Balaji and Taylor Lorenz on AI and Media

20:41Well, so, I mean, the thing is, I think it's take, it's different today. And the reason it's different today is basically tech and media were on the same side. I mean, like, you know, Steve Jobs, like remember Occupy Wall Street, like everybody, he was covered, like his passing was something where even Occupy Wall Street was lighting up their iPhones for him and so forth. Tech was considered to be a wing of the Democrat Party. And, you know, Obama's first election, tech helped, you know, elect Obama and all that kind of stuff. You remember all that, right? So that was something where I think, in retrospect, I think the media saw, wait a second, these tech guys are going from gadget manufacturers to suddenly becoming wealthier than legacy establishment.

21:30Also, another aspect, there's at least three big differences between, let's say, New York media and Silicon Valley. And now Silicon Valley is decentralized, it's the internet. But the three are, well, first obviously is paper versus digital, like the medium. But the second is actually obviously geographic, the 3 ,000 miles away. But the third is perhaps the least obvious, which is demographic, right? Silicon Valley has lots of Asians, lots of Indians, lots of people from overseas. Whereas the New York Times and U.S. media is based in Brooklyn, and they're mostly folks who have generations in the country.

22:03And so that nationalist versus internationalist aspect is also a very important question as to who has the right to speak. and implicitly it's like Salisbury has the right to speak Newhouse has the right to speak they have the right to speak and you, a recent immigrant, don't can we zoom in on that a little bit because it seems very different from how the New York Times might see themselves they don't really see themselves that way they don't see themselves that way but you have to look at what they do rather than what they say Salisbury himself has this giant mansion but he attacks you for being wealthy, right?

22:41Sosbury himself has dual class stock, but they have articles. Okay, but that's like the bot.

22:46Taylor Lorenz:Like, let me tell you, no one at the New York Times, like the actual journalists writing these articles that everybody's taking issue with, like they're not, they don't. I understand that like, whatever, there's that famous like Chomsky interview, I think where he's interviewing a BBC reporter and he's like the only reason you're in that chair. You wouldn't be in the position you're in if you didn't believe the thing you did. Yes, I'm very sympathetic to that. But at the same time, At what point do we let it go? Because it has a long time. Oh, yeah, no, we do let it go. Absolutely do let it go.

23:15Taylor Lorenz:I think at this point. Sorry, I didn't get there yet. Yes, I just like, it's like, the content creator industry is ascendant. It's only going to become more digital. The Times is a great business. It's going to continue on. But like, look at where Legacy Media is. You're kicking a dead rabbit on the ground. You know what I mean? Like, it's so. So actually, so let me say something on that. So first is, you just asked me how the history happened, because I wasn't going to, you know, so I just want to give you the history. No, I know. I just like, I do have to go. Where's the go forward? Because I was thinking about the future.

23:45Taylor Lorenz:I just think that there's like, and also like maybe let's engage with actual journalists too. Like instead of like Salzburger, sure. The people, again, there's tons of idiot people that run these corporations. But the actual journalists, like, I don't think have necessarily like a not all, do you know what I mean? Necessarily, some of them, yes, they're chosen to be in that position for a reason. but a lot of them are just doing their job and they're doing a good job and they're trying to engage in good faith. And I think that there's a lot of animosity kind of coming. So, yes, well, so, okay.

24:13So the TLDR, just to answer your question, then let's talk about the go forward. The TLDR is, I think the media guys think the tech guys started and the tech guys think the media guys started it. I think the media guys think the tech guys started by economically disrupting them. I think the tech guys started, I think the media guys started by socially attacking them in the 2010s. But net-net, where did it land up? Basically, tech realized it needs to build its own media. Hence, monitoring the situation, a new live stream, right? Hence, X, hence, you know, all in podcast, hence Pirate Wires, hence, you know, like a bunch of shows, Gary Tan's thing and so on and so forth.

24:48We just have to build our own thing.

24:49Taylor Lorenz:You don't want to say TBPN? TBPN, that's right, exactly, you know, exactly, right? And, you know, it's basically like, you know, in a video game, it's like, get good. And, you know, on their side, even though I disagree with a lot of what they've done, the New York Times did actually hire a bunch of programmers and built an app and so on and so on. So media was like, you know what, rather than yelling at these tech guys, we have to build our own technology, technology had to build its own media. All right, what's the go forward? And the New York Times is a technology company now because most of what they do, most of the revenue comes from the games.

25:17Yeah, that's right. So now I think what happened is they actually did well economically and they gained money, but they lost power because they lost a bunch of folks who allocate capital and a bunch of folks who build things and so on, over, but they gained a bunch of, I don't know, political partisans, fine, whatever. Point is that I actually don't think it's like totally over because of one thing, which is one very important thing. We actually need to have decentralized cryptographic truth that's not behind a paywall that anybody can verify no matter how poor they are, no matter what, you know, like phone or whatever they have, they can verify it anywhere.

25:58And they're not just taking some corporation or government's assertion for it. Now, we actually do have that with, you know, there's actually a book called The Truth Machine, actually by former WSA reporters, Vigna and Casey, but they left the WSA, at least Casey did, which says, I mean, that's what Bitcoin is. What Bitcoin is, is decentralized cryptographic truth. Anybody, anywhere, whether they're Japanese or Chinese, Democrat or Republican, they could be European or Latin American, whatever, they agree on the state of the Bitcoin blockchain, like who has what amount of money, up to trillions of dollars, and that's been true for 10 plus years.

26:32And the same algorithms that get us to consensus on financial facts, you know, I built this trillion dollar economy, we can use that with some generalization to get to consensus on other kinds of facts, other social facts. That's a big theme for me for the next several years is establishing consensus, provable truth. It should be free. It should be open source. It should be globally verifiable. It should not be paywalled. and it's something where I think it's actually achievable. To give you a very concrete example of what I'm talking about, so, you know, I've got a talk on the ledger of record, but now it's actually feasible.

27:07If you go, for example, to, you know, Claude or Grok, ChatGPT, what have you, and you ask it to describe the FTX hack that happened in late 2022 and give links, it will give some links, for example, to either scan, which show exactly how much of what amount was hacked. So you can click that and you can see this happened at that time. And you can check the timestamp. You can check the references. Another example of this was, you know, when there's a thing about the Brazilian fires, you know, a few years ago, and there's a fake photo that actually Emmanuel Macron tweeted out and the Atlantic actually ran an article on this basically saying they're going to invade Brazil.

27:43It's a good justification to invade Brazil because of these fires. It turned out that was a fake photo or rather a photo, which a timestamp showed that there was the guy who had taken it had died years ago. So it couldn't be a contemporary photo. and you're going to have this whole thing on this photo. The point being, that's a concrete example. There's other examples, like a Chinese case where a timestamp showed that something was patented before or a patent was filed after a claim had been made publicly or Elon was able to disprove a story by showing the instrumental record, the timestamps of his car versus John Broder's article like in 2013 or something like that.

28:14The point being that this instrumental record, these timestamps are a history that's like the history of the machine. It's all the timestamps, it's the raw data. and now you can actually use that to build a story on top of it which cites the raw data. It cites the raw facts, it cites the primary sources and I think that's where we want to go over the next five years and the reason I don't think actually the battle, you know the Kobe thing, like job done? Job's not done, right? Job's not done because legacy media has a little bit of a comeback. Why? Because of AI, people are going to legacy media URLs because there's some small degree of cryptographic verification.

28:52you see the HTPS lock symbol, you know it's coming at least from that author, you know that, okay, well, they may have faked the video, but you kind of, you feel you know where their biases are. And so we have to respond to that, not simply by going direct, but by proving correct. So that's a major theme for the next five years, 10 years. So that's why I don't think, job's not done. And to be clear, that's not an oppositional thing, really. That's something that you'd want, even people at legacy media companies would want that because they also want to verify stories to be correct. and sometimes those facts will be in favor of some group or against some group, but let the truth, you know, come out and let the heavens fall.

29:26Let me pause there.

29:28Taylor Lorenz:Yeah, I mean, I think those are all, like this is a bit, like you have a lot of theories and I think it'll be interesting to see kind of like the way that information ecosystems evolve and how that works out. I'm all for the sort of decentralization of information and people learning. And I think it's exciting to kind of see the way that people are even using AI to gather their own information, do their own reporting, do their own kind of investigations and stuff. I just think, yeah, I just think that also, like, most reporters are trying to kind of communicate. Like, most people, they just kind of want a story.

29:58Taylor Lorenz:They just kind of want the gist of something. Like, they're just trying to, like, learn about something maybe during the day. And I do think that, like, reporters do a good job of packaging information and delivering it to consumers in an easily digestible, largely accurate way. Of course, there's always people that are bad actors. Of course, there's always, you know, sort of wrong information. But yeah, but it is interesting to think about how it evolved. I don't know if you saw that group that was accused of setting up this like fake AI generated news website. And then they had agents, actually.

30:31Taylor Lorenz:It was like an agent that was emailing people for comment. It was leading the future pack, right? Yeah. So although they say that it was a vendor, they say that it was not them. But it was just interesting to see. I don't know. So what interested me is that this agent had gone and emailed all these people for comment and people were saying like, oh, I got an email from that agent or whatever. And I was like, that's interesting to think about. I wonder if we could get agents to FOIA, document requests, email. Sometimes you have to reach out to comment to like 100 people or you're sourcing stuff or whatever.

31:02Taylor Lorenz:So I just think that it's, yeah, it'll be interesting to kind of see how it all evolves. Yeah, you know, one thing also I should say is I always try to figure out a win-win relationship with some industry that's being disrupted. I actually do have sympathy, you know, because in the 2000s, it was a pretty good gig to be, you know, a time writer or something like that. You would have an expense account. You'd write six articles a year. You'd fly around the world. It's pretty chill before the financial crisis. And I get why a lot of people in Brooklyn, for example, have like a sense of loss and so on around that.

31:38Maybe that sounds funny. I mean, you have some thought. No, I think you're totally right.

31:41Taylor Lorenz:I think people in LA also have a loss. I mean, I live in LA, but like people, I mean, I have friends that are screenwriters, right? They miss the golden age of screenwriting. That's never quite bad. So, you know, yeah, I'm sure it would have been amazing to be a Vanity Fair writer in 1995, but it doesn't exist anymore. And it is what it is, you know? That's right. Now you can be a live streamer. Good. Now we can all be live streamers. Well, I'm kind of serious about that. Like, I think that sort of content creation has surpassed and supplanted that. And you can, you know, have a pretty great lifestyle as an online content creator, just because the institutions don't make it so easy to get that anymore.

32:22Taylor Lorenz:I just think, yeah, yeah. You know, one thing you mentioned, you know, I have millions and I should do something. And so one thing I actually do want to do is fund, and I have been doing this quietly actually for a while, but I'm going to do more of it more publicly, is funding media, academia, democracy, equality, that kind of stuff. Um, where, you know, like my, basically with, with crypto in particular, I can put up a prize or a task and anybody from anywhere can, can do that. And we can pay them pseudonymously or publicly or whatever. And, uh, and we can have, you know, like it'll be different than let's say the blockbuster picture of, of the, you know, 20th century, um, just like that was different from Broadway and plays.

33:07but in some ways it has more upside because in somebody who's like a, you know, now you can be the full stack yourself, right? So taking Hollywood, you can be the screenwriter, you can be the director, you can cast the actors, you can translate into 50 different languages. You know, the true auteur can actually now do it without requiring a deal with Paramount or something like that. So I think there's a role, basically, I'm sympathetic to, especially, you know, like people who've lost jobs and so on. But I think just like Substack kind of stepped in and it was able to build a new model for writers.

33:42Taylor Lorenz:It doesn't support reporting is the problem, right? It's that that economy, this content creator economy doesn't support like in-depth investigative reporting. And I think that's what we're losing at. So on that topic, right, I will say something, which is, so, you know, there's a saying, which is he doxes, she leaks, but the New York Times investigates, right? and basically the issue is that for somebody who's not elected to just go and spy on somebody else and dig through their garbage and so on and so forth. Like there was a journalist who went to like Benioff's mansion and was literally digging through his garbage in Hawaii, you know, or something like that, right?

34:22Taylor Lorenz:Are you talking about Pui Wang, the most iconic journalist? I don't know. Was it Allison or Benioff? I don't remember. I think it was Benioff. But the point is that basically, if that was not a, quote, journalist, that would be seen as stalking, harassment, you know, cyber stalking. Like it'd be weird, right? For person A to develop, to go and go through person. But that's very silly. But the context of that behavior matters, right? The context of calling someone up and asking their associates questions would be weird. But in the context of a job, checking job references, it's normal, right? Like, the context matters.

35:01Taylor Lorenz:Ah, but consent, right? So the thing is, if, like, if I just see that person as— There's not consent if you call up and say, should I hire this? I'm, like, in fact, I'm looking into hiring this person. But think about it. If that's somebody who is just, in my view, Salzberger's employee, Bezos' employee, Murdoch's employee, whose ultimate bottom line is the number of page views that they're making for this inherited media corporation— Well, that's not—they don't care about page views anymore. They care about subscriptions. They haven't cared about page views for long time. Okay, fine. Okay, fine.

35:26Subscriptions, conversions. point being, like, ultimately, it's not like they're some elected official, right? It's not like I consented, you know, look, if the FBI— Wait, but hold on a second, but you don't want—but

35:37Taylor Lorenz:we—okay, so there's value, right? In—I talk to a lot of investors or people, you know, people in finance, right? There's value in the reporting that someone like Pui Wing was doing for the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, right? Like, they are uncovering things about companies that is valuable to people, to the public, to either public knowledge or investors or you know, shareholders, et cetera. So I think there's value in uncovering a lot of this information. Well, think about what you're saying. There's value to News Corp, right? Sure, but there's also public, there's also value to the public.

36:10Ah, that's, I think that's where I think we may disagree because I would say News Corp is a media corporation that makes money from attacking other corporations, getting their private information, reselling it for money, but then they pay all their own stuff. News Corp does not want, News Corp doesn't want reporting on News Corp. But wait, sorry, but apologies.

36:27Taylor Lorenz:You just said you want information to be totally free. So you certainly do recognize that there is value to uncovering non-public information. You think that, wait, sorry, hold on. I just want to understand. Like, so do you think that when you say consent, you mean that you think that information, if somebody hasn't consented to share information, it shouldn't be public? I think just like you should not be subject non-consensually to government surveillance, you shouldn't be subject non-consensually to corporate surveillance. Okay, but we're not talking about— But what about an independent media reporter?

37:00Taylor Lorenz:Is that okay? Well, it's like a stalker who's got a subsec and wants to sell subscriptions to their subsec. Okay, so that's what I— Right, so anybody doing journalism, what if it's a nonprofit newsroom? What if it's a nonprofit newsroom doing journalism? Let's take the word journalism for a second, okay? So if, for example, take— And just hear me out for a second. Okay, I'm very confused by this. Nobody in China is doing like some robotics thing, right? Okay. Zuck would never say they're not doing technology. Technology is assumed to be a human universal, right? But for many years, and maybe still today, if you ask somebody who works in, you know, like legacy media, and you said, is Glenn Greenwald doing journalism?

37:44Is Tucker Carlson doing journalism? Is CGTN or like a Chinese media, are they doing journalism? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'd say no. They'd say they're not. That's not real journalism. Even if they may have much lower.

37:56Taylor Lorenz:But ask, everybody has different opinions on what's quote-unquote real journalism and a lot of it's driven by ideology. But you can understand that there's value in uncovering non-public information, right? There's value to the public in uncovering non-public information, right? But the public, well, so two things. I disagree with that because the public is - But didn't you say you want this like open decentralized information ecosystem? Do you think things like Polymarket are bad also? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so let me say something. The public, what is the public? The public is 8 billion people, right?

38:27That's like everybody. So the person who's at the company that's being attacked by News Corp, like the News Corp employee is making money at the expense of the tech company that they're spying on. And that doesn't necessarily benefit 8 billion people. It might entertain them. The News Corp employee would be extremely perturbed if someone was spying on them. They'd lose their minds. They'd get super mad about that, right? So nobody -

38:48Taylor Lorenz:No, but people report on me all the time. I'm a public figure. People report on me all the time. There's a difference between your public statements and then going and surveilling you, spying on you. But if it's relevant to the public, right? Like people aren't just randomly like spying on someone for no reason. They're trying to get information that is inherently valuable to the public. Okay, wait, when you say, what do you mean by the public? Do you mean the Kazakhstanis? Do you mean the entire world? No, like actually, you know. A portion of the public, I guess. I guess a portion of the public.

39:15Yes, a portion of the public. That's right. So it is those people who are paying News Corp.

39:20Taylor Lorenz:I don't think it's always the people that ultimately are paying. Why? Because it's paywalled. It's paywalled content, right? Some of it's paywalled. So the only people who are seeing, hear me out for a second, right? News Corp goes and steals or surveils, you know, some company. What about a nonprofit newsroom that is not paywalled? Like something like ProPublica. Okay, but at least you're with me so far. Let's go to the nonprofit in a second. But it's not the public. It's a News Corp subscriber who can actually see the article that News Corp, you know, got stolen information or they surveilled somebody to publish it.

39:51So Murdoch makes money. You know, the Wall Street Journal reporter makes, you know, page views or has subscriptions, whatever. And the subscriber to News Corp who is paying Murdoch, yes, yeah, maybe they get some entertainment value out of it or whatever.

40:06Taylor Lorenz:They get actual, sometimes they'll get actual business. Sometimes they'll get like, I mean, especially if you're a Wall Street Journal or a New York Times subscriber, you're often subscribing because you want information. You want information that is going to help you run your business. Sometimes, sometimes. But here's the thing, a lot of that stuff is actually very, a lot of the stuff is very, exactly, a lot of it's actually very negative sum. For example, like, look, a true public good is like a bridge, a piece of infrastructure, and so on and so forth, like electrification. Yeah, like I do believe in the public good.

40:36Taylor Lorenz:And what if that bridge was, and what if the guy who made the bridge secretly paid someone off to, you know, not file any of the safety reports and it's actually a huge threat. Let me give you an example. Somebody wants to investigate whether the bridge is a threat because actually once the car drives over it, somebody could die. Of course, but let me give you a different example. So, you know, when Obama was running against, like in his first Senate election, there was a candidate and his wife and I think Jerry Ryan and Jack Ryan. And there was like some like sealed divorce papers or something like that that they had both between themselves.

41:09That was just their own, you know, they had agreed that that was just sealed or whatever. And then some outlet went and got that and printed it. Why? Because they wanted to elect Obama. I mean, that's a real answer. And it harmed that couple and that family.

41:23Taylor Lorenz:Yeah, I don't know the context of that, but I'm not going to argue that people haven't crossed the line or published the teal thing, obviously. I agree with that. Well, Taylor, what would you say the line is? Sorry, what? What would you say the line is where journalists' investigative reporting becomes like surveillance? Oh, well, it's all surveillance. If you guys are worried about surveillance, like we have a bit, like I am very against mass surveillance. So like, trust me, you have a lot of sympathies. And I'm actually very - Or it becomes stalking, let's say. Well, right. But I don't think it's stalking for somebody to be reporting critically on a company.

41:58Taylor Lorenz:And I think sometimes, but I agree with you that, just let me finish, apologize. I hear you. I understand, trust me. You are heard. Like I'm sympathetic. I've had people, I have right-wing media reporters calling up my family members, harassing my family members, showing up places. I'm so sympathetic to this argument. I think there should be a very high bar. I famously wrote about Libs of TikTok. I've talked extensively about the like many, many bars that that met, primarily that she was directly shaping laws in Florida. And I think that we have a right to know if an anonymous Twitter account is directly informing legislation that is going to be used to regulate us, we should know who's informing that.

42:37Taylor Lorenz:Because for all we know, it could be somebody abroad. It could be somebody, you know, we should know kind of who's buying that. So I'm not saying that like, like, I do believe in the value of uncovering non-public information. That said, I know there's bad actors out there. I think there's bad actors out there in the content creator ecosystem as well. I don't think it's just a corporate media problem. I think that there's a lot of kind of crowdsourced investigations. I write about this a lot that are happening now on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok that do, that go far more than you're talking about.

43:05Taylor Lorenz:Journalists, I think, at least have to abide by some sort of ethical standards. Apology, I don't know when the last time you've been on some of these TikTok T accounts, but they don't have those boundaries, right? Yeah, so here's the thing. I think the line, I'm glad to hear you say, and by the way, it's too bad about your family and so on and so forth. I support a privacy. And in general, if you haven't made something public, then, okay, like there's a democratic process, there's rule of law, there's the concept of search warrants. But do you think it's valuable to know, for instance, that OpenAI hasn't hit revenue targets or is struggling to reach a billion users?

43:46I mean, like, so, okay, let me, what I think is valuable is privacy as a bedrock kind of thing. So let me explain what I mean. But don't you think it's valuable to know that?

43:57Taylor Lorenz:Don't you think it's valuable for, like, you don't think that that information has value? It certainly does. The reason I'm very skeptical about that kind of thing is I have seen so many incorrect reports of that kind of thing. Like, for example, go back and look in the early, I'll give you a concrete example. Google, Google's toughest searches for a business model. I think this is in 2003, NYT article. And it basically said, oh, 2002, 2003, it said Google isn't making money. And that wasn't information. It was actually just wrong. Totally, there's wrong information that comes out. I'm not arguing that.

44:29Taylor Lorenz:But if the information is correct, would you say that that's valuable? Not necessarily, because it's like, Like, look, I mean, it's like taking, okay, if you had a surveillance photo. We have to have a debate to point out. Yeah. Give me out, Taylor. If you had a surveillance photo of somebody and they were, I don't know, they were in their towel or something like that, and you published it and lots of people clicked on it. Yeah, it's a real photo. It's true. But there should be, but there would have to be news value. It would have to be relevant for a reason. Who's judging that? Yeah, and I think it's totally good to question who's making these judgments, who decides what's new, what's valuable, who decides like what the news value of certain information is.

45:09Taylor Lorenz:I am all for it. And that's what goes back to the publishers, right? And so essentially, look, my view is with the rise of the internet, there's going to be a lot more people from outside the US, outside the West, outside basically to both the right and the left of the current ecosystem who are going to have a voice and are not simply going to be downstream and accept that Salzberger and Newhouse and Murdoch and these kinds of guys are the ones who ultimately judge what is newsworthy. I don't think that's acceptable. They're not elected. They can't be fired. Sure, totally. There's no accountability.

45:39Taylor Lorenz:I totally agree with you on that. But I also think that we should strive to, like there is value in non-public information. And I think that we see this coming out more and more with citizen journalism, right? Which I think you support. So I do support citizen journalism, but I want to be very clear about what I support when I say that. I don't mean surveillance. I don't mean stalking. I mean like, hey, here is a, like here's a pothole on the street that hasn't been repaired, I'm going to write it up. And what if it's corporate wrongdoing? And what if it's corporate wrongdoing? So if it's corporate wrongdoing, well, there's a, like, there's a police report that you file, right?

46:12But what if it's not necessarily like a police report,

46:15Taylor Lorenz:but what if it's like, I mean, this is what I'm talking about of like, I do think that there are people, for instance, I write a lot of stories where like people within a company or within a program, they want their story out. They know that there is huge consequences for them actually speaking publicly, going out and trying to do that. There would be retaliation. So they go to a journalist, right? And they say, hey, can you help me get this information out. And I do think that there's value, especially with the government too, by the government. Like the government. So I generally think that that is not really pure hearted.

46:43I think often people will do that because they can't get their way internally at the company. Yeah, everybody has motivation.

46:48Taylor Lorenz:I hear you. That's right. And also often, let's say you've got 500 people at a company and one of them goes and defects and gives some non-private information or non-public information. The other 499, their equity value goes down. They're basically like traitors that betrayed the tribe. Not the equity value. I know. I just think sometimes that information is valuable. I hear you. I think there's a lot more nuance to this than we can probably agree. Well, okay. I'll put it like this. We may not agree on this, but at least you wanted to hear my, you know, maybe I can, you know, my point of view is just that, A, privacy is very important.

47:21B, we should consent to having things put in public. and C, there is actually a process for non-consensual, you know, privacy, but that's a search warrant, right? Like a privacy invasion, whatever you want to call it. Like there is a mechanism where if somebody's trying to keep something private, but it actually should be more public, it's called a search warrant. There's a probable cause. I don't think we should have a search,

47:44Taylor Lorenz:especially with the government biology, at least we can agree. We should criticize. Like, I guess I have a different view. I'm, and I'm all for privacy. I'm all for privacy. But when I see what these lawmakers are doing, for instance, don't you think it's valuable to know who's behind groups like the Digital Childhood Alliance that's advocating for all these identity verification laws across the United States? These groups going around, we're child safety. We're just a bunch of grassroots moms. No, you're not. You're funded by evil groups or you're funded by meta. I think there's value in knowing that.

48:14Taylor Lorenz:I think that - Well, this is public record, right? No, it's not. Well, but here's the thing. It's not. The way that that actually manifests is just some like titillation, revelation, get people mad, get a lot of views. No, it can directly affect policies. It can directly affect whether people listen to those groups and whether they find those groups credible. If you know that somebody is just a front group. That means policy is just set by leak after leak after leak after leak after leak. Ideally not, but certainly I think there is value to these leaks and I think there's value to some of this information.

48:46Taylor Lorenz:And I do think that we should strive to uncover valuable information. Yeah, and I guess my alternative view is— And isn't that what, like, Polymarket is and all this? Isn't that sort of also the goal of all of that stuff, is to sort of uncover information collectively? You know, I actually was an angel investor in Polymarket, but I did it because I actually don't really believe in prediction markets. I believe in verification markets. That is to say, like, to actually resolve whether a bet happened, you actually have to have the historical record of what happened. And, you know, for example, the kind of things I'm interested in prediction markets, would be like an internal prediction market within a company for when is this feature going to ship or, you know, is this bug going to be fixed and so on and so forth.

49:27And there's things like that that you can do, which are, I think, positive applications. But I don't agree with the disclosure.

49:34Taylor Lorenz:I do have to bounce, but we have to have a two. I very much don't agree with the disclosure of non-public information for prediction markets or anything else like that. I hear you. Even if somebody, but actually that's a good example. That might be some private individual who discloses non-public information in order to make money. I think it's almost exactly the same as a journalist who does it in order to get subscribers. The journalist is not profiting directly in the same way, but I hear you. I do. We might disagree on this, but I appreciate your commitment to privacy. And I appreciate that you, you know, are against these age verification, identity verification laws.

50:08Taylor Lorenz:And I think we can at least agree on that. But I do have to go. I'm so sorry. I'm so late on my story. This is great. This has been great. Yeah. Thank you both so much for coming on the show. So it was heartwarming really to see how much you agree on some pretty fundamental things. I wonder how many more segments we can do like this. Well, this might be a one-off, but this is fun. All right. I will see you later, Tio. Okay. Bye, guys. Bye. Thank you, bro. Okay. All right. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z Podcast. If you liked this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review, and share it with your friends and family.

50:47For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on X at A16Z and subscribe to our Substack at a16z.substack.com. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. This information is for educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell any investment or financial product. This podcast has been produced by a third party and may include paid promotional advertisements, other company references, and individuals unaffiliated with A16Z. Such advertisements, companies, and individuals are not endorsed by AH Capital Management LLC, A16Z, or any of its affiliates.

51:25Information is from sources deemed reliable on the date of publication, but A16Z does not guarantee its accuracy.