Guest · 53:59
A policy change? Do we need to do anything? Do we need to talk to the Biden administration? Kind
Kara Swisher · 54:02
of ridiculous.
Guest · 54:03
Yeah. Of course, it's ridiculous. But I think that's what... It's both ridiculous, and they have to take it incredibly seriously because it's their jobs because it has big implications for, like, global politics and event.
Kara Swisher · 54:14
For Elon Musk, it does. But I have one more question that Scott made up wondering. The Twitter files, why wouldn't they give you access to them, one? And then new reporting from the Washington Post shows that Twitter staffers actually gave broad leeway to right wingers. This is from the the January 6 committee uncovered a whole bunch of stuff to break rules because they were worried Republican bash clash. So that wasn't quite what the Twitter files said. But why wouldn't you get access to them? What did you think of them?
Guest · 54:37
I was extremely disappointed that I wasn't asked to come on board, but I have found that tech CEOs hate talking to me and never give me any sort of access. Okay. Not not super surprised.
Scott Galloway · 54:48
It means you're doing something right. Yeah.
Guest · 54:51
Thank you. But... No. I mean, I think they chose people who they thought were gonna have a very similar perspective to Elon Musk on this. We saw them... You know, they supposedly had complete acts at carte blanche to kind of go through Twitter systems and find, you know, evidence of kind of suppressing conservative voices voices and all of that. But we saw them really cherry pick these conversations when they were saying, you know, Schroeder had these enormous tools at its disposal to silence conservatives. Those tools were also available to silence liberals or left leaning folks, but we didn't see those examples kind of come out, in the threads. And so I think we're gonna see more reporting, just to drop a little hint on kind of the, other side of that of
Kara Swisher · 55:35
that story. I know. The the the January 6 committee seemed to say they were actually very... And that was my experience was acquiescence just on reporting I did way back when. It was constantly acquiescent is what my... You know, and I wasn't even looking for it. They just didn't send in reporters who actually... Would you like to get ahold of those Twitter fighters? What would you agree to if you could?
Guest · 55:55
Oh, I mean, I think we'd... Yes. Of course. I think those... The Twitter files are enormously newsworthy, but I think we would need to be able to, like, tell a complete story. And if it was a story that went completely against Elon Musk's perspective on this, we would need the freedom to be able to tell it. And I think we believe what you believe here, which is that tech companies might have left leaning at workforces for the most part. We've seen that in how people donate and how people vote. But they're so scared of being seen as anti conservative, as anti Republican that they kind of go over the top from what we can tell to not silence conservative voices to kind of do everything they can to play nice with those exact people.
Scott Galloway · 56:38
I would just be curious, try and become... Speculate and recognizing nobody has a crystal ball. Any thoughts about Twitter in twelve months? A couple a couple thoughts on what you think might happen here? I would... And recognizing none of us know. So I'm asking to take off your journalist hat. There's no way to fact check this. Just some thoughts on what you wouldn't be surprised if you had to bet what might happen here.
Guest · 57:05
Yeah. I mean, I think that he is gonna bring in a new CEO and a lot of
Kara Swisher · 57:10
George Santos, I hear. George Santos.
Guest · 57:13
Wait. Don't I? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no. I'm not even employee.
Scott Galloway · 57:15
Could be any Well, let's stop right there. Could it be Brett Taylor? Someone mentioned the name Brett Taylor to me today.
Kara Swisher · 57:20
I did. I made it up.
Guest · 57:22
You made it up. No. I have truly no idea. I have no clue whatsoever. We've seen him kind of joking on Twitter with various people about, like, who would wanna do this job? And and I think he's gonna want someone who shares his perspective on, like, free speech, etcetera, you know, with Elon Musk's version of that.
Scott Galloway · 57:41
What what is his perspective? I can't figure it out. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Zoe. What else?
Guest · 57:45
Well, yeah. I mean, I think it's
Kara Swisher · 57:46
Or a new CEO that's probably acquiescent, but go
Scott Galloway · 57:49
ahead. Right.
Guest · 57:49
A new CEO that's probably acquiescent, but will that person have the power to actually make the platform useful again for people? I think that there we're still at a point where I feel like Twitter has the opportunity to turn things around, which I know sounds a little nuts, but I just I agree. There's no other platform. Like, we've tried Mastodon. We've tried these other things. In my opinion, horrible. Like, as bad as Twitter is right now, those other alternatives are not great. We're seeing people... I mean, journalists are tweeting out scoops... Are posting scoops on LinkedIn. Like, that is a bleak time in the journalism industry. So if Twitter comes back and, you know, implement Joey,
Kara Swisher · 58:23
let me argue with you about that because we used Twitter when I was running Recode. It never delivered compared to LinkedIn. I have to tell you. It's just Twitter was sexier. LinkedIn always had impact. So did Apple Podcasts.
Guest · 58:36
But you're talking about from a marketing perspective.
Speaker · 58:38
Right?
Kara Swisher · 58:39
From a marketing perspective. Yes. Exactly. But I'm saying to get people to use our site, Twitter was useless. Useless waste of money. Paid advertising or just tweeting ourselves useless at the bottom.
Guest · 58:50
I think the thing that Twitter always had was its influence because it had all of those influential people using it, and it felt like kind of the center of the conversation. Like, if you were gonna have something go viral, you wanted it to go viral there. Like, that to me was Twitter's power, and it kind of did that in spite of itself in a lot of ways. And that feels like it's been zapped.
Kara Swisher · 59:10
So I can tell you though it didn't pay the bills, but go ahead. Right. The actual bills.
Guest · 59:14
Totally fair. Yeah. And we've heard that from from marketers too. It was a very campaign based platform. Like, people would use it for these, like, specific, you know, the launch of a sneaker or a big event, but Mhmm. It wasn't, like, the big ticket item in their marketing budgets. But... Okay. So going back to where's the company in twelve months, I think there's the world in which maybe a new CEO comes on board, maybe it doesn't, but the kind of service continues to just degrade over time. And Twitter in twelve months is just, like, even less influential than it is now. We see it as a company that once held this big place in society and in media and in government and now not so much. And I think there is a world in which a new CEO comes on board and maybe not that much changes on content moderation and maybe advertising is still in, like, somewhat of a free fall, but the platform rolls out some tools and services in such a way that kind of media folks, government figures are convinced to come back on board maybe just because there's no great alternative right now. And so we're still seeing kind of moderate usage and stuff is kinda staying at the level it is now. It's kind of a boring prediction, but Yeah. But kind of those are the the roads that I see real.
Kara Swisher · 1:00:23
I would say I use it 50% less just for marketing, just for buzz. That's it. And that's it. That's it. Nothing else, which is interesting. And Scott's completely off of it. Certainly, read it. I read it passively. I feel like all those passive readers that were there, you know, which is most of Twitter in many ways.
Scott Galloway · 1:00:39
Zoe, try post.news.
Guest · 1:00:43
Yeah. I'm I'm off the wait list. So it's... I'm ready and willing to, to use an alternative. I really did try pass it on, but
Kara Swisher · 1:00:51
I Or maybe none of them. Might be none of them. Right? Maybe it's a new era of something else, which will be interesting to see. We'll see. Anyways, Zoe, what's your next scoop? You just insinuated something there.
Guest · 1:01:02
I don't know. I don't want Casey to get mad at me for revealing too much. But
Kara Swisher · 1:01:07
I'll admit it might be... That's just you.
Guest · 1:01:09
Go ahead. Thank you. We are... We have a few more coming out about Twitter in the next few weeks, and I think we're going to be looking at what tools employees did have available to them on the content moderation side of things and how they were used.
Kara Swisher · 1:01:23
How they were used. And, everybody hardcore. Is everyone hardcore there now?
Guest · 1:01:28
Everyone's hardcore all the way.
Kara Swisher · 1:01:30
I think you're the only hardcore person I know of dealing with Twitter. Anyway, you should read this, cover. It's... It has the word hardcore in it, It was by Zoe Casey Newton, our friend, and Alex Heath, who's also a tremendous reporter from The Verge. Everybody should read it. It's really good. It's a great synopsis and quite fair, I think. Have you heard from Elon about it?
Guest · 1:01:51
We haven't. He did not respond.
Kara Swisher · 1:01:53
Okay. Alright. Zoe, thank you so much. Her work is at platformer.news, and also there's The Verge and This Week in New York Magazine, as I said. Thank you again.
Scott Galloway · 1:02:02
Thanks for your good work, Zoe.
Guest · 1:02:03
Thank you both so much.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:05
That was fascinating. Zoe is such a good reporter. Oh, I love a scoop star. True. I I used
Scott Galloway · 1:02:09
to I just wanna just point out we are now interviewing your roommate's friends.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:14
No. She's not a friend. She's one of the top reporters on this story. You stop that. She's not... He's not my roommate. He's my tenant. Anyway, she's an amazing reporter. Do not insult her like that.
Guest · 1:02:22
Take it I'm
Scott Galloway · 1:02:22
insulting her. Think she's great. I think she's better than Casey. But meanwhile, these people do all live with you. Anyway... Anyway...
Kara Swisher · 1:02:29
Just because the excellent people live with me, I don't know how you would All hold that against right. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
[Ad break]
— Predictions segment begins —
Kara Swisher · 1:03:26
Okay, Scott. Let's hear some predictions from you.
Scott Galloway · 1:03:29
Disney's gonna appoint Nelson Peltz to their board. It's stupid. It's ridiculous that they haven't already. A fiduciary... Board is supposed to be a fiduciary for the relevant stakeholders. And it's... One of the key components of being a fiduciary is that you have aligned interests with shareholders. And Nelson Peltz has a billion reasons why he should be on the board. He bought a billion dollars worth of stock. If you read if you read his deck and if you like this stuff, it's a fantastic deck. And it basically goes through the obvious things here. They way overpaid for the for the Fox assets. They have overspent on streaming. They have not managed costs well. And despite having an unparalleled trove of assets, park attendance way up, This is a company whose stock is at a five year low, has underperformed the S and P, underperformed its peer group. And also, while we all love Bob, he's hard not to really like. The reality is he really failed on a basic level to create any sort of tangible succession plan, both him and the board. And some of the best talent has left That's
Kara Swisher · 1:04:35
the board's job. I agree with you, but that's the board's job.
Guest · 1:04:38
But go ahead.
Scott Galloway · 1:04:38
Okay. The board has failed, and this stock and shareholders have paid the price. And also Nelson, I don't know Nelson, but I know his history because he's a famous activist. He is not a slash and burn poison pen activist. He goes on to boards. He's very constructive. He's very operationally minded. And almost every board he's gone on has great things to say about him. So Yeah. This
Kara Swisher · 1:05:03
Well, nothing for the GE board. He did manage to finally get his own person in place. Sort of shoved Jeff Immeldahl
Scott Galloway · 1:05:12
Right and his
Kara Swisher · 1:05:13
successor. I'm just saying, it's not totally.
Scott Galloway · 1:05:15
Other than Bob Iger, the CEO really knows the company, no other board member has more license to a board seat than Nelson Peltz.
Kara Swisher · 1:05:22
Yeah. I would agree. Listen, I agree that he should be on the board and I've said so, and I'm sure Bob Iger doesn't like saying that thing. So... I think it's hard because they don't... I suspect they don't think he knows a lot about streaming or entertainment or whatever. He does know about costs and and
Scott Galloway · 1:05:35
Look at the other people on the board. That's clearly not a requisite for I being on this
Kara Swisher · 1:05:38
agree. I'm just saying I I I... He's gotta do it. I've said that publicly quite a lot, and I... It's gonna... We'll see if he does.
Guest · 1:05:46
He's We
Scott Galloway · 1:05:46
got an annual meeting coming up. This makes all kinds of sense. And slowly but surely Yes.
Kara Swisher · 1:05:50
Should do it.
Scott Galloway · 1:05:51
The shareholders are gonna call Bob and say, Bob, this is a distraction. Just put him on your goddamn board.
Kara Swisher · 1:05:56
Yeah. I think so.
Scott Galloway · 1:05:57
He'll be constructive. And the sooner you put him on the board, sooner they can get back to the hard work of cleaning up this company and getting it to, you know, getting it to command the space it occupies. It was
Kara Swisher · 1:06:06
my waste Eiger's time if he doesn't. It really will. It will cause him make it much harder.
Scott Galloway · 1:06:11
It'll be a distraction.
Kara Swisher · 1:06:12
And this guy's not just someone. He's a very well regarded activist. So he's in a bit of a bind, but letting him on is also... I think it's a risk you should take, as I've said. So... But a prediction. We'll see when. What's... Before the board meeting or when does
Scott Galloway · 1:06:28
this Well, I think I think the meeting... I think this is gonna outplay... How it plays out. I think the annual meeting is, I believe, the second week in March. And when it becomes increasingly apparent that a lot of large shareholders say to Bob and other members of the board, you know, maybe this wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. What you don't wanna do is go to a board meeting and have them forced on the board by
Guest · 1:06:48
the Correct.
Kara Swisher · 1:06:49
So he should do it himself.
Scott Galloway · 1:06:50
So I think this I think this just needs to happen in the next couple weeks. They put out a blistering statement against Nelson saying that he didn't have the requisite experience, which is such bullshit. Makes him look defensive. It's a distraction. Yeah. It costs shareholder money. Just put him on the board. And if someone
Kara Swisher · 1:07:04
Bob won, don't Scarlet Johansson him. Don't. Don't. You'll have to end up paying him anyway.
Scott Galloway · 1:07:09
Don't Johansson. Anyways, prediction Johansson him. In the next thirty days, Nelson Peltz goes on the board of Disney.
— Predictions segment ends —
Kara Swisher · 1:07:14
Alright. Okay. That's good. I think we're... That's good. I like that. 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. This is a good show. We have a good show.
Scott Galloway · 1:07:30
You like it?
Guest · 1:07:31
Do you know that? This is
Scott Galloway · 1:07:31
the part of the show where we pat ourselves on the back?
Speaker · 1:07:33
No. But I'm just saying I enjoy it. I think they're very... I think they're good shows.
Scott Galloway · 1:07:36
You like us?
Kara Swisher · 1:07:37
I don't... I like our... I like us. I I That's important.
Speaker · 1:07:41
No. But I think it's a good show.
Kara Swisher · 1:07:42
I think we could... I think Zoe was great.
Scott Galloway · 1:07:44
Think Enough of that. Today's show was produced by Lara Nayman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertaught engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Barrows and Miel Saverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Don't hit a switcher car.
Kara Swisher · 1:08:05
Hug yourself, Scott. Give yourself a big, warm, fuzzy hug. Okay?
Scott Galloway · 1:08:09
Deserve
Kara Swisher · 1:08:10
it. You deserve it.
Speaker · 1:08:19
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