Zuck's New Mojo, Elon's New AI Company, Striking Actors' AI Fears

0:00A new image for Mark Zuckerberg. The Microsoft Activision deal is going to go forward and actors in Hollywood are going on strike and warning whether machines will replace them. All that and more coming up on this live edition of Big Technology Podcast right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value.

0:44Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. The truth is AI security is identity security. An AI agent isn't just a piece of code. It's a first-class citizen in your digital ecosystem, And it needs to be treated like one. That's why Okta is taking the lead to secure these AI agents. The key to unlocking this new layer of protection? An identity security fabric. Organizations need a unified, comprehensive approach that protects every identity, human or machine, with consistent policies and oversight. Don't wait for a security incident to realize your AI agents are a massive blind spot.

1:20Learn how Okta's identity security fabric can help you secure the next generation of identities, including your AI agents. Visit Okta.com. That's O-K-T-A dot com. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, Friday edition. We break down the news in our traditional cool-headed format. We have so much to talk about. Ranjan Roy is here. Ranjan, I know you have a lot of thoughts about threads. We've been talking about threads a lot on this show, but we're going to talk a little bit about where it leaves Mark Zuckerberg and what's going to happen in the battle between threads and Twitter going forward. That's our A block.

1:52And from there, we're going to move on to Microsoft Activision and plenty more. Ranjan, welcome. It's good to be back. I've missed you, Alex. There's definitely, there's been a hole in my heart, especially as this thread story has unfolded. And myself and we've had people on threads writing me saying we'd love to hear what Ranjan has to say about this. So today we'll finally get our chance, but let's start with the revitalization of Mark Zuckerberg's image. So this is coming from the Wall Street Journal. It says, Elon Musk has done the once unimaginable. He has helped revive Mark Zuckerberg's Silicon Valley mojo.

2:25That was evident as tens of millions of people signed up for Zuckerberg's alternative to Musk Twitter. After more than eight months of turmoil under Musk on Twitter, a certain glee erupted from those who said that they were tired of the chaos and sometimes nastiness of his particular digital clubhouse, so much that they signed up for threads overlooking the typical privacy anxieties that come with Meta. Here's the question. So obviously we know why people are going to threads right um because they just don't like twitter anymore but the deeper question is did people give mark zuckerberg too much of a hard time previously did they give him too much of a hard time they're certainly not now people are uh thirsting over mark zuckerberg shirtless next to other ufc fighters on my threads when i open it up and we'll definitely get into threads the app itself but but i'll admit myself when threads has come out it's the first time in a long time I didn't look at Meta slash Facebook with total fear about what are they doing and what are the implications of this.

3:29And I'm actually ready to give it a chance. And I think that is the greatest. I mean, short of shooting rockets into space and, you know, electrifying the vehicular system. I think Elon Musk making me be OK with Mark Zuckerberg launching a new app that grows at unimaginable scale. I think that is quite the accomplishment. And then this is so this is a moment and some have called a moment that should be more the press and the detractors of Zuckerberg should be more introspective. I'm curious what you think about that. Was this again like, OK, here's here's the argument. I think it's important to address this.

4:06The argument is that the press and commentators always need a villain. And the fact that they've moved from Zuckerberg to Musk and now Zuckerberg is a hero. We talked about this a little bit last week with Alex Heath, but I really want to hear your perspective. So they say that that's a little bit intellectually dishonest. What's your perspective? Yeah. And as someone who has certainly tried to shine light on Meta's practices and how Mark Zuckerberg operates a business, I would say in terms of being introspective, it's a reminder because the way Threads has come out, and we can definitely get into it, and it relates to the Microsoft Activision news.

4:44in terms of market power and what Meta still is able to do thanks to its size and its interwoven apps and business lines. I actually think Mark Zuckerberg is getting an incredible free pass right now, and I think it's not going to last too long. So I think, yes, it's nice right now, Zuck versus Musk in the cage and shirtless Zuck and threads blowing up are all great. But I think people are going to look pretty carefully at how did Facebook slash Meta actually launch threads and how did they get it to grow so fast and is this a good thing and when you had alex heath on here talking about how threads is not launching in the eu and for listeners i'm actually sitting in paris right now and i was able to download threads from the us app store and try to use it um but i actually think it's a reminder that like they are still the company is still not willing to play by rules around data privacy they're not launching the app and they're trying to use it.

5:41And both of you guys were in agreement that it seems to be that users will be angry at regulators for not allowing threads. But I feel it's a reminder that Facebook is still not, you know, trying to suck up as much data, trying to not respect any rules around data privacy as possible. So I think this is a nice little honeymoon that I hope Mark enjoys, but I don't think it's going to last for too long. Right. So, well, this is the thing that I've been thinking about, which is that it does come down to product in some ways. Even though Facebook and Google were doing the same things in terms of recommending content that made people outraged and making the discussion much more emotional versus thoughtful, people liked Google's products more, so they gave Google a pass, and all the outrage went to Zuckerberg.

6:34And it's like a similar well let me finish so this is like a similar thing here where actually the the face and the because people didn't like the facebook product the now people don't like twitter the product and it's almost as if that is a conduit through which like they say okay this person is like you know a vector of badness all right all right i'll agree with you that mark zuckerberg from like, let's say 2016 to 2019, maybe 2020, did become the face of why is Donald Trump the president? What happened to our privacy? What are this algorithmic media, all these different issues that everyone started to understand and realize and realize what had happened.

7:17And I completely agree that YouTube itself has all the same underlying problems as Facebook Blue or Instagram or whatever else. And, you know, like Sundar definitely does not take the public hit on that. Susan Wojcicki, how do you pronounce her last name? Wojcicki, yeah. She was not a kind of publicly flogged villain. So yeah, I agree. Mark Zuckerberg became the face. And I think Elon Musk right now perfectly represents a lot of what's wrong with the tech industry much more than Mark Zuckerberg, how outspoken he is kind of like embodying Twitter VC tech billionaire evil guy. I think, yeah, he presents like a better embodiment of the things that people are unhappy about that Mark Zuckerberg at this moment does not as much.

8:08So yeah, he's a cleaner story and villain than Mark Zuckerberg was. Whereas again, data privacy, having like the messages from back in college, like screw the users and their privacy. Like Mark Zuckerberg very well painted those issues perfectly into a picture for journalists. And of course, like the media, everyone having like a central character like that makes telling that story easier. Exactly. And one thing I'll say is, so first of all, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is an angel. I think that a lot of the criticisms of him are completely mirrored. And it is kind of a stunning about face in terms of like the way that the public and especially the press are treating him now versus before.

8:49That being said, you know, I think that there was a point where there was no penalty for saying something bad about Zuckerberg. It was almost like, you know, a gratuitous, like, take your pot shots for free zone, even if they didn't have much of a, like, they stemmed away from the critical thinking criticism to just a free for all. And to me, I do think that it did get a little bit out of hand not to say i mean i was you know i've full full uh you know uh full disclosure like i definitely was part of the zuckerberg criticism in the past i mean i'd said some good things about him as well but it is just an interesting thing to me to kind of grapple with as we start to go from you know these two competing narratives i have to disagree because there was also a time when he was on the cover of time magazine in 2010 to like i think he going to like maybe he was person of the year or maybe he was i remember holding that issue uh there was many years where he could do no wrong and the press and that's why ignoring all of the underlying issues that facebook facebook was creating giving him an eternal free pass and he was the wonder kind and the boy wonder and all that like so all of these things kind of ebb and flow and yes there was a time where that reputation because it was so unquestioningly positive that it went unquestionably negative and now it's kind of probably back somewhere in the middle whereas musk is the exact same thing you know he was going to change and save the world and now the real musk comes out and now definitely people have a more critical eye on him but but i think the idea that there is some necessary fault i think that's just how stories in the world work not to get too philosophical but like i think you know like a clean narrative always travels better than a messy one.

10:38And then for a while he was the, I mean, he's been at the top, he's at the bottom. Now he's kind of in the middle, maybe, maybe a little higher than the middle. When I was sitting down with Nick Clegg for the podcast in Davos last year, just a fun sentence to say, he's the VP of global affairs. Alex with the Davos flex. Have to drop it when you can. VP of global affairs at Facebook, or I think he's the EVP there. Basically, he's running policy and public relations there. And I asked him, well, it was just when Elon had closed the deal. And I asked him, so are you happy? And the smile that he gave was pretty indicative, even though he was very politically correct about it.

11:19So let's talk a little bit about Twitter's counterpunch. This week, Elon Musk and Twitter started paying creators sometimes above$20 ,000. dollars uh the people obviously the top tier but they've paid they've been paying them um an ad share for the ads that appeared in the replies to them uh people are saying well this is the counterpunch it's going to get some of the more interesting creators to stay and invest even more on twitter and is like the perfect defensive move against threads what do you think about that i mean i think that's not even necessarily big news because every platform i think tiktok it at some point launched, they said it was like a billion dollar creators fund.

12:03YouTube has been very successful at both using monetary rewards and using engagement rewards for creators and to build out their own creator community. So I think every platform actually is very strategic and smart about giving money to creators. I think Twitter probably has been the worst at it or it's been non-existent. So to me, that's not as interesting. I did see though, like, I mean, the questions are are raised though, who are these high profile users? And I think it's going to be pretty interesting to watch or try to understand who he's paying. But in some ways, think about when Substack launched and who they chose to give the advances to.

12:45Again, Substack, the newsletter platform famously paid some people in the hundreds of thousands, even maybe over a million dollars to come to the platform. And again, it was successful. It did what it had to do. It was essentially an advance and then they would start taking a cut of their subscription fees going forward so i think that strategy when executed well it can work but it also helps define exactly what you want that platform to be because who you choose to pay will be exactly what that platform will become so the narrative has been that all the musk payments have actually gone to right-wing influencers but there's all the other side of that is that like anybody on the left has left right if they've declined their use they don't want to brag about getting paid by musk they're on blue sky they're on threads so like is it a choice by musk or is it a user choice of exit yeah no no that's why to me again like when a platform chooses to pay creators there it's it's like no different to me than a magazine choosing who to hire to write there or who the new york times choosing who to give space to for their opinion.

13:54Wait, so you think this is editorially driven and not algorithmically driven? Of course it is. I mean, come on. They're not paying their Twitter is not paying like half of its vendor bills. The choice to actually pay a specific creator, of course, will be editorially driven. I mean, I think that it's I think it's been much. I don't think that Twitter said, let's go pay all the right wing influencers, because that just turns it into true social i think they they probably paid across the board but some of the people on the left or even the center had a feeling that if they tweeted like even brian krasserstein i think he's a left guy he tweeted he's uh i think he has been the perfect symbol of like the horseshoe theory of engagement where yes there he was like the ultimate resistance tweeter for a long time but now he's come pretty much around just responding to musk being friendly with musk so i think he actually represents me okay right versus left wing i think is less relevant than engagement thirsty willing to kind of like respond to musk for the engagement oh that's that's a cop-out come on like if he's coming at it from the left he got paid he's shameless enough to tweet his his twitter payout though it's not the left all right anyway it's yeah i'll just say this i think that like that the people on the traditional left who got those payments from musk and there must have been some, they're not publicizing it.

15:17Like, it just does, it's not going to show, it's not going to show what they wanted to show. All right, I'm okay with that, understanding that. Because, yeah, it would not be a badge of honor at this point to say you took 20K from Musk. So what do you think, so now we can take a little bit of time and we'll just do it quickly, but I've been eager personally to hear about your thoughts about threads. You actually texted me, you know, from Romania saying that like, this is the biggest tech story of the year. So what makes it that? This has been so incredibly fascinating for me to watch both while I am on vacation and like trying to keep up with it.

16:00But so first, when you download it, the fact that to me, it blew my mind. And again, talking about how Mark Zuckerberg's image has been rehabilitated. But then in terms of like pure Facebook, like, you know, marketing power, my Instagram, it's already loaded up, ready to sign in. I don't actually have to sign up. I still don't know whether it's already created the account because it basically signs in automatically. It's even populated my Instagram profile. Then my entire Instagram feed, it's trying to nudge me to follow all of them even though when I signed up it was like right at the moment it was available I knew my wife at the top was not on threads so clearly you know it's taking advantage of that social graph then I end up on the feed and oh my god it was like the perfect manifestation of just brandy influencery awfulness that like what I have loved Twitter because it is not.

17:03Literally the first thing was like Paris Hilton tweeting to Taco Bell, like good night, Hunter, something like that. And then like that annoying, it's like Spotify saying, I am music. I don't know, like all these like annoying memes and brand social media managers having to, you know, like they were told by their senior managers, get on threads. You got to be involved here. So to me, the feed already, and this is before I followed a single person but clearly it's and it was clear they are taking the algorithm i had some sports highlights i had like it was clear they're taking the using my instagram following to build my algorithmic feed which again is pretty smart and masterful and scary um but again for them to build a product and like get past the zero start problem where you join a new network and you have no one to follow you have no feed it's brilliant from their side but then you know a few days later it's the same thing it's recycled stuff from twitter and reddit it's brands trying to be funny which gets old which is good in like short spurts but is not that engaging over time so yeah those are my initial thoughts do you think it has staying power this is what's so this is what's interesting to me I think the brand and advertising side of this is brilliant.

18:29I think this is an existential threat to Twitter's business. I think Mark Zuckerberg did win the cage match metaphorically already because like every brand, it is the perfect place for brands. It's this like saccharine, simple, moderated, brand-friendly place. So every advertiser already is salivating over the platform and will continue to. And the moment they ask for monetization, they have a better monetization engine than anyone else in the business. And the second they turn it on, every brand will be running to get there. So Twitter's, Linda Iaccarino, God help her, like, I mean, for this to happen after her joining.

19:11And then meanwhile, Elon is posting dick measuring contests with Zuck and whatnot. Like, I think from a business standpoint, it has huge staying power. I think you made one of the smartest points of, and it's rare that I'll say that, but to me, this, but from a user standpoint, this more likely replaces Instagram than Twitter. Because Twitter for me, slash, I would put Blue Sky as a bigger potential long-term threat to Twitter. Because when I'm on Blue Sky, it's the same thing as Twitter. It's some of the same people I'm interested. It's not, it's people I don't really know for the most part, but people I find very interesting saying interesting things.

19:58That is as far from what Threads is for me. But Threads, seeing some brand, especially the more and more the feed does feel visual, seeing some nice photos and meme videos and stuff from people, that is interesting. But that's more what I would use Instagram for, whether they can get people to actually post like their life on it, the way Instagram, the purpose it currently serves, that will be interesting. And I'm curious because like, I still think back when Facebook first launched stories, when Instagram first launched the Snapchat clone of stories, I remember how like aggressively they pushed people towards it.

20:45When they started Facebook stories on Facebook blue launched and wasn't getting enough engagement and people basically getting tricked into, if I post an Instagram story, it will repost onto Facebook blue stories. Like the way they work all this stuff together, I think at some point they could easily just turn on like posts to Instagram, auto posts to threads. And then suddenly that can become like the place you go to, to see what people are up to in life. And I would much rather see what my friends and family are up to in life on a threads like format than the current Instagram app has gotten more and more convoluted with reels and stuff like that.

21:24So, so I think overall bigger threat, and I don't even know if it's a threat. They, they have shown an ability to, you know, like allow Instagram to become the premier destination and let Facebook blue decay a little bit. So maybe they will be okay making threads the new hot place. yep i i agree i think that's what's going to happen that it's going to largely take from from instagram but it could take from twitter too and your point about this being a great place for advertising uh is is spot on in fact um just the second that we finish recording this i'm about to send out a big technology newsletter where uh chief revenge officer doug and i uh spent the week speaking with advertisers and the quotes that they give are really unbelievable in terms of how eager they are to advertise on this platform here.

22:14I'm just going to read a couple of them for you. I'm just going to pull it up here. I also will note that I love that Doug has officially become chief revenge officer and it's stuck. So for those listening, Doug is our intern on big technology this summer. He's coming from NYU journalism. He's very talented. And yes, we've just promoted him to chief revenge officer. And do not mess with Doug. No, you can't. You can't. Okay. So here's, here's some, some quotes from advertisers. I'd for sure start to test immediately because it's meta generally trust them in every placement they have. This is another one.

22:46They're always making updates to improve targeting and placements and ad optimization. Another. They already have better ad technology from a marketer's perspective than Twitter. Facebook's ads, technology and interfaces are much better than Twitter's. And one more. We'll be ready to jump in as soon as meta rolls out advertising on threads. We are communicating with them currently about launch, many of these folks are saying, you know what, like, we think that this is going to come by the fourth quarter. And I mentioned this on the last pod. I think that's spot on. I think Zuckerberg said, listen, like, we are going to wait till we're on track to hit a billion users.

23:22You can already make the argument that they're on track to hit that billion. And they're publicly traded company, Wall Street's going to want its returns. So I think, but the real question is, can they build audience outside of Instagram's current audience. I think you hit on it perfectly because if they can't, then it's just another way to buy Instagram ads and on a product that's not as sophisticated. They really do need to pull Twitter's audience in order to make this work from a money standpoint. I think there's already evidence that they're doing some of that, but that's really where the rubber is going to hit the road for meta in this product.

23:55Well, let's talk about the user growth because there's a couple of points on it. Again, fastest to, I think it was a hundred million users in five days. And to me, the kind of most comical thing is Mark Zuckerberg said, we did that with no promotion. So let's unpack that a little bit. Because first of all, to me, again, how aggressive that signup flow was as an existing Instagram user, the moment you download the app, everything works very perfectly in an aggressive way from your existing feed. So getting a new user when you have the entire 3.2 billion users using your product, I think on a daily basis, 100 million is not that exciting or impressive.

24:37But to me, what's more interesting, this is I'll get a little bit out there on this one, is I've talked about this a few times in the past. There have been these moments where when Meta slash Facebook decides we want to make something happen, suddenly the entire world is talking about it. After they've renamed themselves to Meta and went all in on the metaverse, suddenly NFTs become a huge thing, crypto price boom. when they control the narrative, they control the media. Like what article, if I write about threads, will it land and get traction on Facebook and Instagram? They control the algorithm.

25:20They control the algorithm. So, and to me, I don't even say that as a conspiracy theory. I say that as normal business practice, like juice up threads a little bit in the Instagram and Facebook algorithm, then every writer will be happily covering the story. Again, we're talking about it right now. I recognize that. But like, they control the narrative. So also getting it to a point where everyone in the world is talking about it, they can turn the dial on that. Like, even I remember after the TikTok hearings, and I was pretty disappointed the New York Times wrote about this almost as though it was this organic, surprising thing that the TikTok CEO went from like 5 ,000 to like 10 million followers on TikTok, yes, they can do that.

26:05Like they can, and suddenly became kind of like a heartthrob and all these TikTokers are like, like praising him. Yes, they can control what videos get seen and which accounts to push. So, so again, the idea that threads organically grew without any promotion, I think is a bit disingenuous. And I actually, to me, the one thing that could kill its staying power is I actually think it was a mistake to grow this fast. Because you get all the hype, you get the users, and you get the energy. But to me, a social platform requires some kind of community, some kind of vibe, to use the word. And maybe Blue Sky has been annoying how closed off it's been, but still, it's actually been active among the people I know who use it.

26:54It's still a place where it has like a very specific thing I go to for it. Like think about, do you remember Facebook bulletin? Yes. Okay. Did you ever use it or did you ever see one in the wild? I did. I subscribed to one. I subscribed to one. So bulletin is like their newsletter knockoff. Yeah. And they had like Malcolm Gladwell Malala, I think was writing a new, you know, they had these big name launches and it just went nowhere because they went too big too fast i always actually think about like linkedin when they started with barack obama's ghostwriter um in 2013 when they're trying to launch the more like post-oriented efforts i think again rather than getting homegrown organic stars youtube was the best at this and twitter in fact was also great at this as well.

27:44It's like people who weren't big elsewhere, they grew the platform. They created a voice. They created a way of speaking. That's what made the platform interesting. And right now, again, I think Thread's getting that big that fast, being such a brand focus. That's why it's just like Spotify and Netflix and Taco Bell and Wendy's on my feed trying to be funny and then a bunch of recycled meme accounts. Well, you've got to build out your follower graph. I think the one thing, the one counter argument to this is that they have a built-in community, which is a good chunk of the Twitter community that's come over to try it out and has liked it.

28:20So the one last thing I'll say about Threads is there've been some people asking for podcast recommendations on it, and multiple of you, multiple of our listeners have shared that Big Technology podcast is something that you listen to and you recommend to others. I want to say thank you. I appreciate that. It really made me feel good to see big technology in the mix. And we love it when listeners advocate for the show. So thanks for doing that. We're going to head to break. But on that note, I do want to say if you have the Spotify or Apple app open and you want to show some love, if you could give us a five-star rating on either of those, maybe a review also.

28:55That would be really helpful. It would help us rise the ranks and get some more great guests. So that's always helpful. On the other side of this break, we are going to talk about Microsoft Activision, and whether bipartisan opposition to big tech is still exactly the way that it was when it seemed like there was a united front in both parties. We're going to talk about Elon Musk's new AI company if we have time, and we're definitely going to get to the SAG-AFTRA strike and whether machines are going to replace actors. Back right after this. These days, it feels like every dollar should be working a little harder, but figuring out where to put your cash can be confusing.

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30:08That's a total of 4.15 % variable APY when you open your first cash account. Go to wealthfront.com slash big tech to sign up today. This is a paid testimonial for Wealthfront. It may not reflect the experience of others and there's no guarantee of future performance or success. Wealthfront brokerage is not a bank. Rate is subject to change. Promo terms and conditions apply. For more information, see the episode description. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love.

30:45It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Ranjan Roy. Ranjan writes margins. You can get it at readmargins.com. Great newsletter. Definitely recommend you check it out. Ranjan, what do you think about the fact that Microsoft's Activision is about to close effectively and that this big challenge that the FTC brought to try to block that merger just kind of flopped? Yeah, it is about to go through. Currently, the FTC has appealed the, I believe, preliminary injunction, the legal specifics, like specifics, I'm not going to probably butcher, but the deal, I believe tonight is the deadline that if the FTC does not win this final delay, the deal will definitely go through on the 18th.