Scott Galloway · 49:34
Kill zone exactly the wrong age at exactly the wrong time. A lot of people will say to me, I'm really worried. Have a five and eight year old. I'm like, no, no, no, you're fine. We'll have this figured out by the time they're 13 and 14. But if you went through COVID as a teenager and grew up with social media, I really think you faced some significant headwinds in terms of emotional regulation.
Kara Swisher · 49:58
I do. Can I make another answer? First of all, as I said, it's a sign that society thinks it's important, just like we did with cigarettes or Not everyone wears seatbelts. Lots of teens smokes. Guess what? Lots of teens drink, even though we have rules. It's the society saying to its citizens, we think this is bad. You can cheat, and they will, no question. I think that argument is so false. Like, oh, teens will get it anyway. I'm like, okay. They'll get liquor anyway. They'll get everything. So I think that's number one. It says something about your society that you care enough, and it isn't mandating. It's just saying, as with cigarettes, as with drinking, our teens shall not do this. And I think that's perfectly fine. And, you know, the people that say it's not, they're not paying attention to everything else. The second thing is I do think social media is on the decline among young people, not among our people who are addicted, fatally addicted to these things. But I do think, I watch a lot of young people and I know a lot of them are on there, but I think the age is a little higher.
Scott Galloway · 50:56
I would put asterisk on that. I think it's declining among wealthy, informed young people who have strong parental influences and the money and the resources to Fair get engaged in other
Kara Swisher · 51:09
point.
Scott Galloway · 51:09
I think if you're the child of a single mother, home alone a lot, I don't know. I mean, even among young men, do you know supposedly men ages 20 to 30 are spending more time and less time outdoors than prison inmates? They're on a fucking screen. Just to go
Kara Swisher · 51:26
to see Gaming, what though I think I'm talking about social media.
Scott Galloway · 51:29
Some of this gaming, I agree. But just the big tax excuse has always been we can't find, it would be impossible for us to detect underage users. Guess what? When Australia passed an act, the platforms deactivated nearly 5,000,000 teen accounts in just one month. They were able to figure it out. And meanwhile that very same detection is being withheld from Americans because our federal government has no interest in protecting children from the harms of social media. The Kids Online Safety Act passed the Senate 91 to three and then died when House GOP leadership refused a floor vote. So the bill's been reintroduced and is stalled again. A March house markup was pulled amid partisan fights over preemption. And 40 bipartisan state attorney generals are begging Congress to act, warning the House version would gut state child safety laws. So this is
Kara Swisher · 52:20
I like you bringing the data, Scott.
Scott Galloway · 52:22
Well, the last federal law protecting kids online was COPPA, and it was in 1998. So wait. Let me... You don't think the world has changed in twenty eight years regarding technology potential harm for children? Come
Kara Swisher · 52:33
on. I would not ask you... Think Australia's not working is not the question. It is teens will find a way. But I do think a society stepping out and saying it. And let me just note, I don't know if you saw this, The trailer just came out for The Social Reckoning, which is the follow-up to The Social Network. Jeremy Strong from Succession is playing Mark Zuckerberg. He's got the voice on down pat, although he looks too old, have to say. He's oddly looking old. But it's all about this. It's all about... And it's the story of Francis Haugen, really, pretty much. And these Facebook files and how this... They knew what they were doing, and they did it anyway. This was the first... To me, this was the moment that Zuckerberg went villainous, right? That he started understanding something that I had written about in the Times of 2018. This came out in 2019, 2021 period. But this was the moment, and I think this movie will be really interesting, by Aaron Sorkin. Once again revisiting this issue, is that this guy is living large on the backs of teens, on the backs of kids, on the backs of everybody. And I don't think it's gonna be great for the image. I think it's, to say it again and again has to happen including these laws, these movies and everything else. And Jeremy Strong literally sounds so much like him, it's disturbing.
Scott Galloway · 53:52
Well the ability of big tech to wash over Washington and separate them from the best interests of our children with money. You know what's gotten the way of the Kids Online Safety Act better known as COSA? It forces platforms to exercise open quote reasonable care in designing features so they prevent and mitigate specific harm to minors. Things including content promoting suicide, eating disorders, sexual exploitation, and compulsive use patterns. Big tech is fighting those things.
Kara Swisher · 54:24
Yeah that's because they go, oh it could be used for this. They go behind their first amendment nonsense that they tend to try to push out there.
Scott Galloway · 54:30
Yeah, yeah.
Kara Swisher · 54:31
You can't anticipate every... I just want the society to say no to this, just like kids with phones in schools, no, no, no. And that's what a civil society does to these companies, whether they're cigarette companies, liquor companies. By the way, liquor's on the decline. I think social media is gonna decline more than you think. I think that's my prediction. Anyway, all right, Scott. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
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— Predictions segment begins —
Kara Swisher · 56:54
Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.
Scott Galloway · 56:57
Well, one is simple funny one and the other one is more serious. But the simple one is you're about to see revenues at the 100 biggest podcasts go up 20 to 30%.
Kara Swisher · 57:09
Oh, yay, that's us.
Scott Galloway · 57:10
Additional just from, like everybody make their wagers. Pivot is about to get a great deal of money and so is every other big podcast to be the quote unquote, to have The the exclusive
Kara Swisher · 57:27
They've already come knocking.
Scott Galloway · 57:30
Don't care if it's Yahoo, Scout, or Gemini, these guys are all gonna Yahoo. We're about to... Some of that cheap Remember all that cheap, cheap money that was being thrown around at 99?
Kara Swisher · 57:41
That was mattresses, that was mattresses.
Scott Galloway · 57:45
Mean, you're about to see the podcast universe have the tsunami of money just to say, hey Joe, we'll give you $10,000,000 if you decide that you only use OpenAI. Anyways, that's my stupid simple one. The more specific one is that, I mean, the fix is in. And I just think it's so fucking obvious. Musk called Trump after doing a lot of analysis with his bankers and said, you know, I spent $250,000,000 to get you elected. And probably said, no, you didn't get me elected. He said, well, can you acknowledge that I helped? And he said, yeah. He's like, I'm considering putting 2,500,000,000 into the midterms. How would you like that President Trump? Well, I'd like it a lot. Well, if you can get Paul Atkins over the SEC to waive that stupid rule that doesn't allow retail investors from participating in great companies like SpaceX, I just have this hankering to put in $2.03, maybe $5,000,000,000 into the midterms. Yankering, hankering,
Kara Swisher · 58:39
yes.
Scott Galloway · 58:40
And again, what does that do? It sends 30 to $50,000,000,000 in incremental dollars hunting for a 100,000,000,000 in available shares of SpaceX. This is all of a sudden, there's 50 percent more people looking for homes in San Francisco than there was there was with any other previous IPO. And let's just do the math. Say that takes the price of SpaceX up just, let's be conservative, 10%. At 2,000,000,000,000, that's 200,000,000,000. He owns 40%. So he gets $80,000,000,000? Why wouldn't you promise the president 10,000,000,000 in the midterms? Citizens United, he can do whatever the fuck he wants. So if he called the president and said, hey, call Paul and tell them to do away with this stupid rule such that retail good Americans can't invest in the best companies. And I got a hankering to put $10,000,000,000 to work in the midterms. I mean quite frankly wouldn't he be stupid not to do that?
Kara Swisher · 59:40
Yes, absolutely. That's how it works. That's how
Scott Galloway · 59:43
it Anyways my prediction is the fix is in. What people aren't focused on is this, the waving of the NASDAQ 100 rules that you gotta wait a year and let price settles is gonna create the ultimate false flag signal of pricing on the day of this That's
Kara Swisher · 59:58
what they're doing. Oh, they're all talking it up. And you're like, oh, you people. And Stephanie's right, morality has nothing to do with it. I could never be an investment banker. I couldn't be a lawyer either. I'd be like, you're guilty. You should go to jail. I'm gonna turn you in. I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. Same thing, you I'm not gonna take you public. I just couldn't. I just couldn't do it. I don't know. Well, whatever. Someone has to. Anyway, that was a great prediction. I think you're absolutely right. And about the podcasting, yay, yay.
— Predictions segment ends —
Scott Galloway · 1:00:25
Yay, yay for us. But we'll cash those checks though, but you investment bankers are evil people.
Kara Swisher · 1:00:32
You know what I mean. Let me say, how fucked am I that he's gonna be a trillionaire? I'm kind of fucked, aren't I?
Scott Galloway · 1:00:38
Well, I'm all on board now. I love this kind of populous economist out of The UK, Gary Stevenson, and he totally changed my frame of mind and that is taxes are Kevlar against corruption. Because when people aggregate too much money, they become corrupt. You know power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts. And our taxes are what stands between us and having one person who can decide when to turn off and on battlefield technology and the invasion of Europe.
Kara Swisher · 1:01:06
Do you think you'll like hire an army just for me? I don't know. I just... I feel like, oh, no. It was irritating before, but now I'm fucked. Anyway, elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe, this week on Professor G Conversations, Scott spoke with Anne Applebaum, one of my favorites too, and Fiona Hill. Wow. What a pair about how Ukraine is rewriting the rules of warfare, the hidden weaknesses of authoritarian regimes, and the future of global power. Let's listen to a clip.
Guest · 1:01:32
I think, actually, what Ukraine could show is that the beneficiaries of all of this ought to be society, the private sector, the innovators, and that we need to find some kind of model after this, a refresh after all of the dust has settled here while the dust is settling to basically get ourselves back into gear again. So a trillion plus defense budget that's gonna be top down is not the way to go at all. You're absolutely right. That is not the model.
Scott Galloway · 1:01:59
A lesson from this is that soft power is underrated and hard power is overrated.
Guest · 1:02:05
Correct.
Scott Galloway · 1:02:06
And we've just gotten it all wrong.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:09
Scott, I'm glad you did those two ladies. They're They're badasses.
Scott Galloway · 1:02:12
Yeah, was our four hundredth episode and they asked me who I would want on the show and I said either Ann Appelbaum or Fiona Hill and they said we'll get both. I was really excited to have them on.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:20
Women shall save us.
Scott Galloway · 1:02:22
Yeah, impressive women.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:23
Anyway, we wanna hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot. Submit a question for the show or call 85551 Okay. That's the show. Thanks for listening to pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week.
Scott Galloway · 1:02:40
Today's show was produced by Lara Nayman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, Todd Wiseman. Aleo Jackson engineered this episode. Thanks also to Jabrozmi, Severin, Dan Chelan. Nishat Karwa is Vox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.
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