Pivot · Nov 18, 2022

Elon Bets It All, Apple Grows Out of China, and Guest Kate Klonick

Automatic transcript of the end of the episode, from 46:45. Speakers are labeled by software and may contain errors. Highlighted passages are Scott’s predictions.

Guest · 46:45 As a trust and safety council already, that rules on a lot of these content moderation issues and has been for a while. It frankly sounds like he's trying to set up, like, a corporate governance type of board with his friends and then basically kind of decide when to listen to it and when not to. So I don't think that it's a super serious, commitment on his part. And I think right when he took over, he saw it as a way to appease the people who wanted him to immediately let, Donald Trump out of Arkham Prison to to use Casey Newton's comparison. And Yeah. Yeah. And I think he just punted by mentioning a council. It was just a PR thing. Kara Swisher · 47:26 Let me follow-up follow-up here because you tweeted in October 20, actually, no good speech governance or trust and safety on Twitter equals bad product. It means less people will engage, less avenue would be made. People will silo in like minded communities and increasingly radicalize. We've been there before. This is not rocket science. Very funny, by the way. Guest · 47:46 Yeah. I I think that that's right. It goes to what Scott was saying. And I do think that we're gonna have, we are seeing people walk to places like Gab and Truth Social. We're seeing people go to Mastodon for whatever that's Speaker · 47:57 worth. Kara Swisher · 47:58 Like yourself? Guest · 47:59 Yeah. I I mean, I like Mastodon. It's fine. It's very Usenet. It's very... It is it is very it's very, like, old school. There's a reason that we centralized and brought legibility with, like, algorithms into a lot of... Into, like, a lot of speech into user generated content. Like, I think that this is, we're kind of seeing that what it looks like when you don't have any algorithm, and it's pretty... Makes it pretty unusable. And so I think that it's it's gonna be an interesting inflection point for public education on this stuff. Kara Swisher · 48:32 We've been talking with Noam Barden who's... Has a new thing. We'll bring him on next week to talk about it. There's gonna be a lot of... I've heard from lots of entrepreneurs who are trying new fresh things that are more consumer focused. Scott, next question. Scott Galloway · 48:43 Recognizing that everyone as a consumer gets to pick kinda their approach and level of moderation, when you look at private or public companies that have tried to tackle this very difficult problem, do you have role models and think that they're getting it mostly right and we should look to them for insight into moderation? Guest · 49:01 Yeah. That's a great question. I think that it really depends. The really one thing that has emerged, I think, out of the last fifteen years of content moderations consolidating is that, like, everyone has learned to fly, but it's like there's bird wings and there's bat wings and there's, like, dragonfly wings. I think that it's a different type of evolutionary structure for every different type of thing. Reddit does it differently, but really well. Wiki does it in a completely different way, but really well. I actually think that for all of the product and diversity of product that Facebook kind of brings into one space, I mean, a walled garden kind of thing that they do it fairly well. Twitter was doing it about as well as you can imagine. Pinterest does a decent... A really great job, I think, actually too. But those are all... Like, I'm just talking about, like like, I just named five or six platforms. Like, they're all completely different platforms for different types of things, and they all have slightly different ways of doing moderation, slightly different revenue models, but mostly kind of still ad based. And they figured out a way to kind of match it with their product. Kara Swisher · 50:07 If you had to make one, what would it look like if you had to create a social med... You know, if if Elon made you CEO of Twitter, for example, or or you would did something from scratch with a new entrepreneur, for example? Guest · 50:17 Yeah. I'd kind of probably recreate a lot of the people and the talent and, like, the structure of Twitter. I thought it evolved from, you know, kind of its dumpster fire lowest point in 2014 after Gamergate and Leslie Jones and all of the things that were happening. I thought it really actually over the last eight years had gotten very usable and a much safer place. And that was in part not just because of content moderation, but because they brought in tools like mute buttons and got better at taking content moderation and governance seriously. And I think that the only people complaining are the people like Elon Musk and his cronies who feel like... Who have this misconception of what free speech really means. Kara Swisher · 51:00 Scott, last question. Scott Galloway · 51:02 What role does identity play in moderation? My question is pregnant with a comment, and that is more absolutists around anonymity. And I've always thought, if you want better moderation and more responsible civil platforms, just enforce identity. Your thoughts? Guest · 51:17 I think this way kind of lies madness. For one, we're not really that great at verifying identity in the in the first instance. For the second, there are a lot of people that engage and feel safe because of anonymity. So it is truly kind of this double edged sword where you do something like kind of enforce some type of verified policy. You've actually... They've done a lot of studies on this, that it really... It doesn't actually make it safer. It just kind of... Or better. It just actually excludes certain types of populations from the platform, typically, minority populations and women. And I think that those are important voices. And so I kind of don't think that having real identity attached to your to your name online does that much for content moderation. Kara Swisher · 52:06 I actually have one more question because Facebook just announced that it's not gonna... It's... This is from 2019 to fact check politicians, and they have to decide whether to let Trump, who just announced his attempt to become president again. If you were there... Nick Clegg is apparently deciding this, not Mark Zuckerberg, but he's gonna consult with a lot of people. What would you do there and also on on Twitter, which permanently banned Trump, but now probably will not if if whether he comes back or not, and whether it matters or not because he didn't have such a great launch. How do you look at those two decisions? Guest · 52:39 To not fact check politicians anymore? Kara Swisher · 52:42 Yeah. Yeah. And then whether to bring on Trump again to to remove the bans on him. Guest · 52:47 Yeah. I mean, I think that those are still... I think that they're still hard decisions, and they're still kind of in the... I think that, like, it will really be up to kind of how the platform decides to keep identifying politicians. And I think that one of the reasons that you're moving away from a fact checking process is because it's kind of impossible to decide who's a politician and who isn't. Like, is Donald Trump a politician since he left office? We've always known that he's gonna run for 2024 again. But, like, you know, we've kind of punted that because the oversight board gave them a two year window. And I think this is kind of like a a moment back of stepping back and the the platform's realizing that they're an ecosystem and they don't have to do all of these jobs themselves. There is a rise of third party fact checkers. There's a rise of other types of industry that are doing this type of fact checking and making people aware of this stuff. And I think that that's really important. I also think that it's kind of indicative and brought about in part by the New York Post Hunter Biden story that the platforms took down. Kara Swisher · 53:47 And I Guest · 53:47 think that that... Yeah. A huge mistake. And, you know, I said so at the time, and it was... You know, I think that you can't just roll over the third parties that already existed or the new third parties like fact checkers that are coming into being. I think that's what those part... What those industries are in... Are there for. Kara Swisher · 54:04 Well, may may you make a prediction? Will they bring, Trump back on either of these platforms? Guest · 54:10 Yeah. I think that they will. Kara Swisher · 54:12 Yeah. Me too. I agree. Anyway, Kate, thank you so much. Guest · 54:15 You're such an intelligent voice Kara Swisher · 54:16 in this. And you can find her on Mastodon, Klonic@Mastodon.social. You're still on Twitter a little bit too. Yeah. But I I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Scott Galloway · 54:25 Thanks, Kate. Guest · 54:25 Bye, guys. Alright, Scott. Kara Swisher · 54:27 One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. [Ad break] Scott Galloway · 55:07 To Guest · 55:13 we're [Ad break] — Predictions segment begins — Kara Swisher · 55:35 Okay, Scott. Let's hear some predictions. Come on. I want something good. I want something good. Scott Galloway · 55:40 I I think Bezos is gonna come back to Amazon as CEO. Kara Swisher · 55:43 Oh, woah. Scott Galloway · 55:45 Yeah. And I I have absolutely no insider information. Why didn't Kara Swisher · 55:47 you say that? Scott Galloway · 55:48 I just think He Kara Swisher · 55:48 was here in Washington having parties when I was... I... I'm not in Washington, but he was last week having some parties there. Scott Galloway · 55:53 I think I think he's gonna have a, like, a three to five year, midlife crisis meets human growth hormone meets rockets, personal and private rockets. I think he's going to run out of ED And then meanwhile, he's going to wake up and go, my wealth is down by two thirds if the stock keeps the stocks off 45% this year. And I think a guy like that has a tough time being out of the game this long. I also think he's arguably, maybe with the exception of Tim Cook, the best CEO of the last fifty years, he's still got a lot of tread left on his tires. Kara Swisher · 56:32 Also a tough cookie, but you don't see him insulting his employees. He's a very tough cookie internally, but go ahead. Scott Galloway · 56:37 He's smart. And also, granted timing is everything, and Andy's come into the perfect of... Or the perfect shit storm. But the company's underperformed. There's just no getting around it. And so just think the moons are lining up for him to do a Howard Schultz. And if the stock's off another 10, 15%, I think he'll come back in for one to three years. Kara Swisher · 56:58 Wow. That's a big one. You remember, that's how we met, your big call on Whole Foods. This is a big Amazon call. Interesting. You know, to be fair, Andy's hand... Been handed a sack of, you know, Scott Galloway · 57:10 like Timing is everything. Bad timing. Not his call. Kara Swisher · 57:12 Let me just say, he's got the pan... End of the pandemic. Scott Galloway · 57:15 And oversaw what I believe is going to be the most valuable company in the world. Let me expand on Bezos will either come back or they'll spin AWS. The company... Keep in mind, Amazon is the first company in history to shed over a trillion dollars of market cap. But part of the reason they got there, in my view, and so I'll condition... You know, I'll put a condition on this, Either Bezos comes back or they spin AWS, and Andy built AWS. I think AWS is now worth more than the entire company based on its current market cap. They might spin it. Something's gonna happen. Something big is gonna happen at Amazon. Kara Swisher · 57:48 46% over the past year, Amazon stock, and you can compare that to Apple stock one year, 3%, down 3% over the last year, and then, Meta stock is also Scott Galloway · 58:00 taking Meta's Meta's way way down. Down. Kara Swisher · 58:02 That's an interesting prediction, Scott. That'll be interesting to see if he'll do that. I think he's enjoying his life, so we'll see. We'll see. But, you know, they love to get back in there, and I can... Only I can do this, which is very much in keeping. Scott Galloway · 58:13 Only I can fix this. Kara Swisher · 58:14 I can only fix The thing is you will not be seeing him slag his employees. And, again, I don't know of any CEO who has more of a not so nice reputation internally as... He's a tough motherfucker inside those companies. Scott Galloway · 58:28 You know what one of the first rules they tell you? Kara Swisher · 58:30 About it. Scott Galloway · 58:30 Yeah. Literally, of the first rules you hear around management is you publicly praise and you privately criticize. You sit people down and say, look. You got this wrong, and this is why and this is what you need to do. You don't embarrass people because you create emotion and you create resentment, and all you're doing is saying, I'm more powerful than you. If you do that to me, I fire you. But when I do that to you publicly, I think it's leadership. Kara Swisher · 58:54 I think it's weakness. Scott Galloway · 58:55 I think Kara Swisher · 58:56 it's weakness. If you're saying I am the law to people, it's really... He doesn't have to. Jeff Bezos doesn't have to. I'm very surprised that, Elon feels the need to do it. It's a it's a weakness. It's a weakness versus a strength. He he doesn't need to. He has enough of a reputation. He doesn't have to slag people. Anyway, we'll see what happens. That's a really that's a really interesting prediction. I'm fascinated by that. I have... Can I do a little prediction? Scott Galloway · 59:19 Of course. Kara Swisher · 59:20 If they put it into bankruptcy, for example, Twitter, and they don't have to. I don't think the bankers will come down on this guy. But if they did, if I was Microsoft, I'd be sharpening my pencil for this one. It's cleared out enough. It's been it's been cleaned up enough in terms of wreckage that this would be a beautiful acquisition for them. Hey. That's my view. Scott Galloway · 59:39 Interesting thought. Kara Swisher · 59:39 Yeah. That's what I... It occurred to me. I was like, oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So that's my prediction. If it... It's... One wanted to touch this thing. Now you can say, oh, well, I'm gonna come and clean it up in a way. And I think they have they have LinkedIn. They're good on this stuff. I think there's a... Microsoft would be a really interesting owner for this and TikTok, by the way. Anyway, we wanna hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 Okay, Scott. That's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday for more. Please read us out. — Predictions segment ends — Scott Galloway · 1:00:17 Today's show is produced by Lara Nayman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miel Severio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business, publicly praised, criticized privately. [Ad break] Speaker · 1:01:15 Fall savings are happening now at The Home Depot. Save up to $500 on select appliances, plus enjoy free delivery when you spend $998 or more. From prepping to cooking to cleaning up, Frigidaire has you covered. The custom flex temp drawer switches from fridge to freezer. 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