Algorithms and Oligopolies with Thomas Germain

24:37Yeah. I mean, it's really hard to look at the way that Google has changed in the past year, two years and see. Well, I mean, it's also hard to say whether it's better or worse because like - What is good? Well, first what is good, but then also just what is Google search? Like it's such a gigantic diffused product. Like there's no way to really examine it wholesale from the outside. But, you know, people were adding Reddit to the end of their search queries because the things that were coming up on Google weren't what they wanted. They wanted like some kind of authentic human response. So Google shifts and now they're showing Reddit at the top because maybe people were putting it in, maybe that's what they want.

25:16But 10 Reddit results? Yeah. How is that better? It's because I don't think Google, it may just, and I'm hypothesizing here, we don't actually know. But if I had to guess, it might be because when you build a monopoly that's this successful. In any case, you stop learning how to build products. You don't have those muscles aren't in there to say, oh, right, I need to serve a customer. And if I don't serve the customer, they might go to a competitor. So it went from being like, what is the best search result to, oh, fuck, what do people want now? Who are these people who keep bothering me with questions?

25:53Oh, these little pigs, they want Reddit, I guess. Reddit's where things happen now. And there are ways that I sympathize, right? Because of the system that Google set up, because of SEO, search engine optimization, everyone who has the time and the money has figured out how to set up their webpage to game Google search results. So it's the system that they developed to sort through what's good and bad and what should be at the top. Kind of – it's harder and harder to make that work because the signals that they identified, everyone figured out. So the web has kind of changed and I think that's a big part of why the results aren't as good.

26:33I think it's because there simply aren't great results to be found. I agree 50%. Like I agree that there is an adversarial nature with SEO and that people have been trying to screw with Google forever. The other thing is this company makes like$100 billion a year. My sympathy for the challenges here is so low. And also SEO people get – there are good SEO people. Lily Rae rocks. She's great. There are good people out there. But I would argue the majority of SEO is fucking evil. And it is adversarial to the web. And also Google should fight it. Google should make war with them. Google should make it.

27:11They lie. Google lies. I'm fucking saying it. You don't have to. They lie and say, oh, yeah, we're making helpful content updates. Screw you. No, you're not. Shut down every shutdown dot Meredith. shut down every single company that has re-engineered their content to rip off others and screw SEO. Not HelloFresh. HouseFresh. HouseFresh. There you go. Their great article about SEO. Thank God you remembered that. I was talking about how.meredith basically outdid them on SEO by working out the signals. What Google could do is, I don't know, I'm not some genius guy, but here's an idea. If you mess with Google, Google messes back.

27:50Google says, you want to mess with me? I will cut your own out of Google. Well, and that happened. It does happen. Well, not on a large scale, but there was a case recently that no one really talked about. But I didn't even know this. Every gigantic news publisher from CNN to tiny little companies has like a vertical on their site that has coupons on it. Yes. Right. And Google went in and decided, and it's not original content, right? They were like white labeling stuff that coupon companies were giving them. Google went in and said, this is not allowed anymore. You're abusing the authority of your domain name and we're not going to let you do this.

28:29And I think there's an argument that that's better for consumers, that if I search for a coupon, it's – now presumably I'm going to get sent somewhere where a guy who just makes coupons posted it. But there are all these other cases that you're talking about where it seems like Google either is OK with the way that they're being abused or they don't have a solution in mind. But they have so many – like their resources are so enormous. And the thing you're talking about with the – it was – there's a specific term that will probably be emailed as well. But it was basically that they would have content like coupons and other things on their domain.

29:04So they'd have high domain authority posts from completely different share. but the way I'd push back on that you're right by the way they did do that and that's a good thing is google a coupon right now google look up a coupon listeners go and do it look at the amount of sites like retail me not that just have broken coupons they're all broken and they're full of shitty ads that cover your screen they make your iphone go to a thousand degrees and melt through your desk and it's disgusting that is that's the kind of thing that I'm just like I don't think google cares because that is an experience of the average person.

29:38I want to buy something on a website. Is there a coupon I can use? Oh, the majority of this content is outright fake. Right. And that's the counter argument, right? And I don't think that the coupons on RetailMeNot, they're the same ones that you're seeing on CNN.coupons or whatever it is. Yeah. Not literally, but for the most part, they have the same problems. But maybe it's the wrong question. Is this better or worse? Because the other one that we can ask is, and it's the one the government is asking, Should Google be the one who gets to decide what is and isn't okay on the web? They have unilateral decision-making authority.

30:13Yeah, because of their monopoly. For 20 years, it was totally fine to do this on CNN and the LA Times and every other website. And then all of a sudden, with very little warning, it's forbidden now. And companies have set up entire business models. Like these coupon verticals were making tons of money for news publishers that are on the brink of shutting down. Like the LA Times had one. The LA Times is in big trouble right now. This was bringing in, I don't know the exact figure, but lots of money every year, probably to the tune of millions of dollars. And Google says, you're done with this. You don't get to do this anymore.

30:48This is not a way that you are allowed to make money on the internet. That's a lot of power for one company to have over something that is infrastructure. The internet is infrastructure. I think, and that's a really interesting point, because I believe that any search engine is, if their job is to get you the best results, should have that power. Conversely, I also believe that there should be a quality level, because you can do that, theoretically. I think that that's a good thing that they carve. If you maintain quality elsewhere. If it's just arbitrary, I've decided that this thing doesn't work for me, and it's a black box like everything with Google, than it needs to absolutely needs to go.

31:28But I would actually be a little bit okay with Google being more forceful with stuff. If Google actually did the thing it's meant to do, the original Google, the thing that made it good is it cut through the noise, that there was always a lot of noise online, not just social, just shitty websites, good websites, and Google would get you good results. It was the thing that helped you search the web. Can we even argue it helps you search it anymore? it doesn't feel like it's doing the job it's meant to do it doesn't it indexes everything fine who gives a fuck i don't need it indexed i need the good stuff brought to me so that i don't have to go and find it except now i have to which is fine but i'm also a horrible online gremlin i'm online i know all the websites have memorized all the urls now i don't think most people have and i think most people's because that is really what this is about not you or me or people who are like online all the time it's about regular fucking people who depend on this and it's good they cut off the coupons because that's about that's a bad thing for regular people to just get exposed to but also i don't know how about you actually protect people from the malignant stuff in the ads i was on google the uh like month ago and i actually emailed danny sullivan the search liaison.

32:48Hi, Danny. Now you love me. And I bought a GPD Win 4 pocket from what I thought was the GPD Win 4 website. GPD website. GPD is a they make little gaming console PCs. They're fantastic. I put down$1 ,000 on this thing. I then realized when I looked in the PayPal that it was some Chinese guy's email at gmail.com. And this was because the first result was a sponsored ad for a fake website. this happened to me and I'm pretty good at this. And it was just a well-designed page. And I'm, I was so embarrassed. Like this is my internet cred gone. Right. All of my, my haters found out they were outside my house applauding.

33:30It was terrible for me. Very bad. Very unfair. But Jesus Christ, you can't keep the fake ads off the page. Like, come on. It's bad enough. I think that it, it was last year or the year before it might've been 2022. It was bad enough that the FBI, do you remember this? They issued a statement that said consumers should use ad blockers because there's so much spam and abuse in ads that in order to protect yourself, you just shouldn't even be seeing the ads anymore. So just to cut to ads for a second, if you want to protect yourself, if you really want to make your life better, I really recommend the first thing you do immediately is to listen to this following ad, which will directly and precisely align with every belief I have had and will have in the future.

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37:53It's also our jobs are too hard. But it's like even just one guy in Google who's just trying to search for the worst stuff, not even the obvious was like horrible, like, like, because I think they're probably quite good at CSAM and like outright illegal stuff, but just, I don't know, a dickhead. Just the, I'm the guy at Google who's the dickhead. I just search for the annoying stuff. We fix it. I know they can do that. I refuse to believe that they can't pay a guy to just find this stuff, to be a regular John who just sits there and Googles things like coupons, who searches for fake websites. For a while on Google News, there was a website called Good Morning Kashmir, I think it was called.

38:34And it would just rip off everything. And when I say everything, I mean pretty much every major tech site and then get Google News syndication. When I told Danny, sorry, Danny, I'm putting you on blast, but you didn't say off the record. And when I told him, he was like, well, you shouldn't be using Google use chronological view because it doesn't really work. I'm like, what the, what the, what, what, excuse me? What? That's the thing. And I think that this is the problem with a lot of these big tech companies. They just see customers as like, well, you are the problem. And I think that actually this is an industry wide thing where consumers have been gaslit.

39:12And this is definitely me doing like a book pitch, but it's true. I think that consumers have been made to feel like, oh, when tech fails you, this is a lack of awareness of how good tech is. You didn't read the privacy policy. Exactly. You didn't use the manual. You didn't do this. Apple, and I know my listeners want me to bag on Apple, there's an App Store thing coming. It's going to be mean. It's going to be nasty. Very unfair to Mr. Cook, but we'll get to that. Apple does a generally better job of not treating the consumer, well, maybe treating them like an idiot, but sometimes you have to.

39:43If you're selling things - Sometimes you're an idiot. Well, I am regularly. But if there are hundreds of millions of people, you should assume that the base level understanding is as low as it can be and that the manual is a backup plan. But it's the opposite now, ChatGPT. Well, you don't know how to use it well enough. And I'm not saying you said that, like you were saying this in this manner, but you need to put hours into it. That just shows such an utter loathing, in my opinion, for customers. Like, oh, you're not smart enough to use the future. Fuck you. This is meant to be artificial intelligence.

40:13I'm not meant to be smart. It's meant to be smart. Yeah, and especially when it comes to the content moderation issue. The search results on Google are getting worse or they're being abused or the ads. There was just a report the other day about ads for illicit drugs on Facebook. And I hear the argument that there's so much content that it's just not possible that human beings could go through all of this. That's only an argument that's acceptable if you start with the presumption that these companies should exist. But then on the other hand, I'm not even sure if it's true. I was talking to one of the guys who works at the private equity firm that owns Pornhub.

41:00It's called ALO now. It used to be called Mind Geek. Fascinating. They told me that every single video on Pornhub gets reviewed by a human being. Every video on Pornhub, which I can't imagine a worse job than that because, I mean, like the things that people must be uploading on there that don't make it onto the site. But it is possible. That's a terrible job. Like then you have to pay for therapy for the people who are doing it. But to say that it's just not possible, maybe you should be running fewer ads. But that's the – Pornhub, that's an interesting one. Me, I've never used porno. Of course not.

41:36But I imagine. But with something like Pornhub, it proves it's possible because, yeah, you'll get fucked up as a Pornhub if you don't do this, right? If you don't review everything and make sure that there's no copyright, that there's no underage, that there's no outright illegal stuff. and because there are very clear, very stark penalties for that. There aren't for ads. And I think one of my favorite ideas that I've read is Darren Asimoglu, previously on the show, coming on in the future, MIT economist. He made a suggestion, put the CEOs in jail. Now, I realize that's a little much, but drilling down the idea, if there was personal liability for Mark Zuckerberg, I bet all those problems go away immediately.

42:19I think Mark Zuckerberg would make it his mission to have the cleanest ad experience in the world because the reason that they do it is they can get away with it. I refuse, like, to your point, maybe there should be less ads. Maybe if I walk around and I have a crowbar in my hand, I think I've used this example before, and I'm swinging it willy-nilly and I hit a few windows and I smash it. You love your crowbar. I love my crowbar. It's so much fun. But if I do that, do you think I have to pay for the windows I smashed? Do you think I'm going to get arrested? Of course I am. Well, my job, I'm paid to swing the crowbar.

42:49The crowbar must be swung. I make$4 million a year swinging the crowbar. This is my job. The cops aren't going to be like, well, this is just commerce. We're not going to mess with the economy. And sometimes a few windows get broken. No, they'd be like, stop doing it. And that's because property damage is illegal. How about they make it illegal to fucking show these ads and there are actual penalties? How about there is an actual quality level for all of this stuff? I think that you can't do swinging legislation where it's like search results must be this good. It's hard. There should be company and CEO level liability for if I get scammed due to a Google ad.

43:25That is on Google. Like that is a, not only are they liable for whatever I lost, but my legal costs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There should be actual things. And I think that that is the problem. It all happened relatively fast, like a couple of decades, which seems like a while, but for legislation isn't. But to your point, like do these companies have to exist? Probably not. It's good they do, but if they can exist, they should be held to some account. There should be – now that you've said that, I'm really thinking about like do they need to exist. But why can't they deal with this stuff?

43:59They never seem to be asked why. They never – oh, there's too many of them. No, there's not. Also, there's just no – we can say that there shouldn't be scams in Google ads. I don't think that they have a legal obligation to make sure that there's not, as far as I'm aware. They don't. So, you know, like you could put Sundar Pichai in jail or you could just write a law and have there be some penalty that affects the company's stock price. They'll address the problem. Oh, yeah. It's just we don't – there are no rules about the internet in the United States. And there are definitely false advertising.

44:38There's definitely – it's FTC. I believe it's FCC. I think FCC is – FCC, yeah. Always get those wrong. Casey's probably listening. Going to get mad. But that's the thing. Like those – they need to be enforced. But on top of that, when I say put them in jail, I am mostly joking. Right. I think personal liability, however, would do really well. If they were like, I will lose – Peshai makes like$200 million a year, mostly in stock. How about he loses percentage – not dollar amounts, percentages. is 0.5 percent not for everything but perhaps there's an aggregate thing if they are like oh my wealth will be directly attacked i think sundar pish i would immediately there would be this insane quality improvement same with zuckerberg zuckerberg right now is unfireable but if we set these things for for chief executives who are paid up 300 times their employees salaries if they were paid this insane amount of money, but it was a job with inherent risk.

45:36Hell yeah. I think that would start changing shit really quickly for the better in the same way that competition creates better companies. I think risk would create better executives. I think that they would start getting real, real worried about this stuff. And yeah, they could still get paid an insane amount of money, which I still think is too much, but it would be kind of like being an NFL player. You risk your body. You risk your money. You risk your nasty little houses. I don't know. There's just – it feels like what's exciting right now with all this antitrust stuff is we're finally seeing consequences, though.

46:11Real nasty, mean consequences. And the people getting upset are really funny. Like all the people I've seen who are mad at, like tech analysts. Like, no, you can't hurt the Googles. So good. I love it. Well, what I'm really excited to watch is presumably there's going to be some kind of consequence here, right? The government says Google is a monopoly. We're going to see what they do. Maybe they break them up. Maybe they give them some enormous fine. And then there's another anti-drift case for Google in the United States. There's yet another one in the EU. Then there's all the cases that all the other companies are facing.

46:47I wonder whether or not it's too late to turn the web around. Like it will change. it'll become something else. Can we go back to the open web the way things were five or ten years ago? If you break Google up and suddenly there's competition, suddenly there's incentive to send people to different parts of the internet instead of to a different part of Google, would it get better? Or has it just collapsed to the point where we need to build something else? I don't think it's collapsed, but I will also say something a little controversial. The internet wasn't great 15 years ago. I think we all need to, like, it's not like it, it's worse now but oh what live journal we did we love live journal i i had friends on there like it was cool but like was it i love twitter in its prime i love blue sky i love the fact that i can text you and my friends and all that i can signal people there's some really great things on there and i think the what we perceive as the open web is to your earlier point like maligned by google Google has fucked it up to the point that we don't think it exists.

47:53It does. It's there. And I think the companies like Substack are nakedly evil. I think Substack is one of the most evil companies out there. I think their support of the Nazis is disgusting. Hamish, if you're listening, eat my arsehole. My fucking family died in the fucking ovens in Germany. Fuck you, bitch. Seriously, this is to you, Hamish McKenzie. And anyone who's currently on Substack, even if it's one Nazi who's making money on Substack, fucking kick them off. It's sickening. And Substack now is making it so you can create publications on there which don't involve email addresses or newsletters anymore.

48:26They're just becoming another platform. And that's what sucks. And that's what really sucks about how things are. But platforms as a service are not necessarily a bad thing. LiveJournal was a platform. And then they, like every company, got acquired by a large company, which got acquired by a larger company. Ghost, I love because they're mostly just, yeah, it's a service. You can run it your own. Molly White has hers, self-hosted. I run it on a website with a person who helps because I'm stupid. But the sloppy point I'm getting to is the open web is still there. It's still being built. And thanks to the good services, it's still growing and it's still accessible and it's still cool.

49:04If we can realign these search engines, or maybe there is a future Google competitor. It is not SearchGPT. I think that, I don't know, we could find it again. I think that there could be if these companies were realigned so that they could actually, I don't know, index the internet. There is plenty of original human created content out there. It's just that Google and Bing and all of these sites have kind of defaulted on their position of showing us it. And we have to search for it through social networks. It's why as an independent journalist, it's tough to build a following because all of the algorithms people are built to rely on are broken now.

49:41Right. And if you're not doing it the way that the TikTok algorithm or the Google search algorithm wants you to do it, no one's going to find your stuff, right? Like, it's absolutely true. There's a nostalgia thing going on. The internet used to be better. You know, I remember when I was a child, I was happy. It must have been because the way things were then that they are not now. That's true. But the one thing you can say is the internet is not as weird as it used to be, right? There's less opportunity for just total absolute free expression that is not limited by trying to please some kind of algorithm and to fit into some kind of box.

50:20I think that that's hard to prove right or wrong. I know what you're getting at. You're seeing less of that. I don't know if it's not being created. There are wonderful, weird, strange communities. Absolutely, yeah. There are – I don't know. I said this to someone earlier, like, furries are probably doing some of the most interesting things online. Not my cup of tea, but respect to them. Also, they do some of the funniest hacking things ever. But like, the fact that a community like that can thrive online is lovely. Whatever you're doing, as long as everyone's consensual and happy with it, wonderful.

50:51Enjoy yourselves. I feel like communities like that can do really well online, and they are. And they're able to find people like that, thanks to some of these platforms. The problem is, the algorithms are normalizing everything to a kind of a blunt edge, which I think that's kind of - Yeah, exactly. Yeah. This stuff is out there, but can you find it? Is it the stuff that we're all consuming when we go on the internet? Will it be served up to us? The stuff that you're seeing is the stuff that, you know, keeps you staring at TikTok for the longest, which, you know, maybe that's good. You know, it helps TikTok make more money.

51:27It helps them make a platform that makes it easy to make TikToks. Maybe that's a good thing. But there is this flattening effect that I think is dulling, right? Yeah. It stifles creativity because it limits the way that you can make money. It also creates a path to make money, so maybe it creates more content too. There's two sides to everything. And I think that the problem is that these algorithms are so easily gameable. There's this wonderful Jason Kobler legend at 404 Media did this amazing piece about the Indian guys basically defrauding Facebook. Did you read this? Yeah. Where these guys, I need to have Jason on just to talk about this story.

52:06It's insane. Where there is a Facebook creator program and all of that AI slot, the Shrimp Jesus et al. that you see is these Indian guys who are just using him as generators and have worked out, I can throw this rock in this puddle and it will go everywhere and I'll make real money. And these guys are like, I think one of them was like paying for his disabled brother's wheelchairs, which is so fucking cool. Like one guy did, like Facebook did its first good thing while also destroying itself. And what's crazy is how did Facebook meta not see that and go, we need to get everyone in the boardroom right now, red alert, because that is a insane, like the shrimp Jesus thing should have done it.

52:49And the problem is, I think they could make really good nuanced algorithms that's raised really interesting, meaningful, cool shit. they don't want to i think they actually enjoy their ability to influence and dominate culture and to choose what will happen in the same way that a lot of these generative ai kind of normalized beauty standards and um cory doctor on the last better off lives said this very well he was saying that there is something inherently conservative about generative ai because it and any kind of autocomplete indeed because it's just you say i love and it's going to say you you kind of normalize this one point.

53:28There's no incentive for them to build interesting algorithms, so they just build the one that kind of works for everyone that shows you the slop, the slop that works for you, and it kind of pushes everyone in one direction. And I think maybe, you know, thinking about it, maybe you're right about the nostalgia aspect, and that's what we miss in that the web doesn't feel exploratory anymore. We're not, like, looking or searching anymore. It's here's what has been decided is popular, And what I think this has led to in the media, at least, is there's a lot of people, a lot of companies that are falling apart because – and this is not their fault.

54:03They have built their services as media outlets to appeal to Google and the algorithms, and that worked. And guess what? That stuff was popular because – and this is the who made who thing. Is it popular because the algorithm chose it or because a lot of people like it? Or do a lot of people like it because the algorithm chose it to be popular? And as that falls apart, I don't know, man. It's like, what is culture right now is actually a very open question. Right. Well, we just put out a story about this. It's not the shrimp Jesus, but have you seen the AI cats? No. There's this thing. It's incredible.

54:40We just put it out. It started on TikTok and it spread to Instagram. It's AI-generated images of cats in very upsetting situations. like there's one cat and his son like gets kidnapped by a pigeon or they're at the they're in the sea and godzilla comes and attacks them and this stuff is blowing up it's getting tens of millions of views is it because that's what people like and want or is it because this is what the algorithm is serving them and it like juices engagement kind of hard to say but i mean i kind of like it i i like it as well but something that i'm a lot of internet culture reporting i I feel like kind of fails for this reason, because instead of analyzing the source, they analyze this.

55:23Instead of analyzing the problem, they analyze the symptom. Right. So it's like, why is Brat so big? Why is this Brat? Am I Brat? It's like, that's a fucking Charlie XCX. I'm so old. I'm so fucking old. I just say even saying that out loud, I age 10 years. I am neither Brat nor Cap. and but even then that she's a famous musician people like her music's not for me but people seem very happy with it the brat thing i want that's one where i just look at i'm like is this something that was popular because she's a popular musician or is it because the algorithm made the specific brat thing popular and it's like i i don't even we don't know how these algorithms work so we don't actually know how to say that.

56:10We don't actually know how to pull this apart. So I think with these algorithmic situations as well, maybe them falling apart is a good thing. Or maybe these companies having to do more than just make the algorithm, make stuff popular is for the best. Because I do miss accidentally finding stuff. And the way we find things accidentally used to be the goofiness of the internet, but also sharing. It used to be we got things through our friends sharing stuff. It's why Twitter originally was so fascinating because it was we found it through retweets. But now it's like I guess most people use the For You feed, which is insane to me.

56:48Like do you use that? I often do because I don't think about it. I open Twitter and that's just what I'm looking at. And then I realize that I haven't scrolled over. Yeah. And I mean here's a place where I think we could get some useful government regulation. Because, you know, I don't know if I want, you know, Congress to write rules about how content recommendation engines work. I don't know if I – It's a propaganda thing there. And it's also like a free speech issue. Like do we want them dictating what content you see and what you don't? It's probably not even constitutional. But what they could do is they could mandate that the companies be more transparent about how the algorithms work.

57:30They tell you how does Hinge decide which people you see and which people you don't? How are they judging you? How is Google determining where the search results go? What's showing up on your TikTok account? I think if there was some visibility into how that stuff worked and what the metrics were and what information was being collected, I think it would push the companies to change their systems in a way that was slightly more consumer friendly. It would change it in one way or another, but I think just visibility could be an incentive to give something that was more useful to the consumer. I agree, but I think the other thing that needs to happen is, and I don't know how you do this, is there also must be an incentive for these companies to have quality control.

58:17Because, I don't know, Elon Musk, he's like, oh, yes, I've made the entire Epic-based algorithm public. And he's like, there's definitely something not in there. because they've definitely – the reason I never use Twitter's For You feed is within two seconds, I will see an actual Nazi. And I'll be like, no, thanks. I don't need to see like the 14 words. There's a reason I'm not following them. Yeah, I don't need to see the latest iteration of a Hitler account that's been allowed on there. But I think that there needs to be a quality level because otherwise – well, actually, it gets back to the SEO thing.

58:49I want these companies – and I don't know how you create this as an incentive. to want to attack those who manipulate them. Because SEO as an idea, I get it. If SEO, because there's really, from what I understand, two things of SEO. There is the qualitative side, where it's like, Google is saying this so that the quality of the website on Google is good. This is the original idea for it, is that when you click on a website, it won't scam you, it will load fast, it will have good information, it will make for, it will be a good result. Google has given the hell up on that. That is gone. We are no longer in the Google that actually does that.

59:26But that actually is a good thing. Lily Ray was explaining this to me on the episode. It's like, that as an idea is actually very, very, very good. I wish that more companies, including Google, stuck to that, where it was, we're making sure we're doing a quality service. But the other side is, okay, this is the stuff we like. This is what we will promote on here. And what sucks is, I actually think that side is evil. I think that they should consider anyone actively trying to manipulate the algorithm the enemy. If you are a website that is creating content entirely to index well on Google, not based on how good it is, then you should be considered by Google the enemy.

1:00:06It is surprising that they encourage SEO. It seems counter to the whole point of search engine that you would be able to game it. I think it's just laziness. I think it's – laziness is probably the wrong word. There's no incentive for them to not do it because some SEO is good. And that's the thing, right? Like, how do we solve this problem? Like, again, I don't think that most people want the government dictating the way that Google works. But, you know, if you went back in time and told the high school version of me that I'd be here defending free market capitalism, this is something that competition can help with, right?

1:00:40Like if I really would switch over to Bing if Bing was better and that was easy and it didn't take any effort and it was one click away, then Google would be fighting really, really hard to fix the very real problems that have cropped up recently. And I think that's probably, if nothing else, what is almost certainly going to happen, unless the whole court case gets thrown out, is that you're probably going to get a pop-up right in your face every time you set up a new device or a new browser that asks you which search engine you want to use. Most people are going to pick Google, but there's going to be some sizable percentage that goes over to Bing, that goes over to DuckDuckGo.

1:01:21And all of a sudden, there's pressure to make the products better, both for Google and for these companies. What's insane as well is Microsoft, Bing is profitable, by the way. What would be crazy, and this is Sachin Adela as one of my listeners, I'm sure you're listening, but you're not. What if Bing was really good? This is a crazy idea I had. What if Bing was good? What if when you use Bing, it found really good results? I have this crazy idea that people might go, wow, a search engine with good results? What if this whimsy, this curiosity we're talking about? What if a search engine, I don't know, search the web.

1:01:56What if the algorithm at Bing, Prabhupada Raghavan's leftover dinner that he left from when Yahoo connected to it. What if there was actually something that Bing found that was cool. What if Bing became a very useful search engine that found good results. I don't know, maybe that might scare Google. And what's crazy is, they don't want to. I just don't think they want to. I don't think any of them, they all realize it's slop and that the little pigs have to use it. But if literally one of them was just like, what if we made it good? And all the guys in the boardroom are like, it'll never work.

1:02:31It's never going to work, man. People don't like good things. They like bad things. Look at Google. But I think that that would, if they saw, if one of these people just saw it and went, wow, why was the internet good before? Well, there were less websites, which isn't really true. Like, okay, there were a billion versus a trillion websites. You still can't read all of them. Like, what if they did the job that we wanted to? One of the reasons Twitter used to be so good was because it was kind of a live fire hose of the internet. The reason that Facebook used to be so good was that it was, for evil reasons as well, a database of people.

1:03:09You could find your real friends that you'd lost connection with. And it was a little bit better than MySpace. Yes. It doesn't have to be night and day. If it's 2 % better, people will realize that. They'll go over and then there will be more money flowing and then it can get even better. It's real. And Facebook was insanely profitable right up to the IPO and it was pretty good. There was – to be clear and I did it in the Facebook episode, there were quite evil things. But I – the other thing that is exciting about the Google antitrust that kind of leads into this is they might have to share their advertising data, which I think is going to get really bad for both Facebook and Google.

1:03:45because I think below the surface, you're going to find out that they know way too much. Like they know way more than they want to let on. Yeah. But also they probably know enough to really do really cool personalized experiences and they just don't do it. They just don't want to. Like they could probably make a great search experience for everyone because they know like your blood type and the last time you went to the toilet, but they can't do that, but they can use it to advertise you scam versions of PCs you want to buy. It's just like the incentives are gone, but also Transparency might be really fun for this just because when they when they show how much they can do Well, first of all, I think the government's gonna be quite pissy, but also I don't know Maybe they could get creative and earn their customers But also I don't think on a completely different subject.

1:04:33I don't think Google can survive being broken up I don't think it's possible. I don't think they can do it. I don't think that they as a company operate in a way that If you separate the ads from the search, they're fucked. If you separate ads from search, I don't know what Google is anymore. You can have a very powerful, big search company. Yeah. You can and there are very powerful, large ads companies. But nothing approaching the power and heft of Google can exist without those two things being paired. And I think that the antitrust case against Google's advertising business from the outset appears to be even stronger.

1:05:11Oh, yeah. And there's a place where, you know, there's a lot of discussion about what's going to happen with this search case. Maybe they'll break off Chrome or Android from Google. That doesn't seem super likely because the case didn't address either of those products. It's just about search. But with the ads case, I think there's – if we're breaking up monopolies now, if we decide that they're monopolies, that seems like a very real possibility. And if that happens, it's going to be a completely different internet almost immediately. And something that some of the louder, more annoying tech guys are saying is this is a bad thing.

1:05:44This is the government scaring away innovation. No, I actually think this is a utopian idea. I think that we need fear in their hearts, but also we need to make it clear that big companies like this aren't a good idea. It's not a good idea to have a giant company that does this. The App Store on, I like Apple in general, but I think, yeah, keep your laptop business, your phone business, that's all fine. app store needs to be separate make the apple app store a completely separate thing and maybe this changes how ios is developed maybe this makes it so that ios apps can run on other devices maybe this is altogether something that shatters apple but maybe that is a good thing you can you can install whatever apps you want on your fucking that mac why can't i do it on my iphone it's hard to argue that more choice is not better for people and it is and actually that's the thing i can be kind of cynical, but all of this stuff makes me very optimistic because what might start happening is these companies might start anticipating antitrust and changing themselves to avoid it.

1:06:49Well, that's the thing. And I mean, you've heard this argument in the story before, but I wrote about this for Gizmodo. No matter what happens with all of these antitrust cases, like Google lost this one, maybe the tech companies win every other case. They're still in trouble, right? Tim Wu called it the policeman at the elbow effect, where the fact that these companies are under such scrutiny, they need to move slower. They need to be more careful. They need to be more apprehensive about doing things that crush the competition. That's what happened to IBM in the 60s, right? Like IBM won its antitrust case, but it lost the computer wars because it couldn't innovate.

1:07:25It couldn't compete because the government was watching them. That could happen here. Like maybe Amazon wins, but the way that they're hamstrung because these cases are happening creates an opportunity for someone to step in. It also feels like we're – right now the thing I've been describing to people is there is a tension in the air with the tech industry where it feels like all of those meddlesome consequences of actions are popping up. like intel right now intel a lot of their new generation processes might be entirely like a form of broken that might be very hard to fix the blackwell gpus that are coming out the next generation gpu is necessary to push generative ai so it's sometimes that puts out a useful result also delayed i think there are like parallel processing issues like it's two gpus talking to each other it's crazy but i think we might finally be seeing the cost of growth at all costs This is the real, at some point, you can't grow this fast forever.

1:08:24And maybe the answer is, we are watching the rot economy get actually collapsed to an extent. Because you can, there is a limit to science, and there is a limit to what you can build and how fast you can build it. But if the end result of all this antitrusting is also, they get afraid of being too big. That may be genuinely one of the best things to happen in society. Because we don't need$5 trillion companies that will be$10 trillion in two years. Who does that serve other than Jim Cramer? Right. And I mean, clearly things have changed. Like if you just look at the rollout of AI, the fact that if you go up to some random person on the street on Fifth Avenue and ask them, how do you feel about AI?

1:09:10I think more than half of people are going to tell you that they don't like it. That, I don't think it's about AI so much as it's about just changing feelings about the tech business. 10, 15 years ago, people loved Google. They just thought Google was a nice, good company. People loved Amazon, right? It was like, oh, the two-day shipping is just so great. Now, every company has a really serious popularity problem, which, you know, when we're talking about social media platforms, like that's existential. If I just like TikTok more than I like Instagram Reels, I might just hang out on TikTok more.

1:09:45And this general shift, I don't know what's going to happen in terms of regulation, but it's clear that to one extent or another, the party is over and we're about to enter some kind of new chapter. Whether AI changes everything, whether the internet is different than it was in some technological way, some big platform shift is going to happen. And I think things are going to start to feel different than they have for the past couple of years. And if you want to feel different, perhaps you could engage one of the wonderful advertisers that will follow this message, who, as usual, will align precisely with the things I believe and love.

1:10:18Please buy their products or don't. I can't make you.

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1:12:41Support includes contributions from Wells Fargo and Company and the Wells Fargo Foundation. So today's show is brought to you with support from Square, who I really love. They offer quick payment processing, really easy to use terminals. Everything spins up really quickly. Every store I use them in, I don't really think about the experience, which is exactly what I want from any kind of tech. The loyalty programs work really easily. They're over at Court Street Grocers, S &P, Van Leeuwen Ice Cream. They're just a very easy to use and straightforward piece of tech. I can't recommend them enough.

1:13:10I've heard great things from businesses using them. And as a customer, never upset to see them in a store. Square keeps up so you don't have to slow down. Get everything you need to run and grow your business without any long-term commitments and why wait right now you can get up to 200 off square hardware at square.com slash go slash better offline that's s-q-u-a-r-e dot com slash g-o slash better offline run your business smart with square get started today and we're back and i think what you're saying is really interesting because it is it used to be that they're afraid of just like using losing a user but now it's because they're so precisely and like granularly and like analyzing every interaction and monetizing every interaction every impression makes them a little shred of money so that they can sell to someone else and here and there and everywhere it's more than just it's not just oh i've lost thomas to tiktok it's that percentage of time that you're not spending on Instagram, if that is a kind of an hard to calculate thing, but that shift I'm sure is happening with Facebook.

1:14:24It's more than just raw traffic. It's okay. I'm barely looking at Facebook now. I will go on Facebook. I check it like, like the, like a nest camera outside my house to make sure like there isn't like a dog trying to scratch a hole. And I don't know why that'd be happening. I was trying to choose a thing that would happen. Very normal guy. But it's, you look at it because it's there. Okay. Same with Instagram. I like check, see, I maybe message someone, but I'm not focused on any of these. I'm focused on Twitter and Blue Sky. I read that shit. I love it. Maybe I'm more of a text based guy, but with threads, I barely touch it.

1:14:57And I think the thing is that these companies have forgot how to compete entirely. They're not trying to make good shit. They're not making sure the cool stuff is there. They're just like, well, you have to be here. From the outside, it really did seem like Facebook in particular got complacent. Like there were so many stories. No one's using Facebook anymore. It's a wasteland. It's just baby boomers falling for misinformation. That was the story everyone was hearing. It seemed to be true to some extent. I actually think that that's changing. I now open Facebook every single day and I'm not going on there to look at my feed.

1:15:29It's because of Facebook Marketplace. Facebook Marketplace is an incredible product. People love it. You can sell your stuff. You find really bizarre things. I know tons of people. It's become like sharing memes. A bunch of my friends will send each other the weird thing that we find on Facebook Marketplace. And I think that's because there was pressure, right? All of a sudden, Facebook was in trouble. People were leaving and they had to shift the way that the platform worked and they built this product that is, I think, kind of phenomenal. It's very useful to my life. Half the things in my apartment now, I bought on Facebook Marketplace.

1:16:04And the feed is getting better. I think if you go and you look at the content... I don't know if I agree with you on that. I mean, compared to how it was a year ago... No, man. Maybe your Facebook feed is better than mine. Maybe I just tuned the algorithm better. I get recommendations for the most insane groups. Yeah. I mean, I want to say... I'm going to look at this right now. Pull up Facebook. Yeah, I'm actually going to pull up Facebook. This is always good to do on a... We can look at mine, yeah. Yeah, Gary Tan from Y Combre. On an audio show. Immediate second thing is an ad. Then it's reels.

1:16:33Then it's a picture of a guy. Is Facebook serving me content that I want? I'm not sure. But I do find myself enjoying it in a way that I didn't one year ago, maybe even six months ago. I am actually seeing a little bit less ads. Yeah, I think the experience has gotten better. certainly for me and i that's the kind of stuff that happens i don't like it when things don't confirm my biases anyway yeah but i think marketplace is an interesting one as well because it is useful i bought shit off of that product but it's being poisoned already you have started to see direct consumer shit on there absolutely yeah but also i think it makes them let it makes them enough money that they keep it alive but not so much that they want to just You can't really make it more evil.

1:17:24I doubt that it's making the money. There are ads in it. Maybe it is directly making a profit. If you buy something through Facebook Marketplace or taking a cut, I think it's just getting people to use Facebook. With a useful product. Mark Zuckerberg is woken. No, he hasn't. It's so weird, though, because the more I think about it, I just don't think that there's much way to juice engagement from Marketplace. It isn't something that – Marketplace is only useful if it's interesting or funny. It's not like someone engaging for two minutes on Marketplace is like an ad impression. Well, I mean you see ads on there.

1:18:02But it's not like a meme or a viral thing. No, no. It's definitely not. You can't really do engagement bait on Marketplace. There's only a handful of people who have whatever particular blend of OCD and ADHD that I have that they're going to look at Facebook Marketplace for an hour straight. To be clear, I live in Las Vegas, Nevada. The shit on there is amazing. It would be like, yeah, I stole a bunch of shit. Classic Better Offline listener from the Bellagio. I am on the lam. Please meet me in this parking lot. I will be in a different one in an hour. The law is behind me. The shit that people write.

1:18:36The cars that people sell on there as well. Incredible. Like, I've seen multiple cars with not all of the wheels. Well, my favorite thing is Vice shut down its office in Williamsburg. Right. And some guy stole the sign, like the big Vice sign. Damn. And he hasn't been able to sell it, but every couple of months he'll put it back up and he wants like$20 ,000 for it. Damn, I was going to say if it's cheap. I mean, you could crowdfund, right? There's a lot of people listening right now. I'm not giving a criminal$20 ,000. They just listen to this show. Maybe he is one of them. But that's the thing.

1:19:10like what we're describing is the magic of the internet because the best things of the internet are watching people be like yeah everyone does broccoli milk right like just like some weird they think they're normal and they find themselves into the regular world and like yeah this is how normal things and they're not normal at all and sometimes it's quite distressing but most like there's this horrible meme of like a a guy screaming at his dog right now because he like fed it roast duck and then his mother comes back and he screams at the dog that saying this dog ate the roast duck. It's horrible.

1:19:39It's creating a horrible discourse right now. That's horrible. Yeah. But also, right now, you can go on Instagram or TikTok and look up most wildlife reserves, and they're all doing the same thing, which is they put a camera on a spoon and they feed animals. It's magical. It sounds good. I could watch it for hours. I want that. There are so many weird, like, Cities by Diana on Instagram. Shout out Diana. She is one of the early Dong Wajin Long meme people. Did you see the Dong Wajin Long? There's an episode about it. and a lot of her stuff is just this kind of concussive actual brain rot which is in my opinion what brain rot is just giving yourself a concussion but it's kind of artistic expression that fucking rocks there is this stuff still out there and i actually think some of these platforms have enabled it the problem is i don't think the platforms know they're enabling it i don't think they're being like this is cool and unique i want to surface this because it's not like the rest.

1:20:31They're like, they just automatically like a signal. And now this is popular. It's why Shrimp Jesus is popular on Facebook because they don't really care about the algorithm. They don't really care that it serves good stuff. This is popular. So it's popular. It's this weird, self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, my real concern with it is that it only allows for a certain kind of content, right? There's Mr. Beast. He's got a gigantic empire. The next person down the rung of like the content creator is like thousands of miles away. And he's kind of got a media business that he started. It's only focused on him and there's basically no other media businesses that just operate on the internet.

1:21:16It only allows for this certain kind of relatively low effort content or the kinds of things that one person can do over the course of a week. And it's limiting. That's something that with the previous model of the open web, with the way that advertising works, you could start a company and do the kind of work you can only do with multiple people working on the same project. I love all of this stuff. Yeah. The brain rot. There's people doing – the latest thing that I've seen is people making AI videos where the point is they're kind of playing with how it hallucinates. It's great. But if I want like high quality journalism or a TV show with like comedy writers, that can't exist when the platforms take as much of a cut as they do.

1:22:03Or when the platforms promote stuff like Mr. Beast. Jimmy, he doesn't seem like a good or a bad guy. He seems like the first truly mid person. Absolutely like the first truly mediocre human. Mediocre doesn't mean bad. It just means middle. and he's really good at it but also is he good at it is he actually good or did the algorithm simply choose him because nothing i've watched his stuff i've watched a lot of it just to try and find out and it is just like being slapped in the head repeatedly are you paying attention you pay yeah you don't need to pay attention i'll be here i'm gonna content content content and people like oh well kids love it it's like it's what's top of the algorithm and you can't stop watching it but also cuts you can watch them watch other shit like how much of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy and i am 380 years old right and thus maybe some of this just bounces off me maybe this is what kids like but also i don't know people like what's popular and what's popular is what's chosen by the algorithms how much of that is really intentional on these kids or what maybe this is just the algorithms create their own miniature cults how much of this high quality stuff, like really high quality, like comedy and such would do well if it was given a chance to by the algorithm.

1:23:17How much of this algorithmic stuff actually offers this stuff up and gives it a shot? Because that's what's missing. It's not really giving anything a chance. It's not thinking, well, this is new and unique. This journalism is really fucking good. I need to show more people it. And maybe it's not popular. Maybe people look at it and never click it. And And the answer is the algorithm says, OK. But you need to keep trying. And I don't think they try. Well, there's also the business side. There's like what the algorithm is showing you. But then there's also like you've got a really great one-man journalism operation going here.

1:23:50But it's a certain kind of journalism, right? If you want to do like beat reporting, you need a team of people focusing on individual things or you just can't. Or you just have one beat. Or you just have one beat. That's true. Maybe that's what the future of news looks like. but like I think having an editor is helpful. Oh, I have an editor. Well, yeah, of course, exactly. But like you can't, if you were only doing this on TikTok, you probably couldn't afford to have an editor until you became huge, you know? And that, it only permits, like not just what the algorithm is showing you, but in terms of where it's possible to make money.

1:24:26There's only a certain kind of thing that the algorithm allows. I wonder how much of this as well is just demographic and algorithmic stuff where it's just like, this person seems this age and this gender, we'll just show them this. And they're just like, this is what this person will see. That transparency thing you were saying earlier, it would be great to know if that's what it was doing. Because if that's what it's doing, that is actively bad. It's actively bad and also how commerce works. It's just, I have decided I will target you and you will like this. But when you're providing content, I don't know how much of this is, I'm not saying you have to do that vacuous thing where multiple news companies have been like what if we showed polarizing content the challenge they've used no i'm just saying give me a little bit of x the people i follow on twitter and blue sky especially there are multiple people i follow because the shit they raise is really interesting my mate casey will talk about a lot he sends me links all day and it's great one of my dearest friends but that's what i actually like the internet for it's not just that i am finding stuff but it's the collective consciousness of friends i know and people i follow and people i do or don't know they were sending me things it's cool i enjoy it these what we're missing from google search is it kind of used to be that what we're missing from twitter is it kind of used to be that this kind of zeitgeisty feeling but also the unique stuff that would pop up didn't really come from the algorithm at all it came from people finding it and look like really great internet culture reporting like rebecca jennings of vox great stuff there she's really good at finding these things these things that i don't know that it's not like oh yeah this says everything about everyone but it's like i find this unique weird little story i found these weird little freaks me is so sato at the verge when she's writing about seo one of the great things she does is she doesn't just talk to one seo expert she goes and finds these weird websites yeah it's like an iguana on it you need to go and look up me as work she's amazing i don't know i think what we're the nostalgia we have is it's so much it's not so much the open web is gone it's just it's become obfuscated yeah it's kind of like the commercialization of all content it's when we see mom and pop stores go away and there are cases where mom and pop stores weren't good but yeah having unique competitive stores that sold different things competed on prices but also on supplies uh big comics fan here at least used to be uh the death of having lots of comic book shops means finding comics is actually quite difficult now yeah you can buy them but finding something unique and interesting because there's less places to go to talk to some guy who reads comics behind the counter of a comic store all day and has insane opinions matt weinberger by the way i'm sure you're listening uh you have many stories there but it's like that's the magic we're missing it's actually this is so triber human connection but it really is though wouldn't that be nice and they used to scale it they used to scale humanity and they don't anymore and maybe we go back to that you know like why is this stuff happening like it could be because the algorithm is directing us towards you know this like monoculture or it could be that's what people wanted at this moment in history things do go in cycles and also monoculture is real it happens happened before happens now and i think that just i get a lot of people who listen and they're like ah what can i do to change things and what can i is everything is it don't be a doomer about this there's no need to be the best thing i think anyone can do right now is when they find something cool and unique to share it i know it's so fucking boring but like one of the best things you could do is if you find someone who says something very funny who has like 30 followers please share that please share it with everyone because that is where the old magic of the internet was one of my famous, I think I might have mentioned it before.

1:28:08The thing I am most nostalgic for on the internet is connection. And my favorite one of these is a guy called Thomas Bolvin. He is a French engineer of some sort. Thomas, I've known you for decades and I still don't know what you do for a living. He's also a gifted mashup artist. And he has done some of the most insane things I've ever heard in my life. He did a Kanye West. I know Kanye West fucking sucks. I'm sorry. Kanye of the Stone Age is one of the best albums of all time. It's insanely good. He did a LP, run the Jules album. He has done so many weird things. I found him by accident. He doesn't have a huge following.

1:28:41Totem, T-O-T-O-M, on Twitter. And this guy is just digging away. I've known he made a mashup that I played at my brother's wedding. And I only found him by accident. It's one of the best things that's happened to me. And the internet, and tons of people have stories like this. I think that that really is what we're nostalgic for. It's not the big box monoculture, which I think we all enjoy. We like the populace. It's that there's a weird guy running a website about a thing he's obsessed with and it feels like he's your friend and you're supporting him. My favorite right now, there's a guy on TikTok who has this like comedy thing he does called Walk News where it's like a news show, but it's in just, it's like the style of TV news, but it's about what the walk that he just took this morning.

1:29:22So he like sees a weird, you know, like stick that looks like a duck or something. But I mean, this is what I've been telling people is if you're worried about the health of the open web, if you want to support people who aren't, you know, a gigantic multinational corporation, engage with them on the platforms, like their stuff, share their stuff. But I think even more importantly is find people on the platforms because that's where we find everything and then follow them off. Sign up for people's newsletters, go to their websites, give them$2 a month on Patreon if that's what you want. Give them your email, right?

1:29:56That that's, it's, it's building a connection with people that those creators and publishers and artists control, that they can operate on their own terms instead of just doing whatever the algorithm wants today. If we can go back a little bit to a world where we're supporting individual people and connecting with them one-on-one, I think that does a lot for the health of the internet. And I don't want to be a Pollyanna about this. That's not going to counteract the power of Google.com. But I also think we're kind of going in that direction already. I think people have realized that this is what they want.

1:30:30And they're going out and finding people and building a connection with them that maybe kind of disappeared completely for a couple of years. It was only on the platforms. And that's the thing, like two others I'm going to, I just, I love, I actually think it's cool to highlight these people. One is RealDanYang on Instagram. His new thing he does is he does like sports breakdowns, but he does them for very weird things. He did one where it's a guy a woman throws a spray at a guy in miami and the guy elbow drops the window off of her car the mirror off the car and he's just going like now you're looking at a classic corvette elbow guy and he does like a play-by-play breakdown it's fucking hilarious dan yang is actually one of the most gifted comedians instagram's actually good finding comedy but the way he does this deadpan stuff is so marvelous and every time i see his shit i feel like just so happy because it's like this is what i miss but the other one and probably one of my favorites ever is a woman called Vika.

1:31:23Vika goes wild on YouTube. She is one of the most gifted pianists I've ever seen. I mean, like, she plays Rachmaninoff. And the way her hands move is not human. What she does is she does extremely intricate covers of metal and rock. She did a cover of a Queens of the Star Age song called Unreborn Again, which is a real deep cut. Hole in Your Heart by Royal Blood, but also Black Hole Sun. she did hey man nice shot and the way she keeps time with her hands is genuinely insane like watching it you're like i don't think my fingers can do that on one hand in any time signature close to this and she has a patreon sadly patreon a kind of evil but give her money but also and to really wrap this up it's this shit is still happening it's very easy to look at everything in a monolith and say oh well the all the internet is is just people internet's bad messing with the algorithm.

1:32:20And I just don't think that's productive. And I know, yeah, these small things won't change things, but we've got a lot of listeners now. The best thing any of you can do while listening is when you find this weird little thing, something like this, share it, share it aggressively, send it to your friends. Because this is actually what you're missing. What you're missing is not so much a pure internet because it's not been pure for a while. it's that it's not as easy or at least the sources aren't as loud toward things like this the dominant culture the dominant noise is very big very obviously popular things every like the most popular song is the most popular song because the spotify algorithm blah blah blah blah and these breakout hits aren't really breakout hits in a qualitative level they're breakout hits because the algorithm decided to show it to a lot of people and it was popular enough to take off and yeah there's a situation where it would have been popular anyway but i don't know i think that the best thing you can do is find your weirdos find your weirdos share your weirdos post them on the better offline reddit r slash better offline i want to do the find your weirdos thread i want to know because because that's the thing the better offline reddit has been amazing because it's just real people mostly talking about stealing stuff the whole joke about people stealing stuff catlit converters and everything from a few episodes ago that has taken off yeah And the worry I have is the book coming out and they're just going to steal it.

1:33:41But that's a different problem. But what's magical about it is it's real people dicking around and they're still out there. The real ones. Yeah. I'm really hopeful about the state of the web, right? And it's, you know, maybe again, it sounds like, you know, I'm wearing rose colored glasses. But the fact that if you agree that these things are problems, the fact that it bothers us so much as Internet users is a very positive thing, right? Because Lily Ray, the SEO expert, said to me a couple of weeks ago, she was saying, I can't believe that normies are complaining about how search engines work.

1:34:18You know, the fact that this bothers us means that there's pressure on the platforms to change. Now, when Google searches a monopoly, there isn't much pressure. Maybe that changes. But if you aren't happy with Spotify or with Instagram and you go looking elsewhere, that creates a business opportunity for someone to fill. And I think that's where the internet is going. We're going to find new things that we like. And in some ways, the services are going to change. I want to read one last thing as we end. And this is from Nick Cave on Stephen Colbert. Not the place that you should get it. He said, and I quote, hopefulness is not a neutral position it's adversarial it's the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism each redemptive or loving act as small as you like such as reading to your little boy keeps the devil down in the hole and i fucking agree the thing that you can do as a listener right now is to change platforms sure but share the unique things don't i'm not saying you have to be hipster about it but you find some weird song you find like the demon cleaner for by Kias, the cover I found from Tool.

1:35:20It's fucking cool. That is where the magic of the internet is, and that is where you can find your hope. It's there. Thomas, thank you so much for joining. Where can people find you? I am on Twitter and TikTok. It's at Thomas Germain. Germain's with a G. And how do you spell that? It's G-E-R-M-A-I-N. Yeah, they make me spell stuff now. And you can, of course, find me at google.com. I'm on Twitter. All the things are going to come afterwards. They're out there. But thank you so much for joining me, Thomas. and Danil thank you my wonderful producer in studio Danil Goodman thank you so much for listening everyone and I guess I can say it here even though the season 2 doesn't start we have been renewed they couldn't keep me down thank you so much to everyone for listening and I'm so grateful to be doing this every week I can't believe you tolerate me I love you all to quote the end of the menu thank you so much for listening

1:36:17thank you for listening to better offline the editor and composer of the better offline theme song is matt osowski you can check out more of his music and audio projects at matt osowski.com m-a-t-t-o-s-o-w-s-k-i.com you can email me at easy at better offline.com or visit better offline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter i also really recommend you go to chat.wheresyoured.at to visit the discord and go to r slash better offline to check out our reddit thank you so much for listening better offline is a production of cool zone media for more from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

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