Are we really about to ban TikTok?

28:08It's just true. Like companies in China are structured differently than the companies here and the state interests are much stronger for those companies. And if they don't like you, they just make you go away, which is a thing that happens to Chinese companies. Poor Fon Bingbing. That's true. Yeah, right? Like Jack Ma is like, where did that guy go? He just disappeared. Like that's weird. Like that is a different – like a crucial difference between United States government and Chinese government. Chinese government is a brutal dictatorship. Yeah. I mean, this is the thing we saw with Huawei and we're seeing again in this case that I think isn't always entirely articulated because racism gets in the way and xenophobia gets in the way, which is that like the problem isn't that it's China and China bad because that's just racism xenophobic.

28:54The problem is that the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, has a very capable way of making businesses that are in China do what they want. And they can exert influence and they will exert influence and they have exerted influence. And in TikTok's case, TikTok has gone again and again and again and said they do not do that. We are not based there. We work really, really hard to not have that relationship. and effectively the United States government has said, don't believe you. Right, because you made up Project Texas and then when the chips are down, no one is talking about Project Texas. Yep.

29:32They made up this fake thing, which is like Oracle hosts the data and there's a, we wrote about it. Alex Heath wrote about it. He visited the Algorithmic Transparency Center, which is basically a children's museum for content moderation, where you stand in front of a giant TikTok screen and you're like, ban this, don't ban that. And then behind that is like a wall with a data center behind it that you can gaze upon. And you're like, look at the data. It's here in the United States. And none of that has anything to do with anything, as near as we can tell. Right. Yeah, I think TikTok is always going to face this battle because unfortunately it is owned by a company that is based in China and therefore cannot fully say we are a totally independent company.

30:15Like ByteDance can just not do that. It never can. It never will as long as the CCP is staying in its current regime. And so TikTok is always going to face that. And they have really struggled to convince the government at every turn. They've struggled. And part of that is definitely the xenophobia and the racism, which is just like completely out of pocket and horrible. Yes. Every single time. I fully agree there. Horrible. And I just – I don't know that TikTok can ever say anything that is going to make them believe them. Like even if they – even if Project Texas wasn't so stupidly, transparently like TikTok propaganda to say like us, I don't know what they could do to make the United States government like them.

31:01Yeah. Can I say something vastly more esoteric and philosophical just to turn this somewhere else? as I've gotten older, I've realized the thing that the internet does is make everyone believe that collective action problems do not exist. Which is, if you just take that idea and apply it to whatever your political leanings are, you will quickly realize this is your primary frustration with other people. It's like, some problems are easier to solve if we all do them together. But getting everyone to do everything at the same time is like a political nightmare. And that's just life. That's the history of politics.

31:36Do collective action problems exist or not? Is it – if I'm like the market will provide fighter jets, it won't unless we all pay our taxes and the government buys fighter jets and we think we should have fighter jets for X, Y, and Z reason. And you personally might disagree with those reasons. And you personally might sue the government of the United States and say I do not want my taxes to pay for fighter jets, which is a real thing that happens on the regular. And the United States government says, no, you don't get a choice because of collective action. Like we have to do this thing together.

32:05And you might think to yourself, boy, I wish we would pull our taxes and pay for health care. I very strongly believe we should pull our taxes and pay for health care for people or better education or whatever it is that you think would be better if we all paid a little bit and we all got a lot. Right. This is like the main thing. And what is happening in this TikTok situation is TikTok is a collective action problem. Our government believes the security of the United States is threatened by the existence of TikTok in some way. Our government says that. It believes it. It's taking the votes that indicate its belief in that problem.

32:38Sure. I would remind you that you're the same, Neil Patel, who believes most of the things that Congress does are like deeply disingenuous and not at all about the thing that they say that they're about. I cannot believe I'm the one making this case. I can't either. I'm just saying this to you now. I'm losing my mind right now. I have never, just the 50 to O vote, I think just really, there's something about that. Like they saw the evidence, they walked out, they all did the same thing at the same time. I do agree that that is the single most compelling piece of evidence we have. I've just got it circled in my brain.

33:03Whatever happened there is a big deal. I don't know what it is. And that is the problem. To overcome the collective action problem they have, which is they're going to make a bunch of individuals feel bad. A bunch of individual businesses will lose their marketing channel. A bunch of individual creators will lose their livelihoods. A bunch of individual people will lose their ability to just see trucks jump over shit on command. This will hurt me personally. to overcome the collective action problem. They have to lay out the case. But it is clear that they think if we all endure that pain, collectively we will get some benefit and the benefit will be freedom from Chinese interference in our media.

33:45That's the case. And when you take that and you're like, now we will make the same case against Facebook or the same case against YouTube. I would point out to you, the government has been trying to make that case. They haul these CEOs in front of the government and say, why are your algorithms bad? And the CEOs are like, yeah, I don't know. First Amendment, go away. Like they cannot overcome that. They have yet to come up with an argument that is strong enough to overpower the First Amendment and solve that collective action problem. They have not yet figured it out. The closest they've come is the kids stuff.

34:20That's why you have a Kids Online Safety Act. The closest they've come is sex trafficking. That's why you get FOSTA and SESTA as carve-outs to 230. That's it. The closest – actually the farthest they've gone is copyright law. That's why Disney gets to take stuff down off the internet because we've decided collectively that's fine. And most people don't argue with that. In this case, they have a different thing that they can't wield against the Facebooks and the YouTubes of the world, which is like national security. And they have to make the case. and they've had one kind of sham hearing where they just ask that's your xenophobia where they're like are you Singaporean?

35:00He's like I am Singaporean. That doesn't work. They asked the dude if TikTok uses Wi-Fi. Truly a horrible hearing. That isn't the case. But some case was made to these people where they are willing to take the representative democracy hit where their own constituents are calling them and they're interpreting that as this is the problem. And I'm going to vote against what my constituents are saying to me. Can I put on that? That happens like very rarely. I think you might be underrating the extent to which it's a political win to be mad at China right now. No way. I disagree. I think banning TikTok is a political loser for everyone, which is why Donald Trump is out there being like, no, I'll keep TikTok.

35:44Kids vote for me, Donald Trump. Yeah. Oh, I totally agree with that. But there is a subset of people who are older and don't use TikTok and hate China, which is a lot of people in America who are going to be psyched about this. And so it's like there are the if you're just taking this as like pure political calculus and like this is not the thing we should get hung up on. But if you're taking this just pure political calculus, the TikTok users aren't going to vote anyway. The old people who hate China. Oh, God, they love voting. like that's and this is the thing can i offer you one thing this is unsourced it's half-assed i'm sorry uh i definitely heard at southwest southwest that a significant number of people making the phone calls were boomers who spend all day on tiktok oh the boomers love tiktok i i say that because they got nothing they got nothing to do they're all retired yeah sitting on their bags of money that they have yet to pass i want to point out i think you guys are both focused really a lot on the political side of this and not on the economic side of this which is TikTok goes away, suddenly all those American companies that are largely dominant in the social media space across the world, right?

36:54I think I was reading today that an enormous portion of the famous people on social media are based in America because they use American apps like YouTube and Instagram. If TikTok goes away, YouTube and Instagram immediately get more users. Like there is real economic incentive to get rid of TikTok because that puts money back into American companies. But they could just sell it. And I think this is also part of like the lobbying that is happening here. Like we're seeing, oh, they went and they all got convinced in some hearing that we didn't all, weren't privy to. But they were also getting convinced by lobbyists from Meta and lobbyists from Google saying, yeah, you want to get rid of our competition, go for it.

37:38and and we we can't ignore that like the the economic part component of this thing because it's huge oh i totally agree and all these companies have had a big stock bump in the last week since this started to happen like snap is sitting there being like please dear god man some people will come use snap discover if snap was smart they would buy it that's what i'm saying like maybe it go away yeah but maybe steve mnuchin will put together his band of investors and buy it Who is the other name that got floated? Bobby Kotick. Bobby Kotick. Yeah, Activision's back, baby. When I think about responsible media ownership in the United States.

38:16The way that Shootsie Choo, the CEO of TikTok, has talked about it, that seems like a total non-starter. Like, I don't think there's any world in which TikTok sells. He has to say that. But also, like, literally who could afford it? Like, this is probably a several hundred billion dollar company. Microsoft's back at it. You can't sell to any of the big companies for antitrust reasons. Who else has the money? Snapchat doesn't have money. Literally, TikTok could buy Snapchat. I don't know, man. Elon put together$44 billion for Twitter. You think, okay, Elon, if you buy TikTok and take it private and rebrand TikTok as X videos, now we're onto something.

39:01I understand it's a huge number. I just think that the opportunity for a bunch of investors to get that company and that advertising revenue, that influence, it's not such a big number for the thing that it is. Yes, it's a very big number. It's a pretty big number. Well, we don't know what the number is. So that's the unknown you're not okay with. I just think from – you're not going to be like we're open to a sale while you're still trying to fend off the bill that would force you to sell it. Sure. Agreed. and at some point there becomes a number like everything has a number it's a business yeah capitalism baby welcome to america i mean and it is true that like we got a ways down this road in 2020 based on an executive order that pretty much everybody thought had no chance of holding up in court um and like that's i think the thing that is different now i think there is a real sense that this is a thing that could happen and could stick and so to the extent that uh you know Oracle talked about it and Microsoft talked about it and there were all of these weird machinations going on.

40:03I think everybody kind of knew it was probably nothing, but it seems to be much more likely to be something. And so we might get a real price tag at some point here in the future. Look, all I'm saying, I don't think it will end up getting banned. I think it will end up getting sold. Oh, I think the opposite. That's so fun. We'll see. I don't know. That's a good for a chess prop bet. I think nothing will happen. I think Rand Paul, a few other senators, because they can kill it, right? Like you do need – it was 60 senators have to all agree. And oh boy. I'm with you. I think the massive like betting favorite is we never hear from this bill again.

40:43Yeah. Fair enough. But I will say there are – I have a long history of producing work about the first summit. You can go listen to it. I know, and you're throwing it all away in one verse. You can definitely go listen to it. I feel very strongly about the First Amendment. There are a tiny handful of things that overcome the First Amendment. Copyright law, as you may be aware, based on my long body of work. National security is one of those things. Foreign ownership of United States media is historically one of those things. And I think that's gotten lost in all this conversation. This is why I'm so focused on mechanics of how the bill actually works.

41:19Because that thing is actually important. even if you even if you believe they're not using it now should they have that capability has traditionally been so big of a deal that we've stopped it before it could even happen and in this case we just let it slide because it's an app with dancing kids on it yeah i mean and if if you believe that there is a nefarious thing happening here that is the true genius of tiktok right that like like the the galaxy brain thing you hear is like all the kids in china are seeing on duion which is like the chinese version of tiktok they're seeing like stem and how to build robots and code and all this stuff and we're just seeing dance challenges because it's making us all stupid and slow and this is like a long con plan to make the Chinese kids smarter than the American kids which like if true incredible like well played everybody.

42:04My favorite conspiracy That's why they added the STEM tab to TikTok by the way. I know like this is I just want to point out it's right behind shopping first it's shopping then it's STEM But I think the one thing I'm hung up on like just I agree with you about the 50 to 0 thing and I think the idea that there is a smoking gun is very possible and i'm so willing to be convinced by yeah any shred of evidence that says this is happening there are plans to make it happen there is capability to do it quickly like whatever the flip side of it for me is we've been at this for four years now and we've never heard it and there are so so many people with incentive to talk about this publicly like so many people yeah but why won't they well i don't know get it have you met politicians they usually talk this is what i'm saying so either it is something so grave and incredible that we can't be trust it's like it's like some alien shit we're like we can't know or else it would destroy our way of life or there's nothing to talk about like i i don't know how to think it's not one usually when there's nothing they make shit up i just historically with politicians.

43:16Usually when there's when there's nothing you know it's like they pull off the sheet and the Scooby-Doo kids are like it was bullshit all along. Like that's his I don't know. Maybe that's it. Maybe I'm just over indexing on 50 to 0 and the fact that so many of them were convinced by this campaign and there's something there that they won't say. What if this is all viral marketing for three body problems? It would be very good. Netflix just really going for it this year. Yeah. We could see. Who knows? Look. I think I've been convinced through the course of the conversation that most likely outcome is nothing.

43:49Yeah. Exactly. That's what Netflix wants you to think. And I really do think, and I can't say this more clearly, the government needs to show us its evidence before it takes this action. Yes. We have not seen it. That is, if you take away one thing from this conversation, it's me saying the government needs to show us this evidence before it takes the action. But it's crazy that the evidence apparently exists such that they voted 50 to 0. Yeah, you seem more convinced than ever that there is evidence, which I think is fair. Like what we've seen in the last seven days would indicate that some people have seen some things.

44:26I think that's fair. But I just, I don't think we should take that on faith. I think Americans should own American algorithms. That's it. I think that comes down to it. No algorithms. Well, I mean, if you really ask me, I think we should get rid of the algorithmic media and go start, bring back RSS. Yeah. A bill to bring back RSS in the United States. Vote Patel. That's what they should do. Just put TikTok on the Fediverse. It solves all of our problems. Everything will be fine. But barring that, I think it's pretty, it just feels reasonable to me that what people see and consume should be, they should, the people who are accountable for that should be here.

45:06And closer to you. You know who would agree with that argument is the Communist Party of China. Yeah. And also most people like I think most governments are very interested in making sure that their citizens see something that comes from within. That's pretty natural. And I get this, I think, just comes back to everything we've been talking about, which is. Do you do you think that you are like an individual in a sea of individuals or that you are part of a collective? And I think the Internet makes everybody feel very alone in that particular way. and like almost every political problem comes back to that i'm just thinking about what happens if we get like everybody's like no you're right like we need to own our own media and then we get like the bbc version of tiktok and like the nhk version of tiktok like the national broadcastings yeah for for company for countries but for tiktok i mean npr i think has a tiktok account just imagine that i want yeah what's their what's the npr social media app look like i want to see it well is it just podcast is it just the apple podcast it's just that voice all right we should take a break uh everyone can yell at me in the comments uh also just tell us what you think we have a hotline i just want to say i think it's i actually think i do want people to reach out you should call the hotline 866 verge 11 you should email us vergecast at the dot com but if i had to bet i think most people are going to agree with you neil i i think it is it is just my brain is so broken by the fact that you are the one making this argument i think it's a perfectly fair argument we're all sort of arguing based on evidence that no one has and fundamentally you have to trust somebody and i think ultimately saying the i i choose to not trust china is like not an unreasonable place to be i just can't believe you're the one saying all of this but i'll i'll get there i'll settle down it'll be uh yeah what's the it's a line of foolish consistency is little minds sure whatever that quote is i'm real smart is what i'm trying to say uh uh no let us know i look i've been reading our own comments i think most of our commenters believe i'm like stridently opposed to this ban i don't know why uh probably because i haven't said anything about it until now.

47:20I think the United States government owes us this evidence. That's like the main thing, I think. But apart from that, I think it's reasonable to say like, all right, media ownership should be more local. Show us the tapes. Yeah. Yeah. Van Clear Channel next. All right, we got to go to break. We'll be right back with more BridgeCast. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in.

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51:05Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash track. That's linkedin.com slash track to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

51:20Welcome back. I want to tell Alex and David a story about the studio. Oh, Lord. is looking around in the break and things have moved and I know why they've moved and it's very funny. So The Verge is part of Vox Media as you may know. Vox Media has a podcast network called the Vox Media Podcast Network. On the Vox Media Podcast Network is a very good podcast called Point Forward with Andre Iguoduala and Evan Turner who are basketball players. I'm assuming most people know that but if you don't they're basketball players. Now I know. They're very tall and very famous. They do the podcast in the same studio we're in.

51:56And they redress it with their stuff. Are they the reasons it smells like weed all the time? No. Different podcast. Does this explain why my seat sometimes changes height? I think it explains the chair moving. They record on Mondays, and it would be incredible if on Thursdays. So I'm just going to say no to that one. Call me. If you smoke that much weed, we'll hang out. That's different. So they redress the studio. for their show which makes sense and then we have to put our stuff back but i think they didn't notice it for the first few they did in here so the heine cube yeah he's behind them why would they get rid of that it's so cool yeah i think we should play nba well it was before 2k like nba 94 on the heine cube i think jam probably existed on the on the heine cube i don't think it did here's my official pitch for a vox media podcast network crossover i will play nba jam on a GameCube with Andre Coal.

52:56Sounds amazing. We have a GameCube. Yeah. Your move, Andre. We have a long promise that we'll get together and David and I will play Madden and we just are never in the same place at the same time with the GameCube. Like we've been in the same place at the same time without a GameCube. Both of us have been in this room with the GameCube but without the other person. We're gonna figure out all three elements at the same time. I think you need some more elements like a plug. A controller. A copy of Madden. Critical elements. Some other stuff has to happen. Just once on Point Forward, I want these NBA superstars to be like, is that a Heineken game, kid?

53:35I've been searching for that. It's like I'm on eBay all the time looking for one of those. It's very good. That show's great. You should listen to it. They just had Megan Rapinoe on at South by with them, which was wonderful. Nice. All right. Speaking of media, that is your segue. way uh boy there's a bunch of media streaming news this week one correction i have to issue for the audience in our streaming draft this is true i okay so i have long since been claiming that i won i think given this piece of news i definitively lost even though i think i had the best lineup i think this is an instant dq what happened to motor trends i picked as my niche streaming service so david set up the draft we had to pick player in every category and 4k awards alex has an expansive definition of what counts as award-winning streaming service correct uh live all these things and the last one was niche and i candidly blanked on stage and i was like i don't know i have enough like i picked tiktok i'm good you know like even though it's gonna get you know banned from app stores like i'll take it for now i want to ban tiktok i'm gonna pick it first exactly the point is to be confounding never let him know what's coming uh so i blanked on stage and i picked what my father-in-law had been watching at my home before i left for south by southwest which is motor fan tv and we published the streaming draft and youtube commenters like the shit went 92 weeks ago like it was killed two weeks ago So, first of all, Motor Trend TV was long gone.

55:13It was called Motor Trend Plus. There's a rebrand. And now it's being shuttered and being folded into Discovery Plus, which is where all of us learn about house flipping and going to car auctions. Yeah. Have you checked on your father-in-law? How's he holding up? You know, we haven't brought it up. It just wasn't one of those things. He's just watching, like, cached videos on the TV. Yeah. You know, we're just going to let. Yeah. You don't want to roll to a family member and be like, you have to watch Discovery Plus now. I bet the app still works for a while I think the app is still going to work for a while Nope That's not even right It's closing in 14 days Super isn't going to work for a while He's got some time He's got time He can record it with his phone Yeah I'm just saying I think overall I had the best The best suite But I do think picking an already dead service like an instant DQ.

56:14Like if you pick a thing that's gone 90, you're out the draft. Netflix is next, but yeah. Yeah, that was the real takeaway is Netflix is super dead really soon. Yeah. Any minute now, don't you worry. It's coming. I do think my ability to pick an already dead streaming service distracted from your bold prediction that Netflix would die soon. It didn't. I had friends messaging me being like, I heard the podcast, Netflix, Alex? What the hell? Out of your mind. I think Paramount Plus, Netflix. I don't, actually. I'll be very clear. What did you say? All right. Let's talk about some news. RIP to Motor Trend TV.

56:57Real one. Yeah. Bitch and Rides, Where Will You Live Now? That's a real show, by the way. It'll live on Discovery Plus. It's true. Yeah. You'll be fine. which will then be part of max which will eventually be merged with paramount plus yes one way or another you're gonna watch bitch and rides yeah we'll find you don't you worry i have a lot to say about that show but i think i think it's a very limited audience for criticism of bitch and rides i've watched a lot of it with my father-in-law okay actual news tv news by the way here's the disclosure we'll just get them all the way We mentioned Netflix.

57:35I was an EP on a Netflix show called The Future Of. NBC is an investor in our company. They run the Peacock service, which, if you believe Alex, will far outlive Netflix. I'm right. I'm right. Don't worry about it. I'm right. Yeah, our company makes full swing in the golf show on Netflix. That's pretty good. Those are the disclosures today. I'm sure there are more. I believe wired connections are better than wireless ones. RIP Starlink. That's just a fact. I say that because the Starlink people think that I'm in the pocket of Big Comcast. Yeah. That's a real. I say that all the time. It still comes up.

58:08Yeah. That's what I thought. They're like, he's in Big Ethernet's pocket. All right. Actual news. Yeah. YouTube is revamping its TV app. Not YouTube TV, but the YouTube app on TVs. I have a question about this. Who is not watching in full screen? what what people are like i want to watch like with the ads and crap all around it who are they this is everyone's dream is to make qvc well it's that that is half of it i firmly agree with that that like the goal is to let you point at something on your television and it just appears at your house the next day like that is literally what everyone who makes tv stuff wants the only dream that anyone has ever had yeah truly uh the other half of it is youtube has been on this very long quest to get YouTube onto televisions in like a more YouTube way, right?

59:02Like YouTube has talked for years now about how the TV is the fastest growing YouTube platform. Like it's, it's now to the point that I just laugh whenever they put that in a press release, because it's like, yeah, it's been that way for like a decade now. Uh, but the problem with that is there are lots of things about YouTube that people like that are not just watching the video, right? Like there's all this community stuff comments are very important recommendations are very important you want to subscribe like it's harder to subscribe to a channel from your television than it is from your phone or your computer and that is actually a threat to youtube over time as its stuff gets bigger right so yeah they've been on this thing forever to figure out like how do we let you use youtube while also watching something on your television and their step for a long time was to connect it better to your phone like you know how they have the thing now where you're watching YouTube on your TV and you open up YouTube on your phone, that little thing pops up.

59:54That's like, do you want to connect? First of all, that feature rules and thank you to YouTube for doing it. But that was their big plan. And I think that's how they thought they were going to solve it, right? Like they were like, we're going to be both the first and the second screen simultaneously. This to me feels like them saying that's not really working. And so actually what we need to do is put more stuff, more accessible on the big screen in front of you. So they have this new thing where it's full screen by default, I think. But you can press a button and the video will shrink. And then on the right side, you'll get some of the metadata, the description and the comments.

1:00:27And like I said, a list of the products in the video. It'll look more like seeing YouTube in like a desktop browser. To me, that feels like a reasonable thing to do. And also like the most obvious thing. They're like, what if we just did YouTube on your television? It's like, Like, yeah, that's the one. But it does feel like they're saying this thing where we're going to connect it to your other devices and you're going to be able to do it all simultaneously maybe is not actually the answer the way they thought. It kind of feels like they pulled a Vizio. Oh, God. And went, oh, you know what? Actually, people don't want to control their TV viewing experience from their phone.

1:01:05Vizio was like, yeah. That's what you meant. I was worried. There was any number of other bad things. No, no, no. No, I'm thinking very clearly because I just I have the 26 Vizio TV and I put it in the guest room and I have somebody staying over. And I was like, oh, I have to like, where's the remote? Yeah, I have to give you an Android tablet. And I was like, you just have to use your regular phone. I'm sorry. And I refuse to buy a$29 Roku to solve this problem. It's true. No, it's because I couldn't find it. It's in another box. But I don't know where anything is. But yeah, this just feels like the same thing where people are starting to realize, wait, actually, the phone is not.

1:01:40the best way to do this and sometimes you just want to watch this and interact with it with a remote because remotes are probably the best way to control tv is because they've worked yeah forever yeah and the idea that you'll own both this first and second screen is like the dream like you'll watch up there and shop down here and it's like people do that all the time but they don't no we watch up there and we tick tock down here for now i think this entire story is explained by one quote from the blog post, just one, and the image that YouTube supplied in that blog post. So the quote from the blog post, the design changes started with, quote, the idea of reducing the size of the video player and simplifying the interactions.

1:02:24I hate it. It's just like, we're just going to make the video player smaller because we have, everyone has long thought that the TV is like the lean back. You just put up the video and you're done and you're going. and now they're realizing, oh, this is just an Android tablet on your wall. What if we just let you control it like an Android tablet instead of saying all the interactivity happens on your phone, which is what you're saying. Yeah. But that first one, we're just going to make the video player smaller. That is now acceptable on our TVs. Yes. That's a sea change. I mean, I fundamentally disagree with YouTube on this one.

1:02:55Possibly YouTube as well. This is what I'm saying. The whole story is in that quote. Yeah. No, I agree because you look at that and then you look at the picture and it's her talking about products and then all the products are down at the bottom of the video. Yes, that is true. Okay. That's not what you were thinking. My point is you pull over in your car and actually look at this image and you're like, here's what YouTube thought best represents their big idea. And you look at the thumbnail and you look at the headline and you're like, oh, YouTube has a quality problem. Because the headline is, I bought, in all caps, Many beauty products that actually work.

1:03:33Because that is how you – and maybe this video is great. I'm not saying the quality of the video is wrong. I'm saying YouTube is – the algorithm is actively cheapening the YouTube brand because it's a YouTube thumbnail with like a YouTube face on it. It's a headline that has all caps. It's shouting at you. And then underneath it, what you're supposed to do is buy some stuff. Yeah. And you're like, oh, all this adds up to a less premium good thing. You know what I mean? All of it is being in the mall where everyone's yelling at you. I think you're old. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but the idea that if - I think this feels bad.

1:04:14I think because you think - I like cool things that are cool. I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was an old guy thing. No, I mean, like, if you're mad at this particular video, fine. It has 2.8 million views, which I would say is a reasonable sign that it's pretty good and people like it. But also— I'm saying they should revert control of this algorithm to me personally, the president of America. If this thumbnail just had a jumping truck, would you be less mad about it? And then underneath it was trucks you could buy? Yeah, probably. No, look, I don't have anything to say about beauty product videos or this category video.

1:04:51I'm saying the presentation that YouTube picked for what do we want you to do on televisions is a shouty shopping video. Right. Like all caps in the headline. Like they are trying to take the market away from television. That's a long been the goal on TVs is where they are growing the most. and I think there's a real clash between what works in the algorithmic YouTube feed on phones and desktops and then this experience on a television. This proves the opposite. Okay. What this says to me is that YouTube thought for years that what people would do when they sat down on their couch is they would YouTube like they television, which is to say, put something on and sit for 30 minutes and look at it without doing anything else.

1:05:37And YouTube has slowly discovered over time that not only is that not what people want to do, It's not even what they want to do with their remotes. This thing where like fundamentally YouTube is about the thing that you're watching, but only in part about the thing that you're watching. It's also about who the creator is and what the description is and looking at the products in the video, because a lot of people do like to shop for this stuff and seeing the comments and finding recommendations and going down these rabbit holes. Like to me, what this says is, oh, people actually use YouTube on their TV with their remote exactly the same way they use it on their phone.

1:06:07And so what we need to give them is YouTube that looks like a desktop browser. Yeah, I think I agree with you in that specific way. I'm saying that even if you look at this headline, for some reason the word bought is capitalized, but the words that actually work are not. And mini beauty products is all cap. They are very tiny. The algorithmic – like when you take the algorithmic media and you just like make it this much bigger, I think that stuff is going to get highlighted in different ways. And maybe the fight is between people don't care and people do care. But you just end up in this place where all social media turns into QVC and really the dream of all interactive TV has always been to be QVC.

1:06:49And YouTube turning itself into QVC, like literally turning itself into QVC, puts them right next to real QVC. Yeah. Which is weird. I totally agree with that. And that is very clearly where all of this is going. They're like, look at some ads, pay us a bunch of money, and buy every single product that exists anywhere in this video. Yeah. And that is how we went. But you know what's interesting is the way, like our commenters picked up on this too, on the piece that we wrote. What was it, a few months ago now that TikTok changed the thing where now when you swipe up to see the comments, instead of pulling the comments up over the video, it shrinks the video just down to the top of the screen.

1:07:27Yeah. So you can still see the whole video, just not as big. That's essentially what this is doing now too, right? It's saying you want to get to the other part of the interface. Instead of pulling it up over top of what you're seeing, we're just going to shrink what you're seeing. And I think you can argue about whether that's the correct viewing experience or not. But I think that is very much the trend of where we're headed. It's like we want you to see the whole picture. We're just also going to recognize that the rest of the interface is at least just as important as the video. Or at least provides more opportunities to shop.

1:08:00That one. I mean, it's just all. Oh, you're watching this video. Yeah, I've been watching the video this whole time. I'm sorry. I wanted to see what beauty products actually work. They are mini. They're very, very tiny, but it's cheap stuff that I don't want to use this. Well, they're mini. Yeah, but it's cheap. Well, you'd think it would be good stuff, but cheaper. It's cheap brands. Gotcha. Ice cold, Alex. Yeah, I'm one of those bougie bitches when it comes to my Sephora runs. The last time I watched QVC, I was in a hotel room in California. And it was the winter. It was just recently. And on QVC in California, someone was earnestly trying to sell a corded snowblower and being like, this cord is so convenient.

1:08:45You just plug in the snowblower. And I was like, this is doomed. And somehow this is also the future of all media. It is. Straightforwardly being like, what it is is a push snowblower. But you want to just plug it right in. No batteries to worry about. Yeah, because then you get to use your extension cord also purchased on QVC. It really is amazing how much of the stuff you see on TikTok now even seals some of the conventions of how people used to talk on QVC. The thing where it's like, describe the problem somebody has in overly dramatic turns and then big, beautiful turn into what a cool world you live in.

1:09:20That's now TikTok shop. And they're like, I can't believe how expensive it is. It's on the TikTok shop. It's only going to be this price for this long. Get it now. It's like you're literally doing a QVC bit. And I suspect most of these people probably don't know what QVC is and have certainly never seen it. But like it just turns out that's the correct way to do a buy this thing from a video. It has just been optimized over time. Yeah. There's just like one evolutionary way to tell someone to buy your stupid cheap product. And it's the QVC way. Real like big thinkers. I was just watching this.

1:09:53You know, it's like the classic QVC, like male host, female host. Wow. What are you talking about today? How are you going to cook in your kitchen? And how do you power this snowblower? And I was like, I don't know. Is this like obvious on its face?

1:10:10It was very good. It was the most QVC I've watched in some time. Yeah. It was 70 degrees in California. I was watching people try to sell me a snowblower. I was like, I don't, maybe I travel too much for work. I can't watch QVC because one time in the 90s, I watched an episode of Mama's Family. where she got addicted to QVC. That's bad. And the family had to be like, you can't use QVC anymore. And for whatever reason, I was like, me too. Yeah. As like a five-year-old. It's the end. I will tell one more QVC-related story. My dad was the overnight doctor in the ER in Washington, Wisconsin. So he wouldn't be able to sleep at night when he wasn't working.

1:10:45He used to being up all night. Boy, did we have a lot of stuff in my house. Boy, did I grow up eating a lot of dehydrated apples. The only thing on TV at that time of night. What are you going to watch? I did it again. Six to eight weeks later in the 80s, we got a food dehydrator. It was great. The fruit leather is incredible. He was so proud of that food dehydrator. It was just a circle with a fan. I don't know if you ever actually looked at it. Never mind. Yeah, I've seen one. They're like, we took the hair dryer and now we've pointed it up. It's a food dehydrator. You get fruit leather. This is, by the way, the Dyson story is they invented a fan and now they only make fan related products.

1:11:23It's very good. Okay. Other news. Spotify now has music videos. I don't subscribe. Oh my god. Sorry. I'm excited for you all. I'm excited for everyone who subscribes and loves a music video. I just opened YouTube on my TV in a tiny box below a bunch of sales links and watch my music videos that way. That's true. You're going to be able to buy all the cars and beers and liquors and hats that you see in every music video for the rest of your life, Alex. Are you so excited? It's going to be really, really great for me. No, I think the music videos thing, like it turns out that every streaming story right now is kind of a TikTok story.

1:12:06And we've talked about it a bunch on this show in recent weeks, right? Like this question of like, okay, Universal's in a big fight with TikTok. TikTok might be having an existential crisis, whether it's going to continue to exist. Who is going to show up and say, oh all the music videos you want to watch which are a gigantic portion of what is successful on the internet as a whole uh and spotify is like yeah we'll do it but spotify is doing it in like the slowest weirdest way they have like a tiny number of artists and a few videos and it's like guys it's not actually that hard to put videos into your app spotify like kudos for trying i suppose but like if you if you really wanted to do this do it better also apple has had music videos forever it's not a great player it's not a cool experience but if you're ever bored on your apple tv and your apple music subscriber you can just be like show me music videos and we'll just play a playlist of music videos or you can open the youtube app i do think the this thing where uh that youtube music does very well and no one else does very well where you can sort of seamlessly switch from video to song is very cool and i think that's what spotify is going for here too but spotify is just like desperate to be an app that you look at more because they want you to subscribe, discover more stuff, pay them money and like look at ads.

1:13:24But they just aren't going to get there. Right. Like, remember, what was it like a year ago when they basically like redesigned the whole app to be TikTok and everybody was like, no, thanks. Like, I just want to play a song and then put my phone away. And I think they just they're I don't think they're ever going to escape that. Honestly, I think Spotify is going to buy Paramount Plus. That's who's going to do it. Solves everything. Done. After Netflix collapses. In other Spotify news, Neil Young has returned to Spotify. I'm pretty sure this is only on the list so we can reference the time that Neil Young was on the Verge cast.

1:13:57With his little player? With the Pono, and he described the MacBook to me as Fisher-Price quality and said, your new engineer is Captain Kangaroo. I think we can just run the clips, Andrew. I don't think we have to say anything else about this. That man really cares about sound quality. Very confused about how digital audio sampling works. refuses to acknowledge that it's very hard to hear the difference at an appropriate bit rate and thinks that and i just want to say it the mac he thinks the macbook pro is a piece of crap but an actual quote that we can run now it's a piece of crap are you kidding that's fisher price quality that's like captain kangaroo your new engineer the macbook pro what are you talking about you can't you can't get anything out of that thing all right there you go everybody that was No, no, it's Neil Young.

1:14:48Well, even Neil has caved to Spotify. Yeah, everyone does eventually. Well, not me. But it is, I just appreciate the logic that like he left. He was the like loud protester to Joe Rogan, right? When he signed a huge deal with Spotify, Neil Young was like, I can't be on this platform. And then Joe Rogan got an even bigger, but now non-exclusive deal. So he's now everywhere. and Neil Young's like, well shit, I gotta sell music somewhere. I do enjoy those royalties. Those are nice. Go beyond Tidal. I don't think they have podcasts. Oh my god, Neil's Young website. It's so bananas. It's incredible.

1:15:30I wanted to read the blog post about his return to Spotify but it appears to be down and also Neil Young's website is fully insane and looks like an old time newspaper from the wild west. It's incredible. It does have a full-res audio player on it with a switch that says Master. Your choices are low-res MP3 or Master quality. I love it. It's very good. Again, I love Neil Young. You'll listen to that episode of the Vergecast after these clips. All of it was astounding. I'm rarely taken aback the way that Neil Young just took me aback. When I was like, so computers exist, and he was like, kill yourself.

1:16:07Get this little music player. All right, last bit of video news. I'm just going to say it. It's about Twitter. You mean X, yeah. Linda Iaccarino, everyone's favorite composed stable media executive, continues to say X is becoming a video first platform. Because you get more money from ads. Yeah. When I look around the social media industry and the media industry, I can confidently say that the pivot to video has worked out super great for everyone. Every time. And all these companies are doing great and not doing layoffs. Yep. Totally. Very, very accurate thing you said. Yeah. The biggest companies in the world are super not doing layoffs because video is so lucrative for them.

1:16:50And then everyone's favorite free speech warrior, Elon Musk, signed Don Lemon to do a show on X. I think he thought Don Lemon would be sort of the counterpart to Tucker Carlson who does a show on X. Don Lemon said, OK, Elon, it'll be my first interview. They did an interview. We saw a tiny little clip of the interview. I couldn't finish watching the clip. The clip is Don Lemon saying, don't you think you have to answer to reporters for hate speech on the platform? Yeah. And Elon saying, I don't have to talk to reporters. I'm only talking to you because you're on the X platform, which is very funny.

1:17:25Okay. Deal canceled. Yeah. And we talked about this, I believe, last week. But in classic Elon Musk fashion, there was no actual contract. so now Don Lemon is out there threatening to sue X for a contract that doesn't exist and I just want all of these people if you are somewhere around Elon Musk just write some stuff down and sign it on a napkin alright in the notes app have him take a sharpie to your phone and sign your phone after showing him the contract on a notes app anything is better than the current situation where people just vibe deal with Elon Yeah. Don't vibe you. No vibe. Please.

1:18:07I beg of you. What about handshake? Anyway. No. No. No vibes. Handshakes are the ultimate vibes. Okay. Sorry. I wanted to make sure. I wanted to like, I wanted to double check. I felt that way, but like I needed to check in. Handshakes. They should give that to you in law school. Okay. Handshakes are the ultimate vibes. All right. That's a class actually. Like no one really knows what's happening on the other side of that handshake. Well, I mean, not a contract in Elon's case. Never a contract in Elon's case. Handshakes of the Ultimate Vibes, by the way, is Algorithmic Warfare's first album title.

1:18:40It's like surf rock and I'm very into it. Anyhow, it's very funny that Elon claims that he's a free speech absolutist. Cancel the deal over the most minor of questions when you run a giant platform with speech on it. Yeah. That interview is supposedly running on Monday. I am going to watch as much of it as I can physically stomach. I started it. And you started just that clip. I started the clip. Don spoke. Elon started to talk and like everything about it. I was like, oh, I'm just cringing so hard. I can't even finish hearing him like finish the sentence. Yeah. Just the awkwardness alone is tough.

1:19:21It was. But we'll see. Yeah. Here's one thing I'll say. Many people can have many opinions of Don Lemon. Elon mostly signed all those deals with journalists who treat him like he has all the answers. Tucker, in his interviews with Elon, treats him like all the answers. Matt Taibbi treats him like, you're letting me do this thing with all the answers. This is the first time I think anyone's straight up been like, so there's a lot of racism here. Are you accountable for it? And he just didn't know what to do. Yeah. Elon does not like to be asked questions. Yeah. Yeah. End of sentence. End of sentence.

1:19:54He doesn't like to be pushed ever. Like, do not push him. That's a good way to have your vibes deal on Vibe. Just sign contracts. If there's one thing I just beg of you, it protects both parties. It's not, all right, we got to take a break. There are form contracts available online, all right? Just those will be fine. Anything. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Udacity. AI seems to be everywhere these days. and if you want to prepare yourself to be able to use it, Udacity says they can help, no matter what field you're in. Udacity is an online learning platform with courses in AI and tech, including generative AI, Gentic AI, Python, data science, and much more.

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1:23:42All right, we're back. Lightning round. We've got to make this fact. We are way over. This has been a deep Vergecast. We did food dehydrators. We did Elon Musk. Hour on the First Amendment. Chinese interference. We talked about Motor Trend TV. I just want to say, we've been everywhere. This is why you come here. Yeah. And now it's the lightning round. And David says he has a sponsor. Yes. So at South by Southwest, a friend of the Vergecast named Simon came, and it was his birthday. And his big plan was, when we said it was lightning round time, to scream, it's my birthday, and I'm sponsoring the Vergecast.

1:24:15we didn't do a lightning round and he came up to me like full devastated. So Simon today is sponsoring the lightning round. Hell yeah. Happy birthday, Simon. Simon, we love you. Happy birthday. All right. For your lightning round, Kranz is going to talk about the British monarchy. You're welcome. We're so long into the show to just be getting to this now. Well, it's okay because this is going to be, I think the shortest, what is a photo? One we've ever had. Neil, I will not be talking. He will simply be sighing loudly. We get tired. I hate the story so much. It's so good. Yeah. So Kate Middleton has been out of public view.

1:24:54Who's she? She's a lady who gets a lot of money to live in England and look pretty. Very good. And she has been out of the public view. And there's been a lot of theories about it. And then a relatively recently, a Spanish journalist who at one point said out of pocket things about Michael Jackson and how he was probably murdered. Wow. Where are we going? Oh, boy. She said Kate Middleton is in a coma. And then and then the royals came back and said she's not. And that's very unusual because they usually don't respond to like absolutely insane, stupid stuff. And so everybody's like, where is she then?

1:25:35And so they released this photo and apparently Kate herself has claimed that she did the Photoshop job, but someone did it and they did a piss poor job. Wait, can I ask when the first time either of you saw this photo and Neelai, I know you follow her on Instagram, so you saw it. She's in your close friend circle, so I know you saw it very quickly. I only pretend to not care about the British monarchy because Kate and I have been involved for several years. Everyone has seen this photo. I don't feel like I need to describe it. But if you haven't, go to the internet. It will find you. No, continue living your life in peace.

1:26:09Under no circumstances should you pull over your car and look for this image. But did either of you clock this as weird in any way? Yes, 100%. Did you? Right away? Yeah. I looked at it and I was like, why does everybody – they all look like they have AI faces. They're all smiling in the same weird way. Oh, interesting. You went that far. Yeah. And then I didn't get to zoom in and everything. And I didn't realize it was a story because I had to get on a flight. And so I was like, this is so stupid. And I sent it to all my friends who we sometimes talk about royal stuff. It's okay. It's just me.

1:26:38It's okay. Other people are allowed to care about the royal family. I don't actually care that much. I have a lot of friends who do. We have a lot of staffers who care about this or most. And it's great. Ironically, none of our British staffers. Just a bunch of Americans. Only Americans. It's only the Yanks. The farther away you live from England, the more it appears you care about this. That's true, actually. I wonder if that keeps going. So if you circle around the Pacific Ocean, you start caring about it less. You get to Japan and everybody's like up in arms about Kate Middleton. Could be. But yeah, no, it was clear to me like something was weird in the photo because her head was enormous.

1:27:13I was like, why is her head so huge in this picture? And it turns out because the whole most of it was Photoshop. We don't know entirely how much. Kate later dropped like a thing being like, I just love to mess around with Photoshop. Still no photo of her. The only photo we've seen is a picture of her husband driving and there was a woman looking away when the photo was taken. And they said, that's Kate. That's good. And it's like, it's it. So unclear where she is. Unclear. She's alive. Can I answer the one question? Yeah. Not a photo. Not a photo? You think so? Yeah. Because of Photoshop. Just straightforwardly, not a moment in time.

1:27:49Yeah. That was my big question is, what is a photo? Is this a photo? And it feels like, no. And what's cool is everyone else agrees, including all of the press, everybody, like AP, Reuters, everybody said, yeah, we're not going to carry this photo because it's not a photo. And it's been manipulated. And so very definitive, not a photo. Everybody clocked it. I love how many people clocked in. I love how quickly. It made me feel better. The misinformation on the social media platforms about what's been edited here is out of control. So the number of people who think it's AI is very high. The number of people who have decided, what's it, like a magazine cover?

1:28:29It was a Vogue cover, I think, from years ago. And they've used the face. And it's like, you know, that's just her face. It's nowhere close to being the same face. Yeah. It's just at an angle. It is very funny. You see them side by side, and it's the same person making what amounts to essentially two totally different faces. Everybody's like, they swapped them. And it's like, no, they super didn't. But the heart of the what is a photo debate, the heart of it is if you take a long sequence of photos over a period of time and synthesize one moment in time that never happened but that contains all the other moments in time, is that a photo?

1:29:06That's the heart of the – Yeah. Right? Like iPhone smart HDR or whatever they call it now. The photonic engine takes eight frames and synthesizes one exposure. And that's what Kate did. but the A-frames happened like over five years that's not the same thing is that even her kids? Who can say? the reason you asked and I said I clocked it right away is I have but one child and getting her to look at the camera and smile is very difficult and I was like all three of them? No way just like immediately I was like this is some JCPenney shit like no way and it's the same smile on all of them they all look like they have that the filter in TikTok or whatever that makes you smile That's what they all look like.

1:29:49They do. It's horrible. I'm sorry I had to write about it. I know we had a lot of commenters. I don't think we should apologize for writing about it. Yeah, because I was going to say we had a lot of commenters say, who gives a shit? All those commenters clicked and commented on the story. This is the top story on our site by a mile. People really care about this. I do not. I want to be very clear about this. I'm an Indian American. My people have escaped the British royal family twice. We literally kicked these people out of the countries that I'm from twice. Two different countries. we brought came together here i am don't need you and your queen on my money get out of here like nothing for you it's a king now sure i didn't even remember that uh but i understand why it's important i understand why so many members of our staff thinks it's important i understand people are reading the shit out of it because it's hysterical it's just i'm from westworld and i'm looking literally getting started to be like doesn't look like anything to me she's like moving on I mean, I do think if you want to like, there's a really interesting story about like, the media and information sharing and how we understand what's true.

1:30:52And like, all of that is fine and good. And like, Liz Lopato, I think is in the middle of writing what I assume will be 35 ,000 words about the Daily Mail that will be very good. And I'm very excited to read it. But like, I'm with you. It's, it's absolutely not an AI story. And it is pretty much not at all a what is a photo story, because it's just a hacky Photoshop job that somebody does. CNN did a heroic job of trying to make it a what is a photo story. They did. They're like, this raises the question of what even is a photo? And I was like, you guys. And also, thank you to everyone who got that push notification and immediately sent it to us.

1:31:23This is how we know you are our people.

1:31:28Anyhow. Well, I hope Kate's okay. Yeah. Who can say? They may be weakened at burning her. She hasn't texted me back. Yeah. Yeah. What's up with that, Kate? Get to it. Come on. Neal is waiting. It's a love affair. what can I say this is why I have to pretend to discard to disregard the royal this is one of the rumors is that that he was cheating on her so I think the rumor should be that yeah like she got back at him with you that's I can't even imagine how dismissive my wife will be of this idea my actual divorce lawyer wife would be like that's not true shut it down that's not the person I married.

1:32:08Okay, second and lightning round. I'll just go. As promised, while we have been recording, Starship the Third launched, went up to orbit, opened some doors to prove it could open some doors, and then it was supposed to splash down. It did not. Well, presumably it did, just not in the way that everyone was hoping for. Well, no, the quote from SpaceX spokesperson that we have in our story, we haven't heard from the ship up until this point, and so the team has made the call that the ship has been lost. So no splashdown today. Oh, you're right. I took that to mean like it's going to come down. We just don't know where.

1:32:45But actually what that means is it's still up there somewhere. Or it burned up in the atmosphere. Or it came down and they lost track of it. Or it exploded in some other way. Any number of exciting opportunities for Starship fans. So as successes go. Well, so much, much more successful than before when it fully exploded. and then when the booster exploded. This one went all the way up. It did some planned maneuvers. Love a maneuver. That's it. And then, quote, remained in one piece until contact was lost. I mean, I think it's generally true in these cases that getting it down is the part Yeah, that's the part that they worked on the hardest for the longest time.

1:33:25That is the massive engineering problem with it. We've gotten really good at sitting shit. Worry about that once you can get the thing where it's going, right? Like, let's get it there and then we'll worry about getting it back. And it seems like they're getting it there. We're getting there. Like, that's cool. Yeah. That's cool. And probably the guy who runs that company, the guy should run the company. It's maybe a thing that I could say. Don Lemon. Why does he care if it comes back? He wants to go up and stay up. Go to Mars, Elon. I think everyone will be happier. It'll be fine. All right. Okay, my lightning round.

1:33:53I'm just going to run away from that as fast as I can. Yeah. I just want to take you on like a brief emotional roller coaster that I went on earlier this week, which is when I read a headline from Tom Warren, lovely reporter at the verge who said apple to allow ios app downloads direct from websites in the eu david wakes up to this news hell yeah sounds awesome super exciting apple's gonna like let you properly sideload and then you scroll down a ways and apple has done what it always does which is say a thing and then set up like a hilarious set of hoops you have to jump through in order for this to be real you have to be in apple's developer program you have to be in good standing you have to have more than a million annual installs in the eu which is actually a huge number uh you have to only offer apps from your developer account you have to be responsive to communications from apple you have to publish your data like you basically have to do all the things you have to do to be in the app store only harder and then you can have it from yeah you have to like go on a dinner date with tim cook at one point like that was a really weird one i didn't understand that one yeah yeah you have to go to the house of everyone who wants to download your app and do it for them yeah uh so yeah again like this is this is just what apple is doing here right like they are they are allowing things but making it so onerous that i don't think anything real is actually going to change for people but just the fact that this is a thing that technically exists i still think is very cool yeah the concept is cool the execution is hot garbage yes i'm just Like, how's this going to work?

1:35:29The EU is absolutely like, come on, man. They won't stop. They won't stop. They're relentlessly European. Yeah. They will come to your house and then take a nap around 4 p.m. And they're going to wake up and they're going to regulate the shit out of you. They will work six hours and they will get a lot done in that six hours. They will. I don't mean to denigrate our European friends. They're wonderful. No, because they are getting stuff done. I think Europe is doing a much better job at legislating technology than the United States. And it's because they eat well and sleep right. Yeah. There we go.

1:35:57And they walk a lot. Yeah, we figured it out. We solved it. You do some walkable cities, and then suddenly you're able to do tech regulation. I think all this stuff we've talked about at length is all going to backfire on Apple. Like, this is political nightmare territory for Apple. These, like, technical compliance measures that don't actually add up to anything real, they're just getting in trouble. All right. Haran, do you want to do one more? Yeah, I got one more. And that is – our European friends will already know about this. the Dyson 360 VizNav. What is that, you ask? With a name like the Dyson 360 VizNav.

1:36:33That is a robot vacuum cleaner that uses visual navigation. Wait, do you know what I just realized, Alex? What's that? Do you remember when Dyson was building an electric car? They for sure had a thing called VizNav and were like, oh crap, we got to use this name for something. We like bought the domain name. That's where this came from. How was the car going to go? Was it going to have a big fan on the back? I'm telling you, anytime Dyson tries to make something that isn't a fan-based product, that either sucks or blows, nowhere. This thing does apparently suck. That's its whole thing is it's supposed to be really good at it.

1:37:09And it has the most enormous fluffy brush. Like she said, it's got a really fluffy brush. And I was like, that's a weird thing for you to say. And I don't understand. And then she sent me a picture. And I was like, no, it's awesome. Like I want to just reach through the photo and touch it. It just looks very squeezable. But she's going to be – she just got it in. It's finally available in the United States or is about to be available in the United States. She just got it in. She's going to be spending a lot of time messing around with it. How stupidly expensive is it? It's so expensive. It's over$1 ,000.

1:37:41Yeah. Like come on. Can I just say the way this thing looks – David asking that question. I mean it's Dyson. So I assume whatever number I think I should just double it and that's what Dyson costs. This is not going to fit under – if you have one of those cool platform beds with like real low clearance to the ground, this will not clean under it. It is quite tall. $1 ,200. Sorry. Purple. It does look like one of those things from the Matrix that puts you back in the power plant. Yeah. But like in a friendly way. That's what it's doing to the dirt. That's how the dirt feels when it comes at it.

1:38:13It's like, you know that scene that's like, I'll get my body back to the power plant, but I don't want to know nothing. It's like this thing comes to your house and it's like, we'll get you back in there. But you have to trade Neo. I have weird feelings about this vacuum cleaner. It's so fluffy looking. Like, did you look at the. It does look very fluffy. I don't know why I like both both Jen and I were both like, oh, my God, this brush. Like we lost our minds over the brush, which is very weird and fun for us. I'm excited to see what she does with it. This is vacuum our house. Yeah. But she's got a lot of RoboVacs in there right now.

1:38:47And I really want her to put knives on all of them and have them fight. And she told me no. So I'll update you guys on that. Let's work on that together. Yeah, we can work on that. I think we can do it. All right, Dave, do you have another one or is it just me again? Mine's just really quick, which is that Microsoft Teams is now attempting to become like an app that families use to talk to each other. And Microsoft has been talking about this for a while as like a thing they want to do. But they're now like unifying the app so you can have personal and work accounts together. and I just feel very vindicated by the fact that I've been saying Teams was the stupidest possible name for this product this whole time and I was right and I feel great about it.

1:39:22Can you imagine like going home tonight and being like, okay I'm going to set up the family Teams and then that's how we're going to, like no, I'm out. Pass. Abort. Teams. Get out of here. I'm proud of you for having feelings about Microsoft Teams. Most people I know who use Teams, including me whenever I use it. I try to use it on my computer, something bad happens, I joined the team meeting. The audio is all messed up. And I always say this thing. I have a very complex relationship with Microsoft Teams. And then everyone in the room starts laughing. It's a good joke. Because it's just. It's good.

1:39:54Yeah. Everyone knows what I'm talking about. Yeah. Whatever it is. It's that and Zoom has to update every single time you use it. Those are the two facts of life now. It's very good. And then Google Meet on my 2015 iMac. Just talk about a Dyson fan. that thing could power a car you know what I'm saying it's not great gotta get a new Mac still working on it okay my my last one and we gotta wrap this up many people wrote in to ask about this Nikon is acquiring Red so Red the big famous camera manufacturer I think you mean phone maker phone maker the Red Hydrogen one famously one of the worst products we have ever reviewed incredible a review so bad they cancelled the product it's only happened a few times in our history.

1:40:39I was just, I loved that thing. I mean, I loved like its existence. I didn't love it. What if we took the design language of a rugged hard drive and made you hold it all the time? Look at it. Ridiculous. It was very bad. Bad 3D screen as well. That is not why they're selling to Nikon. They weren't like, we're so embarrassed we got to get out of this. There's been some patent battles in the past between these two. If you're Nikon, you know that so much of the action imaging is happening in video, that is driving a huge amount of the sensor technology that is happening. All the stuff is happening on the video side.

1:41:17And that's not what Nikon's known for. It's not even a little bit. Nope. Not at all. So you see the Canons and the Sonys of the world really lean into video. There's just an explosion of digital video making happening everywhere. Red obviously owns a big chunk of that. I'm not entirely sure how the shape of this patent battle led to an acquisition. I just know strategically Nikon was kind of out of moves. Yeah. And I think red saw a number and they took the number. I'm very curious to see if Nikon cameras turn more into red cameras because I don't think the people who use red cameras will accept them turning more into Nikon cameras.

1:41:56No. I feel like both ways. Like neither one of those crews want to use that product, the other product. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, which is, but that's, that, that makes it a good deal for them is because then they get both of those, those. Yeah. Maybe that's okay. Like red is a good brand with great products. Like maybe, maybe the best place to land is just like, Oh, you need Nikon to have a video strategy. Like here it is. It's called red. And I got good glass. So it's like, yeah, I mean, I'm a Nikon person famously. Our video team is deeply confused by this at all times. But with my Nikon D7500 still going strong.

1:42:34we'll just see it is also by the way it is a good time in still cameras we haven't already talked about this but Becca's been doing a lot of coverage of like very exciting still cameras from Fuji and Leica that are coming out that Fuji film I think about it a lot I don't need that camera but what if I got into photography again that's a midlife crisis camera right there I'm like yeah what if Max doesn't go to college college is overrated get a cool camera beautiful street photography yeah uh sorry kid uh i took a picture of a dumpster okay uh that is it that's the verge cast we're gonna send her to college one way or the other we'll just see how many dumpster photos pay for it yeah uh if she wants to go which she's gonna want to because i'm her father uh okay that's it that's first cast we've gone way over thank you for listening uh many things to give us feedback on this time david tell us how they can get in contact with us you can email us vergecasts at theverge.com that goes to all of us um or you can call the hotline 866-VERGE-11 uh we got a tweet from somebody the other day who thought it was very funny that we used to tell everybody about twitter and then we told people about threads for a minute and now we want them to call our landline which is objectively very funny um we're all also on threads you can find us there uh and also just like theverge.com we make a website it's pretty good yeah come to it directly escape the algorithms That should be our new tagline.

1:43:55Escape from algorithms. That's pretty good. TheVerge.com. All right, that's it. Back on roll.

1:44:02And that's it for The Vergecast this week. Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. That's it. We'll see you next week.

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