forth on it.

Brian:

and there's also what is it?

Brian:

Anonymous banker?

Troy:

Yeah, we, we like bankers because they're sort of like, real estate agents that went to Ivy leagues and,

Troy:

no, no offense to, to any bankers listening, they're enterprising, right?

Troy:

They got to go hustle.

Troy:

They got to find deals.

Troy:

They got to find out where they got to make opportunities.

Troy:

And so, we know some bankers and one of them said, I'd like to

Troy:

contribute to your newsletter and we'll just do it anonymously.

Troy:

And he actually better than Alex, dutifully sends his copy over, each week.

Troy:

And he, this week, he made a, A comment about the, consolidation that's happening around sort of influencer,

Troy:

affiliate marketplaces with the, the mo, mo, most recent acquisition of what's the company called?

Troy:

Maverly?

Troy:

Yeah, Mavely was acquired by a company called Later, but essentially there as ad tech

Alex:

These are all made up names.

Alex:

What is those real companies?

Troy:

yes, there were companies as ad tech has become less interesting with the decline of the webpage, the, you

Troy:

know, influence get an influencer to promote a product and get pay them on performance and have a marketplace

Troy:

that stacks up influencers on ones or creators on one side and filters and

Troy:

offers from retailers on the other side has become, a good business, I guess.

Alex:

I mean, this is how you get 10 year olds into skincare routines

Brian:

is capitalism.

Alex:

Yeah, it's the best type of capitalism.

Alex:

It's the one where you don't have any limitations of how you advertise

Alex:

to people and blurs the line between advertising and content.

Alex:

We love it.

Alex:

it's so

Troy:

raw.

Troy:

but we were doing

Troy:

rabbit, we were doing rabbit holes,

Brian:

Yeah, we're gonna do rabbit holes, Troy, 'cause you, you let off the, the newsletter this week with, with an ode

Brian:

to the wonder of rabbit holes, which are, you know, I think you pointed out

Brian:

they're, they're one of the defining features of the information space.

Brian:

And, and that's because, you know, as the name of this podcast and the newsletter is, it's, it's algorithmic.

Brian:

I mean, algorithms are about rabbit holes and, you know, algorithms are great about leading you down a rabbit hole.

Brian:

It's not like rabbit holes just appeared.

Brian:

but they're much more common now because algorithms are directing the, the media consumption patterns.

Brian:

I take a little bit of a different point of view because I'm trying to break my, Twitter slash X addiction.

Brian:

That is longstanding, I admit it, and, it's, it's really difficult.

Brian:

I, I hit the two hour limit, that I set for myself,

Brian:

and sometimes

Alex:

you have a little, are you using that screen time feature or do

Brian:

Yeah, I do, I do the screen time feature and, you know, it's, it's very, it's, it's terrible

Brian:

because it leads you down all kinds of paths that I don't want to be down.

Brian:

And it's very

Troy:

I mean, you might, you might want to think about you should maybe get a dog or, or, or a cat or something

Troy:

and

Troy:

spend some time there, maybe take up another sort of more offline habit like crochet or there's all kinds of golf

Troy:

things you could do.

Troy:

I love rabbit holes though Brian and and and I like the counterpoint that that you're, you're beholden to, to a platform,

Troy:

and that you can't control your own, your own urges, but Because I use YouTube a lot, I think Alex is right about this.

Troy:

YouTube is a rabbit hole in kind of platform.

Troy:

And I just noticed that I've had some wondrous media journeys and

Troy:

obviously modern media is like, you know, the opposite of a timeline.

Troy:

So we used to have the programming guide and the timeline, and now we rabbit hole.

Troy:

And that's why I think it's interesting and important where I like, Oh my God,

Troy:

this Ron, like I've been rabbit holing on Carson, old Carson interviews.

Troy:

Carson was a talk show host that my mother watched, but he had, you know, this was a legendary time in that format.

Troy:

Regan, Was on there between, you know, governorship of California and

Troy:

presidency and the things that he said echo the present in lots of ways.

Troy:

Not only was he kind of, seen at the time is like, who is this outsider actor politician, but

Troy:

was, you know, conservative in this and and and railing against.

Troy:

The, you know, government overstepping like the present, but, you know,

Troy:

just watching Rob Williams on, on Carson or, or Frank Sinatra.

Troy:

I mean, this is gold, this stuff.

Troy:

Anyway, it's interesting.

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

The YouTube algorithm is not perfect because it assumes that you, once

Troy:

you're interested in one thing, you want to consume endlessly on that tip.

Troy:

But like I got on this Harmony Corrine tip, he's this wackadoodle guy that, is a filmmaker and a, and an artist

Troy:

and a writer who famously wrote the script to this movie kids that

Troy:

many of you have probably seen.

Troy:

And he's just after that movie came out, he's 19 years old and he's on Letterman.

Troy:

And it is a surreal interview and he is kind of earnest and authentic and seemingly at the

Troy:

time sees the ridiculousness of the kind of celebrity interview format and kind of fucks with it.

Troy:

And I fell down to harmony.

Troy:

rabbit hole.

Troy:

There's a bunch of content and even, you know, current interviews with him and then kind of moved into his, you

Troy:

know, in rewatching kids and I watched spring breakers, which was like one of the first films from a 24 that he made.

Troy:

And he's made this bizarre movie called gummo.

Troy:

And so that was my rabbit hole.

Troy:

And, and I, I find that I'm consuming media like that very often now.

Troy:

So that's, that's my contribution.

Alex:

I think the impetus for the rabbit hole really matters here because I think what Brian talks about when going on

Alex:

next is that Something grabs him by the neck and drags him down a dark alley Well, he sees all sorts of things that

Alex:

he doesn't want to see it's a little bit like being invited to a ditty party know,

Brian:

Yeah, grooming, grooming gangs.

Brian:

I didn't know.

Brian:

I don't need to, like, be

Alex:

It is

Alex:

breaking, Brian, I think we need to like have have have an intervention for

Alex:

Brian because it

Alex:

it is 100 You are.

Alex:

You sound like it.

Alex:

Yeah.

Brian:

I am.

Brian:

Because I think, look, I, I really believe that we have, I wrote about this in my newsletter today.

Brian:

We have this, like, Crisis really of attention spans, and it's really all

Brian:

because of this algorithmic media, system and how chaotic the information spaces.

Brian:

And I think when you I've experienced it, like, I think it's really difficult to focus for a lot of people.

Brian:

And, you know, you read a lot about burnout, this is, Ezra Klein had a really good podcast, about burnout, and I think

Brian:

a lot of it comes down to the fact that people feel overwhelmed by a lot of the information that's coming out at them.

Brian:

and.

Brian:

You know, the reality is they need less, not more.

Brian:

And I think it's, it's hard being in the information business to, to say that.

Brian:

But it, it, it really is a problem when people can't focus.

Brian:

And when your attention becomes commodified, because that is how these companies make money.

Brian:

The reason that their rabbit holes exist is because that is, is their business model.

Alex:

And that is why Facebook has been experimenting putting on AI generated content into the feed because

Alex:

it's just more stuff that can be more targeted and it's more surface area

Brian:

More personalized, it's going to be more addictive.

Alex:

It is why some of the most, popular TikTok content is a screen split in two, well, where they might show a

Alex:

clip of a podcast at the top, but at the bottom, they'll put like somebody, you know, playing with play doh or

Alex:

car crashes or people falling down like a ski slope because, because your attention is hijacked by that thing.

Alex:

It's, it's so, so the only way to do it is you delete the app.

Alex:

I was talking to my nephew, and, you know, he's a young guy.

Alex:

He says he's deleted all the apps.

Alex:

He feels better.

Alex:

I.

Alex:

Don't think you need it for work anymore.

Alex:

I went on to X this week, just to check on something.

Alex:

I was actually checking if there was any news about, the fires there.

Alex:

and it descended into this thing that like, yeah, it's become really the algorithm and the people

Alex:

that engage in it have become way too good at playing this game.

Alex:

So it's all about like enragement bait.

Alex:

It's all about hijacking your attention and we're no longer able to get bored.

Alex:

So And, these tools are only going to get worse.

Alex:

and so, yeah, Brian, you just need to get off it,

Brian:

Well, I,

Alex:

just delete

Alex:

it.

Alex:

Can you do it?

Alex:

Can you do like a, you know, like there's a no, not November, like, you know, no,

Troy:

Could we find a, do you guys think there's anything good in rabbit holes?

Troy:

Like, here's the thing, my rabbit holing is pulling me, is, is pulling me away.

Troy:

It is pretty

Troy:

wholesome and it's, it's pulling me away from mindless Netflix shows.

Troy:

Like I just don't watch that crap anymore.

Troy:

And I think that instead what I'm watching is the American experience on the gilded age or a review of

Troy:

a, new tube amp or an explanation on how transformers actually work.

Troy:

Like I'm a better man.

Troy:

for rabbit holes.

Alex:

my first kind of like, you know, because I was very early internet user and I was in forums and stuff like that

Alex:

and rabbit holes were the first kind of real experience I had over the internet where you could find a topic and then

Alex:

click a link and then click another link and then click another link and it felt like you were kind of uh, Navigating like

Alex:

an, you know, like a detective through the internet and finding out new things.

Alex:

And it felt so satisfying, but even, you know, our beloved YouTube,

Alex:

Troy, like, I'm sure like now it's like, Oh, you like Carson.

Alex:

Here's all of Carson, everything Carson, because the, because it's algorithmic.

Alex:

Like the, you know, when I looked

Troy:

Okay.

Troy:

That's a problem with the, with the algorithm that needs to be cured and tweaked a bit.

Alex:

but as a behavior rabbit holes are interesting.

Alex:

Yesterday I listened to like a Lisa.

Alex:

Two hours of coffee Zilla and then I went, I went into a mild depression because I said there's so many of these

Alex:

influencers that are just like not getting any repercussions for their

Troy:

well, well, um, can we pause for a minute?

Troy:

Because Brian, who, tell us about Coffizilla, Brian.

Brian:

well, he is Steven, Findelizen, chemical engineering student.

Brian:

he was a chemical engineering student at Texas A& M and he's a, he's a YouTube creator.

Brian:

He started a different channel called Coffee Break that didn't really take off.

Brian:

And then he, he saw a lot of, of the scams, particularly in crypto, and he, he rebranded himself as CoffeeZilla.

Brian:

He has this sort of film noir, thing going on, like he built the studio and

Brian:

he wears the suspenders like he's like someone out of like a film noir, movie.

Brian:

And, basically investigates online scams at the end of the day.

Brian:

He did FTX.

Brian:

he did, what is it?

Brian:

Was it Jake Paul or Logan Paul?

Brian:

Probably both of

Alex:

Jake Paul, Jake Paul's like crypto scam with, crypto zoo.

Alex:

He did, he did Mr.

Alex:

B stuff.

Alex:

and, yeah, I

Brian:

But

Brian:

he's like 27 years old, right?

Brian:

And he's like an independent guy.

Brian:

I think he's got like a, I listened to the, the Joe Rogan one with him.

Brian:

And he's got like maybe a couple of people like who, who work with him.

Brian:

And, I think it's fascinating because

Alex:

he's,

Alex:

he's Patreon.

Alex:

it's also like if you, I don't know, because I don't think our audience are going to be people that are,

Alex:

maybe attracted to Coffee Zilla because there's a whole aesthetic.

Alex:

It's, it's kind of, it has pretty good production values, but he is, you know, he wears suspenders.

Alex:

He, he's called Coffee Zilla, which makes no sense.

Alex:

His videos are set within, kind of a virtual.

Alex:

Cyberpunk world, there are parts of the video where he goes to a

Alex:

bar and speaks to a robot, because I think he's also, he also,

Alex:

likes making computer graphics.

Alex:

so it's very, yes, it's, it's, it's, it's very specific and you might be turned off by some of this stuff, but it is

Alex:

some of the most compelling to watch and infuriating, investigative content on the

Alex:

internet.

Alex:

It's, it's,

Brian:

too, right?

Brian:

Yeah.

Alex:

Yeah, yeah,

Brian:

Mr.

Brian:

Beast is one guy I could definitely see like a, a downfall, like a entire like Netflix series about

Alex:

Brian, none of these people are getting there's no repercussions.

Alex:

Are you there's no repercussions.

Alex:

The

Alex:

only

Troy:

Brian,

Troy:

just this,

Alex:

repercussions

Brian:

But, but here's what I think is important about Coffeezilla is like, I think a lot of times people in the

Brian:

institutional media are like, well, who's going to do the investigative,

Brian:

you know, journalism, he's doing a form of investigative journalism.

Brian:

He might be talking to a robot bartender.

Brian:

I mean, I think there's going to be a lots of coffee zillas out there.

Brian:

I mean, there's, there's sub stacks, you know, like, the bear cave and, you know, they're, they're basically,

Brian:

you know, almost like a, short seller sort of research kind of thing.

Brian:

And they're in specific areas, but I think that there is an opportunity.

Brian:

And you see with, with coffee zilla to have real investigative work being done.

Brian:

and I think a lot of times it gets dismissed.

Brian:

I mean, Troy, you had, brought up in the newsletter, this Julia Angwin, who used to be a Wall Street Journal reporter.

Brian:

She, she did a, a research report recently about what like mainstream media can learn from, from creators.

Brian:

And, you know, you gotta have, you gotta be talent and you gotta

Troy:

but that was really, that was really good, perspective.

Troy:

If, if just to visit it for a second, because we rely on media brands and the processes that they employ to create

Troy:

this kind of understood relationship between reader and brand that there's kind of trust in that transaction.

Troy:

And that, journalist kind of fits into that scheme and it's assumed

Troy:

that they bring, you know, the trust of the institution to the table.

Troy:

And this report, which was called the future of trustworthy information learning from online content creators

Troy:

kind of said like, well, that's actually not true because people don't trust the media like they used

Troy:

to, but they, but their trust, Levels are high in many cases with creators.

Troy:

What do creators do to create trust?

Troy:

And they sort of, she, she sort of broke it down into like transparency about their expertise and intentions, putting

Troy:

that right in the content, not assuming that it's there real interactions with not like, you know, interactions in

Troy:

comments with the audience and, and, and incorporating feedback from the audience.

Troy:

And just kind of like, it's not pretending to be objective, but trying to be sort of.

Troy:

Transparent instead.

Troy:

And, and I just thought that was an interesting reflection on how trust is created in this new media

Troy:

mode that, that what that's sort of replacing the trust with the blind trust we have in institutions.

Brian:

it never really made sense.

Brian:

The idea that someone just because someone got hired, That makes that

Brian:

you should be, you should be trusted because like HR like approved you.

Brian:

I mean, to me, it's the same with credentialism overall.

Brian:

Like, you know, people who constantly remind you like where they went to college or God forbid the Stuyvesant people.

Brian:

like big deal.

Brian:

Like, what did you do?

Brian:

Like, who cares?

Brian:

Who cares that you went to like Harvard?

Brian:

Why do I, why do I know it?

Brian:

Like, why do you keep telling me it?

Brian:

And I think in the same way, like we're in a populist time and that kind of, you know, unearned, credibility.

Brian:

Is, is gone.

Brian:

And so it needs to be rebuilt.

Brian:

And I think it needs to be rebuilding a lot of these organizations, around, you know, their individual quote

Brian:

unquote talent, you know, I think the wall, the Washington Post this week had had more layoffs, right?

Brian:

But one of the layouts, they, they eviscerated their PR team that was

Brian:

getting their like reporters on like, you know, cable news and whatnot.

Brian:

And now they're gonna have like a talent division.

Brian:

You know, and I think that's like part of, of, of rebuilding these organizations is they're going to

Brian:

have to have, you know, individuals who, who build that kind of trust.

Brian:

Yes, there's going to be a halo of, of the brand itself.

Brian:

but that's just critical to me.

Alex:

I don't know if the brand doesn't become though, like, it may be doesn't help or even hurts

Alex:

because a lot of these influencers, what they build is this parasocial relationship with their audience, right?

Alex:

It's one sided relationship, but the audience feels very connected to them.

Alex:

And they feel connected to them because they experienced the content that they're building professionally.

Alex:

They also often have like, You know side content of like, hey, watch me play some video games or here's here's

Alex:

something personal i'm doing so they feel really like they have, Insight into their lives and then the funding model

Alex:

is either, you know brands that The creator really gets behind Personally, or

Alex:

things like Patreon, which is, you know, the community itself, like funding it.

Alex:

And all of these things are then constantly scrutinized by the community.

Alex:

There's often the Discord server where people are talking.

Alex:

So it all feels really transparent.

Alex:

And I don't think corporations can, Ever match that because there's just like legal HR concerns, all of these things that once

Alex:

you get into, into a corporation, you no longer have the capabilities to do that.

Alex:

So it's going to be hard to build the same type of trust with.

Alex:

You know, somebody that works at the New York Times or, you know, then a coffee Zilla, who's like

Alex:

an really independent spirit, like just from, from the ground up.

Alex:

and so, so I don't know, I don't know how you even copy that model because, because it's so fundamentally different.

Brian:

I don't know if you copy the model, but I think that you, you, you have to like, Learn from it and, you know, like

Brian:

I think like we've talked a lot about what Marquise Brownlee, like, what is it?

Brian:

MKBHD.

Brian:

I get the letters sometimes confused.

Brian:

and he's the new Walt Mossberg, right?

Brian:

Like, I mean, Walt Mossberg was the, it was like the most valuable page that the Wall Street Journal

Brian:

of advertising that the Wall Street Journal would sell supposedly was the one across from Walt Mossberg's column.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

And he one day was talking to like an ad salesperson.

Brian:

He's like, what does that go?

Brian:

And he found out how much it went for.

Brian:

And he was like, he, he did the calculation with how much he was paid.

Brian:

And he was like, Oh, brace.

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

I mean, and I think that's what also happens, right?

Alex:

One of the kind of best example of the collection of creators was, I don't know if you remember, there was a time where

Alex:

Bon Appetit had this like incredible YouTube channel, it was in the kitchen, they had a cast rotation of all these

Alex:

different people that came in and that blew up pretty spectacularly and they all went up and did their own things.

Alex:

You know, most of them are quite successful.

Alex:

The thing is like, once you raise somebody to a level where they're successful, Why wouldn't they go, you know, independent?

Alex:

I mean, especially a lot of people who make content are kind of independently minded, you know?

Alex:

why share the spotlight?

Alex:

Why share the profits?

Alex:

Why?

Alex:

I don't know.

Alex:

I think it's, I think all that stuff's going to be hard.

Alex:

I think, maybe the way to look at yourself if you're a media company is more like a talent agency, right?

Alex:

Like you said,

Brian:

Yeah, I mean, the Puck model is interesting, right?

Brian:

Like, I mean, they're sort of running out of the, they're becoming more to me like a traditional, you know, media company.

Brian:

I mean, they have publications now with multiple authors.

Brian:

So it's not just individuals.

Brian:

There might be a lead in that, but some of them don't like, but they at least have, you know, put the, put the

Brian:

personalities, or the people at least in the early ones, they, they had, You know, they had equity in the company.

Brian:

They were partners, I guess they called

Troy:

But while we're on this topic, Brian, you went off in the, in the chats this week about Lex Fridman and,

Brian:

Oh,

Troy:

uh, and, and,

Troy:

and I don't know, I don't know what you got against Lex Fridman.

Troy:

I think that he's kind of fallen out of

Brian:

I don't, I don't under, I don't understand the appeal.

Brian:

I understand the appeal of a coffee Zilla.

Brian:

I understand the appeal of, of Joe Rogan.

Brian:

I understand the appeal of a lot of, of, of these characters.

Brian:

Some like, you know, if they're not like a Mr.

Brian:

Beast, like I'm not like a 13 year old.

Brian:

So, I mean, I take that, but like with Lex Friedman, I kind of don't get it.

Brian:

Like, I don't get like, he, he got an interview with, With Zelensky

Brian:

and he talks in this monotone and he wears the black suit.

Brian:

He looks like an undertaker.

Brian:

And, and you know, his, his tech podcasts are good.

Brian:

You know, he's, he's, you know, He, he's very technical, I guess he's, he's at least, computer scientist, when these

Brian:

guys get out of their field into politics and into, you know, things like, like a serious situation like in Ukraine, and

Brian:

he interviewed Zelensky and, and there was this ridiculous back and forth.

Brian:

About what language they were going to like talk in and like he wanted to do it in Russian and Obviously Zelensky is

Brian:

not going to do the interview in Russian like Zelensky is a native Russian So he's not going to do it in Russian.

Brian:

I mean, that's just dumb.

Brian:

Like I mean, they're they're at war with Russia anyway, they did the dubbing and whatnot and he did the three hour

Brian:

interview and he I watched it and there were so many points where it was just this, like, this naivete of him being

Brian:

like, you just need to love and you need to like, just like, dude, you're talking to the president of a country at war.

Brian:

Like, I'm sorry, it's not just like, yeah, you have to understand Putin loves his, his country.

Brian:

It's like, no, like, that's just not gonna, you know, I think Zelensky came, came off pretty good during it.

Brian:

I don't think, I don't think Lex Friedman did.

Brian:

And, you know, he's talking about Joe Rogan's comedy club.

Brian:

Are we kidding me?

Brian:

I'm like, I'm not sure if we need to go back to like, just having like traditional media do these interviews,

Brian:

but like, seriously, we're like, he's like, you've got to come to Austin and go to like Joe Rogan's comedy club.

Brian:

Not a great

Brian:

moment.

Alex:

his

Troy:

He said that?

Brian:

yes, he was.

Brian:

He's like, I want to bring peace.

Brian:

And Zelensky was like, well, I've got a busy schedule.

Brian:

Yeah.

Alex:

he's, he's sycophant and he started doing that with all, he, he kind of, I think, allows his guests

Alex:

to feel like, you know, philosopher monks, like he is talking about,

Alex:

like, but isn't it all about love and brotherhood and, and oh, yeah, yeah.

Alex:

And then they try to like, you know, be very thoughtful and philosophical.

Alex:

He's a dork.

Alex:

And he, he's, he's, he overplays his hand every time.

Alex:

He's not even.

Alex:

technically that interesting to listen to.

Alex:

he's somebody that keeps reminding of humble, curious, and, and loving he is, which is always a fucking red flag.

Alex:

yeah, he, just like, you know, you get a guest and then it brings

Alex:

another guest and everybody loves really like, wow, that's good.

Alex:

This is going to be the safest place for me to, to spout all this stuff out.

Alex:

rich and powerful these people are, the more they love hearing the sound of their own voice.

Alex:

I mean, look at us.

Alex:

and he gives this really cozy, comfortable, little warm duvet of like,

Alex:

you know, fucking nonsense, like just like fuzzy philosophy around stuff.

Alex:

And then maybe, maybe Trump is all about love.

Alex:

And maybe, maybe we all are about love.

Alex:

And, he's just a bullshit artist.

Alex:

yeah, I mean, the, the quicker that type of stuff, like, goes away, the better, but I'm, I'm afraid it won't, you know?

Alex:

And you can see Zelensky's fucking frustration, in his eyes.

Alex:

Like, you know, having to remind him, hey, you know, when somebody carpet bombs

Alex:

your family, it's really hard to love that person when they're not getting any.

Alex:

And so, I don't know.

Alex:

I find all these people.

Alex:

He's kind of like, an example of mediocre tech people that have outsized, outsized success.

Alex:

And, let that go to their head and start feeling like they're some sort of techno guru.

Brian:

but this is a particular execution issue to me.

Brian:

Like, I think there's a space for alternative media to have these kinds of conversations with.

Brian:

All kinds of people, including world leaders.

Brian:

I think they have a different dynamic.

Brian:

I don't think it has to be just someone from 60 minutes having like a edited interview.

Brian:

Like

Alex:

I mean you

Alex:

don't have to convince me of that.

Alex:

Like I wish everything was just on YouTube I wish CoffeeZilla did that interview.

Brian:

All right.

Brian:

Should we get to the good product?

Brian:

Do we have a good product?

Brian:

I have a good product.

Brian:

If you don't, if you

Troy:

We got some good products I got some good products this week,

Alex:

It's CES So there's that masturbation device you saw on

Alex:

CES.

Alex:

Yeah

Brian:

quiet.

Brian:

Middle aged men talking about that stuff

Brian:

is just not,

Troy:

Yeah, well, you know, this is I was gonna start an ode to the breakfast

Troy:

meeting, but I won't I won't go there I think breakfast meetings are the best.

Troy:

They're the best Meeting of the day, but, they used to do these great breakfast meetings at the

Troy:

private dining room at Hearst Tower that they were always so good.

Troy:

the, the other one I want to get into my good product, but just on the way there, I've been consuming these just now and

Troy:

then instead of alcohol, these, this company called Can, C A N N, which are.

Troy:

I have like a cranberry Sage THC refresher, but it's only a couple of milligrams.

Troy:

So you can bang back a couple and just kind of takes the edge off a little bit.

Troy:

It's nice product can cranberry Sage THC refresher.

Troy:

It's a nice product, but you know, there's a company, I don't know if this

Troy:

is a good product or not, and maybe I'll get feedback or you guys will.

Troy:

Cause I don't think that one should have too many appliances on their countertop.

Troy:

I think that it's, it's.

Troy:

You know, messy and noisy, but this company Ninja has taken over tick tock such that people, you know, of my

Troy:

daughter's, my youngest daughter's age get influenced by their blenders and things.

Troy:

And, she brought home this upside.

Troy:

It's basically an upside down blender positioned as an ice cream maker.

Troy:

And what you do is you, every night you freeze.

Troy:

whatever you want to freeze, whether it's, you know, a frozen margarita or,

Troy:

you know, bananas and almond milk and vanilla and a little bit of sweetener.

Troy:

And you freeze it and then you put it in the machine and the machine drops down

Troy:

this whirling blade into your frozen thing and it turns it into ice cream.

Troy:

And, it's a countertop device and think, you know, a blender turned upside down that.

Troy:

does this

Troy:

thing.

Alex:

it called, Troy?

Troy:

It's called the, the Ninja Ice Cream Maker.

Troy:

I

Alex:

what it's called?

Troy:

think so.

Troy:

And what's interesting about it is what comes out of it is really good.

Troy:

yummy.

Troy:

yummy.

Troy:

So that's a good product.

Troy:

It's a good

Alex:

Yeah

Brian:

have, they have another popular thing out there.

Brian:

The, they've got a crisper.

Brian:

They got a new, they've got a new air fryer.

Brian:

It's glass and it apparently, it's, I don't know, it's, it makes crisp, things crispy.

Troy:

No, Ninja, I thought it was, you were going to say it makes like you a new kidney or

Brian:

no, no, it's just crispy.

Brian:

I mean, that's why they call it the ninja ice cream maker makes ice cream and the ninja crisper makes things, well,

Troy:

yeah, I mean if you got room on the counter and you want to

Troy:

make ice cream every morning, it's kind of a nice, it's a nice thing.

Alex:

ice cream in the morning is weird But it's it's also called a ninja creamy and it is all over tiktok.

Alex:

yeah, it's probably You know product of the moment in september 2024.

Alex:

So thank you for bringing this to our attention troy

Troy:

yeah.

Troy:

again, I've smashed it with good product.

Troy:

Yeah.

Alex:

want to make troy happy just get him bring him some ice cream at the morning meeting Make him feel

Brian:

Where, where do you like to have your morning meetings?

Brian:

Do you have, what are your go to

Troy:

Oh, every time, Crosby Street Hotel, that's where I go.

Brian:

Oh, okay.

Troy:

Yeah, I saw, you know, your boy Scott was there today, Scott,

Brian:

Why?

Troy:

Scott Galloway, you know,

Troy:

and, uh, yeah,

Alex:

I think he's tall, right?

Troy:

he was sitting down, but he is tall.

Troy:

Yes,

Brian:

Karl Lagerfeld there once.

Troy:

I met with the, I, I had a nice breakfast with the ex CEO

Troy:

of Politico who stumbled upon our podcast and, became a fan of it.

Troy:

He likes, he likes you guys.

Alex:

Wow.

Alex:

I don't know how this one's gonna turn out.

Alex:

I feel I, I was, well, that's but I appreciate it.

Alex:

Thank you.

Troy:

Well, why don't you bring a little po I know.

Troy:

Do you got any positivity before you bounce anything positive to add to this podcast?

Troy:

what's bringing you joy right now?

Troy:

Alex,

Alex:

I, you know, I think, there are many good, thoughtful creators and comment, and commenters on YouTube.

Alex:

And sometimes when I feel like the world is crazy and I turn on the news and nobody's talking about it,

Alex:

it's nice to get online and hear people say that, even though it's essentially things that I know.

Alex:

so folks like CoffeeZilla, you know, highlighting things or, things like that.

Alex:

I find that engaging.

Brian:

I have a good, I have, I have one already lined up for next week with,

Troy:

do you want to u

Brian:

Creator.

Troy:

do

Alex:

All right.

Troy:

What's your good product?

Troy:

Just outta curiosity.

Brian:

My, my good product is,

Alex:

rude now.

Brian:

Okay.

Alex:

an IV.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

And IV is amazing.

Brian:

I got, I got a norovirus this week and I had to, I had to go to the hospital.

Brian:

I don't know.

Brian:

I don't know.

Brian:

I've ne I do not, I'm not sickly.

Brian:

I, I got the PVA virus and then I got this norovirus.

Brian:

I don't know what exactly is going on.

Brian:

it was very, very

Troy:

what ha what ha, what

Alex:

Well, Nora, Nora, Nora, Nora is, Nora is everywhere.

Alex:

And also, you know, IVs, IVs, at least in, in some California circles, you know, it's the, it's a great cure for hangovers.

Alex:

People

Brian:

Oh, I,

Brian:

I'm in Miami . There's

Troy:

Yeah.

Brian:

right, like two blocks away.

Troy:

Have you tried the nin,

Alex:

in New York.

Alex:

That's true.

Troy:

the Ninja IV or

Alex:

It

Alex:

shoots, it shoots ice cream straight into your bloodstream

Brian:

have had like,

Alex:

cannabis infused as

Brian:

I used to run like a lot, like a lot of long distance races and

Brian:

I got super dehydrated a few times and had to go into the medical tent.

Brian:

I would get an I.

Brian:

V.

Brian:

I would go from like, I've gone from like, not knowing where I was.

Brian:

to feeling completely fine after, after an IV.

Brian:

IVs are amazing.

Brian:

it did the trick with this.

Brian:

I didn't feel like amazing afterwards, but it got me on the road to recovery.

Brian:

So never turn down an IV.

Brian:

That's basically my advice.

Alex:

Wherever you are, you could be anywhere.

Brian:

Honestly, in, in, in triathlons, like, they make people like, after they finish, like, particularly iron Ironman

Brian:

races, they, they make you, they weigh you beforehand and weigh you like, when

Brian:

you go into the medical tent, because a lot of times people fake needing an I.

Brian:

V.

Brian:

Because they know that it will speed the recovery so much, and they'll feel so much better.

Brian:

So they don't really need it, like, technically medically, but it's like, such a bonus.

Alex:

Right.

Troy:

go folks.

Alex:

All right.

Alex:

You've heard it here.

Troy:

That's it for this episode of people versus algorithms where each

Troy:

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:

Thanks

Alex:

right.

Alex:

Thank

Alex:

you.

Alex:

Bye.

Alex:

Bye.

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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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